New episodes of Sailor Moon Crystal are coming in about a week and we still have no news about an English release

Usagi watching TV

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.

Sailor Moon SuperS episode 133 - Chibiusa is an old lonely cat lady watching Sailor Moon

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.

Luna using a computer

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.

Possibly Related Posts

 


30 thoughts on “New episodes of Sailor Moon Crystal are coming in about a week and we still have no news about an English release

  1. I got a tweet from Viz the other day that said we will have to wait until Charlene gets back from her trip to Japan to hear more and I saw a Facebook post on a group I belong to for anime collectors that mentioned we would be hearing an announcement from Viz soon, so it sounds like they’re working on it as much as they can. I saw on Charlene’s Twitter feed yesterday that she was going to be at several meetings in Japan so hopefully that’s including a visit with Toei about Crystal. Does anyone know how long it typically takes the American anime industry to announce when a simulcast release is?

    • Excuse me, are you ignoring my post or what? I totally already posted my idea of when I think we’d get it in English. No need to make a totally new post, could of just answered mine.

      • I have no idea what you’re talking about. No one was asking about the dubbed version. We’re talking about simulcasts of the subbed and there’s no reason for you to be rude.

  2. Maybe it will be a 1 week delay or after the series is finished type of thing. With their bigger production budget it seems this time around, maybe they want the Japanese audience to spend money on the Japan products first? I hope there is good news regarding streaming but I will be honest I will most likely not watch subs if viz will dub it. I won’t even understand what they are saying and Viz subtitles seem like they could be off.

    • You know Viz is actually dubtitling the series – meaning the same translation, though not always fitting, is used for Viz’s dub. If you want best understanding quality, watch fansubs. As long as it’s a good and popular group and it’s not just random person doing random things (ugh, Jewelpet Magical Change subs…) it’ll be fine. Official subs usually adapt subs to the western audience to understand, even translating food names like takoyaki and okonomiyaki. Fansubs usually trust their viewers to know at least a little bit about Japan (basic facts) and explain the more difficult ones while officials just change whole stuff so spoiled americans won’t be confused

      • Is it just me? Or does listening to Stephanie Cheh say “Mamo” without the “chan” drive anyone else insane? I only watched the dubs to see the improved animation but it was pretty painful and had to finally stop.

        • For me, I had a MUCH bigger problem with the original DiC dub. Everything else about the dub was an improvement over the Japanese version EXCEPT for Sailor Moon’s extremely grating voice. That didn’t change one iota between the original Japanese version and the original dubs until the Cloverway dub cast took over. Stephanie Sheh actually did the impossible and made SM listenable. I can handle the original Japanese music, original almost everything else, but they made Sailor Moon listenable for me, so I am beyond grateful to Viz for that one.

  3. I’m just so excited that it’s weekly. To me, that makes up for a day or two delay (subbers are so fast these days)

    • Yeah subbers are really really fast nowadays and it’s great of course, but unfortunately some of them are so fast that they can do translation mistakes in the subtitles. But it seems there are a lot of excellent subbers from Japanese to English around :) .

      • I can’t imagine the mistakes would be all that much worse than Viz though! i know enough japanese to know that half the time they just put in scentences that have zero true translation whatsoever!

        • I don’t know the work that Viz does, but thank you for the precisions, if I ever have to watch Crystal with English subtitles or dubbing, I will take care not to take those made by Viz..

  4. I live in Europe so I had no other option but download the first two seasons, not to mention that I want them in 1080p quality so I have to download them anyway… Every episode of first two seasons has hard English subtitles and was available to download right after the official Japanese steaming premiere, so I am sure it will be the same this time and there will be no time to wait for English subs, the episodes will be available in three quality levels and with English subs right after the premiere just as for the first two seasons

    • You were likely downloading a web rip of the official streaming release. If Viz isn’t able to secure the rights for this in time, Europeans will likely have an even harder time being able to watch a high quality release of Crystal.

        • There were also some high quality subs going around from Miss Dream, I think. One thing I liked about those was the fact they translated senshi as “soldier” instead of “guardian”.

          • I checked what I downloaded and those weren’t Viz rips, there is a release group specialized on Japanese Anime, I can’t name the group of course, and I downloaded their own rips with their own subtitles, I hope they will release also third season the same way :)

    • That would be really unfair if Europeans (whose I’m part of like you) were the last ones to get the 3rd season. But we both think the same : with Internet, nothing is impossible, and we will surely have an access to the episodes via ripped downloads right after their official diffusion in Japan, with good subtitles and good quality.

      The two first seasons were a success despite the crappy animation and plot holes, so not choosing a worldwide and simultaneous diffusion would be a big strategic mistake from Toei…

  5. i see no reason to not do an English dub after all the first two season were English dubbed seem stupid not to do the third season as English dub, spos we just have to wait till official word should not be too long till we hear

  6. Adam, thanks for always keeping us updated. Much appreciate, bro!

    Unfortunately, you are correct. We have no news regarding a streaming option with English subtitles. I was looking forward to watching Act 27 in glorious HD quality next Monday.

    We should all be proactive in a way and confirm with CrunchRoll, Hulu, etc via phone or email about season 3. Hopefully we reach a representative with a brain, as we all know how 1-800 experiences can be.

  7. I can’t help but laugh at this situation. I mean, 99.9% of people talking about the first 26 episodes of Crystal were complaining…CONSTANTLY. This is the repercussions of complaining, people. This is all on you guys.

    • So because we complain, Toei has the right to impose restraints regarding the airing of the new season ? So we don’t have any right to criticize something imperfect like the first two seasons of Crystal ? We should love everything about Crystal even if it has some crappy points, just to ensure that Toei keeps on airing the show worldwide for free ? Or dislike and simply shut up and censor ourselves ? And yourself, are you perfect or virtuous in any way ? And if ever your boss decides not to pay you because you disobeyed him (for any reason), will you then say : “He’s right to chastise me this way [even if it’s illegal…], I had no right to complain, he’s the boss after all.”
      This is blackmail and submission… I really can’t understand people who has such anti-democratic and fallacious arguments…

      Moreover, if Toei decides to air Crystal only in Japan for the first time, I hope the company will justify itself with better arguments than : “Yeah guys, you didn’t like our previous works but you want to see the new ones ? Ok, just to punish you, you will have to wait if you live outside Japan.”, because this is so childish…

    • You’re jumping the gun here. It’s still a few days until it premieres and Viz has been in Japan in business meetings, most likely negotiating the rights. All we can do is wait and see but pointing fingers at others and being judgmental isn’t helping in this situation and it makes you seem a bit hypocritical.

    • Sorry, but that’s just silly. The complaints were legitimate. Ugly animation frames, sloppy art, sloppy animation, dumb character and story development, yet we still stood by it and supported it.
      Honestly, a company had better listen to it’s fan base if they want to succeed, the fans are who keeps them in business.
      It looks to me as if they listened to the fans and fixed what we were complaining about (at least the trailers suggest that).

      Oh, and they are streaming it in the USA same day as broadcast, so yay!

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

You may use these HTML tags and attributes: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <strike> <strong>