Finally finished watching the final season yesturday (so the whole show took me roundabout a year to watch!). Well, I have to say I liked it. Though I think in my season rankings it'll be coming second to S.
The Nehelnia (or however the zarquon you spell that!) arc at the start was good, I think the fact that it was rather short helped though and started the series well.
However when we got into the main arc of the season it did start to get a bit generic with the victime/monster of the week plot (sometimes combined with 'what are Three Lights doing this week' plot!), this was particularly jarring in episodes where we didn't get anye setup for this weeks victim and the villain would suddenly show up out of the blue in a place where Usagi (and maybe the rest) happened to be at the time and attack some random person! In fact throught the whole run of the show I've found the whole idea of the Sailors being in the right place at the right time a bit of a 'suspension of disbelief stretch'! I didn't really like Sailor Iron Mouse, but the rest of the Sailor Amanites where alright, particuarly Siren and Crow (probably because neither really came across as evil but rather nice people if you got to know them socially!) and Tin Nyanko was an interesting one particuarly when she ended up being only half evil (shame she didn't last very long after that).
Another negative point about Stars is the lack of screen time for the outer senshi, they were there sometimes but not much. And I was really geared up for their return only to find that (outside from the opening arc and the finale) they hardly did anything! Another reason why this was disapointing was after S Saturn ended up being my favourite character, and then she got absolutely no screentime outside the opening and the finale (and even then she practically did nothing!).
The deaths of the senshi in the finale arc was didn't have the same emotional effect on me as they did at the end of the first season, I think I can workout why.
!: The inner senshi were all taken out in one foul swoop rather then one by one.
2: They fizzeled out of existence rather then just leaving us with the sight of a dead body.
3: I knew it was coming, but not which episode it was coming in, thus it probably came as a bit more of a shock and cancelled out any emotion!
However, the way they all came back to life was much better this time around (probably due to the nature of there deaths this time in comparison to last time (see point 2), the whole Star Seeds thing came off better then "oh look the silver crystal can bring them all back...oh and they've forgotten everything!".
So I think my overall rankings for the seasons will go like this
1: S
2: Sailor Stars
3: Original
4: R
5: SuperS
