The Sailor Moon Le Mouvement Final musical poster, story, cast and schedule have been released

Sailor Moon Le Mouvement Final banner

A ton of information about the Sailor Moon Le Mouvement Final musical has been released! The musical will start in September and run in three different cities in Japan, those being Tokyo, Aichi and Osaka. As expected this musical will cover the Stars arc of the manga, which has the Sailor Guardians joining forces with the Sailor Starlights to fight Sailor Galaxia.

Sailor Moon Le Mouvement Final banner

Check out the new cast members! Note that I don’t speak Japanese so for some of these I couldn’t get a good English version of the name so I just included the Japanese text. I’ll update those when I get some better into.

Harukawa Meiku - Sailor Star Fighter

Seiya Kou, Sailor Star Fighter, will be played by Meiku Harukawa.

Riona Tatemichi as Rubeus

Taiki Kou, Sailor Star Maker, will be played by Riona Tatemichi. Riona previously played Rubeus in the Petite Étrangère musical.

Saki Matsuda Sailor Star Healer

Yaten Kou, Sailor Star Healer, will be played by Saki Matsuda.

Princess Kakyuu

Princess Kakyuu will be played by 岡村麻未.

Coco Isuzu Sailor Galaxia

Sailor Galaxia will be played by Coco Isuzu (Twitter, Instagram).

Aoki Shion - Sailor Iron Mouse

Sailor Iron Mouse will be played by Aoki Shion.

Sailor Tin Nyanko

Sailor Tin Nyanko will be played by 橋垣美佑.

Sailor Aluminum Siren will be played by 小林由佳.

Juri Hirayu - Sailor Lead Crow

Sailor Lead Crow will be played by Juri Hirayu (Twitter, Instagram).

Hirani Yamaguchi as Chibi Chibi

There will be two actresses playing Chibi Chibi. Hinari Yamaguchi and 新津ちせ.

There will also be some dancers playing additional villains. These are 椎原夕加里, 肥田野好美, 匂坂あゆ美 and Ayano Nagasawa. A number of them played villains in past musicals.

Performances in Tokyo will be from September 8th to the 18th. Performances in Aichi will be September 23rd and 24th. Performances in Osaka will be held from September 29th to October 1st.

Will any of you be attending this round of musicals?

Two new tabletop Sailor Moon games, Sailor Moon Crystal Dice Challenge and Truth or Bluff are coming to stores in 2017!

Sailor Moon Crystal Dice Challenge

Great news for fans of Sailor Moon and tabletop games! Dyskami Publishing Company has acquired the rights to release two Sailor Moon Crystal games this year! The first, Sailor Moon Crystal Dice Challenge, will be out this summer while Sailor Moon Crystal Truth or Bluff, a tile based game, is set to be release in the Fall. Details about both of these games can be found on the Dyskami official site.

The first game we’ll be getting, Sailor Moon Crystal Dice Challenge, is a game of dice and cards. Players will be one of 24 characters, who are each represented by a card, and will use a number of different dice to face off against each other. The game comes with a total of 24 dice, 6 different types, as well as tokens and challenge cards. The box art says it’s for 2 to10 players though the site lists it as being for 2 to 8 players. It’s for players aged 10 and up and will retail for $29.99 US.

Sailor Moon Crystal Dice Challenge - Tuxedo Mask challenge card

Sailor Moon Crystal Truth or Bluff

The other game which will be released in the Fall is Sailor Moon Crystal Truth or Bluff. This game will have players laying down tile cards showcasing heroes, villains and ending tiles. It will also include tokens, tile holders, privacy shields and a cloth bag for portability. The title made me think this might be a Truth or Dare kind of social game but based on the description it seems to be about bluffing with what tiles you’re using. This game is for 3 to 10 players and again is for players aged 10 and up. It will also retail for $29.99 US. Check out some of the tiles below! They feature Super Deformed or Chibi type characters in a Sailor Moon Crystal style.

Sailor Moon Crystal Truth or Bluff - Character tiles

Both games are priced affordably and seem to be quite portable. I’m looking forward to seeing these games in action! It’s great to see this come from a Canadian company! Dyskami Publishing is based in Guelph Ontario.

Sailor Moon Web of the Negaverse game

This is not one of the upcoming games!

