Cyprine

Okay, Full Moon Crystal Tokyo is a site I'm well familiar with, but I haven't visited lately. Immediately, the splash page draws to my attention an issue that has always pissed me off about "fancy" layouts, but people rarely take into consideration when designing: Microsoft IE-only CSS filters. FMOCT uses opacity filters for all linked images: when you hover over the image, it reverts to full opacity, but in its resting state is somewhat transparent. Since the background of the site is white, this gives everything a washed-out feel. Now, the filters, themselves, can be used quite well, but the danger with these filters are that they are incompatible with many browsers, especially the fringe-surfer's favourite, Firefox. Though FMOCT doesn't specifically rely on the opacity filters for the site, it's important when designing a site to keep in mind the site's compatibility with browsers other than Internet Explorer, which is kind of a design whore. Especially with splash pages, you should never use special code or anything that is incompatible with any browser. The coding should be simple and easily viewed by everybody, because that's going to be the bottleneck that tells us how to change our browsers to better view the rest of the site. Having IE-specific filters should be a no-no.

Again with the splash page, I see another immediately glaring problem: font colour. Alright, we can tell that this site is going for that serene washed out feel, but the grey font so light that I actually have to squint and even Ctrl+A select the text to read it? Not a good sign. Sure, it's just browser requirements, but seeing as how I'm just getting into a minor hangover from too much brazillian hard liquor mixed drink and beers, I'm not particularly inclined to squint to find out I need to be using MIE 5.5+. Another problem is that the splash page doesn't mention that we're gonna need javascript enabled, which the layout actually uses heavily.

Otherwise, the splash page is used well. Vote buttons are prominently displayed before the splash page enter button (although the enter button itself is not labelled -- also negligent, as it's not immediately intuitive I need to click on the banner to continue to the actual site). There are also a couple of fanlisting buttons and other clique listings. It's good that the webmistress gets everything out of the way before we proceed to the thrust of the site.

The actual site is a simple tables-style layout with each different section featuring a fanart of a chibi of Usagi, Ami, Rei, Makoto and Minako, traced from the SuperS movie opening, and the Outers that seem to be unique fanart in the same style. The colours of the website change with each section. I can imagine that's a pain to update. It's a nice effect, but some sections are done better than others.

Javascript mouseovers are used well in this site: image rollovers are used for the main section navigation at the top of the page, and are also used for the affiliate list (when you mouseover a text link, the top button changes to display the 80x31 button of the site).

Of course, again we come across the problem of having font colours that are simply too faint to see: while the grey of the text of this site are easily read and the links are pleasant shade of dark pink, the hover shade of the links on the main site are a pink so light you can't read it. Maybe I'm crazy, but even mousing-over a link, I'd still like to be able to read it.

One minor irritation: splash pages are designed to give a viewer the requirements for viewing the site, and/or for loading miscellaneous site content that doesn't fit elsewhere on the index page. Loading the main site, I notice the vote buttons are still prominently displayed -- yes, the same ones from the splash page. If you put something on a splash page, don't put it on the main site, please. That just makes your splash page that much more useless.

Alright, the main site lists a description of each section of the site and gives a text link as well as the main site buttons just beneath the banner, which is good. I'm not thrilled with the CAPS/lowercase hybrid writing, but what can you do? There's a bizarre amount of extra white space below the content which is just kinda strange, since it's extremely unnecessary and a waste of space.

The content text is also very close to the grey border of the layout table. I personally prefer my text with a little margin, but maybe I'm getting a little picky at this point.

Overally, while this site is clean, and obviously loads well at most resolutions (it's really hard to go wrong with tables), that washed-out look is kind of bland. The site is set up very well for clear navigation, and technically there's nothing wrong with it, but aesthetically, it's just very soporific.

Most of the other sections featuring other characters have similar problems as the main site which features Usagi: the hover links are too light and the colours are so pastel, it'll easily cure me of the insomnia i'll sure to be suffering from in a little bit due to this oncoming hangover. Also a curious choice is to prominently feature the affiliates list as part of the side navigation of each page. While I think this is great for any site choosing to FMOCT, it seems a tad unnecessary and probably a pain for the owner to manage. I noticed at least a couple of sections in which the affiliates list didn't seem to match what they should've been.

On the plus side, this approach makes each section's layout unique and well-tailored for the content, and though I would personally hesitate to reload new banners, navigation buttons, sub-banners and layout images, it seems to work well enough for those with fast enough connections, like me.

Overall, this site is very cute and it's, overall, well-coded for decent compatibility of most resolutions within the MIE 5.5+ world. If anyone cares, I believe the site was built with a generator, or the person who hard-coded it likes to put random unnecessary tabs when typing freely between p tags. It doesn't matter to me except that using a generator probably caused some of the weird artifacts in this layout, including that bizarre amount of extra white space at the bottom of the main index page.

Viluy

This site has a lot of written content which appears to have been written with a lot of thought and consideration for the reader/visitor. The only thing that bothered me (which is just a personal preference) was the fact that all the is appear as lowercase in titles and such. It seems to be a gimmicky ploy to appeal to the younger masses. Not that that's a bad thing, mind you. It's just annoying for the older visitors like myself (speaking for myself of course).

There is still some work that needs to be done on the site, but as it's pretty comprehensive, it's not a huge issue. A lot of effort has gone into finding out details of all the different series of Sailor Moon, the seiyuu/actors involved as well as the characters in the series, big and small. As far as grammar and spelling issues, there don't seem to be any that I can see. Even the fanfiction appears to be well-considered and written, even if not to my taste (not being a Michiru/Haruka fanatic).

The only thing that I can see to improve is a link issue (or maybe it's just my browser). When I went from the downloads page to the multi-media page, it gave me a 404 error, even though I'd already been to that page. I had to go to the main page to get to it. Other than that, everything is fairly up to date and all the links work. I like the scripted links myself, thought I recognise that it's not everyone's cuppa. That and finish updating the site with the information you're lacking. You have one of the better sites out there and one I'd be proud to link to.

Mimette

You know, I gotta say it. I love the name of this site. It is cute and the splash page is cute. However onto my section.

Ok wow. This site is chock full of goodies. I mean I didn't expect to click on "series" and find that each series has pictures of cover art and such. I was floored by this. Some of these I have seen and others I haven't. There are even pictures of the Myu covers, which is quite rare.

I am a bit intrigued by the galleries. It is separated into two different categories: manga and cosplay. I was expecting your usual "manga and anime", but cosplay?! You do realize I am going to dig through this to see if I know any of these people. Now my review is going to take even longer because I will be sitting here for a while.

Alright, now that somewhere around an hour has passed that I have looked a cosplay pictures, I can return to my review.... sorry guys I can't help it -_-;

The interact section is full of games and fun stuff to do with the promise of some more stuff soon. I hope to see some of it active in the future.

Mixed media is a wonderful place to play around in, but I am in the "downloads" section now, and lemme see... Senshitime Website Clocks! Ok, that is different. The usual emulated games are here as well. However there is one thing here that I must correct. There is the infamous video that has been floating around for a while now, and it needs to be cleared up. It wasn't Saban that did this. It was another company that tried to pitch it TO Saban. For those that haven't seen this atrocity, go have a look, but make sure to have a brillo pad to scrub your eyes with afterward.

I am not making this a really detailed review, because you should be over here yourself checking out this wonderful site. I am very pleased. Keep up the good work!