Shadowjack Watches Sailor Moon

Not really a single work per se; there isn't even an official title. This page is about a series of threads on RPG.net -- something falling into a bizarre gap between a recap and an Alternate Continuity.

One day, Shadowjack, an anime fan with almost no prior experience with Sailor Moon (limited to the first dozen episodes and knowledge of two jokes about the English dub), started recapping the series episode by episode, similar in format to an Abridged Series in Script Fic form.

What followed... was a surprisingly original take on the source material, shining with appropriate humor and insight into the theme and characters. The recaps themselves started very short, but grew increasingly detailed and peppered with in-jokes as time went on. Furthermore, Shadowjack started with almost no knowledge of Sailor Moon canon or fanworks, and his interpretation is thus entirely free of the Fanon that's been built up around the series — leaving him and the other RPG.net forumites free to come up with entirely new fanon, for example, Naru's mother being Queen Beryl.

One constant feature of this series have been periodic summary comics, in which the characters themselves comment on the events so far in a No Fourth Wall way. These, too, have been getting increasingly elaborate from season to season.

As of Summer 2018 the recaps are going thorough the SuperS season.

An index for all episodes is maintained on this page, and this one lets you go directly from one episode to another without having to open new tabs, but for the best experience, it is recommended to start at the beginning of the first thread and read through everything, including the recap posts themselves and everyone else's posts. Yes, the threads are long.

Note to editors: Since the author himself or someone following the forum threads in a spoiler-free manner could be browsing this article, please spoiler-tag anything not yet revealed as of the latest recapped episode.

This abridged series... thingy uses the following tropes:
  • Affectionate Parody: With heavy emphasis on the "affectionate."
  • Alternate Character Interpretation: Frequently relies on this. Among other things, Ami is a Covert Pervert, Rei is a fiery Latina, Artemis is a Battle Butler, and Wiseman/DEATH PHANTOM is an over-the-top comic book super villain. Professor Souichi Tomoe is in it for the science, Eudial speaks like an advertising executive, and Mimette speaks entirely in textspeak and emoticons.
  • Alternate Continuity: Kinda-sorta. It follows the anime closely overall, by nature of its format, but there are a few ultimately minor deviations.
  • Archive Panic: how many threads have been filled up by Shadowjack and the forum-goers? Sailor Moon was a long anime.
  • Cat What: In "Mister Tsukino Does His Taxes and the Household Budget" (see link below).
  • Crossover Punchline: The panda from a first season episode is Genma Saotome.
  • Early Installment Weirdness: The first recaps are very brief in comparison to later ones, each of which preserves almost all the scenes in the original episode (although often in heavily changed form).
  • Epileptic Trees: Shadowjack comes up with a number of theories (remember, he started with almost no knowledge of Sailor Moon canon).
  • Everyone Is Bi: See this image.
  • Fanon
  • Fetish: Usagi discovers she has one for violin music. In a side comic this leads to her keeping violin CDs under her bed like a Porn Stash, including embarrassment when her mother discovered it.
  • Les Yay: Usagi/Rei and especially Ami/Makoto.
  • Original Character: Detective Not-Appearing-In-This-Film, who was mostly created to humorously highlight situations where the events portrayed in the show should have caused legal ramifications. He actually appears in one of the summation comics, though.
  • Real Women Don't Wear Dresses: Commented on how the show averts this trope:

What I find fascinating about the series is that it really is girl power in action. It does not take traditionally "masculine" action tropes and simply gender swap them, no, and it does not deny or condemn the attraction of the pretty princess fantasy. Instead, it takes all the "feminine" girly stuff like frilly princess dresses and pink unicorns and makes them into implements of power. The hypothetical girl in the audience is being told that she can be as girly as she likes and still dream of growing up into power and responsibility. Feminine articles are not shackles or playthings to be eschewed, or tools good only for obtaining the approval of men -- they are treated as cool and desirable things, in and of themselves.
Boy craziness is even part of this, in the way they make the knightly romance fantasy an active one. The girls wanna be swept off their feet by a handsome knight, and, damn it, they're gonna go out there and find that handsome knight and make sure he does it.

Hotaru: Oh my gosh, a talking cat! So cute! May I pet you?
Luna: …I LOVE YOU, HOTARU.

Usagi: Well, I might as well try this sucker. Though goodness knows how I'm supposed to 'cleanse' a pile of rocks.

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