I was tempted to say that these were the first Sailor Moon board games available in North America but I had a vague memory of having seen one before. Indeed a quick search reminded me that there was a Sailor Moon Web of the Negaverse game released in the 90s! I never had the pleasure of playing it. There was also the popular Sailor Moon Trading Card Game and the Sailor Moon pen and paper RPG released back in the day. These last two were actually designed by Dyskami’s founder and CEO Mark MacKinnon. Many other Sailor Moon games were released in other countries around the world.

Check out the full press release below for more details. We’ll be sure to have more on these games when they come out!

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Evgenia Medvedeva’s performance at the 2017 ISU World Team Trophy in Tokyo recreates the first episode of Sailor Moon

Evgenia Medvedeva's Sailor Moon Figure Skating Routine

Two time World champion Russian figure skater Evegnia Medvedeva has given us another great Sailor Moon themed performance! She originally did a Sailor Moon themed routine last year and she’s updated it to reflect many of the events of the first episode of Sailor Moon. This was done this past weekend at the 2017 ISU World Team Trophy in Tokyo. A fitting location for a Sailor Moon themed performance! The soundtrack used for her piece includes a number of audio clips from the first episode as Usagi sleeps in, rushes off to school, meets Luna and ultimately transforms into Sailor Moon. As with the last routine it includes the original version of Moonlight Densetsu by DALI. You can watch the full clip below.

She did quite well at the competition setting records for Short Program, Free Skate and Total Score. Evegnia Medvedeva is a huge anime and Sailor Moon fan as we continue to see with her fun performances.

Evgenia Medvedeva's Sailor Moon Figure Skating Routine - Usagi meets Luna

Sailor Moon episode 1 - Luna freaking out with a bandage on her head

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Viz’s Sailor Moon R The Movie Blu-Ray looks fantastic and is well worth buying despite the unpopular cover art

Sailor Moon R The Movie Blu-Ray - Princess Serenity

Sailor Moon R The Movie was released on DVD and Blu-Ray April 18th and it looks amazing. I’m not talking about the lacklustre cover art which everyone seems fixated on but rather the video quality of the actual Blu-Ray. This is a top quality release which seems to come from the film source. The level of detail is absolutely not something which could have simply been gotten from software upscaling, which is what has been used for all of the home video releases we’ve seen for the Sailor Moon TV series to date. But don’t take my word for it! Look at these screenshots to see the difference. Prior to this release I watched the Japanese DVD as my gold standard. The French DVD release which came out in 2014 looks great too, but is still in the same ball park. It has a slightly cleaned up image and a higher resolution due to them having different TV standards. The old DVD we got from Pioneer in 1999 is borderline VHS quality, but it is an unmated full screen so there’s a bit more to the picture. This new Blu-Ray is in a league of its own. View the full sized versions of these pictures to see the difference. There’s a small amount of loss of quality from the JPEG compression on these uploads but it should give you a good idea of the difference.

Sailor Moon R The Movie Blu-Ray - Usagi gives a rose to Mamoru

Viz Blu-Ray (2017)

Sailor Moon R The Movie - Japense R2 DVD 2002 - Usagi gives a rose to Mamoru

Japanese DVD (2002)

Sailor Moon R The Movie - French DVD - Usagi gives a rose to Mamoru

French DVD (2014)

Sailor Moon R The Movie - English Pioneer release - Usagi gives a rose to Mamoru

English Pioneer DVD (1999)

Pay attention to small details in the image like Fiore’s nose or the lines on Mamoru’s face. This new Blu-Ray image is not something which could have been extrapolated through software from any of the standard definition masters. This is a high quality HD transfer from film source and it looks as good as we could hope for! Fans who were lucky enough to have seen the film in theatres probably noticed that they could see a lot of detail in the image and we see that in this release as well. Look at another comparison between a wide shot of the street which gives us a lot of small details of individual characters.

Sailor Moon R The Movie Blu-Ray - Wide shot of the street

Viz Blu-Ray (2017)

Sailor Moon R The Movie - Japense R2 DVD 2002 - Wide shot of the street

Japanese DVD (2002)

It’s really refreshing to see such a nice quality release from Viz considering some of the earlier stuff we’ve gotten from them. I’ve always said that they’re doing the best that they can with low quality masters and this seems to confirm that idea. They’ve gotten a lot of criticism for using too much post processing and such but at the end of the day if you start off with a low quality master there’s really only so much you can do to try to make it look nice. The minor differences between the different releases of the original anime don’t add up to much but this release is on another level. This is a great movie, part of the best of what Sailor Moon has to offer, and at the relatively low price it’s being sold for it’s a no brainer to pick it up.

