Catch Sugar Lyn Beard, the voice of Chibiusa, in the trailer for Sausage Party

Posted on March 18, 2016 by Adam

Sugar Lyn Beard, the second voice of Chibiusa in the original English dub of the Sailor Moon anime, has a couple of movies coming out this summer. One is Sausage Party, a bizarre animated comedy staring Seth Rogen about living thinking food items which get eaten. Sugar plays the Baby Carrots in this film, which are featured prominently in the new trailer. Note that this is a restricted trailer which features adult content including violence, drug use and language.

Sausage Party will be released in theatres August 12th.

She’ll also be appearing in Mike and Dave Need Wedding Dates. She plays Mike and Dave’s sister Jeanie who is the one that is getting married. You can also see her in the trailer for that movie which will be released on July 8th.

Meet Stephanie Sheh and Michelle Ruff and see Viz’s Official Sailor Moon Panel at C2E2 in Chicago this weekend

Posted on March 17, 2016 by Adam

This weekend is the Chicago Comic and Entertainment Expo at McCormick Place in Chicago. This event will feature an Official Sailor Moon panel hosted by Viz and voice actors from the new dub of the original Sailor Moon anime and Sailor Moon Crystal. In attendance will be Stephanie Sheh, the voice of Sailor Moon, and Michelle Ruff, the voice of Luna. The official panel will be held on Saturday March 19th at 11:30am. This will be run by Viz Media staff including Charlene Ingram so we may have some news about the dub of Sailor Moon S that we are long overdue to get more information about. This is probably the topic I get the most e-mails and messages about! If things proceed as they have in the past we may very well be getting an announcement for a new Moonlight Party, some episodes to be released on Hulu and news about Sailor Moon S on DVD and Blu-Ray. We may also get news about Sailor Moon Crystal’s DVD and Blu-Ray release. This is all speculation of course. Keep checking this site for any significant news that may come from this event.

In additional to taking part in the Official Sailor Moon panel Stephanie Sheh and Michelle Ruff will also be holding a panel Bringing Characters to Life – An Hour with Michelle Ruff and Stephanie Sheh on Sunday, March 20th, at 10:45am. Both of the voice actors will also be available to signs autographs Saturday from 1:15pm to 3pm, 5:30pm to 7pm and on Sunday from 2:45pm to 4:30pm.

Charlene Ingram, the Viz Media rep who runs all of the Sailor Moon panels and Moonlight Parties, will also be holding the VIZ Media Industry Panel on Saturday, March 19th, at 4:15pm. While the important Sailor Moon info will probably be covered earlier in the day at the Sailor Moon panel, Sailor Moon may be covered a bit at this time.

Watch the English dubbed version of Sailor Moon Crystal Act 19, Time Warp – Sailor Pluto, Friday March 18th at 9pm Eastern Time

Posted on March 16, 2016 by Adam

The next English dubbed episode of Sailor Moon Crystal will be available this Friday on Hulu and Neon Alley. Act 19, Time Warp – Sailor Pluto, will be available at 9pm Eastern Daylight Time. Daylight Savings Time is in effect so if you’re lucky enough to live in an area that doesn’t celebrate, Sailor Moon Crystal may be released at a different time than you had been expecting it! This week we go to the future and on the way meet Sailor Pluto who pretty much wants to kill Sailor Moon. Sailor Pluto will be voiced by Veronica Taylor. Anime fans may know her best as the voice of Ash Ketchum in Pokémon! Also appearing in this episode is the adorable cat Diana, though I am not sure who will be performing her voice at this time and we won’t actually hear her speak until Act 20, unless there’s some unexpected ADR.

Fans of Usagi and Mamoru will be excited to see them have sex in this week’s episode! This was strongly hinted at in the manga but not at all subtle in Sailor Moon Crystal. We’ll see if the English dub tries to smooth over this sex scene or if they fully embrace it.

Meet the cast of Sailor Moon at Toronto ComiCon this Saturday

Posted on March 16, 2016 by Adam

This weekend, March 18th to the 20th, is Toronto ComiCon at the Metro Toronto Convention Center in downtown Toronto. In attendance on Saturday March 19th will be a ton of voice actors from the original English dub of Sailor Moon. This includes Linda Ballantyne, the voice of Sailor Moon, Katie Griffin, the voice of Sailor Mars, Susan Roman, the voice of Sailor Jupiter, Toby Proctor, the voice of Tuxedo Mask, Jill Frappier, the voice of Luna, and Ron Rubin, the voice of Artemis.

