Pretty Sailor Soldier Sailor Moon Legendary Hearts
Pretty Sailor Soldier Sailor Moon Legendary Hearts
By: Kou Kotori
New Senshi! New Enemies! The Starlights are back! S/U Y/M T/A Mamo/? ^___^
Starting from the start, the title. Repeating the word ‘Sailor’ makes the title trip up, and adding a colon for extra. Pretty Soldier Sailor Moon: Legendary Hearts seems very inline with the Sailor Moon brand.
The summary is so general in its information. doesn’t really tell me anything. Who is the villain and what is their goal? Why are they dangerous? What makes the OC more interesting than the characters I already know? I also assume that breaking up Usagi and Mamoru is to make room for an OC which always feels like wank to me.
The opening, the chapter title feels in line with Sailor Moon but I’d encourage the writer to make use of FFnets formatting, centre and bolding to make it stand out.
The weird thing is I think the mimicking of the opening could have worked had they done it for multiple chapters and a simple italics. I think the tone does sound like Usagi enough that it doesn’t need the Usagi’s Voice author’s note. The other stuff, the idents and theme song doesn’t because writing is a completely different medium to anime and feels very out of place.
Sailor Vanessa is right in that nowadays certain archives allow gifs where it could be a little bit of flourish, but at the time this was published no chance. Use your medium appropriately and in this case FFnet is just text.
The intro is an overdone trope. Yeah, yeah, Usagi’s late. It’s also jumpy, from the street to Ms Haruna’s classroom? Super weird. I think this highlights how important knowledge of the canon, and making sure you stay within the setting is. When these kinds of details it catapults the reader out of suspension of disbelief. Attention to detail is important.
It’s also a good idea to make sure a scene has a certain length and serves a purpose. The school scene is a handful of sentences before jumping to a different scene in the throneroom of the enemy.
…. Always a throne room. I know Sailor Moon is known but I’ve always assumed it's to save the animation budget. The best thing about fanfic is you are not constrained by budget!
I do appreciate that there’s some appearance detail because in some OC fics you get nothing, but it can be expanded on, like clothes, accessories. Her minion, Tiako, got the lion’s share, and I will say that there is something intriguing about an enemy all in bubblegum pink.
Again, the scene is very… perfunctory? Minion! Do the thing!.... Yes leader, I will do the thing…
And because we’ve watched Sailor Moon we know exactly what the thing is. Again, the scene is so short I don’t have time to get immersed. There’s no atmosphere or emotion, just description.
The dialogue is stilted. I’d introduce the writer to one of those ‘lists of alternative said words’, adverbs and work on combining dialogue with an action to create a more dynamic scene.
"Apologize," said Ami.
Rei suddenly felt a bad vibe coming from random directions. "Guys, I feel something coming..."
"Don't sneak your way out of an apology!" said Usagi.
"She's right, Usagi-chan," said Luna. "Something is coming."
Is only a little better than scriptfic. Better, but not a lot.
Sailor Moon attacking with pies is cute, it’s a creative touch! Kind of on brand but where did she get the pies?
After what feels like forever because nothing really happened, we get the intro of the OC. In fact we get the ol’ Seven Sue Pileup, where five OCs are dumped at once with only a quick description of what they look like. This is the ol’ telling over showing.
This doesn’t work because it’s like going to a party, around the circle with introductions and you never remember who they are! They are just descriptions, no emotions or personality so character wise they’re stickfigure in depth.
I think the best way to introduce multiple OCs in a single scene is one at a time, give each a purpose and a way to shine, showing off their personality more than powers. For example if Sailor Sun is the main and the powerhouse, what if Tiako ran? Sailor Earth might be a tracker, using a visor from a distance to keep track of her and warning caution. Sailor Comet might be the fastest, chasing her down and bragging arrogantly. Sailor Macrocosm could show she’s sneaky, she already predicted the enemy to flee and laid a trap with her attacks causing an argument between Comet and Macrocosm showing their rivals. Then Sun plops down to finish the job.
Each OC should have a reason to be there, otherwise they’re just accessories. Because they are the usual generic first choice of Otaku Senshi creators their team feels incredibly incohesive- Sun, Comet, Earth and Macrocosm…
She wanted them each to feel special so they got to pick their names- including a senshi of the whole universe which is a very interesting choice in that group of friends. (I actually thought of this clip https://youtu.be/JPA9bKz2meI from Southpark).
To review the OC, my guess is Sailor Sun is the avatar OC just because she’s first.
The red pigtails makes me think back in the day she’d be a Usagi recoloured in a .bmp colour scheme with the buns sawn off with a Paint colour palette and plain enough to go on my Sailor Sun Drinking Game page. Apparently she doesn’t wear shoes.
The only other bit of information we get about her is her attack. ‘Sunbeam.’ Aside from being very basic, only described as a golden beam. Sailor Venus wants her attack back. None of this breaks the mold.
So each of these new Guardians spout their attack, destroy the enemy, say something mysterious and vanish back into the shadows leaving the Inners to gasp at how powerful and mysterious they are. Given this is how Uranus and Neptune were introduced, it’s incredibly overused in the Otaku Senshi fandom. Heck, even popular Ocs like Sailor Orion use this trope! But I’m kind of over it and will add it to my own Drinking Game page.
What might have happened is Kotori and Kasumi had some friends they wanted to share this with. Awesome! That’s a great way to keep yourself challenged and inspired! I can imagine two girls in the 2000s sitting at a computer chatting and laughing as they write together! It’s a cute and fun way to write a fic but it also means there’s not a lot of editing. The best way to improve your work is multiple read throughs. Add some here, rephrase something there and slowly sculpt your fic into something more polished and refined.
Two girls sat at a computer and typed and posted it immediately. I always want to find something to praise in a writer because writing is hard. Starting is hard, finishing is hard and chapter 2 is the hardest thing of all.
Unfortunately nothing jumps out at me as unique or original or setting off fireworks in my brain going “Oh! Cool idea! Never seen that before!” and will fade into the great mush of Sailor Moon fics I’ve read before and forgotten.
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So that was my first review, did with the FSA Book Club to get my reviewing chops back. It feels a little bland, not fun at all to read like the old reviews on Livejournal.
I think I’ll also do a little chibi doll to paint over for each of the OCs to give these reviews a little icing. This one was done quick, not chibi enough. Keep an eye out for the next one!
