|
Sailor Moon SuperS
This season debuted on March 4, 1995 and ran until March
2, 1996. "SuperS" stands for Super Sailors or Super
Senshi, as this is the first anime to feature six Super transformed Sailor
Guardians. This is the first season to not focus too heavily on
Usagi. Instead, Chibiusa and her relationship with Pegasus/Helios serves as
the focal point of the season. Initially, this led to lower ratings, as fans
in 1995 felt that Chibiusa was stealing the show, but starting in 2000 this
season has become a beloved hit with internet Sailormoon fans. Toei initially pushed for a wider toy line, despite the
fact that the show was starting to feature more adult content and more nudity
than previous seasons, as it picked up from the last season's
"edge". Toei felt that despite the more mature stories surrounding
the cast, Chibiusa being the focal point would lead to more children watching
with their families. Not only did the number of children not increase, it
alienated many longtime fans. Some felt Chibiusa was a 'Cousin Oliver"
character, and not as important as her mother. Others felt turned off by the
fact that some of the sexual innuendo was being moved away from Usagi, at
this point 15 years old, and was being pushed on Chibiusa, who looks about 10
years old here. In contrast to the previous season, SuperS features
sugary, bright colors. This is the final season for Umino and Naru. They appear
early in the series and in both SuperS specials. They do not appear in the
manga at this point, but Naru did get one more appearance in the StarS arc of
the manga. Also in contrast to the earlier seasons, SuperS pulls very
little from the manga, wholly becoming it's own entity. Plots were either
omitted or changed, and with the exception of the SuperS special and movie,
Uranus, Neptune and Pluto are absent, and Saturn is not mentioned. In the
manga, Helios is fused with his pet Pegasus by Nepherenia. Here, he turns
into a Pegasus, even after he is freed. Diana is introduced here, whereas in
the manga, she had been present since the end of the Black Moon Arc. Luna,
Artemis and Diana never turn into humans in this anime, while they do in the
manga. Phobos and Deimos are seen briefly, but unlike the manga never turn
human, nor reveal themselves as twins, selected by Sailor Mars before the
fall of the Silver Millennium, to be her guardians. Also different is the story of Queen Nepherenia. In the
manga, she first appears through a mirror as Queen Serenity is celebrating
the birth of Princess Serenity. When the inner Sailor Senshi as children cast
her out with Queen Serenity, she places a curse on the princess's head, that
she will die young. This curse eventually led to the fall of the Silver Millennium,
Princess Serenity's suicide when Queen Beryl killed Prince Endymion, and
Sailor Saturn dropping the glaive. Sometime after this, she kidnaps Helios
and Pegasus, fusing the two into one creature, holding him hostage until he
is able to get help from Chibiusa centuries later. Instead, the backstory
shows Queen Nepherenia living alone on the dark side of the Moon, until she finds
Priest Helios on Earth. She kidnaps him just before Prince Endymion meets
Princess Serenity for the first time, and wants to take the Golden Crystal
from his head. How Helios is detained changes too. In the manga, he is turned
into a Pegasus and held inside a human-sized birdcage. In the anime, his body
is held by a web, upside down and naked, and his soul escapes on occasion, to
visit Chibiusa. Her backstory changes again later on, where we find she was
once a beautiful queen with her own castle on the dark side of the Moon, and
had a court that adored her. But one day, Zirconia appeared from a mirror,
pushed herself into Nepherenia's body, and enslaved her court, turning them
all into Remliss and Lemures. By this definition, the Sailor Senshi kill off
an entire group of possessed Moon people. Another change is that initially, Nepherenia wants Helios,
crystal, soul and body. Yet in the manga, she's only using him, with hopes
that she will eventually marry Prince Endymion. More radical changes involve the plot surrounding the
Amazon Trio and Amazoness Quartet/Quartetto. In the manga, Ves Ves, Cere
Cere, Jun Jun and Palla Palla own a tiger, fish and hawk as pets. Using Palla
Palla's magic, their pets become the Amazon Trio, and serve the young girls.
