I also keep getting distracted trying to pick out all the little labor saving animation tricks they used and trying to figure out how they managed to make such janky animations actually look decent, as well as wondering why modern low-budget animation can't manage the same effect even though modern tools should make it even easier and faster to use the old stylistic tricks. Is it just a matter of janky cell animation needing a very specific set of skills that no one today cultivates in order to look good?

A major point to consider is that Sailor Moon was a long running weekly show that went on without breaks for years. Shows like that, no matter the era, require more limited animation tricks in order to deliver an interesting visual product because they will have less movement than 10-20 episode seasonal shows . Also idk what you mean by "janky animations" but Sailor Moon actually moves more and has better, less janky animation than most modern shows of similar length and production.

There is truth that some of the techniques used have faded out and that makes it harder for limited or long productions to deliver a pleasing show visually. Stuff like stylized still frames, color swaps, pans, triple takes and more limited comedic acting with great expressions are somewhat of a lost art form. Either because a some were achieved by analog cel photography and their aesthetic doesn't go well with digital colors and computer compositing but mostly because there is market demand to storyboard shows in a flashier way "like other big hits" and bad productions have lost the ability and realism to try and work around their limitations . Also younger generation of artists simply didn't grow up with those aesthetics so they won't try to reproduce it

Another thing to note is that it was simpler to make a competent looking show back then because simple cel photography of hand painted backgrounds its hard to fuck up aestheticaly. Computer compositing gives people way too many tools to fuck up the aesthetic with filters, digital effects, 3d assets etc being heavily used and usually in a bad or rushed ways due to production issues usually since compositing is also the last thing done. That's why there are 10 isekai every season that look like bland ass aestheticaly . They would be equally crap story wise in the 90s and they wouldn't move more but the art direction, backgrounds etc would have looked at worst cool. Same with sailor Moon. It relies on great backgrounds and color design but in a modern paradigm for a long running show that aspect would look worse and blander

Lastly anime productions are in their worst state ever. Its horrid really. 2-3 great looking shows each season hide the fact that the rest are completely broken, taped together in the last minute and rely on armies of inexperienced animators to patch them up. The production process hasn't been simplified by became more and more complex and fragmentated and without a system of mentorship in place the talent required isn't replaced in good rates despite the fact that many people world wide work o anime nowadays.

Wait, Tuxedo Mask was in his twenties?

i haven't seen crystal or the dub since childhood but I am just posting to let you know the 90s dub of sailor moon was the very first anime I ever saw as a kid (thanks Viz!). I was obsessed to the point where I would wake up at 6:30am on Saturdays to catch it and begged my grandmother to buy me the Sailor Moon action figure doll at wal-mart, which she did (thanks grandma!) and my dad got so mad at this (my mom remembers it as him literally being like ' 'my son is not going to play with a doll') that he literally wrenched all the limbs off it and buried it in a hole in the backyard.

his plan didn't really pan out because I still turned out to be a homosexual communist

anyways to this day I know the lyrics to the 90s dub opening by heart

sailor moon "filler" episodes are the best part of the show. The moon princess/whatever lore is the boring part.

I've been meaning to do a Sailor Moon rewatch blog that literally no one will read for years now. Mayyybe I finally should.

Is it just a matter of janky cell animation needing a very specific set of skills that no one today cultivates in order to look good?

Many things were lost in the move from cell to digital. Background painting, some of the weird composition effects you can get by over laying cells on top of each other, things like that.

Mostly due to the sweatshop like conditions they have to churn out new shows. Although, if you watch a modern show by an old school director they'll use the same tricks: compare Ikuhara's work in Sailor moon and Utena to his newer stuff like Penguindrum and Yuri Kuma Arashi, and they compare favourably.

I can't decide if it gets some credit for making him an impossibly perfect passive wish fulfilment object for the main character (and thus does better than the typical anime things where he would be the viewer insert and Usagi would be the viewer wish-fulfilment prize) or if that just makes it worse by narratively contriving to make a relationship that would be extremely creepy and predatory IRL ontologically ok.

Sailor Moon is a shoujo (aka written for/targeted at girls), so it's basically just the standard anime relationship with the genders swapped, thus making it creepy.

Also I thought he went to her school lmao shows how well I remember the show.

In comparison the first arc of the second season felt like an absolute slog, despite being much shorter - most episodes felt like nothing really happened and the action scenes getting taken over by increasingly long reused move sequences got old fast.

The tree and aliens arc in R was made up for the anime. If I remember right, they had burnt through the content in the comic at that point and had to keep the show going.