Meet Linda Ballantyne, Katie Griffin, Susan Roman and Toby Proctor at Realms Con this weekend, September 30th to October 2nd, in Corpos Christi

Linda Ballantyne (Sailor Moon) Toby Proctor (Tuxedo Mask) Katie Griffin (Sailor Mars) Adam Gardner (Sailor Moon News web master) Susan Roman (Sailor Jupiter) and John Stocker (voice director)

This coming weekend Sailor Moon fans in Texas will be able to meet some of their favourite voice actors from the original English dub of the Sailor Moon anime at Realms Con at the American Bank Center in Corpus Christi. Fans will have a chance to meet Linda Ballantyne, the voice of Sailor Moon, Katie Griffin, the voice of Sailor Mars, Susan Roman, the voice of Sailor Jupiter and Toby Proctor, the voice of Tuxedo Mask.

Realms Con is a yearly multimedia convention focusing on anime, comics, gaming and horror. The convention will run Friday to Sunday, September 30th to October 2nd. Will any of you be attending this weekend?

Registration for the Official Sailor Moon Fan Club will open October 5th at 9pm Eastern Time

Official Sailor Moon Fan Club Membership Card

Last Friday, September 23rd, the Official Sailor Moon Fan Club very disastrously attempted to open registration to overseas fans around the world. The Tokyo Otaku Mode web site was incapable of handing the load of the overwhelming interest from Sailor Moon fans and immediately become unavailable. As promised a new registration date has now been set! The Tokyo Otaku Mode web site has announced that registration will be opened on October 5th, next Wednesday, at 6pm PDT, which is 9pm Eastern Time. Though there has been no indication of what exactly has been done, if anything, to alleviate the server issues suffered last week, Tokyo Otaku Mode has stated that “we are certain that fans will be able to safely purchase their memberships.”.

The Official Sailor Moon Fan Club will cost $58 and give membership until June 30th 2017. Members will get a membership card, transformation brooch designed lip gloss and the opportunity to spend even more money on Fan Club exclusive products. This will also give access to the somewhat terrible Sailor Moon Fan Club App for mobile devices.

Open your mail in style with a Sailor Uranus Space Sword letter opener

Sailor Uranus's Space Sword Letter Opener

Opening letters is boring but opening them with a letter opener is basically slicing your mail open with a mini sword! The fine people at Prism Stationary are bringing the bad assness of opening mail to the next level with a Space Sword letter opener, based on Sailor Uranus’s weapon. This functional yet beautiful device is made of die cast zinc, is covered in coloured glass gems and stores in a cloth purse. The set also comes with 5 envelopes featuring Sailor Uranus and Neptune as seen in Sailor Moon Crystal. Too bad this doesn’t come with Haruka’s “patron” to pay those bills you’re slicing open!

Sailor Uranus's Space Sword Letter Opener

The item was announced on the Official Sailor Moon Site and is up for pre-order on the Bandai store in Japan. It will be out in January and will cost 4000 yen, about $40 US.

Sailor Uranus's Space Sword Letter Opener stationary and envelope

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A Sailor Moon themed drag show and dance party, Nerdgasm: Sailor Moon Edition, will take place tonight at Toronto’s Wayla Bar and Lounge

Nerdgasm - Sailor Moon Edition - at the Wayla Bar and Lounge

Toronto Sailor Moon fans are in for a great show tonight as Nerdgasm… Sailor Moon Edition comes to the Wayla Bar and Lounge at 996 Queen Street East. This event is billed as a dance party but is also a drag show starring Princess Juice Boxx (Juice Boxx), Sailor Bel Bel (Baby Bel Bel) and Evil Queen Bobo (Scarlett BoBo). The party starts at 10pm Saturday September 24th. Tonight!

Sailor Moon Sailor Stars episode 181 - Usagi and Seiya dancing

For details check out the Wayla web site or the Facebook Event. Will any of you be at this event?

Sailor Moon SuperS episode 147 - Makoto and Ami dancing

Registration to the Official Sailor Moon Fan Club has been delayed until a later date

Official Sailor Moon Fan Club registration delayed message

Last night at 6pm Pacific Time, 9pm Eastern Time, the Tokyo Otaku Mode web site began accepting pre-orders for the Official Sailor Moon Fan Club. This included allowing fans in Canada, the US and other countries outside of Japan to apply. Unfortunately the web site which hosted the Tokyo Otaku Mode store immediately became unresponsive and no orders were successfully processed. Unlike Kunzite I was not too proud to refresh the page for a few hours which caused long page loads followed by a series of “Bad Gateway” and “Gateway Timeout” errors and eventually 404 errors as the product page for the Fan Club registration was taken offline.