The girls in turn care for their pets, and are deeply enraged when they are
killed. Once the Outer Sailor Senshi arrive, Sailor Saturn discovers that the
girls are not evil just possessed, and at the end of the Arc, the girls
become Sailor Vesta, Sailor Pallas, Sailor Juno and Sailor Ceres, and exist
to follow Sailor Chibi Moon the same was Mars, Mercury, Venus and Jupiter are
to follow Sailor Moon. In this anime however, the girls do not know the
Amazon Trio. The Trio is only briefly killed, but are resurrected by Pegasus,
and brought to Elysion to live out their days as lights. The Quartet takes
over for the Trio as Zirconia's minions, but while they are eventually turned
good, the four never become Sailor Guardians. Another change saw Fish-eye
become a homosexual man while Hawk-eye became interested in older women. In
the manga, Fish-eye is straight and it isn't revealed if Hawk-eye is ever
into anybody, but he does dress as a woman. Tiger-eye remains unchanged as a
pedophile into young girls. Another radical change involves transformations and what
everyone is searching for. In the manga, Helios is trying to find the maiden
who can unlock the seal of the Golden Crystal in himself and in Mamoru.
Chibiusa is that maiden, but since his vision was of an adult Princess Lady
Serenity, he erroneously thinks her mother is the maiden. As the story
progresses, all of the Sailor Senshi gain Super transformations, and then an
Eternal transformation, and Tuxedo Mask finds the power to use his crystal
just as Usagi and Chibiusa use theirs. During this time, both Helios and
Mamoru are suffering from a deadly black rose in their chests, one that won't
go away until Nepherenia is defeated and the seal is broken. In this anime
however, only six Sailor Senshi are shown getting Super transformations, nobody
turns Eternal, and while Mamoru does end up with a black rose in his chest,
his illness only lasts a few episodes. Also unlike the manga, nobody uses
their princess forms except for Usagi and Chibiusa, while in the manga, all
of the girls can access their original form. Also, while Usagi and Chibiusa did swap ages because of
Palla Palla, the story and art changed. In the manga, it lasts two days, and
Chibiusa looks the same as she did as Black lady, though she can't remember
being Black Lady at all. Yet here, the change only lasts a few hours, and
Chibiusa just has slightly longer hair. It's puffy, a hybrid of her normal
hair and her Black Lady hair, sort of as a tribute to Naoko Takeuchi's
original design of Black Lady, which saw her with shorter hair, mid puff. Chibiusa's age again comes into question here. In the
manga by this point, she's entering the 3rd grade, but her body
age is around 10, and it's just before her 903rd birthday. By the
end of this arc, her body age has shot up to 13, as she's looking similar to
when Minako was Codename Sailor V, again at 13. In this anime, Chibiusa
spends the first few episodes looking 8-9 years old, most of the season
looking 10, and then as Pegasus leaves, her body age shrinks down again to
about 8. This is the only season to have more than one special make
air. There is an hour long SuperS special, which features three
different stories. One story has Usagi, Luna and Artemis run through clips of
the previous seasons, as Usagi educates Chibiusa about the past. In a huge
continuity error, Chibiusa does not recall ever being Black Lady and does not
recall ever being told about the first season. Yet Chibiusa and Usagi went
through those events together in the R Movie Special, and at that time,
Chibiusa had a full recollection of being Black Lady. Another story sees
Sailor Uranus battling a cold and flirting with the new maid, while Sailor
Neptune gets jealous. They both end up dealing with Lemures, but ultimately
decide not to tell the other girls about it. The third story is pulled from
the manga's very first Chibiusa's Diary story, where Chibiusa gains a vampire
classmate named Lyrica/Ririka/Lilica. In the manga, this story takes place
while Chibiusa is in first grade, while here, she and her friends are in the
3rd or 4th grade. In the manga, Lyrica's mother is also
a vampire, and the two are killed by Sailor Moon and Codename Sailor V. Here,
it's just Lyrica being possessed by a Lemure, and she battles with Tuxedo
Mask and all of the Inners, who combat her with bad breath from eating
garlic. Lyrica is saved. The second special preceded the SuperS movie, and follows
the manga short story "Ami's First Love". Only a few slight changes
were made. The SuperS movie features an all original story, with new
characters that were not in the manga but were created by Naoko Takeuchi. When Pioneer/Geneon released the SuperS movie, they
omitted the Ami's First Love special. Neither DiC nor Cloverway got the rights
to the SuperS special, with many speculating that Toei just never sent the
