There is no new Sailor Moon Crystal episode this week. Why not read the manga instead?

Posted on July 30, 2015 by Adam

Had Sailor Moon Crystal continued beyond episode 26 using its regular schedule, Act 27, Infinity 1 – Premonition, would be released this coming Saturday, August 1st. There will be no Act 27 this weekend. We don’t know when we will get it. The final episode’s closing scene left us with the words “À bientôt” which insinuates we may get it some day, but not right away. What is a fan to do? I would suggest you pick up the Sailor Moon manga by Naoko Takeuchi.

I’ve mentioned in my reviews time and time again just how closely Sailor Moon Crystal resembled the manga. It was so close that mentioning the similarities was a waste of time. It made more sense to point out the occasional differences, of which there were few. I prepared myself for each new episode of the show by rereading the equivalent Manga chapter and after doing so the episodes always played out just as expected. If you’ve enjoyed Sailor Moon Crystal to date the easiest way to continue following that story is to pick up the manga where the show left off.

For years reading the manga was not easy, as English releases of the manga released by Tokyo Pop were out of print, but the latest release of the manga by Kodansha is easy to find at many stores and online retailers. Feeling cheap? You can read the fan translations over at Miss Dream, but I would always recommend supporting the series by buying the manga. If you’re starting from the beginning, I don’t need to teach you how to count. If you’re starting where Sailor Moon Crystal takes off the first Kodansha comic you’ll want to pick up is volume 6 with Sailor Chibi Moon on the cover. This book starts the Infinity Arc which is where Sailor Moon Crystal would have, and hopefully someday will, continue with its next episode.

As always you can buy these books using these Amazon links to support the site.

A Super Sailor Mercury S. H. Figuarts figure has been revealed

Posted on July 29, 2015 by Adam

This past weekend, on July 26th, the Super Sailor Mercury S. H. Figuarts figure was revealed at the Wonder Festival 2015 Summer in Chiba, Japan. This was also announced on the official Sailor Moon site. Super Sailor Mercury does not differ greatly from regular Sailor Mercury. The differences are the little semi transparent flaps on her shoulders, a heart shaped gem in the middle of her bow to replace the round one, a star on her choker, a larger bow on the back of her skirt and three ear rings per ear instead of one.

Previously Super Sailor Moon had been announced but this is the first of the other Sailor Guardians to be revealed in their powered up forms. One would expect that, following this figure’s release, the rest of the Sailor Guardians will also be released in Super forms. If the original release schedule is any indication we will next be getting Super Sailor Mars followed by Super Sailor Venus, then Super Sailor Jupiter. While it would certainly preferable to get more unique characters at this point instead of slightly different releases of existing characters, this certainly makes some sense from a business point of view. It’s a lot easier from a manufacturing and design aspect to make a new Super Sailor Guardian body mold and use mostly unchanged head and face molds from existing figures than to make entirely new figures that do not resemble any others.

There is currently no release date for Super Sailor Mercury though we can expect that this figure will be priced similarly to already released figures. You can buy some of these figures from Amazon using the links below.

All of Sailor Moon S is now available on Hulu

Posted on July 27, 2015 by Adam

This week with the two latest additions of Sailor Moon to Hulu we get episodes 126 and 127. This completes the Sailor Moon S season, so fans can now watch all of the first 3 seasons of Sailor Moon for free on Hulu and Neon Alley. We actually wrapped up the main story of Sailor Moon S last week with episode 125 so now we have a couple of sort of terrible episodes focusing on other things which happen following the main altercation with Mistress 9, Pharaon 90 and Sailor Saturn which no one ever asked for but that we are getting anyway.

