Sailor Moon is by far the epicenter of all magical school girl oriented Japanese anime. Every other anime you see with this theme of girls whose costumes resemble that of the Japanese school girl has its influences and inspirations from Sailor Moon. I somewhat have seen enough Sailor Moon to give a brief explanation of the premises.
Only reason I watched a few episodes of Sailor Moon was because there was nothing else on and I was waiting for Gundam Wing to come on. They haven’t shown Sailor Moon on Cartoon Network for a good while. I remember several years back it was part of the Toonami block that used to be on from Monday to Friday. This was several years before it got replaced with the Miguzi block. Of all the magical girl anime series, Sailor Moon was by far the longest.
The first arc was known as the Dark Kingdom arc. They introduced the five main characters: Usagi Tsukino who is Sailor Moon, Ami Mizumo who is Sailor Mercury, Rei Hino who is Sailor Mars, Makoto Kino who is Sailor Jupiter, and Minako Aino who is Sailor Venus. Originally, it started out with three who are Sailor Moon, Sailor Mars, and Sailor Mercury. Sailor Moon and Sailor Mars were bickering when not fighting enemies over the affection of Tuxedo Mask who’s real-life persona is Mamoru Chiba. But at the moment, they didn’t know he was Tuxedo Mask.
Gradually, the other members were introduced. Sailor Jupiter appeared next. Then a few episodes later, Sailor Venus made her appearance with her cat companion Artemis. Artemis is the male counterpart to Luna who is Sailor Moon’s cat companion. For the first arc, they are protecting the Crystal Kingdom along with Queen Serenity that exists one thousand years into the future. It turns out that Sailor Moon and Tuxedo Mask are the queen and king of the Crystal Kingdom.
Sailor Moon R is simply a filler-arc of thirteen episodes. Filler episodes are episodes created to ensure that the anime doesn’t catch up with the manga. The Sailor Moon anime was adapted from the manga. It revolves around Crystal Tokyo.
The story carries on into another arc. This time, Sailor Moon is dubbed as "Sailor Moon S." They are introduced to new enemies that are looking for certain hearts of people. Sailor Mini-Moon who is Sailor Moon’s daughter in the far future makes her debut and becomes another regular. Sailors Neptune, Uranus, Pluto, and Saturn are introduced. Sailor Saturn seems to be one of the tragic antagonists in this arc. Half of the Sailor Moon S arc revolves around Hotaru Tomoe who is Sailor Saturn, the dark scout.
The fourth arc is introduced as "Sailor Moon Super S." The Sailor Scouts are given new items, powers, and abilities since the ones they have do not work on these new villains. Diana, the daughter of Luna and Artemis is introduced as Mini-Moon’s new companion. This series revolved more around Mini-Moon who has dreams of Pegasus the character that is hunted down constantly by the Black Moon Circus. They’re after the Golden Crystal that’s the horn in Pegasus’ unicorn form. Sailor Moon and the Sailor Scouts’ end up fighting the Amazon Trio and the Amazoness Quartet.
Interestingly, Fisheye the "female" of the trio has an attraction towards Mamoru. In a sense, becomes a rival of Usagi’s. It’s also revealed that the Amazon Trio used to be animals as well. Fisheye used to be an actual fish. In the United States version, Fisheye was made into an actual woman. One fact remained the same, Fisheye was attracted to Mamoru.
The final arc is called "Sailor Stars." They’re introduced to the Sailor Starlights, three women who disguise themselves as a boyband trio. This series didn’t have an American adaptation mainly due to the reason that they crossdressed as men when in disguise.
Sailor Moon isn’t your normal heroine as it’s evident throughout the series. She can’t cook if her life depended on it. She’s very blondish. She’s not that intelligent. She can be pretty lazy. To top that off, she makes very bad grades in school.
Asides from that, Sailor Moon is still a very popular franchise. They have a high grossing manga, live-action series, games, and so forth. There are also a few anime movies for Sailor Moon. Basically, this is your anime for little girls. It’s mainly for little girls. But that’s good enough since it’s a very large viewer base.
The intellectual group would find no value in this. Liberals would find nothing in this. Radical feminists would very much condemn the anime for the objectification of females due to the outfits. Right-winged neoconservatives would condemn Sailor Stars and possibly the rest of the Sailor Moon franchise.
But, it remains a great anime for little girls everywhere.