美少女戦士セーラームーン SuperS

Passable if you remove the entire first arc

Recommendation: watch eps 1 & 3, then 23 to the end. The first arc is agonizing, and entirely skippable (I gave up after 7 eps).

The overall theme this season is adolescence & the conflict between growing/maturing & losing childhood innocence. While Chibiusa is the focus again, she's more developed and interesting, and balanced out much better by the remaining ensemble cast. That said, the main story itself is pretty basic, and there's plenty of places where I just didn't care for the SoL writing (especially the comedy). As for the arcs...

Amazon Trio (1-22): It’s like someone decided "let’s take the worst elements of previous seasons, make the comedy way more childish and dragged out, make the background villains into an annoying circus, and move on from “sexy lady + object” monsters formula to “this is basically just an SA metaphor”. I watched 7 episodes before tapping out, and skipping to episode 23. If it weren't for the repeated SA-esque attacks, and generally ridiculous combat choreography every episode, I'd probably have watched a few more of the suggested episodes.

Amazoness Quartet (23-30): The quartet is fun, and the slice of life parts were enjoyable enough too. I honestly wish the quartet had gotten some more episodes, b/c the way they (often constructively) interacted with everyday people added a nice flavor to the show, and they're a fun group. While the dream mirrors are still a thing, they're handled much better.

Pegasus (31-39): We've discovered... the main plot! And it's compressed and mildly confusing, and otherwise fine. Like last season, these episodes really pack a punch, and have great combat choreography. I really like watching the combat when it's related to the main plot, b/c nobody's pulling their punches. The stuff with Chibusa and the pegasus who's really a prince/guardian of dreams was sweet enough - but you also have to ignore that it's basically him grooming her (which some have speculated the director intended to deconstruct, but never had the chance to). The arc would have benefited greatly from another 2 episodes, to fill out the backstory a bit more. Look forward to reading it in the manga, to see what exactly I missed out on.

Better than R, but no outer senshi in sight, and way too much Chibiusa for my tastes.

The confrontation with the final villains feels pretty rushed. I would have liked to have fewer filler episodes and more time to expand their story. But such is life in 90s anime.