A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, a young jellyfish watched a Sailor Moon movie about a gallant knight named Tuxedo Mask and his trusty wench and enjoyed it thoroughly. So impressed was this jellyfish that it vowed to consume all anime movies it beheld, and a great tradition of anime watching continued from then on. And thus ends today's history lesson, class.

Yes, Sailor Moon R: The Promise of the Rose was actually the very first anime movie I had ever seen, and I absolutely loved it the day I saw it on that shiny black video cassette. Now, roughly ten years later, I finally had a chance to see it again and I can safely say that nostalgia has never been quite so disappointing as it is now.

Now, forgive me for not having one of those red squishy things humans call "hearts," but the utter level of sappiness in this movie was too high to be bearable by any living matter. In the beginning of the movie, I was perfectly fine and content with the shounen-ai themes abound in every corner of the plot, but by the twentieth time the sailor soldiers utter "We'll be girlfriends forever!" and "I love you girls so much!" I was practically gagging. I can handle a lot of things: fan service, plot holes, Cosprayers, and Naruto fanboys, but melodramatic, trite dialog? That's just way too much for me, baby!

Okay, so the story basically revolves around this premise: a male alien named Fiore is practically head over heels in love with Mamoru (Tuxedo Mask); unfortunately, somewhere along the line Fiore gets possessed by another alien that isn't very fond of Earthlings at all for some reason. In fact, this second alien dislikes Earthlings so much, that it wants to KILL them—all of them! Thus, the both of them travel to Earth on a giant asteroid and prepare for the annihilation of all humans.

Obviously, these two aliens (the evil one, by the way, looks like an evil daffodil) won't degrade themselves by actually coming to the surface of the Earth, so the sailor soldiers do the most logical thing: they bring the fight up to the surface of the asteroid! Excuse me for being cynical, but I always thought that humans breathed air, especially when they're in outer space. I don't know, it must have just been me. At first I thought they could somehow survive in outer space without oxygen because they were transformed, but at one point Sailor Moon de-transforms and continues to stay alive... much to my disappointment. Even more painfully, after she de-transforms, all of the other girls begin to cry for the millionth time in the movie.

Fortunately, there were several good aspects of the movie that warranted a score as high as 2.0. For example, one thing that I really found fascinating was all of the backstory it had about Mamoru. Up until now, he had always been a sort of enigma to me. Both his past and present were always pretty much obscured from the view of the audience, and he really never even mentioned what happened. Now, however, so much about him has been explained. For instance, his usage of roses each time he comes to the rescue of Sailor Moon was explained, as was an even more surprising connection between the two of them.

Another great aspect of the movie was what I like to call the technicals. That is, the audio and the video. Being a movie, the production values were obviously a lot higher than they would be for a television series, and it really shows here. The artwork is as crisp as I've ever seen it, and there is nary a glitch in the animation. I had never seen Sailor Moon become nude with so much fluidity before watching this movie! The music and voicework is another great part of the movie, although really the voice acting is something that is consistently impressive throughout the entire series. At first I was a little alienated by the music (which was basically just completely redone music from the series), but it quickly grew on me.

Unfortunately, there is not a single additional aspect of the movie that I can say impressed me. The plot was as vapid and uninspired as could be, and there was so much cheese throughout the film that I seriously considered forcing myself to become lactose intolerant. Perhaps an explanation for the disturbing amount of it in this could be the fact that the movie is just barely over an hour long, which could mean that the creators were unable to develop the story as much as they had wanted to and therefore were unable to instill the correct emotions into the viewer before the dramatic parts of the movie occured. Nevertheless, never before in a movie have I seen so many crying women, which, in the end, may quite possibly be this movie's only demographic. I only wish I could be as braindead as this movie now that I've seen it.