Keiko Kitagawa, best known to Sailor Moon fans as Sailor Mars from the live action Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon series, will be in yet another live action adaptation of a popular manga and anime series. She will be in the upcoming The Promised Neverland movie as the character Isabella, also known as Mama. The series is about a group of children in a mysterious orphanage where Isabella is their caregiver. This takes place in the distant future where the orphanage, the only world they know, is part of some nefarious plot. I guess that means they’re not actually going to Neverland. Would it be rude to suggest this is similar to the plot of The Island? I haven’t read or seen the series but it seems like Keiko Kitagawa’s character is potentially a villain in this.

The casting for the film has already caused some controversy as the character or Krone will be portrayed by a Japanese actress, Naomi Watanabe, though the character in the manga and anime is black. This is an interesting controversy given the recurring backlash when white actors are cast in Hollywood adaptations of Japanese franchises such as Scarlett Johansson in Ghost in the Shell.

The movie will be released in Japan on December 18th. There are no details about a North American release at this time. Fans looking to check out the anime can watch the first season on Crunchyroll, FunimationNow, Hulu or Hidive. Are any of you fans of the manga and anime series? Will you be checking out this movie when it’s released?

Source: Sports Hochi via Anime News Network

The Sailor Moon official site has posted a lot of details about the upcoming Sailor Moon Prism On Ice show which was announced last summer. The event will be taking place June 5th to the 7th at the KOSÉ Shin Yokohama Skate Center in Tokyo. We had previously learned that Evgenia Medvedeva, a Russian figure skater and Olympic medalist, was going to be in the show. We now have confirmation that she will be playing Sailor Moon herself! An article at Oricon includes photos of Evgenia Medvedeva in her Sailor Moon costume! The rest of the cast includes Sailor Mercury, Mars, Jupiter and Venus as well as Tuxedo Mask. The villains are the Dark Kingdom’s Queen Bery, Jadeite, Nephrite, Zoisite and Kunzite. All of the above mentioned characters will be portrayed by figure skaters, most of whom are world class competitive skaters, from around the world.

Also appearing in the musical is Anza as Queen Serenity. Anza is best known to Sailor Moon fans as the first to play Sailor Moon in a Sailor Moon musical. She continued in this role for many years. The other special guest, who’s role is not mentioned, is Kurt Browning. He is a World Champion figure skater who was a well known sports celebrity here in Canada in the 1990s.

The show will also have a voice cast which includes the main cast from Sailor Moon Crystal. Only the Sailor Guardians currently have voice actors listed at this time. This could mean that the show will mainly feature those characters in spoken roles or perhaps the others will be announced at a later time. The details on the site list them as being the voice actors from the Sailor Moon Eternal films. As the Dark Kingdom specific characters will not be in the Sailor Moon Eternal films, they may not have been mentioned for this reason. It may also prove more complicated in booking voice talent from a previous season when there hadn’t been an expectation for them to be reprising their roles in the future.

Music will be by Akiko Kosaka, who has been involved with music in the original Sailor Moon anime, the Sailor Moon Musicals and Sailor Moon Crystal.

A full translated cast list in included below:

Sailor Moon/Usagi Tsukino: Evgenia Medvedeva
Sailor Mercury/Ami Mizuno: Satoko Miyahara
Sailor Mars/Rei Hino: Mirai Nagasu
Sailor Jupiter/Makoto Kino: Alissa Czisny
Sailor Venus/Minako Aino: Becky Bereswill
Tuxedo Mask/Mamoru Chiba: Andrew Poje
Queen Serenity: ANZA
Kunzite: Jason Brown
Jadeite: Takahito Mura
Nephrite: Dylan Moscovitch
Zoisite: Seiya Hashimoto
Queen Beryl: Shinko Sakamaki

Additional skaters: Youji Nakano, Shigeru Matsumura, Koichi Kobayashi, Kohei Yoshino, Yuka Kono, Takana Ito

Special guest appearance: Kurt Browning

Voice cast:

Sailor Moon/Tsukino Usagi: Kotono Mitsuishi
Sailor Mercury/Ami Mizuno: Hisako Kanemoto
Sailor Mars/Rei Hino: Rina Sato
Sailor Jupiter/Makoto Kino: Ami Koshimizu
Sailor Venus/Minako Aino: Shizuka Ito

Other staff:

Screenplay: Takuya Hiramitsu
Choreography: Yuka Sato, Benji Schwimer (Assistant)
Music: Akiko Kosaka, Lunar Eclipse Meeting

As I put the list from the official site through Google Translate some of the names that aren’t hyperlinks may be incorrect. I’ve included Wikipedia links when I found them to give some insight into what those athletes have done.

Are you excited for this event? Will any of you be making the trip to Japan to check out this show in June? Who are you most excited to see?

Continue reading →

The trailer for Fast and Furious 9 was released yesterday and it has been revealed that a number of characters from The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift will be returning in this film. This makes me wonder if Keiko Kitagawa, who played Sailor Mars in the live action Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon series and was also in Tokyo Drift, might be returning to the franchise? The returning actors that we see in the trailer are Sung Kang as Han, who was in many other Fast and the Furious films, Lucas Black who portrayed the main character Sean in the film, and Jason Tobin who was Earl in the film. You can watch the new trailer below.