Episode 126, A New Life: Parting of the Stars of Destiny, seemingly immediately follows episode 125. We don’t actually follow up with what Super Sailor Moon and Baby Hotaru will do but instead we start by seeing Chibiusa asleep. We eventually do see where Baby Hotaru ended up. She is with her father, Professor Tomoe, who is obviously still recuperating from his injuries. Chibiusa is happy to see that Hotaru is healthy and safe, though it seems like it might be a while until they can hang out again. It’s important to note that Professor Tomoe is relatively innocent in this whole affair. He was controlled by an evil entity all this time. The only thing he did which was wrong was that he agreed to allow some unseen unknown power to bring his daughter back to life while still suffering from the trauma of seeing her die. Almost anyone would have made that same decision. At this point it seems like there is a happy ending for Professor Tomoe and Hotaru. It would certainly be bad if in not too much time some girls who previously tried to murder this baby came by and forcefully took her from her father. All that is well and good but now the episode gets really awful. Everyone should have been totally cool with Usagi being great but instead Sailor Uranus and Neptune randomly start to fight Sailor Moon because they want her to prove that she’s really worthy. She doesn’t really do anything to prove this worth, and just fights for a bit, and maybe because they respect that she’s kind of scrappy they have a complete change of heart, kneel to her and we’re all friends again. What an awful waste of time that leaves a sour taste in our mouths for characters that were otherwise so well handled for the rest of the season. Too bad we won’t be seeing them at all next season.

Episode 127, A Guardian’s Realization: Strength Lies Within a Pure Heart, may seem a bit familiar to fans. Didn’t we just see this in Sailor Moon Crystal? It’s time for Chibiusa to leave, again, but she’s quite sad about it. The real failure of this episode is that Chibiusa gave a better and more emotionally touching goodbye at the end of episode 88, after she left at the end of Sailor Moon R. Here we sort of do a weaker version of that sadness and Chibiusa once again leaves. She returns almost immediately though, which is reminiscent of the manga. When Chibiusa leaves after the Black Moon story arc of the manga, as seen in Sailor Moon Crystal episode 26, she immediately returns. This doesn’t happen the first time around in the anime as Chibiusa remains gone for a number of episodes. Perhaps the writers would have kept her away had the plot of Sailor Moon S, based on the Infinity arc of the Manga, not required her to be linked to Hotaru’s story. I feel this episode should simply not have happened and instead we should have seen this in Sailor Stars. By the time Chibiusa finally leaves for the future she’s fake left three times before finally leaving anti climactically between episodes. Chibiusa isn’t being forgotten any time soon though. She’s about to dominate the screen for the entire next season as Sailor Moon SuperS, which will begin streaming on Hulu next Monday, is all about Chibiusa!

Support the site by buying the first two seasons of Sailor Moon on DVD and Blu-Ray using the links below.

Viz’s Sailor Moon R Season 2 Part 1 release does its best with poor masters

Posted on July 21, 2015 by Adam

The third Blu-Ray and DVD release of the original Sailor Moon anime was released on July 14th in North America. This release, with dubbed and subbed episodes by Viz, includes the first half of Sailor Moon R. As with other releases to date the packaging and extras are great but the video quality is quite poor. Viz has obviously gone to great lengths to provide the best product they can but it simply seems that they have continued to receive poor quality source material and are doing the best they can with what they have to work with.

I never did get around to reviewing the first season’s sets. My order was delayed for months on Amazon.ca and by the time and canceled I reordered the sets it was too late for a review to be relevant. Many fans have spoken about issues with those discs. Mainly it came down to the video quality. Viz made a blog post to discuss their issues citing bad masters as the reason for the poor quality. Unfortunately this post was essentially useless as all of the original images they have shown are a mix of two fields due to interlacing. Without getting into too many specifics with standard definition TV technology video comes one field at a time which is why with older videos you will often see stills with lines in them where it looks like two images appear at once. This is not apparent when watching video, but looks quite bad in paused or still images. The Japanese DVD releases for the first season of Sailor Moon were progressive scan, not interlaced, so all we can say for sure is that the masters Viz got were not the best TOEI had to offer, but comparing interlaced images to a final product is intentionally deceptive and gives us no actual indication of what the video quality of the masters are really like.

