The next English dubbed episode of Sailor Moon Crystal will be available on Hulu and Neon Alley this Friday, April 1st, at 9pm Eastern Time. Act 21, Complication – Nemesis, has Prince Demande kidnapping Sailor Moon! This is personal for Prince Demande who, just like Mamoru, doesn’t respect a woman’s autonomy and choses to force a kiss on Usagi.
This episode gives us a glimpse of things to come for Chibiusa as we see the symbol of the Black Moon Clan on her forehead and an image of someone that looks just like her but a bit older.
This week on Hulu and Neon Alley‘s new episodes of Sailor Moon Sailor Stars everyone dies! With episodes 196 and 197 Sailor Galaxia has laid siege to the city and she’s going through Star Seeds like candy. This includes some favourite characters and someone who it turns out has been dead for most of the season. Also we find a convoluted reason to get good guy superheroes fighting each other, something I despise and which film critics seem to be sick of too!
Episode 196, Countdown to Destruction: the Sailor Guardians’ Last Battle, is pretty much what the title says. Galaxia is destroying the city and collecting Star Seeds. She got one earlier in the season, then one last episode and now she’s going for a whole bunch. Did she get others through the season on other planets or did she do that earlier? Not really important. What is important is the return of Sailor Saturn! She arrives already transformed of course, because there was no money for a transformation sequence I guess. We start off with the Sailor Starlights confronting Galaxia and then Sailor Chibi Chibi Moon brings the gang in to assist. This does not go very well as she kills Sailor Mercury, Mars, Jupiter and Venus. It’s really all about Sailor Mars though. It’s always all about Sailor Mars. This mirrors the first time everyone died in the first season where Mars is the last to go and the first ghost to touch Usagi. It’s never Mercury, Mars, Jupiter and Venus. It’s Mars and the rest. It’s Rei and the rest. Once again we see Sailor Moon single out Sailor Mars as her single closest friend. She has a big heart and has a love for all of her friends, but there is something special about this relationship which transcends all others. As if that weren’t enough we see the Star Seeds join others and Sailor Moon recognizes one that shines brighter than any other. Mamoru’s Star Seed. It turns out there was a good reason he hasn’t been returning her letters and that’s because he’s dead. Having Usagi be generally unaware of Mamoru’s death was a big change from the Manga, but one which I think worked well with the story of the Manga. Usagi thought he was being distant and her relationship with Seiya was a distraction from this. Turns out he was not being a jerk at all. Sailor Star Fighter sees this Star Seed and all I can read from her face is “Wow. Even this guy’s Star Seed is cooler than me.”. Poor Seiya never had a chance.
Episode 197, Ruler of the Galaxy: the Menace of Galaxia, isn’t done killing people off. First we see what happened to Mamoru. As we know he never got to the states, but it wasn’t clear what happened on that plane. Galaxia faced off against him and took his Star Seed. Tuxedo Mask’s reaction to this is priceless. He does not fear what she will do because he knows that Usagi will defeat her. I wonder what happened to the rest of the plane. Surely if it had gone down or everyone had been killed it would have made headlines and Usagi would have heard about it. Perhaps in this world of superheroes and weekly monster attacks on the city a missing plane doesn’t get noticed. So the gang is teleported away from Galaxia, which is very temporary. Enter Sailor Uranus, Neptune, Pluto and Saturn who are once again already transformed. We learn that Sailor Galaxia is the one who orchestrated the return of Nehelenia to awaken Sailor Saturn so that she could have another True Star Seed that wasn’t otherwise in the game. This is like using a cheat device to catch Mew even though he’s not in the game. This makes me wonder why Hotaru didn’t have a True Star Seed inside of her prior to becoming Sailor Saturn again. Is that really how this works? After a little fight it seems like Sailor Uranus and Neptune decide to be evil. Is this what happened with the Sailor Animamates? It got the impression that they were slaves but getting Sailor Galaxia’s bracelets does not seem to cognitively affect these two. We get a fight between good guys. This is a pet peeve of mine in comics and comic based properties, but here it isn’t about who would actually win. I’m sick and tired of excuses in Avengers movies for the heroes to fight each other and now in the summer of movies that are nothing more than convoluted reasons to have good guys fight each other I think I’ve hit a saturation point of tolerating this kind of Batman V Superman and Civil War nonsense. So Sailor Uranus and Neptune kill Sailor Pluto and Saturn. The rest of the gang arrives just at the right time to see them die. Oh well I guess this means no transformation sequence for Sailor Saturn ever! Maybe in Sailor Moon Crystal we will see this. So Sailor Uranus and Neptune seem to be evil and Usagi’s next. To be continued!
