Monthly Archives: September 2018

Hinamatsuri Petit Chara figures of Usagi, Mamoru, Haruka and Michiru are coming in January

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Hinamatsuri Petit Chara - Mamoru and Usagi

Four new Sailor Moon Petit Chara figures have been announced on the official Sailor Moon site. These ones are Hinamatsuri themed, showing Usagi, Mamoru, Haruka and Michiru in traditional Japanese dress. What, you may ask, is Hinamatsuri? Some of you may already be familiar with this but I certainly wasn’t before seeing these. Hinamatsuri, also known as Doll’s Day or Girl’s Day, is a holiday in Japan celebrated on March 3rd of each year. On this day ornamental dolls, which these figures are meant to resemble, are displayed.

Hinamatsuri Petit Chara - Haruka and Michiru

There are two sets of figures available. One is on Mamoru and Usagi and the other is of Haruka and Michiru. As these dolls traditionally show a wedding or an Emperor and Empress it seems fitting to use Sailor Moon’s two most iconic couples for these sets. The figures are available for pre-order on certain online sites now and will be released online and in stores in Japan in January 2019. Though prices vary slightly each set of two figures will sell for roughly 3000 yen, about $26.50.

Hinamatsuri Petit Chara - Mamoru and Usagi, Haruka and Michiru

Do you plan on picking up these sets? There are a lot of photos of the figures so keep reading for more images.

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Check out the board and pieces for the upcoming Sailor Moon Monopoly game

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Sailor Moon Monopoly - Board

A Sailor Moon Monopoly game is coming! A listing for this game has been up with many retailers for a while now but we can now see, from the GameStop listing for the product, what the game’s board will look like! The game will retail for $39.99 US and will be released November 9th according to GameStop’s site. With the release of this version of Monopoly there will be as many different types of Monopoly games as there are Funko Pop toys at GameStop! The box and board feature all characters from the Sailor Moon S season including all 10 Sailor Guardians as well as other villains from that season such as Professor Tomoe, the Witches 5 and Mistress 9. Neo Queen Serenity and King Endymion are also on the game though those characters don’t make a proper appearance in the S season. As a long time Monopoly player it seems obvious that the values on most of the board match what people would be used to only all spaces are replaced with Sailor Moon themed characters and items. Properties are all characters with other characters and items making up others squares. I’ve listed a breakdown of what characters are replacing for every original Monopoly space:

Mediteranian Avenue – Luna and Artemis
Baltic Avenue – Mimete

Oriental Avenue – Eudial
Vermont Avenue – Viluy
Connecticut Avenue – Tellu

St. Charles Place – Cyprine/Ptilol
States Avenue – Sailor Chibi Moon
Virginia Avenue – Kaolinite

St. James Place – Sailor Mercury
Tennessee Avenue – Sailor Mars
New York Avenue – Sailor Jupiter

Kentucky Avenue – Sailor Venus
Indiana Avenue – Professor Tomoe
Illinois Avenue – Sailor Pluto

Atlantic Avenue – Tuxedo Mask
Ventor Avenue – Sailor Neptune
Marvin Gardens – Sailor Uranus

Pacific Avenue – Mistress 9
North Carolina Avenue – Sailor Saturn
Pennsylvania Avenue – Sailor Moon

Park Place – King Endymion
Boardwalk – Neo Queen Serenity

Reading Railroad – Garnet Rod
Pennsylvania Railroad – Deep Aqua Mirror
B. & O. Railroad – Space Sword
Short Line – Silence Glaive

Electric Company – Cosmic Heart Compact
Water Works – Spiral Moon Heart Rod

Community Chest – Love
Chance – Friendship

Income Tax and Luxury Tax – Something with the Witches 5?

The following spaces are unchanged:
Go
In Jail/Just Visiting
Free Parking
Go To Jail

In addition we can get a bit of a look at the “Sailor Moon Money” in this image and we see the following denominations on bills:

$1 – Sailor Moon
$5 – Sailor Chibi Moon
$10 – Sailor Mercury
$20 – Sailor Mars
$50 – Sailor Jupiter
$100 – Sailor Venus
$500 – Sailor Moon

Why Sailor Moon is on both the $1 and $500 isn’t clear! I may be mistaken as it’s hard to see exactly what it says on the $1 bill but it seems to have a crescent moon and the “Sailor” part is clear and the second 4 letter word appears to be Moon from the top of the letters we see. I’m not sure the $ is the appropriate symbol to be using in this case as there seems to be an M symbol to reference Sailor Moon Money when dollars are mentioned but it is a bit hard to make out. Sailor Moon Money has no basis in canon. Throughout most of the series the character live in Tokyo and would use Japanese Yen as currency. I don’t know what currency would be used in Crystal Tokyo but it seems unlikely that it would be called Sailor Moon Money as Sailor Moon is no longer an active superhero at the time, what with being the Queen of that city.

