The next Sailor Moon musical, Amour Eternal, has a terrible name

Amour Eternal - Did you mean Amour éternel?

An update has been posted to the official Sailor Moon site which reveals the name of the latest musical, Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon Amour Eternal, as well as a complete cast listing. The new musical has been confirmed to be covering the Dream arc of the manga, adapted as Sailor Moon SuperS in the original Sailor Moon anime. This title is just the worst! Amour, as most probably know, is the French word for love. Eternal however is not French at all. It’s a full on English word. What the hell? Why not Amour éternel, which would actually be proper French? Are we supposed to pronounce it in French? It just sounds gross to say Amour Eternal. It’s just bastardizing two languages. It’s gross. The last two musicals all had fully French names. Is this supposed to be a misspelled French word or is this intentionally terribly mismatched English and French words? This is just bad and it will not stop bothering me and I will probably not be able to avoid mentioning how terribly stupid it is at least once in any post referencing this musical. This offends me as both and English and French speaking person and it should bother you too.

Everlasting love translates to Amour éternel

This title will just lead to more confusion on what the name means. Amour éternel would translate roughly to everlasting love or eternal love. I guess eternal is more the word we’re going for since it’s the actual English word in the horrible title.

Here’s an English translation of the cast, courtesy of Wikimoon:

Usagi Tsukino/Sailor Moon: Hotaru Nomoto
Ami Mizuno/Sailor Mercury: Yume Takeuchi
Rei Hino/Sailor Mars: Karen Kobayashi
Makoto Kino/Sailor Jupiter: Kaede
Minako Aino/Sailor Venus: Rimo Hasegawa
Haruka Tenou/Sailor Uranus: Syu Shiotsuki
Michiru Kaiou/Sailor Neptune: Sayaka Fujioka
Hotaru Tomoe/Sailor Saturn: Karin Takahashi
Sailor Pluto: Mikako Ishii
Sailor Chibi Moon/Chibiusa: Airi Kanda
Helios: Hikaru Hiyama
Queen Nehellenia: Sayu Otsuki
Zirconia: Kanami Sakai
Tiger’s Eye: Chihiro Ando
Hawk’s Eye: Riona Tatemichi
Fisheye: Yumi
Dead Moon Circus: Yoshika Kobayashi, Risa Kawamura, Yoshimi Hidano, Chiemi Doi, Ayano Nagasawa, Ayumi Sagisaka
Mamoru Chiba/Tuxedo Mask: Yuga Yamato

Some newcomers and some repeat performances here. Sailor Moon, Mercury, Mars, Jupiter and Venus are all new actors, as we’ve seen announced previously. We already saw that Yuga Yamato would return as Tuxedo Mask. Shuu Shiotsuki, Sayaka Fujioka, Mikako Ishii and Karin Takahashi will be reprising their roles as Sailor Uranus, Neptune, Pluto and Saturn. Airi Kanda will also be returning as Chibiusa. Riona Tatemichi, who previously played Rubeus in the Petite Étrangère musical, will be playing Hawk’s Eye. The rest of the cast are newcomers to the musicals, as those characters have no appeared before.

We Are The New Pretty Guardians - The cast of the next Sailor Moon musical

We previously reported that Hikari Kuroki would play Ami Mizuno, Sailor Mercury. This role is now credited as Yume Takeuchi. I don’t know what prompted this change in casting, but this replacement was posted as a separate update on the Sailor Moon official site on the same day as this updated cast listing was shared.

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26 thoughts on “The next Sailor Moon musical, Amour Eternal, has a terrible name

  1. We’ll just have to think its a spelling mistake. Happens all the time with Japanese-to-another-language translations. Its one letter. If the other musicals had french names, then we’ll assume it was a spelling mistake on their part and we could move on. No need to be offended personally.

    I notice also that a lot of your reviews lately are on the negative side. Like, needlessly negative. I get that its your opinion, but you seem to be disappointed a whole lot. I’m personally just glad Sailor Moon gets to live this long at all. Imagine the sadness of Wedding Peach fans.

  2. It’s very hard to say “Amour Eternal” without it coming out “amour éternel”. It’s like trying to chew on a jawbreaker. Very confusing.

    • BTW, Miss Dream – undisputed experts on all things translation-related – says “‘Amour Eternal’ is French for ‘Eternal Love.'” Just wanted to share that. (And, yes, their translations of Japanese are often equally as faulty as this.)

  3. My eyes and ears bleed just like yours, Adam, as a Frenchwoman. But I’m not even surprised by this bad mix of French and English here. And I think that zencompulse’s theory (see above) is a good explanation of why the new Sailor Moon musical is called “Amour Eternal” instead of “Amour Éternel”. At least I try to see it this way :) .

    Here is a French page about “Franponais”, the “unfortunate use of French words by the Japanese” (not available in English, though) : https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franponais. Have some fun, some examples of Franponais are just priceless.

      • Indeed, the awkward use of English words in Japanese is called “Japlish”.