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New episodes of Sailor Moon Crystal will be released on Japanese TV on Monday April 4th, just 8 days away, at 11pm Japan Standard Time, about 10am Eastern Daylight Time, but we still have no news about when it will be available to watch in North America. After nothing came out of C2E2 last week fans were hoping to hear something at Anime Boston which had its official Sailor Moon panel on Friday afternoon. There was no news at this panel. Twitter user @abzeronow was at Anime Boston and reported that there was nothing to report. The panel at Anime Japan which showed us a ton of new footage also had no news about any streaming version, either for Japanese or North American viewers.
At this point it seems as if the show will only be released on Japanese TV next week, and so we will not likely have a simultaneous streaming version to watch here like we did with the first 26 episodes of Sailor Moon Crystal. There has been no indication that it will be simultaneously released on Crunchyroll, Hulu, Neon Alley or even on the Japanese streaming service Niconico which is usually region blocked and has inferior video quality. We also have no indication of when the show might eventually be made available on any such services.
Where does this leave us? It’s likely we will have to wait for less than official sources to watch the show. At first a raw version (in Japanese with no English subtitles) of the show will probably find its way online. If no official subtitled release is available it is likely that some group of fansubbers will release an English subtitled version for fans. The legality of this is a bit questionable, but rest assured that I will report any news of such a release on this site as it becomes available. Given the time needed to get a copy of the show, translate the script, time it to the video, author and upload such a version, it would likely be mid to late week before that’s available.
There was an event today at the Anime Japan convention in which we saw the new Sailor Moon Crystal opening, closing, got a new trailer and even got a preview of what seems to be about half of Act 27. All of this footage is now available online, though the episode footage is of lower quality with people talking over it. Those people happen to be the voice actors for Sailor Moon, Uranus, Neptune and Saturn as well as the new director, but this is still a fairly terrible way to watch a clip.
This is not all of Act 27, yet it appears to be a continuous episode. Is this what people saw at the premiere event earlier this month? If it is then we may have been wrong in assuming Sailor Moon Crystal will not have a 1:1 ratio of manga chapters to episodes. Yes this clip concludes after the fight with the Daimon that comes from the girls at Mugen Academy but at less than 12 minutes we are hardly getting a full episode. Not everything seen here is in proper order either. We see Usagi disguised as a student of Mugen Academy. Is this a change in the order of the story or are we just being presented with a bunch of out of order clips from the first two episodes, strung together in a somewhat cohesive way? Regardless, it was mentioned that this season will span 13 episodes and there are 11 manga chapters for the Infinity Arc, so while this isn’t a 1:1 ratio, only two new episodes will be added to this season. It is still not clear if or how Act 27 will be split.
The better quality footage is of the music videos for the opening and ending themes. We previously mentioned that this is only the first of the ending themes and that many CDs would be released throughout the coming months. Also included is the CD cover art for the first single.
Here is the new opening In Love With the New Moon sung by Etsuko Yakushimaru. She previously sang the cover of Otome no Policy on the 20th Anniversary Memorial Tribute Album and her voice here reminds me a lot of that song. This new opening has a lot of naked people in it, if you’re into that.
Next is the first ending theme Eternal Eternity sung by the voices of Sailor Uranus and Sailor Neptune, Junko Minagawa and Sayaka Ohara. This song reminds me of a few other anime themes including the opening theme for Revolutionary Girl Utena. Some of the visuals reminds me of the footage in the opening as well. The other that came to mind was a song from the Street Fighter II anime movie Itoshisa To Setsunasa To Kokoro Tsuyosa. Yes I know, I seem to only have watched anime the late 90s. It was better then.
Finally we have the new trailer, which includes some footage we’ve seen before.
There’s a lot of new footage here so I’ve included a bunch of screenshots for your convenience lower in the post. Of note is just how different Luna and Artemis look! Reminds me of something out of the Moon Animate Make-Up! project. What do you think of the new animation? I think it looks great, but obviously a bit different. I’m real excited for this new season which is a bit over a week away. Here’s hoping we get some news about a streaming version soon.
The latest English dubbed episode of Sailor Moon Crystal is now available on Hulu and Neon Alley. Act 20, Crystal Tokyo – King Endymion, is all about the future. The gang arrived in Crystal Tokyo last week and here they are at the Crystal Palace. What a shock! Chibiusa’s parents are Usagi and Mamoru? This was strongly hinted at and after last week there wasn’t really any doubt. King Endymion, the title character, is a sort of ghost hologram in this episode. This is so that two of him don’t occupy the same space at the same time because that is apparently terrible, but never seems to be a problem.
We finally see Diana. Her voice actor was never previously heard in the new dub of the original Sailor Moon anime as Diana doesn’t appear until Sailor Moon SuperS, not in 30th Century Crystal Tokyo where she originally appears in the manga. What do you think of her new voice?
Next week is Act 21, Complication – Nemesis, which will have Prince Demande being terrible and give us a glimpse of Black Lady.
