When I began watching Sailor Moon, I didn’t expect it to have won me over so much. Especially not by its third season which I’d – foolishly – assumed would be the point where diminishing returns would’ve kicked in. Nope! Sailor Moon S is my favourite of the show’s seasons thus far – in part because I’ve well and truly settled into the show’s charming comedic rhythms, and in part because it’s easily the queerest season yet (and that’s saying something).

It’s not simply that Sailor Moon S introduces Sailors Uranus and Neptune – the latter of whom is so butch she’s regularly mistaken for a boy, and becomes the object of affection of many of the Sailor Guardians – or little-girl-turned-apocalyptic-demigoddess-turned-sailor-guardian Hotaru, whom Chibiusa is soon crushing upon. (Though this is all gay as hell.)

Rather, the very essence of the show resists heteronormativity, whether it’s by pushing Tuxedo Mask to the sidelines or revelling in the transgressive femininity represented by the transformations of the Sailor Guardians and their enemies alike. One could write a university thesis on how the show’s surface embraces the ‘frivolous’ trappings of Western femininity while resolutely resisting the appeal of the ordinary in its subtext. Anyway: good shit, this.