Sailor Moon Sailor Stars, The Complete Fifth season, is coming to Blu-ray May 28th

Sailor Moon Sailor Stars The Complete Fifth Season

It looks like won’t need to wait much longer for the next season set of the original Sailor Moon anime. Last week in a since deleted Tweet Viz announced that Sailor Moon Sailor Stars The Complete Fifth Season would be coming to Blu-ray on May 28th. Why was the Tweet deleted? Who knows! Is May 28th still the official release date? Probably. The set is not listed with any online retailers yet, but should be showing up soon. Along with the announcement we also get our first look at the cover art for this release which features Eternal Sailor Moon.

With the release of the fifth and final season this will complete the rerelease of the series on Blu-ray. While the first few sets included significantly improved video quality the difference becomes less noticeable for the later series which already looked quite good in the sets released a few years ago.

The set will include English audio as well as the original Japanese audio with English subtitles. Will you be picking it up?

The original Sailor Moon anime first aired 32 years ago today

Sailor Moon episode 1 - Crybaby Usagi's Magnificent Transformation

March 7th 1992, 32 years ago, the original Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon anime first aired in Japan. This first episode, The Crybaby: Usagi’s Beautiful Transformation, introduces us to Usagi Tsukino who gets a magical broach from a talking cat and transforms into Sailor Moon! It was three years until that show would be released dubbed into English but throughout the next few years Sailor Moon took the world by storm.

Sailor Moon episode 1 - Usagi removing a bandage from Luna's head

What are your first memories of this show? I didn’t watch it until 1995 when it started airing in English in Canada and the US and became almost instantly hooked on it.

Sailor Moon Episode 1 - Silhouette

Will you be doing anything special to celebrate this occasion?

Sailor Moon episode 1 - My job here is done

A new Nogizaka46 x Sailor Moon musical is coming in April of this year

Nogizaka46 x Sailor Moon musical - 5th Anniversary

It’s been over five years since the first Nogizaka46 x Sailor Moon musical premiered in Japan and to celebrate a new presentation of the musical is being planned. Since Nogizaka46 is a band with many members, 46 of them to be precise, they can keep doing this for quite a while. The group is also cycling through members since you can’t be old and still be in an idol group in Japan, so there will likely be newer members of the group performing in this version of the musical.

We don’t currently have a ton of details aside from the show starting in April. After the original Nogizaka46 x Sailor Moon musical in the summer of 2018 there was a 2019 version which was more or less the same actual show with different actors. I watched the 2018 music on Blu-ray and watched the streaming version of the 2019 version and don’t recall noticing any differences.
It seems likely we will be getting essentially the same musical this time around.

Are you interesting in checking out this musical again? Will you be in Japan to see it? Ticket sales will first be made available to members of the official Sailor Moon and Nogizaka46 fan clubs.

Sailor Moon SuperS The Complete Fourth Season is now available on Blu-ray

Sailor Moon SuperS Complete Fourth Season

The fourth complete season set of the original Sailor Moon anime is now out on Blu-ray! Sailor Moon SuperS The Complete Fourth Season was released on January 30th in stores and online. You can buy the set from Amazon to support the site. Previously the season had been split up into two instalments but we now have it all together as one set. These newer releases have generally been of better quality than the older sets. That said as the seasons went on the quality of the original sets improved, so the difference between this release and the earlier one is likely to be less noticeable than other seasons.

If you’ve been following The Discourse these sets also have a pinkish hue which you may never have noticed until people started to make a deal about it. It’s something that’s visible with side by side screenshots but nothing I ever made much notice of while watching the series.

Sailor Moon SuperS mainly focuses on Chibiusa as she befriends Pegasus and the girls face off against the Dead Moon Circus. This is an adaptation of the Dream arc of the Sailor Moon manga. It isn’t the strongest or most popular season but it does have some solid episodes and redeeming qualities such as the humourous monster designs. I’m looking forward to rewatching these episodes.

Did you pick up this set? What do you think of it?

Did Robbie Daymond, the voice of Tuxedo Mask, secretly confirm that he’s dubbing Sailor Moon Cosmos with a photo of him wearing a Sailor Moon Star Locket pin?

