Sailor Moon Crystal director Munehisa Sakai has completed his work on the series. Is anyone taking his place?

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Sailor Moon series director Munehisa Sakai

Munehisa Sakai, the director of Sailor Moon Crystal, has ceased working on the series. He mentioned this in a tweet yesterday. The tweet, in Japanese, thanks all of the staff for their hard work and says that his work on Sailor Moon Crystal is complete.


As director of the series he is ultimately the person who is most responsible for how the show came together and the final product we saw, so if you liked Sailor Moon Crystal, you liked his work. Now we must wonder if this is a sign that Sailor Moon Crystal is truly over. It seems that he is not staying on as director for any additional episodes of Sailor Moon Crystal, but is anyone taking his place? If so, this new show may be quite different from what we’ve seen. We haven’t heard anything about the series since the “À bientôt” message was left at the end of Act 26. That episode aired a month ago today, so it hasn’t been so long that we should panic after not hearing much else in this much time. If the creative talent behind the show is moving on the other projects, this could be an indication that “À bientôt” was a reference to something other than new episodes of Sailor Moon Crystal.

Thanks for all the good work to anyone who worked on the series that we’ve seen to date. Let’s hope that there is more to come, by however may be at the helm of the Infinity arc of Sailor Moon Crystal.

Source: Munehisa Sakai’s Twitter page via Sailor Moon Portugal

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35 thoughts on “Sailor Moon Crystal director Munehisa Sakai has completed his work on the series. Is anyone taking his place?”

  4. Dammit.

    But he’s not the only one whose contract has expired. In July (or June ? Don’t remember), Yukie Sako (character designer for SMC) had announced on her Twitter page that her work on SMC was over. Her post was written in Japanese but it was finally translated and spread over the Sailor Moon English-speaking fandom, and a lot of speculations concerning SMC’s future (on Twitter, Facebook, forums, Tmblr…) had been made from the fact that she was no longer part of the show’s direction team.

    And finally, Munehisa Sakai’s departure now leads to the same kind of speculations.

    I thinkt it will lead to nowhere : the only option we have according to me is to stay alive to see if SMC will get a continuation XD .

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  6. I think this is clearly a definitive end and no more hopes for renewal are appropriate. Fans should realize this as soon as possible. There is no director, no chief designer thus is highly improbable that there are some preparations for renewal.

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    • I think it’s still too early to say it’s the end. We still have the new musical based on the Infinity arc coming out next month and the Proplica Spiral Heart Moon Rod in the works. The original Sailor Moon anime went through several directors over the course of the show, starting off with Junichi Saito, then switching to Kunihiko Ikuhaa, and Takuya Igurashi directed Sailor Stars. It isn’t uncommon in anime for them to have different directors for different seasons of a show. All we know from this is that if a second season does get made eventually, it will have a different staff. Considering the first season of Crystal seemed to be done by a different animation staff every other episode, I’m not sure why this is somehow unusual for the show or a sign of a definitive end.

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      • I think it is logical that Toei will not announce cancellation of the show until all promo activities finish… last bluray will come out in November and I think after that Toei will announce definitive cancelation

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        • I think Alex is right. TV studios are real dicks about this. They love keeping people on a string while they deliberate whether or not a show will get renewed. They did the same thing with Sleepy Hollow on the Fox network in the States. First the showrunner left after a less-than-fabulous second season, and everyone was saying it was the end. Not too long after that they renewed it for a third season. We might get the same thing here (though I think SMC will have a better 2nd season than Sleepy Hollow, which I doubt will see a 4th).

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          • Rami, by “I think Alex is right”, you meant Neon Genesis instead ?

            Because in fact I agree with you and Neon Genesis. Come on Alex, don’t be so pessimistic ;) .

            And the fact that Yukie Sako and Munehisa Sakai have seen their contract expiring doesn’t mean that they won’t be called back by Toei for a new SMC season ;) .

            At the beginning, SMC was only designed by Toei for the Dark Kingdom and the Black Moon arcs. It took almost 2 years (or more ? Don’t remember) to be produced and finally aired, after it was endlessly delayed, leaving the fans angry and pessimistic, thinking that they would never get to see Sailor Moon reborn from her ashes. And finally, we had Sailor Moon Crystal.

            So I think Toei might be in the same kind of process again. A series takes a lot of reflexion, a lot of time to be produced. The production teams can change from one season to another…

            I think Sailor Moon Crystal will be back, like Terminator ;) .

            (Er, I feel my English is very lame today, so please excuse the possible mistakes)

  7. I’m almost finished with manga so I really hope we see the rest of SMCrystal because there are lots of moments I’m looking forward to!

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  8. I hope they dont cancel or are done with the show. May be new directors for better quality to the animation. I love they did stick to the manga but I really would like some fillers, it seems like the whole motion of events happened less than a month.

    Oh well one can hope and wish we will have a new SMC by next year.

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