After nearly a decade Sailor Moon Crystal is now complete. Today, June 30th 2023, Sailor Moon Cosmos Part 2 was released in theatres in Japan. This marks the end of Sailor Moon Crystal which was first announced at a Sailor Moon 20th Anniversary Event on July 10th 2012. Though it was meant to air starting in 2013 it began as a streaming series on July 5th 2014. Three seasons and four movies later Sailor Moon Crystal has faithfully retold the entirety of the Sailor Moon manga’s five story arcs.
All of this of course does little to help fans outside of Japan who still don’t know how and when they’ll be able to see Sailor Moon Cosmos Parts 1 and 2! If the Sailor Moon Eternal movies are any indication we might be getting them streaming on Netflix though some fans are hoping for a theatrical release. We don’t know and might not for a few months still! A Japanese Blu-ray will surely be released soon enough which could be a chance to import the films if no release is planned before that. Such a release would not likely have subtitles, as Sailor Moon releases rarely do, but it would open up the possibility for a high quality fansub.
Sailor Moon Crystal may be wrapping up but it won’t soon be forgotten by fans who still appreciate the manga and original anime 30 years later, as well as the fantastic live action series which is 20 years old this year. While we wait to see these movies for ourselves we can only guess as to what’s next for the franchise. Hopefully the coming decade isn’t a drought like we had between the live action series and Sailor Moon Crystal!
Have you seen either of the Sailor Moon Cosmos films? What did you think?
Van you please post about the Rica Fukami (Venus) & Emi Shinohara (Jupiter) Event that they’re currently crowdfunding?
https://camp-fire.jp/projects/view/679469?utm_campaign=cp_po_share_c_msg_mypage_projects_show
Nobody is talking about this event and it’s the first time in 27 years that the two seiyuu will perform Sailor Moon songs on stage. The event will also be live streamed.
I hope we’ll get a anime for Parallel Sailor Moon with pink cat and Casablanca Memory.
If you watch the press conference from last night (the one where Nojima presents Mitsuishi with a bouquet of 99 red roses), it’s abundantly clear that there are no more animated adaptations in the works with this particular cast of actors.
The seiyuu for the four inner senshi and Tuxedo took turns spilling out their emotions to Mitsuishi about how much the past 10 years working on Crystal has meant to them. I think it’s a good way to bookend what is most likely the final chapter in the anime canon–for both audiences and the cast/crew who have given years of their time and talent to this franchise.
The musicals will probably wind down at some point as well, but those have always operated independently of any screen adaptations. I’m sure Adam will be busy in the next few years posting about Blu-Ray releases of those, as well as any re-re-re-remastered sparkly deluxe anniversary editions of whatever Kodansha and Toei are recycling from the nineties.
Working on Crystal that long must have been such a chore.
It hardly seems ten years but sometimes it seems more like 20.
I’d love to have an announcement for a new series, but I’m not sure Naoko Takeuchi wants to go there. I wish she’d advise someone and hand it down Dragonball Super style, even if she is ready to move on, the fans are not.
New series? Unfortunately, Naoko is too busy collaborating with luxury designers making wedding dresses and shoes with seven-inch heels to do much else.
Please look forward to new content from Naoko Takeuchi’s estate in 50 years!
I hope they don’t use the honorific dialogue for Sailor Moon Cosmos in English.
So… maybe my frame my mind was in a whole separate area here. I believed as an opportunity to revive the franchise with the new Crystal adaption that we would head towards ‘surprises’ from Naoko and the organization itself. Some were speculating perhaps an extension to the story (6th potential arc) or something of equivalence to bring ‘more’ to die hard fans.
I’m surprised to see that all we got was subpar quality for season 1 and season 2, a great season 3 but a very-fast paced season 4 movie and 5? However maintaining the quality in S4 and S5 still deserves some praise.
I’m beginning to believe now that all of this was just a marketing propaganda to cash in and capitalize on a successful franchise… and nothing more.
Great? Season 3 was dreadful.
I’m grateful the Crystal reboot has ended. Some of us didn’t think Toei would finish adapting the manga since seasons one and two were of awful animation quality. Hopefully, once they reboot again in another 25+ years, they’ll give the Sailor Moon franchise the best quality out of the gate instead of waiting until halfway through.
That’s not how reboots work.
Nostalgia has a finite lifespan, and the “best quality” is not something that Toei is likely to fund after half a century. A second animated reboot is unlikely to happen, especially after 25+ years lol.
What you’ll see instead is slightly remastered/upscaled refreshes of the nineties anime, which will be redubbed and reprinted in perpetuity.
Crystal will be remembered as one of the worst animes ever made.