The new episodes of Sailor Moon Crystal, covering the Infinity arc of the manga, will have three different ending themes! When the trailer launched we previously announced that the new opening would be “In Love With the New Moon” sung by Etsuko Yakushimaru and that the ending theme would be Eternal Eternity sung by the voices of Sailor Uranus and Sailor Neptune, Junko Minagawa and Sayaka Ohara. An announcement on the official Sailor Moon site tell us that this is only the first ending theme as there will be two others! Misato Fukuen, the voice of Chibiusa, will sing Otome no Susume or Maiden’s Advice and Kenji Nojima, the voice of Tuxedo Mask, will sing Eien Dake ga Futari o Kakeru or Only Eternity Brings the Two Together.
A CD single with the opening theme In Love With the New Moon and first ending theme Eternal Eternity will be released on April 27th. Two others CDs will be released at about a month interval. A CD single with the same opening theme, In Love With the New Moon, but sung by Mitsuko Horie and the second ending, Maiden’s Advice, will be released on May 25th. Mitsuko Horie provided the voice of Sailor Galaxia in Sailor Moon Sailor Stars and sang the cover of the Sailor Stars theme on the 20th Anniversary Album. A third CD single again with the opening In Love With the New Moon but this time sung by Momoiro Clover Z and the third ending theme, Only Eternity Brings the Two Together will be released on June 22nd. Momoiro Clover Z sang the original opening theme, Moon Pride, which appeared before the first 26 episodes of Sailor Moon Crystal.
All three will be a CD/DVD combo with music videos included. MSRP is 1500 yen, about $13 US, each. You can pre-order these CDs from online retailers such as Amazon Japan (1st CD, 2nd CD, 3rd CD) and CD Japan (1st CD, 2nd CD, 3rd CD).
This good Friday, March 25th, the latest English dubbed episode of Sailor Moon Crystal will be added to Hulu and Neon Alley. In Act 20, Crystal Tokyo – King Endymion, the gang arrive in the Crystal Palace of the future and meet the ghost/hologram of King Endymion. What’s more there’s a big revelation! We will finally learn who Chibiusa’s parents are. Who do you think it will be? Rei and Mamoru? Luna and Artemis? Sailor Iron Mouse and Rhett Butler? It could be anyone!!
This week we will see, and hear, Diana, the adorable kitten who is the daughter of Luna and Artemis. Diana’s role is severely diminished in the original anime to the point where we have still not seen her in the new English dub of the original anime released by Viz. While we even have the cast of Sailor Moon S announced Diana doesn’t show up until Sailor Moon SuperS of the original anime so there has been no announcement of her voice actor. I’m curious to hear her. Who do you think it will be?
The two latest episode of Sailor Moon Sailor Stars have been added to Hulu and Neon Alley. This week with episodes 194 and 195 we learn a lot more about Sailor Galaxia as we get pretty much all of the anime’s time with Princess Kakyuu. It’s a bad week for Seiya’s relationships as Usagi starts to come to terms with Mamoru’s absence. Also to note there are no more monsters of the week for the rest of the series. The last Phage was in episode 192!
Episode 194, Crusade for the Galaxy: Legend of the Sailor Wars, gives us a ton of back story. Princess Kakyuu is here and she seems to be the one with all the answers, and is willing to give us just a few of them. We get a description of the Sailor Wars. Some great Sailor Guardian sealed Chaos inside herself and became totally evil. That’s Sailor Galaxia. She’s treating Star Seeds like Pokémon and she won’t stop until she’s caught ‘em all. Usagi is missing Mamoru quite a bit and calls him and … his answering machine picks up. Did Mamoru keep his massive apartment in downtown Tokyo while he went to study in the United States where a physical answering machine is located or has he just left his phone line with voice mail set up? Did he pay for all of this with his part time job at the resort he showed up for once a year ago? Who exactly is continuing to pay these bills while he’s not even available to return phone calls and mail to his girlfriend? Seiya meanwhile gets a busy signal while calling Usagi who is trying to call her boyfriend. Oh boy, that’s a symbolic busy signal! Seiya then mistakes Kakyuu for Usagi. Tell me about it. There are a bunch of jokes about keeping Usagi safe in this episode. Fair enough! She’s the princess and that’s kind of what these people need to be doing. Sailor Tin Nyanko shows up at the school, masquerading as student Nyanko Suzu. Once again no monster as Sailor Tin Nyanko attacks Usagi, who tries to take her on alone. The fight is interrupted by a red rose which is tossed into the fray. Wow! WTF? Chills. The rose was tossed by… Seiya. Damn. A fight ensues and Sailor Moon half heals Sailor Tin Nyanko with Silver Moon Crystal Power Kiss. We’ll see how that goes later. Usagi breaks down crying at this point with the rose reminding her of Mamoru. Seiya asks if he’s not good enough for her. It’s not looking great for Seiya.