Sailor Moon R The Movie Blu-Ray  - Cover

But wait, you’re all thinking, what about this terrible box art??? Indeed, the cover art isn’t the best. For weeks fans have been criticizing it. I’ll agree that it isn’t the best box art compared to their other releases but is that what’s most important? We’ve gotten a lot of really nice looking boxes with great little booklets and the video content always looked kind of terrible. Here we have the opposite, a box which isn’t that nice and a top quality release inside! All things considered I’d rather we get a release with a cover drawn by 3 year old with crayons if we could somehow keep getting quality releases like this!

Sailor Moon R The Movie Blu-Ray - Sailor Moon returns to life

Let’s look at what else is in this release. First off is the feature, which is only 1 hour long. This is the first of the Sailor Moon movies and it includes both a new English dub by Viz and a Japanese audio track with English subtitles. Sailor Moon R The Movie is one of my all time favourite films and my favourite of the Sailor Moon movies. It includes some of the best animation seen in the series. I watched the film in Japanese with English subtitles as I’d already heard the dub in theatres and found it to be good. Having seen a number of different versions of the film countless times I didn’t notice anything amiss with the translation, but as I don’t speak Japanese I can’t comment on it more than that.

Sailor Moon R The Movie Blu-Ray - Make Up! Sailor Guardians

Also included is the Make Up! Sailor Guardians special. This originally aired with Sailor Moon R The Movie in theatres in Japan. It was also included in North American theatres when it played here. This is a fun little extra, running at only 16 minutes, with some new animation but mostly recycled clips from the TV series. This extra feature also looks great. This makes me wonder what kind of masters TOEI had access to when they put it together! This release was obviously mastered from a film source but the TV clips included also seem to come from a higher quality source even than we’ve seen with the Japanese DVD releases. With the upcoming Blu-Ray release of the original Sailor Moon anime in Japan being advertised as being software upscaled from standard definition sources I wish they had access to the same source material they used in 1993 when this special was put together. Just look at this shot of Ami from her first appearance early in the first season with the fine detail in the lines. It isn’t the best but it’s nothing like what we’ve gotten in any other TV release of the series. Let’s hope the Japanese release we get in June looks something close to this!

Sailor Moon R The Movie Blu-Ray - Make Up! Sailor Guardians - Ami from the TV series

Sailor Moon R The Movie Blu-Ray - Cast Interview

There are a few extras on this disc. When Sailor Moon R The Movie played in theatres it was introduced by an interview with the cast. This included Stephanie Sheh, Sailor Moon, Ben Diskin, Fiore and Robbie Daymond, Tuxedo Mask. When I saw this in theatres I thought it was a bit silly to have it before the main feature. I was there to watch the movie, not see something which wasn’t more thrilling than your run of the mill DVD extra. Having it as an extra like this however is totally reasonable. This feature is about 10 minutes.

Sailor Moon R The Movie Blu-Ray - LA Premiere Q & A

Also included is an interview which followed the LA Premiere. This included nearly all of the voice actors from the film, Viz’s Charlene Ingram and the ADR voice director for the film, Suzanne Goldish. The cast present included Carrie Keranen, the Xenian flower, Ben Diskin, Fiore, Cherami Leigh, Sailor Venus, Amanda Miller, Sailor Jupiter, Cristina Vee, Sailor Mars, Michelle Ruff, Luna, Sandy Fox, Chibiusa, Robbie Daymond, Tuxedo Mask, and Stephanie Sheh, Sailor Moon. The only main actors not present were Kate Higgins, Sailor Mercury, and Johnny Yong Bosh, Artemis. The interview included your standard kind of banter about how mind blowing it is to see Sailor Moon the big screen and the fan reaction. Suzanne Goldish, ADR director, tells a humours story about how her notes had her flip flopping from calling the villain Fiole, which means nothing, and Fiore, the objectively correct character’s name and the Italian word for flower. This explains why the voice actors refer to him as Fiole in the pre-movie interview. ADR directors don’t have the star power of the voice actors but they usually have some good insight into the production which makes for interesting stories.

Sailor Moon R The Movie - Character art

Note that this book is not included with the film.