These sets have HD video, but they are not from an HD source. Sailor Moon was animated on animation cels and then recorded on 16mm film. That film was then converted to 480i standard definition video which is generally what is used as a source. In many cases with older shows, including many anime shows, the original 16mm film will be used as a reference to create an HD 1080p video and this creates a very high quality video. That is not what is occurring with these sets. TOEI provided Viz with 480i standard definition sources which are by all indications quite bad. Viz used video processing to clean up this source material and upscale it to 1080p for the Blu-Ray sources as well as the videos we’ve been seeing on Hulu for over a year. To say the results aren’t as good is an understatement.

The video quality here is not terrible, but not great. The first season sets were highly processed to the point where little grain on the video could be seen but the video quality suffered. It seems as if this set has undergone less processing so more of the original grain remains. While this may seem like it is a lower quality finish, this is simply because it is closer to the source material. I do not have the ability to make Blu-Ray screenshots with my current AV and computer setup, but I was able to find a few on Imgur. These are from episode 51 and I have included screenshots from the Japanese region 2 DVDs (resized to the correct aspect ratio) for comparison.

Viz Blu-Ray	Japanese DVD
Viz Blu-Ray	Japanese DVD

It should also be mentioned that, unlike with the first set, there is no pillarboxing. This means that the right and left side of the screen are black rather than being a weird decorative graphic which no one really liked.

What is the alternative? I think people may forget how much worse we’ve had it. The 90s dub was done with fairly low quality masters but as it was intended for standard definition TV broadcast we didn’t really notice. The DVDs were of low quality. ADVision’s DVDs for the first two seasons of Sailor Moon were probably the worst quality release of anything I’ve ever seen. We can be happy that episodes 67 is actually included on this release, where it had been completely omitted previously.

The episodes included on this set cover the alien story arc which introduces us to Ail and An as well as the beginning of the Black Moon Clan story arc which introduces us to Chibiusa, Rubeus and the Ayakashi Sisters.

Video quality aside the packaging and included 96 page booklet are great. The booklet includes summaries for all episodes and a great deal of character art. The cover art looks great as the does the disk art for both the Blu-Ray discs and DVDs.

A reversible cover is included and pictures all of the members of the Black Moon Clan. Unfortunately some sets to not include this cover. This was acknowledged by the manufacturer as being a problem and so a replacement is available. Included below are the instructions on getting a replacement cover, as shown on the Right Stuf tumblr:

A number of customers have contacted us regarding the reversible covers of the Sailor Moon R Set 1 Limited Edition, reporting that their copy does not have a reversible cover. If your copy of Sailor Moon R Set 1 Limited Edition does not contain a reversible cover, a replacement cover will be provided to you directly from Warner Brothers Home Entertainment at no cost to you. Please call the toll-free number 1-800-553-6937, where you will be asked for your name, mailing address, and telephone number so you can receive your replacement. Thanks everyone for your incredible patience while we worked with the manufacturer to resolve this issue.

There are some nice extras included. Creditless versions of the opening and closing credits show the original opening and the only closing used in Sailor Moon R. There are interviews with cast members from Anime Expo as well as some behind the scenes interviews that were done during recording. A lot of the art which is included in the booklet is also included in photo galleries on the disc.

This set does not lack great special features. The packaging looks great and the booklet is full of good content. No doubt if Viz had access to better source material for the video, the final product would have been great. It’s unfortunate that this release suffers due to problems outside of their control. All the bell and whistles doesn’t change the fundamental fact that this is just not a good quality release, but it’s the best we’ve got. Fans of the show who watch it online should still consider getting this set. It is the best you’ll get in a domestic release. The only alternative would be to import a Japanese or other international release or pirate the series by downloading fansubs.

You can buy this set and the others which have already been released using the links below to support the site.

Keep reading for more images of the packaging.

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Sailor Moon S episodes 124 and 125 and the dubbed version of the second half of Sailor Moon R are now available on Hulu

Posted on July 20, 2015 by Adam

We’ve gotten a lot more than usual added to Hulu and Neon Alley this week. Sailor Moon S is almost done as we wrap up most of the story with episodes 124 and 125, introducing us to Sailor Saturn. In addition fans can also watch the second half of Sailor Moon R, episodes 69 to 89, dubbed by Viz on Hulu. These episodes were added with this past Friday’s Moonlight Party 4.