Robbie Daymond, the voice of Tuxedo Mask, wearing a Star Locket pin

Today, December 20th, the Sailor Moon Cosmos films were released on DVD and Blu-ray in Japan. International fans are up in arms begging for any news about a release outside of Japan, but we may have gotten a hint that a dub is coming soon! Robbie Daymond, who voiced Tuxedo Mask in Sailor Moon Crystal and the Sailor Moon Eternal films, shared a photo of him recording “an unexpected & awesome two sessions to finish out 2023″. He does not mention what these are and if it’s indeed a recording of Sailor Moon Cosmos he surely signed an NDA (non disclosure agreement) so I would not suggest for a minute that he’s done anything to violate this. Robbie Daymond is wearing an interesting looking pin in this photo. That is a pin of The Orgel or Star Locket from Sailor Moon. This is the locket that Princess Serenity gives to Tuxedo Mask in Act 6 of the Sailor Moon manga and Sailor Moon Crystal. It’s also featured in the original Sailor Moon anime.

Sailor Moon Crystal Act 6 - Orgel watch

Is this an obvious sign? An unquestionable confirmation that Robbie Daymond is recording the dub for Sailor Moon Cosmos? Well I can’t say for sure but if I wanted to give a subtle clue about recording a show that didn’t violate and NDA this is a nice way to do it. The secrecy behind the recording might explains why he refers to it as “unexpected”. If I wanted to troll people by giving them false hope while I recorded a fry commercial this would be a fantastic way to do it so take it with a grain of salt. Remember that a few years ago Michael Yurchak, the voice of Hawk’s Eye, posted a photo of Instagram which had a barely visible image of the Amazoness Quartet on a monitor which was our first indication that a dub of Sailor Moon Eternal was being recorded for Netflix. The film premiered on Netflix six months after that leak. Let’s hope we don’t wait that long!

Sailor Moon's Star Locket

We are long overdue for news about a release of Sailor Moon Cosmos outside of Japan. Regardless of how it gets released a dub is likely and a dub using the same cast as we’ve had for the first four story arcs is certainly the way to go. The timing for this makes sense and I’m optimistic that this could be a good sign, but we should always wait for official news which I will of course share to this site when I get it.

Sailor Moon Crystal Act 13 - Orgel protects Sailor Moon from suicide

I’m looking forward to getting my Japanese Sailor Moon Cosmos Blu-ray in a few days and I hope that a fan sub shows up some time soon as well. I will always encourage supporting the official releases when possible. Let’s hope we get news of a North American dub and release soon! If that’s indeed what this is I wonder what took Robbie Daymond two session to do. Tuxedo Mask spends most of these movies as a gem. Perhaps he just meant it was two sessions for the two films. I think Taiki’s forehead has more lines than him.

Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon Cosmos - The Golden Crystal

Update 2023-12-23: It looks like this pin is from The Lantern Girl’s etsy shop. Unfortunately this particular pin is currently out of stock.

A reunion special for the live action Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon series will air on Japanese TV on Christmas Day

Live action Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon Reunion - Cast

Fantastic news for fans of the live action Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon series! The original cast, Miyuu Sawai, Rika Izumi, Keiko Kitagawa, Mew Azama and Ayaka Komatsu, will appear in a live action series reunion which will be broadcast on Christmas day. In this look back at their time working on the series, known as PGSM or Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon to many fans, the cast will reminisce on their time auditioning and becoming friends while filming the show in 2003 and 2004.

Live action Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon Reunion - Cast

This special will be broadcast on CBC Television (no relation to the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation). I saw some discussion on Twitter where some fans in Japan were upset that this particular station is not broadcast throughout the country so that even parts of Tokyo wouldn’t be able to watch it. The announcement on the official site mentioned that broadcast details would come at a later date, so perhaps there will be additional channels added before Christmas. I honestly don’t know much about the details of Japanese television stations, except that CBC was the channel the show originally aired on. Their site still hosts the show’s web site. As a fan outside of Japan it does not look like there will be any international streaming options at this time. I certainly hope a copy of this special will be made available online and that some resourceful fans will work on a translation for it! I certainly don’t still have the Japanese file sharing program I used to use back in ’03 and ’04 to download raw episodes of PGSM hours after they aired!

Live Action Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon Act 18 - The Sailor Team with Sailor Moon in the middle

It’s so exciting to see a live action series retrospective after the show has been ignored by anything official for so long. It’s often completely missed or glossed over when the history of Sailor Moon is looked at. This all changed recently when Keiko Kitagawa, Sailor Mars from the live action series, was cast as Sailor Cosmos in the second Sailor Moon Cosmos film. Now that we have this as part of the 20th anniversary I wonder if we could be seeing more from the live action series in 2024. The series was first release on DVD back when the show was originally airing, with a box set of those same discs being released in 2011. Now would be a good time for another release of the series!