There is also some character art on the disc itself. I wanted to grab some screenshots but this feature wasn’t included on the DVD and the tool I used to get Blu-Ray screenshots doesn’t support menus. I’ll spare you photos of my TV and assure you these are character designs for the film similar to those seen in the above photo from the Japanese art book. It would have been nice to see a booklet with some character bios and maybe some of this kind of art but there’s nothing in the way of inserts with this release. The Japanese Sailor Moon R The Movie art book includes over 100 pages of content. It would have been easy for Viz to put together 20 or so pages to accompany this film!

Sailor Moon R The Movie Blu-Ray - Discs

We also get the standard trailers which are included in all Viz releases. If you haven’t been convinced to buy the remastered uncropped Ranma 1/2 Blu-Ray release at this point it’s just not going to happen.

So what’s my final verdict? Isn’t it obvious? Just buy the movie! Don’t bother with the DVD as it doesn’t showcase the high quality video of the HD transfer. Buy the Blu-Ray which includes the DVD if you somehow don’t have a Blu-Ray player in 2017. I got mine on Amazon. You can also get it from other retailers like Right Stuf. If you don’t want a physical copy you can save a few bucks by getting it digitally on iTunes or Amazon Video, but be warned that the digital version is currently only available in English. This is a high quality release of a great movie which every fan should own. Go get it!

Now that we’ve agreed that it’s worth getting whether you have another copy of the film or not a practical question is whether or not it supersedes any other release. Should you just throw your old copy out? The old Pioneer release has some advantages, mainly the old dub which some people have nostalgia for an the unmated full frame image. For most people in 2017 with widescreen displays this has limited appeal, but to this day the English release is the only way to get this full pictured version. Even the original Japanese laserdisc version was presented in widescreen. As for the Japanese release it still has some special features which are nice. A rare DVD feature that all of the Japanese Sailor Moon movies have is an isolated music only track which is a nice addition which isn’t on this release.

Keep reading for more photos.

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Did Doctor Who’s season 10 premiere draw inspiration from Sailor Moon?

Mamoru from Sailor Moon and Heather from Doctor Who obsessed with mirrors with a star in one eye

A number of similarities occur between a recent episode of Doctor Who and a story arc in Sailor Moon Sailor Stars! More specifically both stories revolve around obsessions with gazing at mirrors which actually house some sort of monster by people with a yellow reflecting star in one eye. The episode of Doctor Who in question is the season premiere of season 10, The Pilot, which aired this past weekend. In this episode a character, Heather, has a defect in her eye which causes it to have a yellow shine in it. The Doctor’s new companion Bill refers to it as a star and the episode’s original title was “A Star In Her Eye”. In the episode Heather is obsessed with staring at her reflection in a puddle as she gazes at it and invites Bill to do so too. Ultimately the reflection is actually an alien which sucks her into the mirror and then attacks others through reflections. Sound familiar?

Doctor Who Season 10 Episode 01 - Heather looking at her reflection

I was struck by a surprising similarity to a few episodes of Sailor Moon Sailor Stars. In the first 6 episodes of this season, with the similarities more specifically being during episodes 167 through 169, there was a brief story arc where Mamoru got a shooting star in his eye which was actually a piece of mirror from space. This caused him, and a number of other people, to become obsessed with mirrors gazing at them day and night. The bit of star in their eye caused a yellow shimmer which looks just like that seen in Heather’s eye in Doctor Who. Ultimately Nehelenia was in the mirror, as the shooting star was actually a bit of the Mirror of Dreams which had been confining her and the reflection pulls Mamoru in just like we’d seen in Doctor Who.

Sailor Moon SailorStars episode 168 - Mamoru and Nehelenia

Doctor Who Season 10 Episode 01 - Heather's alien hijacked reflection

Coincidence? I like to joke about these similarities being intended but I’m not convinced anything more than coincidence is really necessary at this point given the countless hours of TV produced every week. It is possible that Steven Moffat, who wrote the episode, had seen the episodes of Sailor Moon in which this took place and used it more for a visual inspiration. The specific story details beyond the superficial don’t really add up.

Sailor Moon SailorStars episode 169 - Usagi's classmate gazing at a mirror

Looking for more of a Doctor Who/Sailor Moon link? Sailor Iron Mouse, also appearing in Sailor Stars, travels around in a phone booth. Doctor Who travels around in a TARDIS which is disguised as a Police Box which is a specialized kind of phone booth/panic room that a person can use to call the police. This is similar to Bill and Ted’s phone booth which was itself likely inspired by Doctor Who. Whether Sailor Iron Mouse’s phone booth was directly inspired by the TARDIS or through the intermediate of Bill and Ted’s phone booth isn’t something I can definitively determine. Regardless it’s nice to see Doctor Who finally has a Bill in their phone booth. Let’s get a Ted in there too!

