Classic Season: Without Mercury, Mars or Jupiter

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Classic Season: Without Mercury, Mars or Jupiter

Postby SailorStar9 » Sat Aug 10, 2013 8:29 am

How would the Classic Season have turned out if Mercury, Mars or Jupiter hadn't appeared? What would have changed at D-Point?

And how would the rest of the anime turn out if a more powerful version of the missing Guardian Senshi appeared during the Black Moon Arc?
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Re: Classic Season: Without Mercury, Mars or Jupiter

Postby Blackcat101 » Wed Aug 21, 2013 4:41 pm

That only leaves Venus and Sailor Moon. Venus could kick ass, only the anime toned her down. But in the end, the Senshi would have lost with only two of them. I
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Re: Classic Season: Without Mercury, Mars or Jupiter

Postby PCHeintz72 » Wed Aug 21, 2013 8:15 pm

SailorStar9 wrote:How would the Classic Season have turned out if Mercury, Mars or Jupiter hadn't appeared? What would have changed at D-Point?

And how would the rest of the anime turn out if a more powerful version of the missing Guardian Senshi appeared during the Black Moon Arc?

I seriously doubt the two senshi alone would have been all that effective against the dark kingdom... certainly not enough to take all the generals out and Beryl... It is worse when you figure Ami was if not the powerhorse, but the brains of the operation.
It was her advice that allowed for the defeat of a number of the Youma... Her tutoring and insistence on Usagi concentrating in school to get good enough grades to get into high school (yes... there really was such a scene in the anime).

Having said that, I have seen at least one story where Mercury was delayed, though I liked it immensely, and still reread it from time to time I consider it a extreme AU... it was called 'Life's Blood' by Dro'gan NiteFlier.

Only other one that was extreme AU enough to really qualify was where Moon made the extreme mistake of killing Ami's lover right in front of her... it was called 'Waking Ami' by PinaPoe
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Re: Classic Season: Without Mercury, Mars or Jupiter

Postby Crescent Pulsar S » Wed Aug 21, 2013 9:08 pm

Even for the anime, the good guys would have somehow triumphed over evil. That's kind of the point of the series, as well as many other good versus evil titles.

To back that up with canon, rather than just what we -- as observers -- expect from the genre, let's first take a look at Venus. She was already handling both regular crime and the "monster-of-the-week" by herself. And between Artemis and (from the computer on the moon) Serenity's contributions, she was in no real need for someone like Ami. Then there's Tuxedo Kamen, who's very useful when it comes to saving bacon and providing an opportunity to get in a finishing blow. Let's also not forget that the good guys have a "knack" for happening upon the baddies' operations, which further negates any requirement for Ami's intelligence and/or tools, and Rei's ESP.

Of course, with the Ginzuishou, Usagi's always going to win if the situation ever comes down to using it.
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Re: Classic Season: Without Mercury, Mars or Jupiter

Postby Blackcat101 » Fri Aug 23, 2013 4:48 pm

Usagi in the first season, had to go by watching her four friends die to use the Ginzuishou at full power. With only two senshi, the Dark Kingdom would have more power in numbers so Usagi would have died for overuse of the Ginzuishou way before she could defeat them. The Ginzuishou is a last attack type of weapon and quite strains Usagi, is not to use in every battle after all. Remember the battle with Jadeite? I think Venus alone could have killed Jadeite, but then they would target her as the main target and with only Usagi as support, it won't really go well. Besides Usagi at first didn't have the Ginzuishou, she had to unlock it. While is anime only, I don't think Venus and Usagi alone could have been able to defeat the seven great youma.