        I didn’t know the Jacuzzi song and I needed the lyrics for some parts, it’s a real mess, I like that :D ! But I don’t wanna go in his Jacuzzi, no thanks…

          • By reading the commentaries posted under the video, I learned that the language they use is called chiac, a vernacular mix between French and English, used by some Acadians. The members of Radio Radio are from New-Brunswick and Nova Scotia.

          • Yeah that is my understanding. I’ve only ever passed through New Brunswick on my way to the Maritimes. The French I heard there seemed fine but I hardly got to encounter much more than hotel workers, gas station attendants and restaurant servers. Not a great sample of the entire population. There are a lot of Acadians over there though as I’ve inferred from all of the stars on the houses I saw passing by. There is something similar to the “Franglais” slang that I hear around these parts sometimes but most of it is very alien to me. I’m sure it’s really funny to people who live around there though! How much is excessive parody and how much is how some people really talk I couldn’t say.
            My assumption, based on what I’ve observed, is that in France there are English words that are incorporated because they’re kind of trendy. In Quebec and French Ontario there are English words that are incorporated because people are bilingual and a bit lazy! I’m thinking “chiac” is a bit more along that trend.

          • You know, in France, we incorporate English words not only because this is trendy, but also because we are lazy too. All these words could easily be translated in French, because they already exist, but everything is made to brainwash the French people with “Globish” words. In Québec or in Acadie, I can understand that it happens, but in France, I think we should try to make some efforts not to corrupt the language. But it’s hard, because the Internet spreads the Globish fashion really easily and really fast.

            https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6UFBHBYD6bU
            ;)

          • We have efforts to preserve the language here too! I’ve heard that the French in Quebec is closer to what it was in France hundreds of years ago. The idea is that the language stagnated here more in isolation. I can’t really confirm this since I wasn’t around 300 or so years ago! It’s probably a little more nuanced than this as both have evolved a bit, but the languages seem to have sort of split when Novelle France was settled centuries ago.

        • I have no doubt that you have some efforts to preserve French from anglicisms, and in fact, I think you do better than us French people. For example, the Québécois have created the word “courriel” to translate the word “e-mail”, and this is a very clever and pretty invention.

          As for the fact that the Quebec French is closer to the Old French (les langue d’oïl) that the French spoken in France nowadays, it seems to be a proven fact. The link I posted in my previous comment leads to a video where a Québécois explains why. The “standard” French spoken in France nowadays comes mostly from the French Revolution (that’s why we call it the “Parisian accent”, but this name is a bit fallacious…), with its dominant ideology called jacobinism, that still determines the political entity of France nowadays… But among the standard French, we have kept many regional dialects and accents born from these dialects (en langues d’oïl et langues d’oc) that can still be heard throughout the country, though they are disappearing, because they are mostly spoken by old people. If you ever hear some French regional dialects/accents which are remains of the langues d’oil, I’m sure you will find some resemblances with Quebec French for some of them. I grew up among peasants speaking the berrichon (sometimes I could not even understand what they said). Here are some examples : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Egrfsn2CU8E, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5MpQ0DZvpXQ, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k-gTUUgZCQo.

          Of course the reality of the creation and evolution of French language through the world is more complex than that (it’s the same for every language), but we can only sum up.

          • Oh wow what a variety. There are a few I have trouble understanding. I can figure out almost any Quebec accent but when it’s really European it’s not always easy. There is some of Berrichon that sounds very Quebecois! That song is like hearing some guy from Quebec singing.

          • Don’t worry, I have trouble understanding not a few, but a lot of those French dialect accents >_< . Of course the easiest for me to understand in this video is the berrichon accent, since the region called Berry is my homeland. Besides, it seems those recordings are very old, because all those accents were very strong ; I'd say they were made during the 20th century, surely before the 80's, and I find that this scale is even too large.

            I saw some comments here and there on the Internet from Quebecers, writing that the berrichon accent is indeed close to the Quebec French "accent" (because of course, for us Frenchmen, the Québécois have an accent).

            As for the medieval song, the singer, René Zosso, a Swiss man, is amazing ! His pronunciation of Old French is fantastic. I try to sing it myself, and while some sounds are very hard to reproduce, some others are easy for me, because those sounds were kept in the berrichon dialect (though I don't have a berrichon accent myself, I have a "standard" French accent. But I often noticed, though, that when I get angry and bitch about something or someone, I speak with some slight berrichon intonations !). And finally, I'd say that the fact that the "standard" French had us completely stop rolling the "r" letter is very recent…

          • Everyone has an accent people just don’t see their own! I’ve seen people who were taught French as a second language in Canada by people with European accents thinking French Canadians have an accent. The concept blows my mind! This is how people talk here! But it’s just the reality of the culture. If you don’t learn French natively in Canada you will have a more European accent and not learn the slang terms which are part of the every day language here. It doesn’t really prepare a person for conversing with their peers. It prepares them to converse with people an ocean away. Not terribly useful all things considered!

      • Interesting fact ! But silly concept indeed !

        Yes, everyone has an accent, and the “purest” accent, to me, is just a myth. The accents are what make a language rich and fascinating. This is really important to preserve that variety !

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