Sailor Moon Sailor Stars episode 175 - Sailor Iron Mouse and her phone booth

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A rumour is suggesting that Sailor Moon Crystal season 4 is coming in 2018

Facebook Messenger screenshot where Yasuhuru Takanashi suggests Sailor Moon Crystal season 4 will be in 2018

A couple of screenshots of alleged conversations with Yasuharu Takanashi, Sailor Moon Crystal’s music composer, are suggesting that Sailor Moon Crystal’s 4th season will be airing in 2018. People in the fan community are referring this as a rumour of further delays for the upcoming season. As rumours go, this one doesn’t seem to have much weight to it. I’m reporting this as it’s being discussed in the fan community and I wanted to weigh in on it’s legitimacy and not because I think there’s much validity to the rumour itself. Let us look at the evidence provided and consider how reliable the claim is.

Instagram screenshot where Yasuhuru Takanashi suggests Sailor Moon Crystal season 4 will be in 2018

I originally saw this in a Tweet by Twitter user Chase the CHECH (@iHasMangic) who included two screenshots. The first is from a Facebook Messenger conversation. When asked if season 4 was coming he stated “Season 4 for Sailor Moon 2018?”. The question mark is a bit questionable. The profile image and name match that of Yasuharu Takanashi’s Facebook profile. The second screenshot is of an Instagram conversation. When asked about the possibility of a 4th season in 2017 he responds “2018! (smiley face) (thumbs up)”. Again the user name, in this case @nassy_takanashi, and profile photo match his Instagram profile. Since originally posting this I’ve been in contact with the user who posted this to Twitter and Adrian, the user who originally had these conversations. Adrian also posted these screenshots to the Pretty Guardians Facebook group and a post on the Genvid Forums. These include alternate screenshots of the same chats.

We can ask ourselves a few questions. Are these screenshots legitimate? Is Yasuharu Takanashi indicating that Sailor Moon Crystal is delayed until 2018? If he is, is such a claim a reliable indication that the series is indeed delayed? I can’t make any certain claims about the authenticity of these screenshots. One could easily fabricate something like this, but would they? If I were going to fake a screenshot I might attempt to make a more clear confirmation without confusing question marks and emoji, but then I’m not in the business of doctoring screenshots these days. With matching avatars it doesn’t seem out of the question that these are legitimate. Having seen a number of different versions of these screenshots and spoken to Adrian about it I don’t think there’s much of a reason to doubt the validity of these.

If they are indeed real screenshots, what is actually being said? The language is a bit confused but it does seem like Yasuharu Takanashi is indicating that, in his opinion, the series will be continuing in 2018. If this is indeed what he means, we can again ask ourselves if that is a reliable source. Yasuharu Takanashi composed the music for the first three seasons of Sailor Moon Crystal. It is entirely feasible that he will continue in this role if the show should continue, and we’ve received indication via the official Sailor Moon web site that more Sailor Moon Crystal is coming. As someone working on the show he may have an idea of the schedule. He may not as well. He may have been working on the show, be working on it now or be scheduled to work on it in the future and not actually have a specific idea of when the animation, voice acting and other production work will be completed and when the final distribution is scheduled for. If he did actually know when the show would be coming he may not be at liberty to disclose this. This chat isn’t a confidential discussions between professionals or close friends but rather a fans who reached out and got an answer.

Take it all with a grain of salt! If others weren’t reporting on this I wouldn’t have bothered to post about it myself but as it’s being thrown around I wanted to share it for context. There are a lot of ifs going on. If they all turn out we may be getting new episodes in 2018, but with so many unknowns I wouldn’t make any certain conclusions about this actually happening. I tend to only give consideration to information shared through official sources such as those posted on the Official Sailor Moon site. Even when we get information through official sources we’ve seen that such situations are likely to change anyway. For now the only official word we’ve gotten is that more Sailor Moon Crystal is planned and we have gotten no timeline of when this would occur.

As always if we hear anything official on this topic we will be sure to share it as soon as we can.