Now if you want a fic where Venus is badass and forces Usagi to train since all the other Senshi never appeared, that could work. But still, without Venus distracting the Dark Kingdom pretending she is the princess... it would very hard to win. Sure, you could have Setsuna awake the Outers early, but if they need that to just defeat the Dark Kingdom, the next seasons would be insane.
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Re: Classic Season: Without Mercury, Mars or Jupiter

Postby Crescent Pulsar S » Fri Aug 23, 2013 6:09 pm

The Ginzuishou killing Usagi from overuse, or being a strain in general, is nonsense. In the main example given for it, it's not even true. Not only is she still alive afterward, but all four of the sailor senshi are brought back from the dead. (People may also cite her mother, but it's never said or suggested that she died from using it, as far as I recall.)

As for the seven great youma, Venus and Usagi wouldn't be alone. There'd still be Tuxedo Kamen, remember? They only need to get one (maybe two) of the rainbow crystals between them, and Usagi is already well-equipped to deal with the resulting youma (by using the moon stick). With Venus and Tuxedo Kamen there to distract and/or weaken them, I hardly find it difficult to believe that things would still progress as they would had the other three sailor senshi still been around.

The only reason why they seem incompetent in the anime, as opposed to how they're portrayed in the manga, is because just about every episode has to follow the same formula every... single... freakin'... time. They're not allowed to have an easy time of it. That doesn't mean their victories are luck or normally impossible, but that their abilities to function competently are being suppressed by an outside force. It's the same reason for why use of the Ginzuishou is reserved, because it's the equivalent of Staples' easy button. You're simply not going to get drama and suspense that way, much less as much action.

This is why I'm glad they're producing a new anime. There's little chance that it will turn out any worse than its predecessor, because they did a bang-up job the first time around. And by "bang-up job," I mean they banged it up until it was a pile of trash. Well, pretty trash, but if looked at with any depth it's just mediocre or worse.
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Re: Classic Season: Without Mercury, Mars or Jupiter

Postby Ellen Kuhfeld » Fri Aug 23, 2013 9:12 pm

Crescent Pulsar S wrote:This is why I'm glad they're producing a new anime. There's little chance that it will turn out any worse than its predecessor, because they did a bang-up job the first time around. And by "bang-up job," I mean they banged it up until it was a pile of trash. Well, pretty trash, but if looked at with any depth it's just mediocre or worse.

I'll have to disagree. There may have only been about ten minutes of good stuff per episode (after you get past the OP, ED, transformation sequences, and speeches). The monsters of the week may have mostly been dumb, but they had occasional flashes of quality. Some of the mid-bosses weren't half bad in the first, fourth, and fifth seasons.

If you trim off the redundancy, piece things together, ignore some digressions, and use a soft-focus lens -- you have a five-season run of The Once And Future Queen.
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Re: Classic Season: Without Mercury, Mars or Jupiter

Postby Blackcat101 » Sat Aug 24, 2013 12:32 am

The way I understand it, Usagi did not survive her battle with Queen Metalia, she died but the Ginzuishou revived her and the other four, somewhat resetting time so all the Dark Kingdom did on Earth never happened?
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Re: Classic Season: Without Mercury, Mars or Jupiter

Postby Crescent Pulsar S » Sat Aug 24, 2013 4:33 am

I'll simply ask this: does it make sense for something to kill its user if it's just going to be revive them anyway (and why didn't that happen with Usagi's mother?), along with others of note who had also died?

Either way, the result at the end was because Usagi had made a wish for things to be a certain way. While she had collapsed after defeating Beryl/Metallia, there's nothing to indicate that she had died, or would have, prior to being reincarnated/transmigrated because of said wish. And if you go by the mangled dub, you don't even see her collapse or hear the wish, and everyone just happens to be alive and have no memory of their time as sailor senshi; there is no hint of the possibility of Usagi dying and only clear evidence of revival.

And you also have to consider the fact that this particular result does not repeat itself in the future, even though the baddies only get stronger from then onward. Thus it makes more sense that Usagi had made a wish to transform their lives back to something normal rather being taxed by using the Ginzuishou and dying.

Ellen Kuhfeld wrote:I'll have to disagree. There may have only been about ten minutes of good stuff per episode (after you get past the OP, ED, transformation sequences, and speeches). The monsters of the week may have mostly been dumb, but they had occasional flashes of quality. Some of the mid-bosses weren't half bad in the first, fourth, and fifth seasons.