A “Meet the Cast of Sailor Moon” panel will be held Saturday afternoon at 4pm. The cast also has space at the autograph area near the food court, though it is not clear at this time what the schedule for autographs will be.

Sailor Moon Un Nouveau Voyage musical DVD review

Posted on March 14, 2016 by Adam

The Sailor Moon Un Nouveau Voyage musical was released on DVD in Japan on February 24th. This is the third in the current set of musicals covering the Infinity arc of the manga which introduces us to Sailor Uranus, Neptune and Saturn as well as the Death Busters. This is a Japanese only DVD which is region 2, so if you are looking to drop 6450 yen, about $57 US, on this to import it, realise you won’t be able to understand what anyone is saying unless you speak Japanese. This is a two disc set which includes the full musical on the first disc and some special features on disc 2. I bought my copy from Amazon Japan, though you can also get it from other retailers such as CD Japan.

The packaging is quite nice, with the cover featuring the musical’s poster. A special booklet is included which includes character descriptions and lyrics to all of the musical’s songs.

The first disc, as I mentioned, is the musical itself. The run time is 2 hours and 36 minutes. It’s quite a long musical but this also includes some extra performances after the curtain goes down and some words of thanks from the cast, due to this being a recording of the final performance of the musical. Lots of crying!

I realise I never actually did a full proper review of this musical when first played in Japan and became available to watch via fansub. I started writing one but put it off and at this point it’s so overdue it would be silly to release it. So much to say the musical is fantastic. It is faithful to the manga but still does its own thing enough to make it interesting. The new characters are great, as Haruka and Michiru have a great romance and Hotaru struggles with her illness in a very emotionally impactful way.

The musical is great. The quality of this DVD is not so awesome. As with La Reconquista and Petite Étrangère, the DVDs are standard definition with interlacing, 480i resolution. This is typical of older TV shows shot on video but for a musical which took place in 2015 it’s a bit disappointing. There is no Blu-Ray because there is no HD version that has been recorded. It seems like the best resolution possible is what is on this DVD.

The second disk has a lot of special features on it, of varying interest. As I’ve mentioned many times I don’t speak Japanese so a lot of these features don’t do me much good.

The first featurette focuses on the two actresses who are playing Chibiusa, Kokoro Kuge and Airi Kanda. They show up out of costume for a quick introduction and then we watch half an hour of parts of the musical they are in. We seem to go through all of their scenes from the musical. I’m not really sure what the point of this is but here we are. This whole thing is about 32 minutes.

Next is an interview with the main group of actresses, that being the girls playing Sailor Moon, Satomi Ookubo, Sailor Mercury, Momo Koyama, Sailor Mars, Kanon Nanaki, Sailor Jupiter, Yu Takahashi, Sailor Venus, Shiori Sakata, and Tuxedo Mask, Yūga Yamato. They chat for about 45 minutes about various things. I really couldn’t give you any insight into the content of their conversations but they are extensive! Boy some of these girls have really short hair when not wearing those wigs.

Following this is a similar interview with the Sailor Guardians from the outer solar system, that being Sailor Uranus, Shuu Shiotsuki, Sailor Neptune, Sayaka Fujioka, Sailor Pluto, Mikako Ishii, and Sailor Saturn, Karin Takahashi. Again I don’t know what they’re saying, but one thing that caught my attention was how much Shuu Shiotsuki looks like Haruka. In the musicals all of the actresses wear wigs but her short blonde hair was quite like she looks as Haruka. This interview is about 18 minutes.

To wrap things up we go back to the stage. A sort of tribute clip is shown to the departing actresses who are playing Sailor Moon, Mercury, Mars, Jupiter and Venus. This makes them cry. Someone comes out to give them a piece of paper and more crying. They do a final number while crying. This is the crying feature. I may not speak Japanese but all people of this earth share a common language of crying!

Included with this disk is a 26 page booklet which includes characters bios and lyrics for all songs from this musical. I’ve included photos of all pages from this booklet at the end of this post.