Episode 124, The Coming Terror of Darkness: Struggle of the Eight Guardians, is where a bunch of fighting happens before the epic finale. The Sailor Guardians are set to stop Mistress 9 and so they are storming the enemy stronghold. Sailor Pluto freezes time to prevent a helicopter accident and dies anticlimactically for breaking this taboo. Sound familiar? Indeed, this is taken right out of the Black Moon Clan story arc of the manga, only Sailor Pluto doesn’t die in Sailor Moon R and her returning for the SuperS movie and Sailor Stars is not ever really explained. So a ton of monsters show up. They are red proto Daimon type things which is what happens when you don’t put a Daimon seed in anything. They are quickly dispensed with. Inside the building Sailor Uranus and Neptune confront Professor Tomoe, or rather the Daimon Germatoid who is in control of him. The two are separated so that Germatoid can be dispensed with leaving Professor Tomoe as the good guy he once was. Sailor Moon has a fun confrontation with Hotaru, who tries to get the Holy Grail, because she’s really just evil Mistress 9 posing as an innocent girl. This doesn’t really work out as Mistress 9 is revealed once again!

Episode 125, The Shining Shooting Star: Saturn and the Messiah, features the very very brief appearance of Sailor Saturn. As Sailor Guardians go Sailor Saturn is the least shown one of the bunch as this it the only time we will see her until Sailor Stars and she is the only Sailor Guardian never to get an animated transformation sequence. But I’m getting ahead of myself. We’re still dealing with Mistress 9! She couldn’t get the Holy Grail from Sailor Moon in the last episode so she tries to get her father to get it which … works perfectly. Sailor Moon gives the grail to Professor Tomoe who in turn hands it to his daughter. But Mistress 9 puts it in the big Galaxy contraption thing to summon Pharaon 90, the big evil from the season that we haven’t really seen at all, but we are to believe he’s behind all the bad stuff. Things are going bad but… Hotaru turns into Sailor Saturn! This is great! She returns Chibiusa’s Pure Heart to her. Everything is looking up. Sailor Saturn can even go and kill Pharaon 90, too bad she’ll have to die to do it. The moral thought expedient continues! First we wanted to kill Hotaru to stop the end of the world but now she is willing to sacrifice herself to save the world. The end result is still Hotaru dying, but since she is willing it’s somehow better. Sailor Moon won’t have it though. She was not on board with killing Hotaru and she is not on board with letting Sailor Saturn kill herself and so she hurls herself into Pharaon 90 after Sailor Saturn. Emerging from the chaos is a battered Super Sailor Moon and a baby Hotaru. This pretty much ends the main story of Sailor Moon S. What follows next week are two kind of terrible episodes which follow the conclusion of the primary story arc.

Support the site by buying Viz’s dubbed and subbed episodes of Sailor Moon on DVD or Blu-Ray using the links below:

A review of the final episode of Sailor Moon Crystal, Act 26, Replay – Never Ending

Posted on July 19, 2015 by Adam

The latest and final episode of Sailor Moon Crystal, Act 26, Replay – Never Ending, is now available on Crunchyroll, Hulu and Niconico. For now this is the final episode. No next episode preview exists and a message stating “À bientôt” or “See you soon” appears at the end of the episode. I’ve already written another blog post about this and will discuss it later in this post. An obvious interpretation of this is that there will be more episodes some time in the future, but nothing of the sort has been confirmed to date. With that, there is a lot to discuss about this episode, so let’s focus on the present, or rather the 30th century, for one last time.

I never really noticed this in the past but Chibiusa is really small! In one particular shot she seems especially small. She usually seems to be about half the size of most adults in the show, which would put her under 3′, something closer to 2’6″ in this shot where she doesn’t even reach the bottom of Sailor Jupiter’s skirt. This is typical of a 3 or 4 year old. Her age isn’t really known with her actually being 900 but given her level of language, maturity and schooling she really shouldn’t be this short. This sort of reminded me of Shippo from Inuyasha who’s size varied wildly from shot to shot.