If you trim off the redundancy, piece things together, ignore some digressions, and use a soft-focus lens -- you have a five-season run of The Once And Future Queen.

If there's only ten minutes of good stuff, and you consider but don't apply your second paragraph, I do believe that's what's called mediocre. After all, ten minutes is about half of the episode, and if you average that out with the rest of it, the junk, you meet somewhere in the middle at the very least. :P

And are you sure it'd be five seasons after the modifications? XD
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Re: Classic Season: Without Mercury, Mars or Jupiter

Postby Spica75 » Sat Aug 24, 2013 9:09 am

I'll simply ask this: does it make sense for something to kill its user if it's just going to be revive them anyway (and why didn't that happen with Usagi's mother?), along with others of note who had also died?

Yes it makes perfect sense.


If there's only ten minutes of good stuff, and you consider but don't apply your second paragraph, I do believe that's what's called mediocre.

Nah, the series is overall actually rather good. But it´s good DESPITE everything stupid and badly hacked together.

If someone manage to remake it without all the dreadful bad sides, it´s likely to be a great series, potentially awesome, even if they don´t actually change anything beyond getting rid of the stupids.
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Re: Classic Season: Without Mercury, Mars or Jupiter

Postby PCHeintz72 » Sat Aug 24, 2013 9:59 am

As for the seven great youma, Venus and Usagi wouldn't be alone. There'd still be Tuxedo Kamen, remember?

Him? I would like to note, remember, you are talking 1st season Mamoru... not 2nd - 5th, and not Manga...

1st season Mamoru was, well, mostly harmless and a mere distraction.

The only reason why they seem incompetent in the anime, as opposed to how they're portrayed in the manga, is because just about every episode has to follow the same formula every... single... freakin'... time.

No... Sailor Moon won most of her earlier battles through flukes, though I suppose fans could argue it was her destiny and fate to win those battles since she was on the side of good...

She was extremely clumsy, which is not entirely her fault as she is not familiar with combat... at all. It is actually fairly embarrassing to watch some of her battles, but is forgiven merely on the count she is a 13 year old girl.

She was also generally lazy, she did not want to train, either in combat or magic or schooling... as it would ruin her free time....




But I reiterate, without the others I doubt she could possibly defeat even the incompetent Dark Kingdom... She simply looses too significant an amount of her capabilities. For good or ill, the senshi mostly did not operate near as well independently as they did as a group. They need the synergy and symbiosis for combat effectiveness... The only way they won even with that is due to the sheer incompetence of the Dark Kingdom... I could have thought of dozens of better ways to have taken on the senshi or even been more effective in general than they did...

Mercury was the thinker, whom solved and figured out the best, or only way to kill some of the monsters

Jupiter was their power horse. Both physically, and attacks... and she marks one of the only Senshi to have physically attacked a dark general (unless you count being run over by planes).

Mars was the sensitive and sometimes picked up on things far quicker than they otherwise would have.


Without all that capability she would have lost in this scenario, I cannot see her pulling a win.

EDIT:
Merely a fan fiction quote, but something I grabbed out of a Ranma crossover you might consider relevant:

Overall rating? On a scale of one to ten, they each individually rate a
three, maybe a four at best. They're just too
untrained, although very enthusiastic. Together though, they score a
high eight, maybe even a nine. In general
they're just a team of bullies, unable to be effective unless they
travel in packs.


Do note that is not really quite my own opinion, but close enough I remembered reading it...
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Re: Classic Season: Without Mercury, Mars or Jupiter

Postby TerraEpon » Sat Aug 24, 2013 12:42 pm

Crescent Pulsar S wrote:The Ginzuishou killing Usagi from overuse, or being a strain in general, is nonsense. In the main example given for it, it's not even true. Not only is she still alive afterward, but all four of the sailor senshi are brought back from the dead. (People may also cite her mother, but it's never said or suggested that she died from using it, as far as I recall.)