Sailor Moon Monopoly - Box

We also see what the tokens for the game will be. These are also listed on the GameStop site. These are the Cosmic Heart Compact, Moon Chalice, Spiral Heart Moon Rod, Garnet Orb, Deep Aqua Mirror and Space Sword. These are again all items appearing in Sailor Moon S.

Why Sailor Moon S? Why now? Sailor Moon SuperS has now been released in its entirety in North America on home video. Sailor Moon Sailor Stars is out subtitled on streaming services. When it comes to Sailor Moon Crystal we’ve only gotten up to the Infinity Arc, telling the equivalent of the Sailor Moon S story, but these are clearly original Sailor Moon anime based designs and not Sailor Moon Crystal designs like we’ve seen with the Sailor Moon Crystal Dice Challenge game. Surely there is the convenience of having all of the Sailor Guardians appearing in Sailor Moon S allowing for more properties with those characters in it. If we had a first season based game we might be seeing Queen Beryl and the Shitennou alongside Naru and Umino instead. There are certainly reasons for which Sailor Moon S makes sense for the game’s setting, but it still seems odd and a bit arbitrary to me.

Do you plan on picking this game up? How many versions of Monopoly do you own?

The Nogizaka46 x Sailor Moon musical will be released on DVD and Blu-Ray March 20th

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Nogizaka46 x Sailor Moon musical - Sayuri Inoue and Mizuki Yamashita as Sailor Moon and Sailor Moon in Weekly Shonen Magazine

Good news for musical fans who have TVs that were made after 1992! It has been announced on the official Sailor Moon site that the recent Nogizaka46 x Sailor Moon musical will be released not only on low resolution DVD but also on high definition Blu-Ray! This 3 disk set will include two version of the musical, that being both the Team Moon and Team Star versions, as well as bonus features! This is great news given the last 5 musicals, all released long after Blu-Rays and high definition televisions were commonplace, were only released on a low quality 480i DVD. I’ve complained about this time and time again as the past musical releases are really not in keeping with where the rest of the video industry is. This has become particularly frustrating in light of the fact that streaming and digital versions of the musical, uniquely available in Japan, are available in significantly higher resolutions than the DVD releases. I had previously suspected that the reason for the low quality releases was that older style video cameras had been used for the recordings, but this does not appear to be the case.

Nogizaka46 x Sailor Moon musical - The entire cast

This is particularly useful for North American fans who would normally not be able to play Japanese DVDs but are able to play Japanese Blu-Rays. Japan is in DVD region 2, while North America is in DVD region 1, requiring a region free DVD player to be able to watch a Japanese DVD. When it comes to Blu-Ray discs however a different system based on letters is used and both North America and Japan are part of Blu-Ray region A. I play all of my imported Japanese Blu-Rays on my off the shelf Canadian PlayStation 3 and 4 systems without issue. Keep in mind that these Japanese releases do not have any subtitles so fans will only be able to watch them in Japanese.

Nogizaka46 x Sailor Moon Musical - Sailor Mercury, Mars and Moon

These releases unfortunately will not be cheap! The Blu-Ray release is 9504 yen, about $84 US, and the DVD at a modest 8424 yen, about $75. There’s certainly a good deal of content at that price but this still seems quite expensive! Bonus features on the third disc will include rehearsal footage, backstage video and more.

Nogizaka46 x Sailor Moon musical - Tuxedo Mask and Sailor Moon

I certainly hope that this means we will be getting Blu-Ray releases of musicals in the future. While that may be the case this release may also be given more attention due to the fact that it involves members of the band Nogizaka46 and will appeal to a new audience. We don’t have any box art yet but I think a reversible cover with Team Moon and Team Star would be fun. Do you plan on picking up this release?

Sailor Moon S and SuperS Movie showings were plagued by technical issues and suffered from poor attendance

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Sailor Moon S Dish Network playback issues

Last month Sailor Moon S The Movie and Sailor Moon SuperS The Movie played in theatres here in North America. Unfortunately many fans who attended showings of these films had negative experiences, mostly due to technical issues. One of the more common complaints was that the wrong movies were played. The first weekend was meant to show an encore showing of Sailor Moon R The Movie, originally shown in theatres in January of 2017, along with a first time presentation of Sailor Moon S The Movie. Many theatres instead played Sailor Moon SuperS The Movie as well as the Ami’s First Love special, which should have been a week later. This may not seem like a big deal but amongst many fans Sailor Moon S holds a special place, being the only one which is based directly on a manga story. Others had issues with the sound in the theatre being far too loud. In some cases the movie failed to play. One user got the photo which I posted above showing an error with the satellite connection which appeared to be streaming the film. In another case the screen’s subtitles were too low making them hard to read. Others who planned to watch it dubbed instead got a subbed version.