Neo Queen Serenity awakes and everything is cool between her and Chibiusa. She seems proud of the Sailor Guardian she’s become and sends her off to help her friends. But wait doesn’t she already know this because she fought alongside her for years when she was a teenager?

Sailor Chibi Moon is given Neo Queen Serenity’s sceptre which becomes the Cutie Moon Rod. The idea seems to be that Sailor Moon of the past has the Cutie Moon Rod. In the future it becomes Neo Queen Serenity’s sceptre, and then it is given back to Sailor Chibi Moon. This is why both Sailor Moon and Sailor Chibi Moon have matching rods. Like with the two Silver Crystals, they are the same items from different times. They fight Death Phantom, use a double Moon Princess Halation and then Sailor Moon’s Cutie Moon Rod is destroyed. So where does Neo Queen Serenity’s sceptre come from? How does Sailor Chibi Moon’s future version continue to exist? The future as seen in this story arc is the future of this arc, because later in the mange there are item, uniform and cast changes which are not reflected in the future but as the Cutie Moon Rod is replaced even within this same arc, the timeline is already in question.

The time travel is really a mess. So the Death Phamtom is beaten, yay, and everything is great again. Sailor Moon and Neo Queen Serenity want to meet but it’s forgiven because, as Neo Queen Serenity states, it is not a part of history. Well is any of this a part of history? Does Neo Queen Serenity remember spending years of time with her future daughter as a kid, and traveling through time, and saving the future or any of this crazy stuff? If she does, then it’s all a predestination paradox. If she doesn’t, then what fundamental difference does it make if two people actually meet each other? Tuxedo Mask and the ghost of King Endymion are BFFs at this point, but their physical bodies didn’t occupy the same space so it doesn’t matter? Influence can happen through any sort of transmission of information. Simply being able to see the future would have the ability to drastically change the course of history, yet somehow a lot of importance is put on the actual meeting of people.

So what do we do? Oh forget the timeline I want to meet you so they just go see each other. Is this really wise? I mean I know we completely ignore all rules of time travel as we’ve seen by Sailor Pluto never doing her job but what are the implications here? If we actually did somehow change the flow of time by having Sailor Moon and Neo Queen Serenity meeting the main thing that would happen is that Chibiusa would never be born, which is kind of serious business. But nothing seems to happen and so everyone from the future thinks it’s a great idea to just go meet their past selves as the Queen, King, all of the Sailor Guardians and even the cats come and say hi to their past selves. Only Diana is not guilty of tainting her timeline and she may never be born if this is allowed!

There’s so much kissing in this episode. Neo Queen Serenity wakes up King Endymion with a kiss. Sailor Moon and Tuxedo Mask kiss while wandering in space. Usagi and Mamoru kiss back and earth and of course Chibiusa and Mamoru kiss when she returns! It should make a lot of the fans of romance happy seeing so much smooching.

Sailor Moon gets her brooch updated. Now she has the Cosmic Heart Compact. Oddly though Chibiusa is also seen with a Cosmic Heart Compact. In the anime the transformation item she has for Sailor Moon S is the Prism Heart Compact, though it is unnamed in the manga. It is not usually drawn in details but it does not seem like it was ever meant to closely resemble Sailor Moon’s brooch as it does here.

Chibiusa leaves, somewhat. The clock says 7:20am. How early to be time traveling, but Chibiusa is doing this on a morning before school so that makes some sense. After a teary farewell she leaves only to return moments afterwards. Classic time travel! It’s not clear how long she was gone for but obviously more than a few seconds passed in the future for Chibiusa to be sent back for training. The letter Neo Queen Serenity sends references Usagi having offered to train Chibiusa, though no such agreement ever seems to have taken place. But then Neo Queen Serenity is from the future so perhaps she knows that Usagi was fine with it, having been her in the past, assuming this isn’t part of some abandoned timeline since she met herself and ruined the universe. It seems that Neo Queen Serenity is being a bit lazy here by sending Chibiusa away in order to be rid of her for a while, but this makes no real sense. If time travel is at play she could just have sent her to the future. Chibiusa may very well return to the time she left once her training is complete. There’s no reason to look at this as a normal non time traveler’s sending a child to boarding school. Let’s not forget that Chibiusa is 900 years old so Neo Queen Serenity has had her around for quite a while and does not appear to have tried to sent her to time travel boarding school before.