While fans would be happy to see this show, originally released only on standard definition DVD, released on Blu-ray, this is likely impossible. The show was shot on 480i video so there is no film source to go to in order to get a high definition version. Some sort of AI assisted upscaling could always be done but it won’t look like a show that was shot on film ever could. When Discotek Media was asked about releasing the live action series in North America on a recent stream they said simply that the series was not available for license. Perhaps if the show became available again in Japan the rights would become available internationally as well. Am I being optimistic? Surely!

Sailor Luna

But as long as we’re dreaming how about a new “next generation” live action show? The original Sailor Guardians could all be mothers who’s children themselves become Sailor Guardians. Perhaps an older Sailor Luna, now around 30, could be the eldest of the Sailor Guardians and their mentor. We follow the lives of happy couples such as Usagi and Mamoru, Makoto and Motoki, Ami and Nephrite and of course Rei and Minako. Perhaps that’s a bit too optimistic, but with Sailor Moon Crystal now complete in Japan they could certainly use something else to have as an excuse to keep selling products to older Japanese fans. I’m real excited about this special so allow me to dream a little.

Live action Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon Logo

For now I’m just real happy to see this logo on the official site again.

Source: Official Sailor Moon site

New Sailor Moon artwork and an interview with Naoko Takeuchi appear in Vogue Japan

New Sailor Moon illustration by Naoko Takeuchi in Vogue Japan

Because magazines come out in the future fans are now getting their hands on the January 2024 issue of Vogue Japan which features and interview with Sailor Moon creator Naoko Takeuchi as well as her latest illustration of Sailor Moon! That illustration, found on page 94, is included above. Here’s an image of the interview with Naoko Takeuchi which is found on page 93.

Naoko Takeuchi interview from Vogue Japan

If your Japanese is as bad as mine, you probably wonder what it says! Luckily Twitter user @leticia_cosmos has shared this translation video.

I’ve transcribed this translation below for reference. I’m not actually sure if that’s the entire interview or not. The text box on the top left doesn’t seem to be included.

Looking back, Takeuchi says that the women who appeared in the films and manga she liked were “lively and always on the move. I learned that standing still was not good.” When she began drawing “Sailor Moon,” she once again asked herself, “What kind of strength does a woman have?” She introduces by saying that “There are individual differences and there is no one answer that fits all”, she then shares her insight into the book Onna Daigaku Hyoron, a Neo-Confucian values manual to teach subordination to newly married women of the 18th century, written by Yukichi Fukuzawa, which she recently read because of her daughter’s school report. “In Japan and the rest of the world, women still have the same low status and lack of freedom that they had 200 years ago. When I watch the news every day, I think about how difficult it is to live as a woman on this planet. Society is so rigid that women are forced to become strong. If we ever put the complexities and superfluities of society into an equation, we would get a simple answer like a formula: Strength = Motherhood = Kindness.”, she suggests.

In the universe of the work that embodies Takeuchi’s wishes, the Sailor Guardians come together in solidarity and demonstrate their strength. “Women are at a disadvantage when they have to physically fight men or aliens. It would be better if they didn’t even have to fight, of course. I believe that women have some kind of magical power within them. To manifest this power you need spells and items. And the strength of prayer. Prayer extinguishes evil, I think that is ideal. I want to continue praying strongly. I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately.”

A short passage of this interview was shared by Crunchyroll which upset some fans in the way it characterized women and girls as being weaker than men. In the context of the rest of the interview to me the quote doesn’t seem negative. Sailor Moon and her friends are powerful, but that doesn’t always mean kicking and punching their way to victory. By prefacing that “There are individual differences” a statement like women being, in this case on average, at a disadvantage when fighting men or aliens isn’t much different than saying something like men are taller than women, even though individual variation of course exists. We of course don’t yet know quite how strong aliens are but they are portrayed as being pretty powerful in the series. Its likely there are species of aliens that are both stronger and weaker than humans, much like the various animals on Earth. What do you think of the interview?