tape. DiC and Optimum Productions edited the movie, using the
Sailormoon R cast. It was the final venture for that team, as the same year
the movies came out, Cloverway took over production for the S and SuperS
seasons. Only a few of the original voice actors from the DiC era made it
over to Cloverway. Due to DiC editing the film, many attack and
transformation names were changed, and do not match the SuperS TV edits. Peruru's name came up in a debate. It's pronounced
"Peruru" very clearly in the film, but fans argue it should be
"Pelulu" or "Pearl" since his name and costume are based
on pearls. The SuperS movie takes place immediately after Pegasus
returns to Elysion, but just before Sailor StarS starts. However in the
background, girls from the Mugen school appear. Mugen was destroyed at the
end of S. Another continuity error sees a completely alive Sailor Pluto
appear without explanation. Sailor Uranus and Neptune also arrive, but the
three are not able to Super transform yet. Kuniko
Ikuhara, who worked on Sailormoon through SuperS once recalled how the movie
almost turned out, and how a lost script for SuperS became the entire premise
for Utena: A: That was a real plot I had thought up. I was once up to
directing the Sailor Moon Super S Movie. It was going to be a story in which
Uranus and Neptune were the main characters. It was going to be a story independent
to the TV series and this was going to be the first appearance of Uranus and
Neptune. And Sailor Neptune was going to be in a 1000-year sleep at a place
called "The End of the World". And Sailor Uranus was needed to
steal the talisman from the Sailor Scouts and use that to awaken Sailor
Neptune. And Uranus was going to be riding the black Pegasus. And the story
was going to be that Sailor Moon would ride Pegasus to chase Sailor Uranus
riding the Black Pegasus to the "End of the World". And the climax
of the story would've been the rodeo scene between Sailor Moon on white
Pegasus and Sailor Uranus on Black Pegasus. And so this was kind of story I
had in mind. But before production began, the producer walked off Sailor
Moon. It would've been possible for me to make the story still, but since I
came up with the story with the producer, I also walked off. But I had an
attraction to the idea of "The End of the World" which I thought up
for this plot. So the same thing in Utena comes from the Sailor Moon plot. This was the final season Cloverway worked on, and while
the dialogue had been vastly changed, much of the content was left alone,
except for one episode with Ami naked, and the gender identities of Zirconia
and Fish-eye. Because Fish-eye was homosexual in the anime, Cloverway turned
Fish-eye into a girl, though the gender swap wasn't officially announced
until six episodes into the season. Zirconia was changed to a man, but no
reason was ever given as to why. The change made no sense, as Zirconia wears
lipstick, never hits on anybody, and is later shown to be living inside of
Nepherenia. One episode was dropped, but later re-edited and shown
silently on Cartoon Network during the second run of SuperS. SuperS was aired on Cartoon Network without fanfare. When
the second run of S ended, Cartoon Network re-edited the first S trailer
commercial, and said there were all new episodes starting the day after. This
was the only acknowledgement SuperS was given outside of ads for the movie,
so most fans had no idea SuperS had even been dubbed. This makes SuperS the
only season to air without it's own ads on Toonami. Some names were altered. Due to an issue with translation,
Palla Palla became Para Para. Ves Ves was Besu Besu. Cere Cere was Cerle
Cerle. Tiger-eye became Tiger's Eye. Fish-eye and Hawk-eye would alternate
some episodes as Hawk's Eye and Fish's Eye. Nepherenia became Nehellenia.
Momoko, who was previously Melissa in the DiC dub and Katy the previous
season became Melanie. Kyusuke became Kelly. To make up for this, Diana, Helios and Ikuko all retained
their names. Irwin toys made prototypes for a series of action
figures/dolls based on the Amazoness Quartet, but they went bankrupt before
they could produce anything more. They also had plans for Pegasus and Helios
merchandise, but nothing came to fruition. Curiously enough, DiC released a
SuperS calendar with shots from the actual season, even though they never had
the rights to dub this season beyond the movie, and they also had a few
episode screenshots used for their trading cards. |
Episodes:
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20
21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30
31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39
Ami's First Love SuperS Special Movie
Follow
me back to the Battle Record!
Follow
me to the next season!
Follow
me back to the last season!
Follow me back to Moon Sisters!