So...
I enjoyed it. But while most of the artwork (particularly the backgrounds, and indeed, some of the character designs) is lovely, the animation itself seemed quite poor to me. I don't know what frame rate they were using here, but a lot of the animation felt quite jittery, and there were points where they only bothered to animate certain features on the characters faces (mouths, for instance, but not eyes or eyebrows), emphasizing the new designs' already somewhat vacant expressions.
And WHAT is up with Usagi's hair? I thought my main gripe with the new design would be her huge skull, but her pigtails move very strangely here. They're always floating and animating independently. I know people like how "flowy" her hair is, which works great in still art and maybe certain action sequences, but, for the most part, the old series adhered to the laws of physics here.
Kotono also sounded a little off to me. Her henshin and intro speech sounded fine, but she seemed to be warbling/adding a trill to lot of her dialogue, which came off as overly shrill (even for Usagi).
I'd like to say the background music was rather... generic and unimpressive to me, but the sound mixing here made it impossible NOT to notice the music, which was set far too loudly over the dialogue. In terms of the score itself, obviously Takanori Arisawa set an impossibly high standard on the original series and no one will come close to matching it, so I'm willing to give this series some time to find its own footing with the music, but so far I'm unimpressed. Was there any leitmotif AT ALL? I actually missed Tuxedo Mask's maracas.
I don't have particularly strong opinions on the transformation sequence... the CG isn't great, but I like the throwback to the original anime's version, and the opening and ending credits were enjoyable enough, if somewhat generic.
My biggest concern, I predict, will be tone. I'm excited to see some of the manga plot points that the original anime left out/changed finally animated, but the original anime really had a perfect combination of voice talent, animation style, music, and writing (say what you will about the filler episodes, but those "slice of life" stories at least gave the viewer an opportunity to revisit and become familiar with the characters week after week) to get the audience emotionally invested with the characters. Takeuchi's heavy involvement makes me worry that the series will follow a very somber tone, heavy on the romance and drama rather than the humor. The scene where Usagi performs the "Sailor V Kick" and slams her knee into the door, for instance, is a good example—whereas in the original anime, it's quite funny, it fell rather flat for me here. (Although apparently it also occurs in the manga, and the panel there is quite cute, so maybe I'm just having trouble connecting with the new character design: http://sailormoon.wikia.com/wiki/File:Usagi_Sailor_V_kick.jpg )