Sailor Moon S Part 2 will be released on home video June 20th

Sailor Moon S Part 2 Blu-Ray

We finally have a specific release date for Sailor Moon S Part 2 and it just squeaks in to Spring on June 20th! The DVD and Blu-Ray sets are up for preorder on Right Stuf and these include a June 20th release date. The DVD set has an MSRP of $39.99 while the Blu-Ray is priced at $69.99. Right Stuf has them for $35.99 and $62.99. We also have a good look at the box art including the back which has details about the release.

Sailor Moon S Part 2 Blu-Ray - Back

We’d previously learned from Viz’s Moon Panel at Anime Boston that we’d be getting the sets in June but we didn’t have a specific release date until now. Sailor Moon S Part 2 includes… well the second half of Sailor Moon S. This covers episodes 109 to 127 which concludes the story of Hotaru, the Death Busters and all that fun stuff. It includes Japanese audio as well as Viz’s new English dub of the original Sailor Moon anime. This will be the first time these episodes are heard in English as Viz has no longer been releasing episodes in an effort to promote their home video releases as they’d done in the past.

Sailor Moon S Part 2 Blu-Ray

This Fall’s musical will be called Sailor Moon Le Mouvement Final

Sailor Moon Le Movement Final

An update posted to the Official Sailor Moon site this morning revealed that the name of the upcoming musical, taking place in Japan this fall, will be called Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon Le Mouvement Final. The above logo was included with the post. No other details were included.

Sailor Moon Amour Eternal Musical DVD - Taking a bow

We have previously learned that almost all of the cast will be reprising their roles with the exception of Karin Takahashi who will not be returning as Sailor Saturn. That role will be played by Mirai. Though we’ve received no official confirmation of the subject of the musical it seems logical that this will focus on the Stars arc of the manga. The wings in the logo suggest we will be seeing Eternal Sailor Moon, who appears at the end of the Amour Eternal musical. The title, French for “final movement”, suggests that this final arc of the manga will somehow finalize the story of these musicals. I had been hoping that after this 5th musical we would somehow continue the story of Sailor Moon with some kind of original musical that takes place after the story of the manga. Perhaps this will still be the case!

Update: I misreported the title as “Movement Final” and not “Mouvement Final”. This is the correct French word for Movement.

Sailor Moon Amour Eternal DVD impressions

Sailor Moon Amour Eternal Musical DVD - Cover

The latest Sailor Moon musical, Sailor Moon Amour Eternal, was released on DVD on March 15th. What’s that? Still not on Blu-Ray? No. This is a DVD only release despite the fact that there is an HD streaming version available in Japan. The set includes two discs, the main feature and some special features, as well as a special booklet which is a sort of program. Photos of all pages of that booklet will be included at the end of this post. This is a Japanese only release so don’t expect to be able to follow too well if you only speak English. Fans looking for a subtitled version of the musical should check out the fan subbed version by Miss Dream.

Sailor Moon Amour Eternal Musical DVD - Usagi, Mamoru and Chibiusa

First off let’s talk about the main feature, coming in at a whopping 2 hours and 43 minutes, the 4th of the recent wave of Sailor Moon musicals, Sailor Moon Amour Eternal. This was a decent musical with the most notable change to me being the inclusion of the birth of Princess Serenity back in the days of Silver Millennium. We never got much about this time of her life in other series and it’s interesting to see the other Sailor Guardians fully grown at this time in this particular continuity. The main cast of the 5 actors playing Sailor Moon, Mercury, Mars, Jupiter and Venus were replaced for this musical. They will all be returning for this Fall’s upcoming musical.

Sailor Moon Amour Eternal Musical DVD - Queen Serenity and Princess Serenity

DVD

Sailor Moon Amour Eternal Musical HD Version - Queen Serenity and Princess Serenity

HD download

The bad part about this release is sadly the terrible video quality. As with the three prior releases this DVD is 480i video. What this means specifically is that it’s interlaced video, something like the signal we’d get for a standard definition TV broadcast or VHS tape. Oddly the release is still 16:9 widescreen optimized for widescreen displays but somehow not optimized for a progressive scan display, which is what almost everyone would be watching this on. For prior releases I gave Evil Line Records the benefit of the doubt, assuming the release was of low quality due to older cameras used for the recording. Now that we’ve seen 1080p HD releases available to stream in Japan for not only this musical but the last three, it is obvious that this is not the case. This DVD is poorly authored and the company that released it is to blame. Just look at the comparison screenshot between the download version and the DVD version to see the drastic difference in quality. Even if a Blu-Ray release was not viable, a progressive scan release has been the standard for movies released on DVD for nearly 20 years. Many older TV shows are released interlaced simply because that was the limitation of TV at the time but even most early DVDs of movies are progressive scan. No excuses for this one.