What about the R Movie?
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Re: Classic Season: Without Mercury, Mars or Jupiter

Postby Ellen Kuhfeld » Sat Aug 24, 2013 2:02 pm

Crescent Pulsar S wrote:The Ginzuishou killing Usagi from overuse, or being a strain in general, is nonsense. In the main example given for it, it's not even true. Not only is she still alive afterward, but all four of the sailor senshi are brought back from the dead. (People may also cite her mother, but it's never said or suggested that she died from using it, as far as I recall.)

There were so many people doing so much dying at the end of the Silver Millennium that nobody had time to record cause of death.
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Re: Classic Season: Without Mercury, Mars or Jupiter

Postby Crescent Pulsar S » Sat Aug 24, 2013 5:10 pm

Exactly. We can't say either way.

TerraEpon wrote:What about the R Movie?

I'm reluctant to include it. Does it have any relevance or impact that would tie it to the television series continuity? It's bad enough that a lot of the television series could be removed without any ill effects on the plot (though you'd lose out on character interaction), much less what would be considered a side-story at best. I'd readily consider the S movie, though, because at least it parallels other Sailor Moon media (the manga) like the television series does.

Aside from that, no, she doesn't die because she overused the Ginzuishou, in the sense that it taxed her body into doomdom. It was the other way around, where the Ginzuishou was overloaded to the point of shattering when outside power had been added to it, and her life appears to be tied to it (which is more nonsense).

Spica75 wrote:Yes it makes perfect sense.

"The price for using me too much... is death. But you conveniently get a one-hundred percent refund forever, so no worries."

I see. XD;;

Nah, the series is overall actually rather good. But it´s good DESPITE everything stupid and badly hacked together.

If someone manage to remake it without all the dreadful bad sides, it´s likely to be a great series, potentially awesome, even if they don´t actually change anything beyond getting rid of the stupids.

My standards are quite high, and this series insults my intelligence like no tomorrow, even if I disregard whatever realistic limitations there had been in producing it at the time. A child might accept one episode after another with incompetent baddies, the goodies always happening upon their schemes, the baddies always getting the upper hand and putting the goodies into some kind of pickle, the goodies always being saved or somehow saving themselves, and the goodies always have to rely on the same person to finish the job every single time. (Note: there are some exceptions to those "always," but that's the rule otherwise.)

PCHeintz72 wrote:Him? I would like to note, remember, you are talking 1st season Mamoru... not 2nd - 5th, and not Manga...

1st season Mamoru was, well, mostly harmless and a mere distraction.

Which was more than enough, time and time again. He was needed even with all of the sailor senshi present.

No... Sailor Moon won most of her earlier battles through flukes, though I suppose fans could argue it was her destiny and fate to win those battles since she was on the side of good...

She was extremely clumsy, which is not entirely her fault as she is not familiar with combat... at all. It is actually fairly embarrassing to watch some of her battles, but is forgiven merely on the count she is a 13 year old girl.

She was also generally lazy, she did not want to train, either in combat or magic or schooling... as it would ruin her free time....

And why doesn't she ever change, despite the time and experience, and what she knows is at stake? She only gets serious when everything's on the line, and then relapses into incompetenthood for just about every other baddie that comes along? I'm not buying it. That's not a problem with the character, but the real person/people behind them. There would have to be something extremely screwed up about someone's brain if they can fend off world-threatening baddies like Beryl and then flop around like a fish out of water when it comes to small fry that can't even measure up to that. That's not a learning curve, like you see in the manga, but the application of nitrous oxide until such a time that it's not wanted.

But I reiterate, without the others I doubt she could possibly defeat even the incompetent Dark Kingdom... She simply looses too significant an amount of her capabilities. For good or ill, the senshi mostly did not operate near as well independently as they did as a group. They need the synergy and symbiosis for combat effectiveness... The only way they won even with that is due to the sheer incompetence of the Dark Kingdom... I could have thought of dozens of better ways to have taken on the senshi or even been more effective in general than they did...

