Here are some photos of this year’s Miss Universe Japan, Yuumi Kato, dressed as Sailor Moon! This is Miss Universe Japan’s National Costume. Yuumi Kato’s Instagram page shows us twophotos of this costume which she will be wearing at the Miss Universe National Costume competition which takes place on December 11th, about a week before the actual Miss Universe competition which will take place on December 17th. I’m not an expert on this pageant so I’m not sure if the National Costume is something we will also be seeing at the actual competition.
Yuumi Kato unveiled this outfit at a press event where she dramatically threw off a kimono to expose it! You can watch a clip of this below.
Though the Miss Universe competition is taking place on the morning of December 17th due to the magic of time zones it will be televised on Fox December 16 at 7pm eastern time. Do you plan on watching it? What to you think of the costume?
Now that Sailor Moon SuperS Part 2 has finally been released on home video we also have news that Sailor Moon Sailor Stars will be out in the Spring. Viz Media posted a message to their official Twitter account stating that Sailor Moon Sailor Stars is coming in Spring 2019. Though no specifics were mentioned we can assume this to be a reference to the DVD and Blu-Ray release of the series as dubbed versions of the anime have not been released to stream for free lately, as was done early in the series. This post was accompanied by a Sailor Stars logo featuring many characters seen throughout the series as well as Sailor Chibi Moon and Tuxedo Mask.
The logo itself is not terribly new. Nearly three years ago Sailor Stars began being released in Japanese with English subtitles on Hulu which used a nearly identical banner. This reminds us of course that Sailor Stars is hardly new to North America. When the fifth season was not released in English after Sailor Moon SuperS was originally dubbed we went nearly two decades without seeing the episodes in any official capacity but fans can now watch the series in Japanese with English subtitles on Yahoo! View, Tubi or Hulu. That said we still haven’t seen an official English dubbed version of the series which we will be seeing for the first time in the Spring.
We still don’t have a specific date for the release of the first half of Sailor Moon Sailor Stars, as I assume it will be split into part 1 and part 2 as the other seasons have done. For now we can still get the first 4 seasons.
More good news for Sailor Moon fans in the North Eastern United States! The Super Live Musical will be performed in both New York City and Washington D.C. in March! We had previously learned that the cast of Sailor Moon The Super Live would be involved with the opening ceremonies of the National Cherry Blossom Festival in Washington D.C. on March 23rd 2019 though we didn’t have any specifics of full performances. It is now indicated on the official Sailor Moon site that the musical will be coming to New York City and Washington D.C., which likely means at least one full performance in each city. No specifics have yet been given besides that these will both take place during March 2019. We will have more information as it becomes available. For now you can watch the trailer below which announces the North American showings.
Do any of you plan on attending either of these showings? New York City is the closets a musical has ever been performed to my home! I’ve driven to each of these cities but I had less babies around the house back then! How far would you need to go in order to see one of these?
Characters from Sailor Moon Crystal will soon be appearing in the popular Japanese mobile game Monster Strike. What is Monster Strike? It seems a bit like StreetSmash, the Street Pass mini game in Super Smash Bros. for 3DS where you smash round pieces into others on a board. The characters will be appearing in the game shortly, meaning no specific date has been given. A number of images, available on the Official Sailor Moon site and Monster Strike web site, show that this will include Sailor Moon, Mercury, Mars, Jupiter and Venus, Tuxedo Mask, Queen Beryl, Jadeite, Nephrite, Zoisite and Kunzite. Some fans believe this art may be a first look at the designs of the upcoming fourth season of Sailor Moon Crystal. I’m not convinced.
We have previously learned that Kazuko Tadano, who was a character designer and animation director for the first two seasons of the original Sailor Moon anime, would be doing the designs for the Dream arc of Sailor Moon Crystal. What her take on the series is remains to be seen however she did a sketch of Sailor Mercury, Mars, Jupiter and Venus back in 2013 which gives us an idea of what her art style is like more recently. If you’re looking to see how she drew Sailor Moon back in the 90s note that she did all of the laser disc cover art, which has been used for home video releases over the last 25 years. So much to say the image of Sailor Moon most people think of matches her style.
I frankly don’t see the resemblance here. The art style and almost comically large heads in the Monster Striker images just don’t seem to fit with either anything that Kazuko Tadano has put out or what Sailor Moon Crystal was doing. If I had to venture a guess I would say this art is made by one of the artists who has done other Monster Strike art over the years. Further by the very fact that we only have characters from the Dark Kingdom story arc shown here I don’t think it’s likely that these are new Sailor Moon Crystal designs. We similarly never saw any of the characters unique to the first two story arcs done in the style of Sailor Moon Crystal’s 3rd season. There is plenty of art from the Dark Kingdom arc which could be used for purposes such as these if that was the desire here. Instead this appears to be Sailor Moon Crystal in the style of Monster Strike. The super deformed or chibi versions with very large heads seem to fit with in game graphics of other characters. This is only my own personal assessment of the art of course! You are free to make your own determinations about what you think and these will be confirmed in 2065 when we get the two Sailor Moon Crystal Dream Arc films.
Further to the art shown on the web sites there was a video stream which showed the Sailor Moon content. Start watching the video embedded below at 11 minutes for the relevant content. This included a number of images of mash ups between Monster Strike characters and Sailor Moon characters. The only name I could decipher was Alice who is Sailor Moon. The other Sailor Guardians and Tuxedo Mask have gotten a similar treatment.
In addition to being featured in this game there will be a number of Sailor Moon Crystal x Monster Strike products sold at the XFLAG store in Shibuya. This includes a number of food items.
Do you play Monster Striker? Do you plan on playing the game when these characters are out? What do you think of the designs? Do you believe these are Sailor Moon Crystal Season 4 designs, Monster Strike style designs or something else?
Keep reading for more art which will be used in the game.
Good news for Sailor Moon musical fans in the US Capital area! As reported on the Official Sailor Moon site, songs from the Sailor Moon The Super Live musical will be performed at the National Cherry Blossom Festival held in Washington D.C. on March 23rd! The specifics of the performance aren’t given yet though it is mentioned that the cast will be involved with the opening ceremonies which will take place from 5 to 6:30pm on March 23rd. It seems unlikely the entire musical will be part of these opening ceremonies. Perhaps only some key songs will be featured with a full performance taking place at a later time. We don’t have such details at this time. We can see from this Tweet from Evan MacIsaac indicates that the director has stated that they are hoping to perform the entire musical.
Also in attendance at the opening ceremonies is JPop artist T.M.Revolution who has performed a number of anime themes including Heart of Sword, the third ending theme for Rurouni Kenshin, and six songs for the series Gundam SEED and Gundam SEED Destiny. (Update: It seems as if T.M.Revolution was at last year’s opening ceremonies. Though his presence is mentioned on the Crunchyroll site this may be a mistake based on photos of him at least year’s event being on the festival’s site. He may not be appearing this year.)
Do you live in the area? Do you plan on traveling to Washington D.C. to see this performance?