So Chibiusa is back. Sailor Moon has a new brooch and attack item. Why do all this if this is the last episode? Because that’s what happens in the manga. Sailor Moon Crystal has not simply been a somewhat faithful manga adaptation. It has been a nearly exact retelling of the manga story. New episodes or not they wouldn’t have removed these scenes.

Will the show return for season 2? The final scene of the episodes carries a message, “À bientôt”. This is French and is accurately translated as “See you soon”. We do not know with any certainly what this means. The default assumption here, which I believe is the intended meaning, is that there will be more episodes. This is the closest thing we’ve had to any official confirmation. There are no details and it’s hard to get any specifics. We are, as far as I interpret this statement, being led to believe that the series will continue at some time. When, we can’t say. Will something happen between now and then that will interfere with this plan to bring us new episodes? That is certainly possible and so even if this message is meant to tell us new episodes are coming, these plans may not come to fruition.

There are other possibilities for the meaning of these statements. The live action series ended with the words “See you again”, a less accurate translation of “À bientôt”, which was only meant as a reference to the at the time already announced Special Act, a single episode straight to video special which was itself followed up with a prequel. With other things happening in the Sailor Moon world it could simply be a reference to some other project which fans may care about to varying degrees.

Sailor Moon Crystal was originally announced in summer 2012 for the summer of 2013, but it was delayed a full year before it finally began in July 2014. Episodes were obviously animated at the last minute as next episode previews often had changes by the time the episodes came around, and the next episode preview for Act 26 was all reused clips from earlier episodes. There were also all of the changes done for the Blu-Ray releases. If some time is needed to catch up on the backlog and get a bit of a buffer for new episodes, that is great. There may be a ton of other financial and planning decisions being made in Japan right now that we aren’t and won’t be made aware of. With the series now airing on TV in Japan there may be some desire to have new episodes released either on TV first or simulcast on TV and online. We really don’t know any details. Now is the time to be patient, and hope that new episodes will come at some point. The sooner the better, but in this case late is always better than never.

Like with the premier of Sailor Moon Crystal we must be weary of rumours and pay attention to official sources. There was a ton of speculation based on international sources or subtle mentions which had us assuming all sorts of premiere dates for Sailor Moon Crystal which didn’t pan out until the official release date finally came from an official source, a live event. There were also delays to timelines layed out by official sources, and news with specifics of those delays again came from similar places. A lot of rumours continue as dates such as Winter 2016 are now being spoken of with regards to new episodes of Sailor Moon Crystal, but the only official news we’ve had is “À bientôt”. We will be keeping an eye on the official web site and Twitter account, reporting any promising rumours as they come up but always keeping in mind the strength of various evidence. We will be sharing anything we find to be relevant on this site as we learn it.

Be patient friends. We waited a long time for this series. For a lot of us that wait paid off. Do not mistake my snarky negativity for a dislike of the series. I’ve greatly enjoyed Sailor Moon Crystal and sincerely hope there is more in store for us some day.

Keep reading for more screenshots from what we hope is not the final episode of Sailor Moon Crystal.

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Will Sailor Moon Crystal return? What is the meaning behind the cryptic final message “See you soon”?

Posted on July 18, 2015 by Adam

The final episode of Sailor Moon Crystal, Act 26, Replay – Neverending, was available this morning on Crunchyroll, Hulu and Niconico. There has been no confirmation of any episodes beyond Act 26 to date as fans continue to hope for some kind of announcement of more episodes. No next episode preview appeared where it usually does and instead of the usual “À suivre” or “To be continued” message we instead saw “À bientôt”, French for “See you soon”.

It’s unclear exactly what this means. The ideal case of course would be that this means we will be seeing more episodes at some time in the future. It could also simply mean that we will be seeing more of Sailor Moon in various ways, through products, the musical and other ways which are already being released all the time. This may also be a reference to something new and unexpected. A new movie, special or something else we simply aren’t expecting.

