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Sailors Uranus and Neptune get the ending’s visuals and vocals all to themselves.

After a nine-month break, the start of the third season of Sailor Moon Crystal, the reboot of the monumentally popular and influential anime series, is just a week away. While this new batch of episodes is being promoted as the Death Busters Arc, taken from the name of its major antagonists, the real excitement is the arrival of Sailors Uranus, Neptune, and Saturn, therein finally bringing the entire team of Sailor Senshi together for the first time in the Crystal era.

With the season premiere coming up fast, the producers have unveiled the opening and ending sequences for Season 3. Taking over opening theme duty is singer Etsuko Yakushimaru, with “Love the New Moon” (“New Moon ni Koi wo Shite” in Japanese).

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Musically accompanied by some stirring strings, the opening shows the titular star leap into action, which also gives viewers a chance to check out the new character designs for Season 3. Judging strictly by this short clip, they have a greater sense of weight and more expressive faces than the characters’ previous Crystal incarnations, which should be a step in the right direction towards winning back fans of the original anime who didn’t care for their frailer builds seen earlier in the reboot.

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Even though she gets solo billing, the success of Sailor Moon’s franchise has always been thanks to the strength of its ensemble cast, and the opening does an impressive job giving all of the nearly dozen Sailor Senshi a moment to shine. Season 3’s ending sequence, though, is a different story, as it shows only romantic partners Sailors Uranus and Neptune.

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It’s not just the visuals that don’t have room for anyone other than anime’s most famous same-sex couple, either. The vocals for the song, “eternal eternity,” are provided by the two new voice actresses for the pair, Junko Minagawa (Uranus) and Sayaka Ohara (Neptune).

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Released along with the opening and closing animations is a new preview which gives a glimpse of the star’s updated transformation sequence, which doesn’t seem to rely as much on conspicuous CG as her first one in Crystal.

And while the preview shows Sailor Uranus, in her non-Sailor Senshi identity, driving a much dorkier-looking car than the Ferrari she’s often been seen with before, the rest of the team’s new attack animation shows some nice kinetic energy.

▼ And Sailor Jupiter looks awesome, of course.

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Sailor Moon Crystal’s third season debuts Monday, April 4 at 11 p.m. on Tokyo MX1.

As always, follow Casey on Twitter for more Sailor Jupiter favoritism.

Source: IT Media
Top image: YouTube/sailormoon-official
Insert images: YouTube/sailormoon-official (1, 2, 3)