You are surely wondering if this DVD is worth it! If you’re looking to watch this musical with English subtitles, you’d be better off getting the fan subbed version from Miss Dream. Of course this is technically piracy and does not support the musicals. Short of going to Japan to watch a musical yourself, something many fans have done, your best legal option to support this musical would be to buy this home video release. Keep in mind this is region 2, so you will need a region free DVD player to watch this if you don’t live in Japan. It is NTSC which will present other difficulties for those living in regions with PAL video standards. Despite the quality issues musical fans will probably appreciate having this. There are some nice features on here which fans may find interesting which have not been subtitled by anyone so this is the only way to get those. Naturally if you’re not fluent in Japanese you won’t get quite as much out of this.

Keep reading to see more images of the menus, packaging and photos of every page of the booklet.

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Sailor Moon Sailor Stars episodes 192 and 193 are now available on Hulu

Posted on March 14, 2016 by Adam

This week’s new episodes of Sailor Moon Sailor Stars on Hulu and Neon Alley are all about Yaten threatening people! First he gets upset at Minako for trying to do the thing he’s doing and then he tries to steal an incense burner from innocent little Chibi Chibi! It’s also all about fetish costumes as Minako auditions to be an idol in all form of ridiculous costume and then the gang dress up as maids for a sort of school run Maid Café. This week also features the double whammy of two piece swimsuits and Usagi holding a child in her arms.

Episode 192, Go for Your Dream: Minako Becomes an Idol, continues Minako’s quest to become an idol. Didn’t we already see this episode? Episode 114 is kind of exactly this as Minako faced off against Mimete to become an idol. Minako made it to the final five in the episode before losing. Usagi herself tried to be an idol in episode 7 as well. In the live action series Minako is an idol all along, but in the anime she has to work for it! This is a popular topic in Japan. Frankly I was a bit baffled by these kinds of episodes back in the 90s, as such a thing was not that common here. I’d seen shows like Star Search but in this pre American Idol world it seemed to be a bigger thing in Japan. These days there is no shortage of shows which are pretty close to what is depicted here, somewhat of a mix between American Idol and a beauty pageant. While stars for such shows are often picked with their physical appearance in mind, this is less overtly stated as a requirement than it might be in Japan. What’s more the circus in Japan seems to just be amped up to 11, with competitors showing up with rabbit ears, tuxedos, school uniforms and other costumes that are indistinguishable from cosplay. Yaten is real upset at Minako for trying to be an idol. Yaten, an idol himself and member of what is surely the most popular boy band in Japan, thinks being an idol is incompatible with Minako’s duties as a Sailor Guardian. I wonder if throughout this episode Yaten, when coming face to face with Artemis, has noticed that he has a crescent moon in his forehead that looks just like the one Luna has. Artemis doesn’t seem to be very jealous of Yaten either, which is odd considering both loves of his life, Minako and Luna, have shown overt signs of being attracted to him. Oh well Artemis and Luna are great at hiding their emotions. They never even talk about their daughter who went back to the future between episodes with no fanfare. The competition of course includes a swimsuit portion. This must be good news to some readers, though sadly Minako only sports a one piece suit. Some other competitors wear bikinis though. Minako performs Route Venus at the competition. Though this song first appears in Sailor Moon SuperS it is a Sailor Moon R character song for Sailor Venus and is performed by Minako’s voice actress Rica Fukami. The target this week is Takuya Moroboshi who is like the Japanese Simon Cowell. He turns into Sailor Musician who is totally ridiculous looking, like most Phages. During the fight Usagi asks Luna to watch Chibi Chibi. I always find this funny as Usagi did it to Chibiusa in Sailor Moon R as well. Minako ultimately wins the competition, but decides not to pursue it at this time. I guess hypocritical Yaten got through to her! She seems to think she can become an idol at any time because she forgets that she lives in Japan and that her chances of success diminish with each passing year.