I had a bit of trouble tracking down a copy of the issue. I wanted to get myself a physical copy, which is for sale on sites like Amazon Japan, but I was not able to get a copy to ship to Canada when I tried. Opting instead for an eBook copy of the magazine, which wouldn’t need to be flown across the Pacific Ocean, I turned to the Rakuten Kobo store thanks to a tip from Twitter user @itsmoonrevenge. There is a Japanese listing for the issue. This magazine is not listed on the English Kobo store. Fear not! Fans outside of Japan can still buy e-books which are only available in Japan. I did something similar when I bought eBook versions of the colour versions of the Sailor Moon manga. At the time I used PayPal though this time I was able to use my own credit card. It took some messing around on the site and using a fake Japanese address but I was able to use my own credit card details to purchase the January issue of Vogue Japan and load it onto an app on my phone, which is where the screenshot of the interview comes from.

Sailor Moon SuperS, The Complete Fourth Season, is coming to Blu-ray January 30th

Sailor Moon SuperS Complete Fourth Season

The next season of Sailor Moon will be coming to Blu-ray soon. Viz Media posted to their Twitter account to share that Sailor Moon SuperS Complete Fourth Season will be released on January 30th. This includes our first look at the cover art. The set is on Amazon but it doesn’t have price listed yet. That listing shows us the back cover of the set as well.

The first three season sets included improved video quality compared to the earlier Blu-ray releases which had a half season per set. As time went on the quality of those releases got better. While I expect this set will also include better video quality we don’t know for sure if they will have used better masters or how big the difference in quality, if any, will be. We will know for sure once the set is released early next year.

Sailor Moon SuperS Complete Fourth Season - Back

Sailor Moon SuperS covers the Dream arc of the Sailor Moon manga. It has the Sailor Guardians along with Chibiusa fighting the Dead Moon Circus including the Amazon Trio, Amazoness Quartet, Zirconia and Nehelenia. Do you plan on pick up this set? Have you gotten the earlier releases? You can support the site by ordering them using the Amazon links below.

Sailor Moon SuperS Complete Fourth Season

The Sailor Moon Cosmos films are coming to Blu-ray and DVD in Japan on December 20th

Sailor Moon Cosmos DVD and Blu-ray announcement

Good news for those who like to spend a lot of money to import movies they don’t understand! The official Sailor Moon site has announced that Sailor Moon Cosmos Parts 1 and 2 will be release on regular and limited edition DVD and Blu-ray sets on December 20th 2023! As with other Japanese Sailor Moon releases this will only include Japanese audio with no English subtitles. Japanese Blu-ray discs are region A so they will play in a North American Blu-ray player however their DVDs are Region 2 which won’t play on a North American player. You can watch the short trailer for the Blu-ray release below.

There are two version of each of the Blu-ray and DVD release and they aren’t cheap! The single disc Blu-ray or DVD, which somehow costs the same in 2023, has an MSRP of 10,000 yen, about $69 US. The four disc sets also costs the same on DVD and Blu-ray with an MSRP of 16,000 yen or $110 US. What’s the difference? The four disc set has a second DVD or Blu-ray with special features including an anime music video, likely the one we got with the soundtrack, creditless openings for the films as well as two CDs with music from the films.

There are also vendor exclusive special incentives from a number of retailers. There are acrylic figures with different characters being included with the films from different retailers. Those are even more expensive than the regular four disc set though price varies slightly between retailers.

So when do we get to see the movies here? We still don’t have any news about a release of the Sailor Moon Cosmos films outside of Japan but that doesn’t stop people from speculating! As the Sailor Moon Eternal films were released on Netflix less than a month prior to the Japanese Blu-ray release of those movies many are thinking that we will be seeing these movies either in theatres or on Netflix, before December 20th. I’m not totally convinced of this timeline as it seems odd to time a North American release with a Japanese home video release, or to do the opposite, but it seems that usually Japanese Blu-rays are released after movies are released here.

The original timeline which I speculated about back when Sailor Moon Cosmos Part 1 was released in theatres predicted that if we heard about and got a release of Sailor Moon Cosmos with a similar delay that we did for Sailor Moon Eternal then the Netflix announcement would be in September, next month, and the streaming premiere would be in November. There’s still time for this to happen!

All that said I am reluctantly looking forward to importing these movies for their absurdly high price. If a North American release isn’t out by then I will watch the Japanese version and surely follow along well enough as the story is pretty close to the manga. It’s also likely, in the event that a North American release is still not announced prior to December 20th, that someone will fansub the films. This sometimes happens as quickly as a few days after a show airs or is available on video. Perhaps these fansubbing groups will not be working hard on the days before Christmas and we can expect it a bit later.

Will you be picking either of these sets up? If so which one?