Tokyo Otaku Mode Bad Gateway Error

A message was sent out on the Tokyo Otaku Mode Twitter account stating that registration was closing and that it would be reopened at a later date. A full e-mail was later sent out to users who had previously asked to be notified of details about the Fan Club stating that indeed the site was down due to high traffic and that the fans would be able to sign up at a later, as of yet unannounced date, when they assure us that fans will be able to safely purchase their memberships. Fans who had signed up to be notified by e-mail will get some notification when this occurs. If you haven’t signed up for that e-mail notification yet you can still do so following this link to the Tokyo Otaku Mode site. The Tokyo Otaku Mode Twitter account has claimed that registration will be announced well in advance.

Read the full e-mail sent to interested users below:

Hello Sailor Moon Fans,

Thank you very much for your interest in the Official Sailor Moon Fan Club. We are sending this message to update on the current status of membership registration.

Registration for the Official Sailor Moon Fan Club was initially opened on September 23, 2016 at 6:00 PM (PDT). However, due to an overwhelmingly large show of support from the Sailor Moon fan community, our servers were brought down and memberships were not able to be purchased. We would like to offer our most heartfelt apologies for the worry and inconvenience that this issue has caused for everyone who waited for registration to open.

As a result, we have decided to temporarily delay registration until a later date when we are certain that fans will be able to safely purchase their memberships. If you are receiving this message, please be assured that we will contact you again once a new registration date has been decided.

Again, we would like to humbly apologize for the inconvenience that this has caused.
We hope to be in touch again soon with more details!

– The TOM Team
Let’s Enjoy OTAKU Life!

Fan Club membership will cost $58 US and last until June 30th. This will give fans a membership card, access to the Fan Club App for mobile devices and lip gloss fashioned after Sailor Moon’s original Transformation Brooch as well as the option to buy Fan Club exclusive merchandise in the future.

Shut Up and Take My Money

Registration for the Official Sailor Moon Fan Club is now open to international fans

Official Sailor Moon Fan Club Membership Card

Update: Following issues with the site being inaccessible due to heavy traffic the Fan Club registration page was removed. A message on the Otaku Mode Twitter account noted that registration is currently closed but would be back at a later date.

The Official Sailor Moon Fan Club, previously only open to fans in Japan, has now opened overseas! For a limited time fans in the US, Canada and select other countries worldwide can pre-order a fan club membership for $58 US from the Tokyo Otaku Mode web site. I visited the site immediately after membership opened at 9pm Eastern Time and though I was able to load the fan club pre-order page the site almost immediately become unresponsive, likely due to load, leaving me unable to complete my purchase. Hopefully the traffic will reduce soon allowing users to get their memberships.

Official Sailor Moon Fan Club Lip Gloss

Being part of the fan club will give you a membership card, a lip gloss container fashioned after Sailor Moon’s brooch, access to the Sailor Moon Fan Club App for mobile devices and the ability to pay more money for Fan Club exclusive merchandise. The membership period will not last a full year. It will expire on June 30th 2017. This is likely because the Fan Club began in Japan in July of this year, and so the first year will run until June 30th. Though new memberships will only be accepted until October 22nd it has been stated that only a limited number of new Fan Club members will be allowed to sign up, so it is quite possible that registration will close before that date. If you are interested in signing up you would be wise to do so as soon as the web site lets you.

Official Sailor Moon Fan Club Lip Gloss

Usagi is basically a tasty dessert in this upcoming Sweeties figure

Sailor Moon Sweeties figure

Do you like Sailor Moon and sweet desserts? Well this new line of “Sweeties” figures seems to basically be characters as some sort of sweet food? In this upcoming figure Usagi is dressed as a fruit parlor waitress sitting in a parfait glass with some whipped cream on her. She has a moon themed spoon in her hand which itself has whipped cream in it. If you have a weird thing about wanting to eat Usagi, this is the figure for you! It will be out in March and cost 5900 yen, about $58 US.

Sailor Moon Sweeties figure

I suppose we could say that this is somewhat Sailor Moon related as there is a “Fruits Parlor Crown” next to the Crown Arcade where the girls sometimes eat desserts. This is the first figure in this new line so it’s hard for me to say exactly what the recurring theme will be. Will other characters also appear in the same kind of food container? Different food containers? It’s a bit hard for me to completely appreciate this whole product since fruit parlors just aren’t a thing which is part of my culture but they are a thing in Japan, where this figure is being sold. As far as I can figure a fruit parlor is where you can pay a lot of money to get a little bowl of nicely arranged fruit and whipped cream.

