Magical Girl Anime and Filler OR: How People Completely Miss The Point.
So I was looking through Youtube for Sailor Moon commentaries on a whim, and I found somebody complaining about how much “filler” early Sailor Moon has. Now, I have a slightly contrarian opinion on filler in general, but to make this complaint about magical girl anime, in my opinion, is incredibly myopic and completely misunderstands how Magical Girl anime are structured and written because evidently all MG anime must be paced like Madoka and Nanoha.
I think before we discuss exactly why filler is important we should ask a really simple question that people don’t answer correctly: what is Sailor Moon about?
I think a good way to answer that question is looking at the start and end points of the narrative.
The first episode is all about Usagi and it honestly isn’t very flattering. Here is Usagi’s day after rescuing Luna: she’s punished by Ms. Haruna for being late because she slept in, she gets a 30% on a test and one of her two friends notes that this is hardly out of the ordinary. Partially because she failed that test, she can’t buy some jewelry she wants. She then runs into Mamoru, who himself mocks her over her low test score. She then gets in trouble with her parents. And then instead of actually engaging with her responsibilities regarding her homework she takes a nap, ensuring the cycle will begin anew. At the beginning of the episode, she herself admits to being a klutz and crybaby.
In the final 2 episodes, she basically watches 5 close friends that are willing to actually die for her… well, die one by one. She has a complete and total breakdown half way through, and in the end just wants to give up and run away. But memories of her friends (and the boyfriend she now has!) cause her to not give up, and help push her on to, as calmly as she can, face her brainwashed boyfriend and the villain behind all her suffering. And she wins. She manages to beat a powerful sorceress and, despite all the odds being against her, turn her boyfriend back to normal. And then she’s brave enough to face the end of the universe with a smile, giving up all the happy times, all the meaningful moments with her friends, all the memories of her boyfriend, and all the times that she was able to not be “clutzy crybaby Usagi” and be a genuine hero. Largely because she cares about her friends and wants them to have happy, normal lives.
If these don’t sound like the same character, that’s because they’re not. And so much of that comes from all those “filler” episodes. The early episodes people call pointless absolutely do have a point; they show that Usagi isn’t good at this. She stumbles, she gives up. She often either lucks her way to the solution or has Tuxedo Mask save her. But then, slowly, she learns. She becomes stronger. Braver. She figures out ways to beat her enemies without Tuxedo Mask;s help at all, to the point that he can turn evil and she can still manage to succeed, with the help of her friends.
Sailor Moon is a story of growth. It’s Usagi growing as a superheroine, but also becoming a stronger person. And you need those episodes because they help us fill that gap and really understand how she became that way. The original anime isn’t a tale with a streamlined plot that is about beating the bad guys. It’s a tale of people changing and getting stronger. It’s a tale of slow gradations, until eventually things that were so hard become easier. A tale of how you and your relationship with those around you changes before you even notice it. And it’s not just Usagi either.
There is a great bit in the Sailor Moon R movie. The Senshi are essentially burning through all their power to help Usagi, almost certainly risking their lives. And as they do so, they think about how much Usagi has done for them, actually flashing back to scenes from Season 1. It’s very remiscent of Smile Precure’s bit in Episode 32, and the show probably got the idea from this scene. It’s a really powerful moment, but only because we saw it. Only because in real time, we saw Usagi start to change their lives for the better.
One of my favorite moments in the first season is when Usagi is attempting to infiltrate the Dark Kingdom to get her boyfriend back, and it continually looks like Usagi is caught and in danger. While the others desperately want to intervene, Rei insists that they stay where they are. After a while, Makoto accuses Rei of not really caring about Usagi at all.
And it makes sense. Throughout the season the two are constantly fighting, and in the first portion of the season (from her entry to around 20 I’d say) Rei is hardly subtle about how she thinks Usagi is a shitty leader. There’s reason to think that maybe Rei doesn’t think hugely of her, and she clearly didn’t at the beginning of the show.
Then Rei takes out Usagi’s most precious possession, and notes that she wouldn’t have trusted Rei with that if they didn’t trust each other, and right now she is going to trust Usagi, and that requires sticking to the plan and not intervening. It’s a genuinely powerful and touching moment because, while we didn’t necessarily see this change occur, we did see everything that happened that might have caused it. Every little thing that might have caused the two to get closer and earn each other’s respect and love (platonic or no.), and it’s because of that that the moment makes complete sense,
You get a similar moment in Rei’s final scene before her death, where she tries to tell Usagi in her last moments that despite how much they fought, she really does care about her. In fact, Episode 45 is one of the best episodes Sailor Moon ever had, and that’s partially because you get to see Usagi’s friends sacrifice themselves for her sake, but also because you’ve spent so much time with these characters; watched them grow up little by little, and become stronger people, in small ways and big ways. It makes the brutality and suddenness if so many of the deaths so incredibly stark and painful. If you start heavily clipping episodes, you start to rob the episode of that emotional power. It just starts to be characters dying, not Rei and Minako and Makoto and Ami dying; characters that mean so much because through the good episode and not great episode alike, they are characters you’ve grown to care about.
You, of course, don’t need a 40+ episode season to be sad when characters die. But this doesn’t just make you feel sad, it helps the deaths resonate and connect with Usagi, because just as you saw them die, you also saw them live. And that does mean something, and make those losses all the more powerful. The series’ emotional core lies in the little things just as much as it does the big.
I could touch on other seasons or series right now (I can tell you offhand that if you only watch the “important” episodes, you tear most seasons of Pretty Cure apart, Futari wa and Smile especially.), but this is long as it is, and I think I’ve made my point.
In many ways, though I like both of them, I would argue that Madoka and Nanoha are focused on the end point of the story and working backwards to get there; personally I think this is demonstrated in how the longest, StrikerS, is also the weakest season by far. Sailor Moon, Pretty Cure, Cardcaptor Sakura (though that one honestly could have used a bit of trimming) and so on are not just about the journey, but walking you through it step by step. And that’s part of what can make them incredibly… well, magical.
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