Some have asked why the film wasn’t simply played on film or some other kind of physical media to avoid this kind of problem. This was likely a cost savings measure. For a wide release movie it makes sense to send hard drives or film reels across the country but for a one time only or weekend long release like this such a thing isn’t feasible. Traditionally smaller release movies would have reels going from city to city with those showings happening at different times in different places. Digital technology allows us to have these kinds of releases taking place across the country simultaneously. In this case there were some issues doing so. I’m not an insider in the world of movie theatres so it’s hard to say if these problems are due to a new system that some places aren’t experienced with, limitations of the technology or something completely different such as inadequately labeled movie titles. It’s very difficult for me to get a feel for just how widespread these problems are. I don’t have specific metrics on who had a great experience and who didn’t, though when I asked about it on Twitter and Facebook and got a number of responses just from my own followers, this seemed to me to be an indication that the problems were fairly widespread. To be clear I saw a showing of the SuperS film with Ami’s First Love and did not experience any technical issues.

An empty theatre at a Sailor Moon SuperS screening

Many fans also commented on how few people attended their showings compared to the better turnouts for Sailor Moon R The Movie last year. I was excited to attend the R Movie with a packed theatre and was a bit surprised to see that there was only myself and one other group of fans in attendance to see Sailor Moon SuperS and Ami’s First Love. The fact that I went to a late addition evening showing may have been a factor but from what most fans are saying, there wasn’t the same kind of turn out anywhere for these. It’s hard to say exactly why this might be but many seem to feel that this was not marketed as well as the R Movie had been. Again I don’t have any specific metrics for this. Box Office Mojo has numbers indicating that last year’s showings of Sailor Moon R The Movie grossed $452,053. They unfortunately don’t have any numbers listed for the S and SuperS films and I was not able to find specific numbers elsewhere.

Did you have issues seeing the film?

Source: @lambdapower, @itsmoonrevenge, @BailliePuckett, @Meiruechan, @_MegumiAi_, @Internetcanunot

As the new Eternal Editions of the Sailor Moon manga are released in English a smaller Bunkobon version is coming to Japan September 28th

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Sailor Moon Bunkobon version vol. 1 cover - Sailor Moon

As a new even bigger version of the Sailor Moon manga, the Eternal Edition, is being released in English tomorrow an even smaller version will soon be released in Japan! Japanese readers will be getting a Bunkobon version of the Sailor Moon manga which is a smaller and cheaper version of the manga. At only 842 yen, about $7.50 US, this is about half the price of the Complete Editions which were released a few years ago. These are Bunkobon or Bunkoban Editions which are a size which is referred to in Japan as A6, which is roughly 4.13″ x 5.83″. In contrast the new Eternal Editions which are coming out in North America are even bigger than the large Complete Edition Japanese versions and measure a whopping 7.1″ x 9.98″, a bit smaller than a standard 8.5″ x 11″ letter sheet of paper. This is almost double the height and width of the new Bunkobon Japanese versions and roughly 3 times the surface area! Of course the larger English version is also over three times the cost so you really do get what you’re paying for! The Japanese Complete Editions were A5 size which is between the two at 5.83″ × 8.27″. Check out this Tweet by @thesailorbook to see the difference between the new English version and the Japanese Complete Edition. The Bunkobon Edition is not included in this size comparison.

Sailor Moon Bunkobon version vol. 2 cover - Sailor Mercury

The first two volumes of the Bunkobon editions will be released on September 28th. The covers are similar to the Complete Editions and Eternal Editions showing art of Sailor Moon on volume 1 and Sailor Mercury on volume 2. Both volumes 1 and 2 are available for pre-order from Amazon Japan. If you’re more interested in buying an English version, with high quality paper and some colour pages, you can order those using the Amazon.com links below. Only volume 1 is released on September 11th while volume 2 won’t be out until November 13th with later volumes coming out in 2019. Since there were delays with volume 1 coming out there may be more delays to that schedule.

Will you be picking either of these up? How many versions of the Sailor Moon manga are you up to now? I think I’ll be up to 9 if I get both of these but I’m starting to lose count. My Sailor Moon books are still in boxes as I’m moving into my new place.