Mercury was the thinker, whom solved and figured out the best, or only way to kill some of the monsters

Jupiter was their power horse. Both physically, and attacks... and she marks one of the only Senshi to have physically attacked a dark general (unless you count being run over by planes).

Mars was the sensitive and sometimes picked up on things far quicker than they otherwise would have.


Without all that capability she would have lost in this scenario, I cannot see her pulling a win.

And you don't think the incompetence of the baddies isn't badly contrived, either?

Also, you're giving the others too much credit for their accomplishments. Like I said, they keep following the same formula, where they all have to suck so their win is "dramatic" instead of par for the course, even though that consistency still makes it par for the course. You say Jupiter's a powerhouse, yet no one but Usagi can actually defeat a baddie of any strength. How many times did they actually have to rely on Mercury's intelligence to win, which couldn't have been accomplished by one of the cats and the tools that they have at their disposal? And Mars' ESP rarely leads to anything that they wouldn't have happened upon on their own anyway, and rarely offers anything definite on top of that.

If you take away those three sailor senshi, Usagi will end up on the ropes. Still. There's at least two others to fulfill the role of weakening or distracting the enemy. Still. Tuxedo Kamen would be around to give Usagi the opportunity to deal a decisive, finishing blow. Still. Nothing would change without those three senshi, except some of the minor details.

And no matter how you look at it, the good guys were always meant to win. Usagi could be alone, a quadriplegic, be deaf, mute and blind, and she'd still win. Well, maybe. :P
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Re: Classic Season: Without Mercury, Mars or Jupiter

Postby PCHeintz72 » Sat Aug 24, 2013 5:59 pm

But this is not really what you asked...

If you believe she is going to come up on top because she was meant to, then there is no point to the discussion at all.

You asked, and the thread title states, the classic season without Mercury Mars, or Jupiter.... that means, excepting changes from their absence... season 1 goes as season 1 was meant to go... and the changes would snowball the further in you got due to their absence.

Given that, you have the same tactics by the bad guys, the same distance Mask kept from the scouts, and the fact Venus came far later than the others

I honestly cannot foresee her pulling a win, or even living through it.

Even the incompetence of the bad guys only gets one so far...

Best guess, she buys it at the airport incident under Jedite, assuming he still makes the threat... Remember up until Beryl threatened him with eternal sleep for his failure to kill them, he really was not taking them seriously, may have seemed to, but not really... but in that incident, he pulled all the stops and it really took all the active scouts at the time (Moon, Mars, Mercury), the mis-controlling of aircraft to run himself over, an ofuda by Mars, and Mask, to even get him to the brink of defeat before he disappeared to face Beryl.

Re-watched some of that episode just now... man really feel sorry for Mamoru with her publicly humiliating him that way... I also always hated that they waited until after getting off the train at the airport being chased by the fake police to transform...

As an example of that synergy effect I mentioned and group tactics, do note it was Mars whom was the first to warn the others that the police were about to swarm them, and Mercury that determined they were really made of mud and not human. Would Mon have faired as well about to be piled by fake cops with no way knowing they were not human?



And if you really want to get rid of the fantasy setting and go realistic, a competent Dark Kingdom and a Japan taking a unknown terrorist threats and strange incidents around the city serious would likely lead to far different circumstances down the road. They would also have to take the vigilante incidents more serious, and would the Japanese really go light on a heroine fighting evil in the name of justice. Or that she held back information from them about attacks on civilians...

Actually, that last, having her go to the police, and ask for an alliance, or for help, would be one way for her to live...

EDIT: Also, since the R movie is technically not season 1, you could say you do not want to include it for the purpose of discussion, though I dislike the idea, as it is supposed to be part of anime continuity canon, and information in it is just as relevant for this discussion as anything else.
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