This afternoon I received my replacement booklet for the Sailor Moon Sailor Stars Limited Edition Blu-Ray set. I was surprised to see this so quickly as I’d only put in the request 11 days ago on September 8th and today on the 19th it arrived at my door. Great turnaround by Viz and Warner Brothers! I was however a bit surprised to check out the relationship chart and to see Sailor Uranus and Neptune were listed simply as “Partners”. I was hoping their connection would show “Love” like is indicated for Usagi and Mamoru. Additionally the lyrics for Moonlight Legend have not been corrected.
In the press release by Viz it did indeed state “Sailor Neptune and Sailor Uranus are not friends, but in fact, partners” and we understand in this context that this means romantic partners and not, say, two people working together to sell insurance. In the relationship chart is that so clear? Are they partners in fighting evil or partners in the bedroom? Having watched the dubbed version of Sailor Stars Part 1 the faithful adaptation makes it clear beyond any doubt that these two share an intimate relationship with a number of suggestive lines. As I’d mentioned in an earlier post on the issue, they were previously listed as “Partners” in the Sailor Moon S relationship chart and that didn’t seem to have caused the same concern. Of course no one even noticed the error with the lyrics going back to the first season so I’m not sure how much people paid attention to such specifics. It’s worth noting that the term “Lovers” was used extensively in the Sailor Moon R relationship chart, though these two were not in that season.
Although the original press release mentioned “The erroneous text is in the romaji provided with the song lyrics.” and fans assumed this was in reference to an untranslated piece of text from Moonlight Legend, the Sailor Moon anime opening theme for all but this season, this doesn’t appear to have been fixed. I’m wondering if there was perhaps another romaji problem that was corrected? I did not do a page by page word for word comparison of both booklets to check.
Other minor changes exist in the relationship chart such as the Three Lights’ names being corrected to given name first, where this was inconsistently using their family name first in the old chart. They are also listed as “Sailor Star Lights” as a group where they weren’t before. Minor formatting changes exist on other pages but as I mentioned I didn’t do an exhaustive comparison.
What do you think? Am I being extra picky by expecting these two to be listed as being in “Love” after all that’s gone into this? Did you get your replacement booklet yet? Have you noticed any other differences?
Possibly Related Posts
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Viz Media promises to reprint the Sailor Moon Sailor Stars Limited Edition Blu-Ray booklet after referring to Sailor Uranus and Neptune as being in a “friendship” -
Viz Media has begun the replacement program for the Sailor Moon Sailor Stars booklet
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Viz’s new English voice actors for Sailor Uranus, Neptune and Saturn and more revealed at the Anime Expo Sailor Moon Panel -
A new season of Sailor Moon Crystal has been announced and will feature Sailor Uranus, Neptune and Saturn -
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I Can’t find the Difference in the Lyrics page
I can’t find a difference in the Lyrics page either.
Haven’t got mine yet, but I hope Usagi and Mamoru’s Star Seeds will be included on their character bios.
haven’t gotten my replacement yet but I will for sure be looking it over with a fine tooth comb once I get it but so far it looks like from what the pics show and what ive read is they changed the names of the 3 lights to the proper way to say them and change the relationship status from friends to partners?? partners is not a very good way to express those 2 in any form they are point blank lovers especially how they talk to each other even in there first appearance in this season…. what kind of partners would they be expected to be? one could say all 9 senshi are partners to some extent but the type of partnership is what we expect here so……. as for the lyrics I knew they weren’t going to fix them as they botched it up since episode 1 and no one called them out on it… even I could of screamed it loud but I waited to get involved in the conversation until it was too late o well
I really do not think there is some kind of homophobic agenda going into this as some people have implied in the past. I don’t even think it is insensitivity.
Viz hasn’t shied away from showing these relationships in the anime dub or subs and have left Zoisite, Malachite, Fish Eye, Uranus and Neptune all as they were in the original.
I also feel like though they are obviously in love to us fans, partner isn’t an incorrect term. They are partners in battle as Senshi and as regular girls. They team up whenever possible in every circumstance from missions against the enemy to playing in a concert and are also life partners.
I would almost imagine this word choice is something even Toei would have approved.
While at first I was a bit taken aback by partner and friends was not the right term for what they are at all, I kind of think for what we see in the anime, the term might go much deeper than something like lover might convey.
Either way, I doubt there is any conspiracy at Viz to make them appear as cousins or something. XD
I 100% agree with you. Also, nowadays, it is common to call same-sex couples “partners”, in case of civil unions/partnerships. And after all, some prefectures in Japan issue partnership certificates for same-sex couples. That’s why I, too, think that there is nothing homophobic at all in this chart, and that calling Uranus and Neptune “partners” imply that they are partners in battle as well as romantic partners. And who knows, maybe the term “partners” is a way to mean that they registered a civil partnership! I like to think of it that way
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*Is holding a molotov cocktail, currently burning* But it’s so much more fun to force-start a war!!
No, I refuse to feed the troll
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I shall not be fed then. But I will sing!
As long as you sing well, it’s okay then
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Then go on, Sailor Star Singer!
That’s awesome.
I noticed they are labelled as partners in the sailor moon S booklet too
Yeah I mentioned that in my first post about the booklet. At least it’s consistent!
https://www.amazon.com/Sailor-Moon-Stars-Combo-Blu-ray/dp/B07XR5GMNP/ref=pd_ybh_a_2?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1&refRID=JF4JXEVV6TVPYBYT1Z20
Just saw this yesterday!
Thanks! Spotted it this morning. I’ll write something up.
I mean, I call my husband my partner sometimes. The terms are basically interchangeable, so it’s not like this is some major homophobic conspiracy.
Yeah!
No and I don’t think it was in the first place either. It just seems a bit silly to go through all of this trouble and still use such a bland term.
I dunno, I feel like it’s an improvement, but it’s still kind of weak. Why can’t they put “love” like for Usagi and Mamoru? It still feels a little like downplaying/making it ambiguous. I mean, why not “partners” for Usagi and Mamoru, then? They fight evil together too. It’s like that whole “separate but equal” thing, which as we know, didn’t work out too well.
Yeah Viz should pay attention on what they need to fix
so I got my replacement in the mail today…. so friends are now partners and the star lights names have been made proper in the relationship tree…. nothing changed for the errors in the song (no surprise there) one thing I did find is looking through the bios of characters you come across the star lights and all 3 in the original were missing the “H” in KOH so…. yeah that was fixed other then that the new book looks a bit washed out with the colors a bit in some of the artwork, way to go viz (golfer clap) made semi changes to make sure they didn’t dust the cousins under the rug and fix a missing “H” and yet completely missed the translation errors o well, at least part 2 will be out before Christmas and hopefully we can see if there will be a new remake to fix the song errors which I doubt will happen until the next video format which right now is blu ray to digital so……….. also superS arc is now in English on HULU so almost there with the full series to stream
Yeah just saw that! Making a post about it.
They’re partners in more than one sense, but I’m not going to complain about the “replacement” booklet either way.