Sailor Moon Amour Eternal Musical DVD - Taking a bow

Also included with the main feature is a full length audio commentary! This includes the main cast of Hotaru Nomoto, Sailor Moon, Yume Takeuchi, Sailor Mercury, Karen Kobayashi, Sailor Mars, Kaede, Sailor Jupiter, and Rimo Hasegawa, Sailor Venus

Sailor Moon Amour Eternal Musical DVD - Special features - Interview with Hotaru Nomoto and Yuga Yamato

The second disc includes over an hour of special features which aren’t terribly appealing. We start out with a 30 minute interview between Hotaru Nomoto, who played Sailor Moon, and Yuga Yamato, who played Tuxedo Mask. As I don’t speak Japanese I can’t really elaborate on the actual content.

Sailor Moon Amour Eternal Musical DVD - Special features - Special Performance

Next is a stage presentation for a Birthday Night special event, likely held on Usagi’s birthday of June 30th. This is only a few minutes long.

Sailor Moon Amour Eternal Musical DVD - Special features - Audio commentary recording

We then have over half and hour of video showing the recording of the audio commentary. Here we get a picture in picture view of the musical with the five cast members giving their thoughts. Not terribly useful to those who would also watch the entire commentary.

Sailor Moon Amour Eternal Musical DVD - Special features - Intermission

Finally we have an alternate take of the Amazon Trio talking with the audience during the intermission. This one is from the November 6th show. Since these involve audience interactions the intermission for each show would be unique.

Sailor Moon Amour Eternal Musical DVD - Menu in Comic Sans

A note about the various menus on both discs! They use a hilariously cheesy Comic Sans font. Comic Sans is the kiddy or comic style font that you’ll see in a lot of older web sites or perhaps some that are just a little cheap. Over the years it’s gotten a reputation for bad design. In this DVD’s defense however let’s remember that in Japan Comic Sans wouldn’t have the same reputation. I would simply ask our native English speaking fans, what kind of font is any Japanese text written in? Would you be able to tell a fancy and trendy Japanese font vs. a cheap and dated one? Not likely.

Sailor Moon Amour Eternal Musical DVD - Booklet - Cover

Also included is a 20 page booklet which is similar to what you might see in the program sold with the musical. This includes bios for the characters and the lyrics for all songs.

Sailor Moon Amour Eternal Musical DVD - Booklet - Pages 13 and 14

That’s about it. Is this worth it? Costing the equivalent of over $50 US and having abysmal video quality and some fairly lack luster extras this release isn’t terribly appealing to fans who might not actually speak the language. It really would have been nice if this physical release was at least of equivalent or comparable in quality to the relatively cheap digital copies which are available for a fraction of the price in Japan. All said I can’t really recommend buying this, but hard core fans might want to anyway!

Keep reading for more images of the box art, menus and photos of all pages of the included special booklet.

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Sailor Moon S Part 2 will be out on DVD and Blu-Ray in June

Sailor Moon S Part 2 on DVD and Blu-Ray in June 2017

We finally have confirmation from Viz Media that the second part of Sailor Moon S will be released on DVD and Blu-Ray in June. We previously had only learned, based on an insert included in the Sailor Moon S Part 1 release, that it would be out in Spring 2017. The first day of Summer is June 21st so if the release is out before the 21st it will technically count as Spring! All of this was announced by Viz Media at Anime Boston’s Moon Panel which was held this past Saturday April 1st.

Sailor Moon S Part 2 coming in Spring 2017

Twitter user Absolute Zero Now was live tweeting the panel and snapped a couple of relevant photos. The first is of a slide stating the release would be out in May but the second stating it would be out in June. This was confirmed by Viz Media as being the updated and correct date at the panel and on Twitter.

Sailor Moon S Part 2 is not out in May

This release will include episode 109 to 127, concluding the Sailor Moon S season with the battle with Mistress 9 and the appearance of Sailor Saturn. The set will include the new English dub by Viz which has not previously been heard. Bonus features will include interviews with the cast, production art and more. This release still does not have a listing on the stores of online retailers such as Amazon and Right Stuf. These should be up in the coming months as a specific release date is determined.