Design in Sailor Moon

After reminiscing about my happy childhood memories of singing along with the theme song to Sailor Moon on TV, I had the urge to relive the song. Thus, to youtube.com I went. And it did not fail me! There it was, the first link, with the song and the opening animations to accompany it. My room mate heard it and suggested that we watch the first episode to reminisce some more. And so we did. As we were watching it, both of us were very surprised by how mediocre the animations were. The characters looked exactly how we had remembered. However, the overall quality was a little blurry and pixelated. The transitions between scenes looked similar to transitions in a powerpoint slide and there were minimal effects done. We thought to ourselves "How did we think that this was so cool when we were younger?"

Sailor Moon Episode 1, Part 1


Putting this into perspective, it is a great example of how far we've come since twelve years ago! Technology has greatly advanced and so has the film and animation industry. Along with this development, people's expectations of film and animation have risen as well. Thinking about it, when I was a child, I know that I didn't pay much attention to details such as special effects and such. It was the characters, plot, and music that kept me a loyal fan. Now that I am more aware, to some degree, of how animation and design is done, I look out for it. And I ask for more from it. While I was watching that first episode, I was asking questions about why the characters werre given the costumes and outfits that were drawn. Is it silly that I am analyzing an old cartoon?



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Sailor Moon Videos