Episode 195, Princess Kakyu Perishes: Advent of Galaxia, is sort of a double spoiler title. It’s just doubly terrible. Anyway. The Three Lights are doing one last concert! Why? They found their Princess! Well now they are looking for the Light of Hope, which apparently is the thing that can stop Galaxia. Why just do one concert to call the Light of Hope? Either they’re done and don’t need to sing anymore or they aren’t and it should just be status quo. Whatever. It’s their last concert. More importantly, Mamoru is totally off the grid. Usagi admits to Rei that he hasn’t actually responded to any of her letters. When Ami looks into it he never arrived in America. He’s not in his old apartment, which still has an active phone line and perhaps an answering machine, so where is he? How is he paying his bills? So Mamoru is not in US but we saw him and the plane with that light and the … oh boy let’s think about something else. So concert. Sailor Tin Nyanko attacks the concert and she’s totally messed up. She was half healed with the Silver Moon Crystal Power Kiss “attack” last episode so she’s sort of like Two Face only without the coin. This is sort of tragic. The Animamates aren’t evil at all. They are being controlled. Sailor Moon has the power to heal them but has failed to do so at every attempt. Tragic. Lots of other people are at the fight like Sailor Uranus and Neptune. Oh wait of course no Sailor Saturn. Whatever. Galaxia shows up and she’s collecting all the Star Seeds. She takes Sailor Tin Nyanko and then Princess Kakyuu tries to hold her off while the Starlights escape. Princess Kakyuu has her Star Seed taken. Wow that was kind of quick. I kind of thought maybe she’d transform into a Sailor Guardian and maybe have some kind of fireball attack but she doesn’t really do much. Oh well moving on. As Kakyuu is dying Sailor Chibi Chibi Moon takes her hand and with her last breath says that Princess Kakyuu feels the Light of Hope. Whatever that is! I guess this means Princess Kakyuu isn’t Chibi Chibi like I thought!
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Today, Saturday March 19th, was Viz’s official Sailor Moon panel at C2E2 in Chicago. The C2E2 panels were streamed on the C2E2 site. I didn’t catch the panel myself but thanks to many users following the panel on Twitter I was able to keep up with what was going on. We were hoping for significant news which is long overdue and we didn’t get any. We didn’t get anything about the release of the upcoming dub of Sailor Moon S and also didn’t get any specifics about the upcoming new episodes of Sailor Moon Crystal, covering the Infinity arc of the manga, which will be starting to air on Japanese TV on April 4th.
Never fear! Anime Boston is next weekend and we will be having yet another Official Sailor Moon panel next Saturday, March 25th, at 5pm. Big news about these topic may be left for then. Anime Boston is being held at the Hynes Convention Center in downtown Boston.
Anime Boston will have some Japanese voice actors from the original Sailor Moon anime in attendance! Husband and wife voice acting couple Toshio Furukawa and Shino Kakinuma will both be there. Shino Kakinuma voiced Naru Osaka throughout the series. Her panel will be held on Friday March 25th at 4pm, right before the Official Sailor Moon panel. Great timing! Toshio Furukawa provided the voice of Hawk’s Eye in Sailor Moon SuperS as well as Shun Hayase, a side character from Sailor Moon S. His panel will be Friday at 1:30pm. The two will be signing autographs on Saturday March 26th at 11am. Toshio Furukawa will be doing his own autograph session on Sunday March 27th at 10:30am.
The latest English dubbed episode of Sailor Moon Crystal to be added to Hulu and Neon Alley takes us to the future! Act 19, Time Warp – Sailor Pluto, has the gang following Chibiusa to the 30th Century Crystal Tokyo and getting their lives threatened by Sailor Pluto in the process. Who does she report to anyway? I sort of assumed her boss was Neo Queen Serenity, who probably wouldn’t appreciate her employee killing her past self, but I guess these rules exist for a reason! Fans of the Pokémon anime will recognise Sailor Pluto’s English voice, Veronica Taylor, as Pokémon trainer Ash Ketchum. Yes that’s right I’ve found another reason to bring up Pokémon. Sailor Pluto’s adult female voice actually sounds more like Ash’s Mom, Delia Ketchum. Does that make King Endymion Professor Oak?
We get to see Diana the kitten this week very briefly, though we won’t hear her talk until the next episode. One thing we also see but don’t totally see if Usagi and Mamoru having sex! This was hinted at heavily in the manga but in Sailor Moon Crystal not a lot is left to interpretation.
Next week is Act 20, Crystal Tokyo – King Endymion, has us actually hearing Diana’s voice, though we don’t yet know who will be voicing her. We’ll also see the purple version of Tuxedo Mask and get a bunch of backstory including who Chibiusa’s parents are! OMG who could it be?!
