sailor moon crystal negative – SittingOverHereDreaming

Okay I was a lot nicer towards Crystal in my first post but tumblr eating that instead of posting it has given my all the gumpy Crystal!Rei lacks, so whoops.

This moment is meaningless for Crystal!Rei. It’s not an unusual statement, and Usagi being different from Serentiy (or even the ideal of Serenity) hasn’t really come through.

SO I PROPOSE WE TAKE THIS MOMENT AND PUT IT IN ANOTHER CANON. ANY CANON. Even the manga, as much as Crystal is supposed to be faithful to it, would make this moment 1000x more meaningful.

Rei always has moments like this, where she admits that she loves Usagi the way she is (“We always fought, but it was fun,” anyone?). But for those to work, Rei and Usagi need their antagonism. We have senshi who Usagi clicks with right away (the rest of the inners, really, but most especially Mako. Mako and Usagi is the least complicated relationship, and that works). Usagi and Rei take time. Rei wants Usagi to be better and Usagi wants Rei to just love her already, and that causes friction. But when push comes to shove, Usagi, for all her crying and almost losing fights and reading manga instead of studying, is more than good enough for Rei, and for all of Rei’s gruffness and critical comments, Usagi knows Rei loves her.

So let’s pretend this is Rei, manga!Rei or 90’s!Rei or myu!Rei or PGSM!Rei, who’s kept trying to push Usagi to be stronger, to be a better student and and better fighter and a better everything, saying no, you’re not the ideal princess. You’re you and you’re better than any princess. You don’t need to change at all.

So. My problem with this episode (and what’s shaping into my problem with Crystal as a whole).

So, in the manga, there’s not that giant interlude of Tuxedo Mask trying to fight Zoicite. He can’t even get to the fight because of a barrier. And clearly Crystal had some time to fill, as this is a fast paced chapter, and they chose to fill it by having that super pointless fight.

Which is a bad choice in my eyes for a lot of reasons.

Like, okay, let’s say they want to keep the focus on UsaMamo, since that seems to be what Crystal wants to do. You know what would have been interesting? IF TUXEDO MASK COULD NOT HELP USAGI AT ALL AND HAD TO DEAL WITH THAT. Like there are so many ways that could be interesting. He could feel super helpless. He could bash himself against the barrier screaming her name. He could have a hint of a flashback to the fact that he (via their relationship) essentially caused the downfall of her kingdom and her death. And then we could switch to Usagi seeing him, and not wanting to die with him thinking it’s his fault (and then we could have her also think about the others, but that’s a different nitpick). But like, it could have done SO MUCH to actually establish his character beyond the frankly creepy stuff Crystal has been having him do.

(The moment where he stops her to give her his bag did not work for me here. It did in the manga, but the pacing felt super off and too slow to be cute here.)

And if they didn’t want to go that route for whatever reason, THEY COULD GIVE MORE TIME TO THE INNERS. The really puzzling thing to me is that Crystal!Inners have less personality than their manga counterparts, and Crystal keeps choosing to not do anything about it. And it bother me because there’s so many scenes that are slower paced than they need to be (see the scene in Mamoru’s room, where there’s just so many empty beats, or the everyone-repeats-what-Luna-just-said scene in last episode), so clearly Crystal is trying to fill time. So why are they not filling time with character work.

I mean, a couple thirty second scenes of Mako and Ami talking while walking to school, and Rei getting pissed about something, or just all of them interacting in a context that has nothing to do with Luna or their mission would do SO MUCH.

(Also just like. How about we also get Usagi really really caring for the inners along with Mamoru? She keeps only getting power from Mamoru and I love that she can draw strength from him, but hey how about her actual guardians too.)