Good news for fans of the original Sailor Moon anime who for some reason didn’t actually buy the Blu-Ray sets that came out eight years ago. Viz has a cheap season 1 set which collects all 46 episodes in Japanese and in English on six discs coming June 14th 2022. Previously Viz had released half season sets for the entire Sailor Moon series. This meant five seasons across ten sets. This new set has a more affordable price tag of $49.99, less than even half a season used to cost! Amazon has the set listed for that full MSRP while Right Stuf has it for $44.99. You can support this site by pre-ordering the set from Amazon using the links in this post.
Viz’s Blu-Ray sets aren’t the best but they’re the best we’ve got. All Sailor Moon TV series Blu-Ray discs released anywhere in the world are basically upconverted to high definition from a standard definition source using software. This means the show will never look like something which is actually an HD remaster from the film source, as many anime series have done. Viz’s release, mostly in the early seasons, didn’t look that good. I compared Viz’s Blu-Ray release to the Japanese Blu-Rays and DVDs in my review of the first Japanese Blu-Ray set. The Japanese set isn’t perfect either, but it’s nicer than Viz’s set. As the years went on the quality of Viz’s Blu-Ray sets got marginally better until the Stars set which was actually pretty good. This was probably due to a number of factors including the quality of the video masters they had available and the techniques they used in order to clear up the video. This of course raises the question of what, exactly, this set will look like.
My prediction is that this set will just be exact copies of the Blu-Ray discs which were including in Viz’s first season Part 1 and Part 2 sets. Same menus. Same special features. Same marginal video quality. If that’s the case it’s a decent deal if you don’t have these already. It’s evidently a great series and this is your best way to watch it in English or in Japanese with English subtitles. When I watch my Star Trek The Next Generation or Deep Space Nine full series sets whenever I pop in the first disc of a season I get ads for the previous season set, which was included with the set I already bought. This happens because they didn’t author new Blu-Ray discs. They just reproduced more of the discs they had already authored and put them in a bigger box. We don’t know for sure that this is the approach that will be taken here, but that would be my guess. That’s common for rereleased movies and series. There is one bit of evidence which suggests that we may actually be getting reauthored discs. The Right Stuf listing mentions an interview with Katsuyuki Sumisawa as a special feature. As this wasn’t on the original release this would mean at least one disc, potentially all of them, is potentially going to be new.
It’s possible that Viz will go back to their source material and redo the video in better quality. It’s also possible that they’ll use other masters like the higher quality Japanese Blu-Ray releases or some of the other Blu-Ray releases which have been coming out around the world since 2014. They might also take some high quality masters and use newer technology like AstroRes to get the best possible HD version software algorithms can give! This is possible. I think it’s somewhat unlikely. If this were the case then there would be good reason for a fan to want to repurchase these sets in better quality. Personally I’ll be waiting until confirmation of what these sets are like before I decide whether or not to purchase the series again. Getting the same discs in different boxes isn’t enough of an incentive to me, if that’s what this set is. Getting new discs with similar video quality would also not be a terribly enticing release.
Here are some details about this release from the Right Stuf web site:
About Sailor Moon Season 1 Blu-Ray
Sailor Moon Season 1 contains episodes 1-46 of the anime directed by Junichi Sato and Kunihiko Ikuhara.Usagi Tsukino is a cheerful schoolgirl who often finds herself in unwanted trouble. One day, she saves a talking cat named Luna who gives Usagi a brooch that transforms her into Sailor Moon, guardian of love and justice!
Special Features: Clean Opening and Ending, Trailers, Art Gallery, Announcement Panel & Fan Reactions, Dub Recording Behind the Scenes, Official Announcement, Trailer Moonlight Memories Pt. 1, AX Sailor Moon Panel, Official Cosplay Team Interview, Sailor Moon Day Highlights, An Interview with Katsuyuki Sumisawa
See More
Details
Publisher: VIZ
Media: Blu-ray
Spoken Language: English, Japanese
Subtitle Language: English
Genre: Fantasy, Romance
Themes: Battles, Magical Girl
Age Rating: 14+
Run Time: 1060
Year Created: 1992
Release Date: 6/14/2022
Dimensional Weight: 1
Region Code: A
The special features listed are more consistent with what we got in the older sets except for the Katsuyuki Sumisawa interview.
Will you be picking up this set?
Possibly Related Posts
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Viz’s Sailor Moon R Season 2 Part 1 release does its best with poor masters -
The original Sailor Moon anime is coming to Blu-Ray in Japan starting this summer -
Sailor Moon S is coming to DVD and Blu-Ray starting November 15th -
Sailor Moon S Part 2 will be released on home video June 20th -
Sailor Moon Sailor Stars volume 1 is coming to home video June 18th
so from the pics you have of this set it looks to be just a strictly blu-ray only set which would add to the making it cheaper to release as it wouldnt have the dvds in there… i might pick this set up if the one and only reason being they actually find a way to make a better rip of the blu-ray into HD quality that the later seasons clearly were getting better and better the further we went…for now no not going to get this set as i have the full set already in there fancy combo boxes and am working on purchasing the full set on vudu…
This will be coming out around my birthday. Maybe I’ll ask for it as a birthday gift.
Wow! Awesome!
I think if Viz was stupid enough to release a better transfer for cheaper, everyone that purchased the originals would sue them. And rightfully so. The previous releases were a total scam.
Thank goodness I didn’t get them the first time around. I doubt they’ll use the same masters as Australia or Japan but hopefully the R episode (which required a disc replacement) and the Sailor Uranus and Sailor Neptune being listed as partners instead of girlfriends booklet mistake are both fixed. Obviously the movies will be re-released as a boxset themselves as well as Crystal.
I see they’re still releasing a ton of Eternal merch long after the movies have come out. I really hope Studio Deen animates Stars. They should also re-animate the first three seasons and fix season one so that it’s more faithful to the manga but that’s just wishful thinking.
I love Pretty Soldier Sailor Moon with all my heart. I’ve been a fan for over 25 years and am nearly 34 now. It’s one of the best anime series of all time and 90% of anime fans happen to be anime fans because that was one of the very first anime they’ve ever seen along with Pokemon, Dragonball, Speed Racer (I could never forget you) and Cardcaptor Sakura (which is in dire need of a complete series uncut redub).
so with what it looks like this looks like a bare bones version of the box sets, doubt there would be a booklet to go with this set since its blu-ray only and no dvds… and im sure that they will hopefully use the corrected R masters… now if they go out of their way to make a new master with better quality in this blu-ray set then im all for repurchasing this set… at least on a nice side i can let one of my residents know they are rereleasing this series so she can now buy a cheaper reprint even tho they fell in love with my last set and loved all the artwork
are going to do the same season 2 3 4 and 5 i hope they do
I expect they will but this likely won’t be confirmed until close to those individual releases.
i still need to know if the masters used in this season set are better than what we got originally.
Same. We might only know once someone gets their hands on a set.
so not to bump this but i wonder if they fixed the subs in the title song where i called them out a few times for not translating “gomen ne” for the 4 seasons that use the song or do they just copy and paste the last print into this set, that alone will warrent me to repurchase the entire set
Are they going to release the whole series?
Almost certainly one season at a time.