Episode 193, The Stolen Silver Crystal: Princess Kakyu Appears, is all about a Maid café though I’m not sure it was called that at the time. A little poking around tells me the first Maid Café dates back to 2001 but this episode aired in November 1996. Regardless of the specifics, this a restaurant where the girls dress up as French maids to serve their customers. It’s nice to see these school girls replace the highly fetishized Japanese school uniform with a French maid outfit. Seiya takes a page from 80s romantic comedies as he appears outside of Usagi’s balcony to chat with her. Usagi is there with Chibi Chibi who is dressed a rabbit. Could Chibi Chibi’s rabbit outfit be a clue to her actual identity? No. The rabbit outfit is in no way related to her identity in the anime. At this point on my first viewing I still thought she was Princess Kakyuu which we’re about to learn is not the case. Chibi Chibi got that incense burner a few episodes ago which is surrounded with butterflies and smells like Princess Kakyuu. This causes jerk faces Taiki and Yaten to try to get it from her. This is pretty sketchy, seeing large teenage boys threatening a little kid to fork over something. Naturally this causes Makoto and the rest of the girls to come to her defense. The target this week is … Sailor Moon! Sailor Lead Crow does something right for a change and targets someone who actually has a True Star Seed. She threatens to destroy the school with a black hole, as if a school which endorsed a fetish café was worth saving, and this seems to work on Usagi who submits to those bracelet things. Her Star Seed is the Silver Crystal and when it is retrieved Sailor Moon turns into Usagi. Let’s tease this apart for a moment. A normal person, when deprived on their Star Seed, becomes a Phage who is Sailor something which has to do with their interest. When Sailor Moon loses her Star Seed her Phage is Usagi dressed as a maid, which happens to be what she was wearing before. Is Sailor Moon’s Phage Usagi? So Lead Crow is sucked into the black hole, because these things are dangerous, and so are Usagi and Chibi Chibi but that’s okay because Princess Kakyuu shows up and it seems like she’s the one to destroy the black hole somehow. Wow it’s great this big climactic thing we were waiting for finally happened. I can’t wait to see what Princess Kakyuu does!

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The English version of Sailor Moon Crystal Act 18, Invasion – Sailor Venus, is now available on Hulu

Posted on March 11, 2016 by Adam

The latest English dubbed episode of Sailor Moon Crystal is now available to watch on Hulu and Neon Alley. Act 18, Invasion – Sailor Venus, has Sailor Venus facing off against the final member of the Spectre Sisters, Calaveras.

This episode also features the return of the Shitennou who were killed in the last season. They’ve returned as ghosts summoned by Mamoru with whom they used to be real good buddies.

Next Friday is Act 19, Time Warp – Sailor Pluto, in which we will hear Veronica Taylor, the English voice of Ash Ketchum from Pokémon, as Sailor Pluto.

The Infinity Arc of Sailor Moon Crystal will have more than one episode per manga chapter

Posted on March 11, 2016 by Adam

March 6th was the sneak preview of the first episode of the upcoming Infinity Arc of Sailor Moon Crystal, which will be aired on Japanese TV on April 4th. This was, we are supposing, Act 27, Infinity 1 – Premonition. Every episode to date has lined up with the chapter titles from the manga but it seems this trend will not continue. Two people who attended the premiere episode have confirmed that it only covered half of the manga equivalent of Act 27. Twitter user @uiyoe16 first mentioned that this only covered part of the story but later a user Andy added a comment to one of our posts with a lot of details.

According to her the episode concluded after Sailor Jupiter and Venus defeated the Daimon which had come from the Infinity Academy Students’ backs. This means that the first episode would only include appearances by Haruka and Michiru, but not their Sailor Guardian counterparts Sailor Uranus and Neptune or Hotaru, all of whom show up towards the end of Act 27. By my count this means the episode covers pages 4 to 43 of the manga chapter, which goes up to page 73. This is a bit more than half, but close enough that the next episode would likely conclude Act 27.

Many users have also wondered if this could mean that, unlike the first two seasons, we could be having more extra scenes and character development not in the manga. Part of what set the original Sailor Moon anime apart from the manga was that, over a longer period of time, we got extra content exclusive to that series. Andy goes on to say that they did not change anything or add new scenes not present in the manga. This would mean that, even though we may not be doing the 1:1 ratio of manga chapters to Sailor Moon Crystal episodes, we might not necessarily be adding anything completely new. This just gives us the same story animated at a different pace. Many comments have pointed out that the stories in the Infinity arc are often longer, so this kind of approach makes sense rather than trying to cram more story into a short episode. How this will factor in throughout the season is not clear at this point, and we will only get an idea as the story goes on, though we can imagine longer stories may have more than one episode while shorter ones may keep the 1:1 ratio.

Here’s the complete Tweet from user @uiyoe16:

@NickGreeley the ep only contained half of act 24 from the manga but the new transformations and attacks were much better.