Sailor Moon Crystal Act 15 - Crown Fruit Parlor

I know what you’re all thinking. Why start with Usagi? Why not start with a Nephrite x Naru chocolate parfait? Big time missed opportunity but I hope they will make up for it in the future.

Sailor Moon episode 24 - Naru and Nephrite

Could this be the next ridiculous figure in the series?

Sailor Moon R episode 76 - Sailor Venus is a cake

Source: Official Sailor Moon site, Kiddyland

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The Official Sailor Moon Fan Club will soon be open to the US, Canada and other countries around the world

Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon Fan Club Banner

The Official Sailor Moon Fan Club began taking memberships in Japan in March. I was hoping to sign up but was quickly thwarted when asked for a Japanese address. What Prefecture do I live in? Not sure I understand the question. Now the Fan Club is opening up to a number of countries around the world! Registration will begin September 23rd and will be open for only a limited time, closing on October 22nd. Interested fans should sign up to be notified of more details at the Tokyo Otaku Mode web site by providing their e-mail in the very straightforward English language form. This is not the form to sign up for the Fan Club itself. This is a form to be notified how and when to sign up for the Fan Club.

The cost to become a fan club member for 2016-2017 is $58 US. This will include a membership card, access to the Fan Club app for mobile devices and the ability to order club exclusive merchandise. The intention of this move is to give the same fan club benefits that exist in Japan to people all over the world. Some exclusive merchandise is shown in the English poster seen below.

Official Sailor Moon Fan Club Flyer

This registration will be open to fans from the following countries:

Australia
Austria
Belgium
Brazil
Canada
Chile
China
Colombia
Denmark
Finland
France
Germany
Hong Kong
India
Indonesia
Ireland
Italy
Japan
Malaysia
Mexico
Netherlands
New Zealand
Norway
Peru
Philippines
Poland
Puerto Rico
Republic of Korea
Russian Federation
Singapore
Spain
Sweden
Switzerland
Taiwan
Thailand
United Kingdom
United States
Vietnam

Those who are not from one of these countries are encouraged to leave a comment when they leave their e-mail address to request that the fan club include their country as well.

Sugar Lyn Beard, the voice of Rini, to appear at Unplugged Expo October 15th and 16th in Toronto

Sugar Lyn Beard - The Zone

Stephanie “Sugar” Lyn Beard, the voice of Rini and Sailor Mini Moon from the original dub of Sailor Moon S and SuperS, will be appearing at Unplugged Expo at the Westin Harbour Castle Conference Centre in Toronto October 15th and 16th.

Sailor Moon S episode 103 - Sailor Chibi Moon and her Pink Moon Stick

Canadian Sailor Moon fans will not only remember Sugar as the voice of Rini but also as one of the PJs from YTV’s The Zone, the after school zone programming block which played many shows, including Sailor Moon, here in Canada. Sugar will be appearing with her fellow PJ Carlos who hosted the Zone during the same time frame.

Sugar and Carlos on YTV's The Zone

YTV, like the company which produced the first English dub of the original Sailor Moon anime, is based in Toronto where this convention takes place. It’s no coincidence that so many voice actor appearances occur in Toronto!

Sailor Moon SuperS episode 135 - Chibiusa the artist

I won’t be able to attend Unplugged Expo this year but I have fond memories of my time at the convention 3 years ago during Unplugged Expo 2. Will you be attending this one?

Incredibly expensive Sailor Moon themed mugs are coming in February

Sailor Moon x Noritake mugs

A couple of great looking Sailor Moon mugs have been announced on the official Sailor Moon site and are available to pre-order from the Bandai site. These mugs are decorated in Princess Serenity and Prince Endymion themes and sell as a set for 9,250 yen, about $90 US! I’ve got a couple of Sailor Moon mugs kicking around and I paid anywhere from $10 to $15 for them so this does seem a bit steep to me!

Sailor Moon x Noritake mugs - Princess Serenity

The mugs are made by Noritake, a Japanese dinnerware company, which makes fancy items such as these porcelain mugs. These classy designs don’t feature overt images of anime characters but instead have a classic looking design inspired by these characters from Sailor Moon. They are made in Sri Lanka which isn’t where Arthur C. Clarke lived and he was a genius so I guess they are worth nearly $100 for the set! What do you think? Will you skip buying an excessively expensive Pullip Doll to buy these ultra expensive mugs?

Sailor Moon x Noritake mugs - Prince Endymion

What do you think? Would you spend nearly $100 to get this set?