There’s not much to go along with this. A tweet from this morning on the Sailor Moon official Twitter account simply mentions that the latest information will be announced at the official site. That is generally the main place we expect any big news to come from, as opposed to the smaller international sites and sources which are often referenced as evidence for a second season.

For now we wait and hope for some official announcement. What do you think this message means? Are you remaining optimistic?

Watch the final episode of Sailor Moon Crystal, Act 26, Replay – Neverending, July 18th at 6am Eastern Time

Posted on July 16, 2015 by Adam

This weekend is the final episode of Sailor Moon Crystal, Act 26, Replay – Neverending. Though fans continue to hope for more episodes, we still have not had any confirmation of any episodes following the initial 26 episode run. This next episode will be available on Crunchyroll, Hulu and Niconico starting this Saturday, July 18th, at 7pm Japan Standard Time which is 6am Eastern Time, 3am Pacific Time. This will be the final episode of the Dark Moon story arc as we wrap up the story of Crystal Tokyo and Nemesis.

This is it. Chibiusa has become Sailor Chibi Moon and Nemesis has been blasted away, but with it we also lost Sailor Moon and Tuxedo Mask! We will finally get to see Neo Queen Serenity return as the final battle with Death Phantom takes place. It’s unclear where exactly things will leave off with this being a finale. Will Chibiusa leave for the future and wrap things up perfectly? Will they still bother upgrading Sailor Moon’s transformation broach and giving her the Heart Moon Rod which she won’t ever get around to using? If another season is ever planned they probably will. Finally will we see the “À Suivre” (to be continued) message at the end of this one as we have with every other episode to date? If we don’t that will certainly be an indicator that there are no new episodes planned.

Terri Hawkes, the English voice of Sailor Moon, to appear at Ai-kon in Winnipeg July 17th to the 19th

Posted on July 15, 2015 by Adam

This coming weekend Winnipeg Sailor Moon fans will get a chance to meet the voice of Sailor Moon herself, Terri Hawkes! She will be appearing as a guest at Ai-kon from July 17th to the 19th in Winnipeg, Manitoba. Terri Hawkes was the second voice of Sailor Moon, but likely the most recognisable to many fans of the original English dub having provided the voice of Sailor Moon for most of the first two seasons.

Terri Hawkes recently co-authored Performing Motherhood: Artistic, Activist, and Everyday Enactments. Her contribution is the chapter “The Triple Threat” which deals with gender issues in theatre.

Sailor Pluto’s heart shaped Garnet Orb can be seen on new photos of Pluto

Posted on July 14, 2015 by Adam

This morning NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft was a mere 12,500 km from Pluto. While approaching it took the above photo, the highest quality photo taken at the time, which reveals a large heart shape on the dwarf planet’s surface. No doubt this is Sailor Pluto’s heart shaped Garnet Orb which lies on top of her Garnet Rod. This Garnet Orb is one of the three Talismans, the other two being Sailor Uranus’s Space Sword and Sailor Neptune’s Deep Aqua Mirror.

Sailor Pluto’s status as a Sailor Guardian has come into question since her planet was downgraded back in 2006. Despite more recent rumours to the contrary Pluto is still very much not a planet. That said the appearance of her Talisman across the surface of her dwarf planet’s surface is a big deal. Until now the only celestial body with something on it’s surface represented by the character was the rabbit on the Moon from which Usagi, who’s name is the Japanese word for rabbit, gets her name.

One might also argue that Sailor Jupiter’s Flower Hurricane takes some inspiration from the Great Red Dot of Jupiter which is technically a anticyclonic storm. Storms are only called Hurricanes if they occur around North America. Those centered near Japan are actually called Typhoons, which makes one wonder why Sailor Jupiter’s attack would be named after something which can no occur where she lives.

Now we must ask ourselves how Naoko Takeuchi managed to know back in the 90s that Pluto had a heart on it’s surface even though we didn’t get these pictures until today. Time travel seems to be the most logical explanation though we must remain open minded to alternative theories until an official statement is made.

Source: NASA

Sailor Moon News

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Monthly Archives: July 2015