— Black_Ear (@ukiyoe16) March 6, 2016

Here’s the full comment left by Andy on our post about the Sailor Moon/Pokémon crossover:

greetings to all Sailor Moon Crystal fans! I was one of the fans who had a chance to see the limited premiere of the third season and I want to share some news with you, although I know some news have already leaked out. So first at all – at that time there were no new opening and ending credits, they said they are still working on it, same with the new soundtrack – what we could hear were just unfinished samples. The transformations and attacks have brand new animation – and it is stunning, much more better than in the first two seasons, Guardians also have new Planet Power make-up pens! The episode was simply a half of “Act 27 – Infinity 1, Premonition”, they did not change anything and there was not any new scene which is not in manga, it was 100% faithful to the manga and ended after Jupiter and Venus destroyed on the street the monster which emerged from one of the Infinity Academy student’s back. There were not present Sailor Uranus and Sailor Neptune (their civilian form Michiru and Haruka were present of course), Professor Tomoe, Hotaru, nor Witches 5 and only a brief appearance of Kaolinite and Pharaoh 90.

How many episodes will we have? There are actually different numberings for Manga chapters in different editions. Sailor Moon Crystal had broken up episodes according to the new version of the manga which were reprinted in 2003. These are the chapters used in the latest English release of the manga. According to this numbering the first two arcs spanned 26 episodes and there are 11 chapters in the Infinity arc. It looks like the Infinity arc would at least cover 12 chapters if they only broke up the first Act but more likely would be closer to 20 or 26 for this story arc alone if they kept up this pace throughout the Infinity story arc. While it was originally expected that another batch of 26 episodes could cover both the Infinity and Dream arcs of the manga, this may no longer be the case. At this point I’m considering that the next Act will be Act 27, Infinity 1 – Premonition, but what will Act 28 be called if it doesn’t span Act 28, Infinity 2 – Ripples, of the Manga? We may not have specifics until April 4th when the episode airs, or some short time after that as we still have no details about international streaming options.

Source: @ukiyoe16 and the comments at Sailor Moon News

A Pokémon/Sailor Moon Crossover? Is the Golden Crystal or Mamoru’s Star Seed in the Pokémon Moon logo?

Posted on March 9, 2016 by Adam

Could it be that the upcoming Pokémon games Pokémon Sun and Pokémon Moon include a Sailor Moon Crossover? Zack Compton, who created this image and left it on our Facebook page, seems to think so. The Japanese Pocket Monsters Moon logo includes a small gold coloured gem which looks suspiciously like a True Star Seed. The picture above shows Galaxia with (spoiler!) Tuxedo Mask’s Star Seed which happens to closely resemble the Golden Crystal from Sailor Moon SuperS and the Dream arc of the manga. Though the similarity is a bit of a stretch the game also has Moon in the title so why not? Check out the games official Japanese logo below. The “Confirmed” comment is a reference to a trend in the Pokémon fandom to confirm remakes throughout the years.

Here is Sailor Chibi Moon with the Golden Crystal, quite similar to the gem from the image and of course nearly identical to Tuxedo Mask’s Star Seed. There are minor differences with Star Seeds being partially transparent with a shiny star inside and the Golden Crystal being a fairly uniform colour.

The Pokémon/Sailor Moon crossovers don’t end there! As I’ve previously mentioned Makoto’s father, as seen in Act 17, looks just like Brock from Pokémon! This may largely be due to the fact that he’s closing his eyes in the photo. Who does that? Maybe Makoto’s father is French Stewart.

Source: Zack Compton on our Facebook Page

Watch English dubbed version of Sailor Moon Crystal Act 18, Invasion – Sailor Venus, Friday March 11th at 9pm EST

Posted on March 9, 2016 by Adam

The next English dubbed episode of Sailor Moon Crystal will be available to view on Hulu and Neon Alley this Friday at 9pm Eastern Time. Act 18, Invasion – Sailor Venus, has Sailor Venus facing off against the final Spectre Sister Calaveras who uses antiquated DVDs in her evil plot. They must be cheap 480i DVDs like the Sailor Moon musicals use!

We’ll see the Shitennou as good guys this week. Mamoru summons them from the gems he keeps. Too bad we couldn’t see more of them in Sailor Moon Crystal, after being kept around for a somewhat anticlimactic ending.

Sailor Moon News

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Monthly Archives: March 2016