In the film Earl frequently interacted with Keiko Kitagawa’s character Reiko so it would certainly make sense to have her join him. Since she’s not seen in the trailer however one might be inclined to believe that she won’t be making an appearance in this one. The two are in many scenes with Bow Wow’s character Twinkie. It would be nice to see him returning in the film as well. Can we have too many characters in a Fast and the Furious film? Box office history tells us that the answer is clearly no! Though Bow Wow would be a tougher get than Keiko Kitagawa, this franchise seems to have a near unlimited budget for big stars.

The return of Han is certainly an interesting twist in the Fast and the Furious franchise. Director Justin Lin, who’s first film in the series was Tokyo Drift, has gone to great lengths to include Han in as many movies as possible. Even though Han is killed during The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift, the third film in the franchise, he is in a number of later movies which makes them take place earlier in the series. Tokyo Drift becomes a sort of flash forward for the series or alternatively we flash back to earlier films. This is why we still see flip phones in movies released years after they were obsolete. The events of Tokyo Drift finally occur during the timeline of Furious 7. It seem a movie and a half without Han was long enough so he’s been somehow brought back to life. This wouldn’t be a first for the franchise as Michelle Rodriguez’s character Letty was presumed dead after Fast and Furious but shown to be alive with amnesia in Fast Five. Maybe Gal Gadot can return as Gisele somehow as well? Why not? Would a CGI Brian be disrespectful to Paul Walker?

It remains to be seen if Keiko Kitagawa will be in the film. She is a Japanese actress and model who’s only Hollywood work is The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift. Her part in that film was fairly minor, even though it gave us this great deleted scene of her swearing. The Fast and the Furious films are always huge international box office draws thanks in no small part to their diverse cast from around the world as well as filming in many exotic locations. Including a Japanese actress in this film could only help with this trend.

I wonder how Han will feel about the fact that the team is now good buddies with the guy who attempted to kill him, not to mention Brian and his family, in earlier films? We will find out May 20th when the movie hits theatres!

Lizzo is quite a Sailor Moon fan and in a recent interview with CBS This Morning she told interviewer Gayle King that if she could trade places with anyone it would be Sailor Moon! You can watch clips of that interview below which includes that exchange.

At first I thought of how unrealistic it would be to switch places with a fictional character but then I realized that real people in the real world can’t actually switch places either so why not? Lizzo is clearly a Sailor Moon fan as has been shown in the past a number of times. A couple of years ago she dressed as Sailor Moon for a performance.

It has come to my attention that Galarian Slowpoke looks like Sailor Moon and now I can’t unsee it! What does this mean? Slowpoke is a Pokémon. One of the original 150 from the first games actually, but there is a new variant on this Pokémon that was announced in the past week and that is Galarian Slowpoke. This version of Slowpoke is native to the Galar region, which is where the new games Pokémon Sword and Shield take place. There was a new bit of DLC (Downloadable Content) announced last week and while that won’t be playable until the summer fans can get a sneak peak by catching a Galarian Slowpoke. This looks a lot like a normal Slowpoke except for the fact that it has some yellow on the top of it’s head and tail. Due to the way Slowpoke has round ears this makes it look as if it has blonde hair with two hair buns. These clearly resembles Sailor Moon’s famous Odango Atama or Meatball Head hair style!

I first heard about this when I stumbled upon an image on Instagram that artist @sindorman made of Slowpoke as Sailor Moon. The artist also posted this image to his Twitter account. He mentions that he heard about this on Twitter but I didn’t see any particularly viral Tweet discussing this idea. I can only assume he saw this Tweet by @csmith03 which mentioned the idea. An earlier Tweet by @squirreIseok mentioned it as well but this didn’t have much visibility.

Who first noticed the similarity? I’m not certain but some time before Galarian Slowpoke was even conceived of this “Sailor Slowpoke” animation was made by YouTube user Mdbruin. This video appears to similarly be inspired by Slowpoke’s ears which are similar Usagi’s hair. You can watch the video embedded below.

It’s a bit funny that Slowpoke is known for being a sleepy, lazy Pokémon while Usagi is herself known for being lazy. For fun I called a Slowpoke Sailor Moon and gave her the moves Slack Off, Yawn, Rest and Confusion. They all seemed to fit. Unfortunately she was unable to learn Cosmic Power via TM and there’s no way to teach her Moonblast, a move learned only by leveling up or breeding in the game but not by Slowpoke. Perhaps Slowbro or Slowking will be able to learn these and other Sailor Moon themed moves when the expansions are released!

Now comes the big question. Was this similarity deliberate? Not one usually prone to speculation I am inclined to say … maybe? One can not deny that Galarian Slowpoke’s yellow head looks like hair. The ears really do look like two buns on Slowpoke’s head. In Japan this hair style, especially in a blonde colour, makes one think of Sailor Moon. Slowpoke doesn’t look like Chun-Li or Princess Leia, but rather like Usagi or Sailor Moon! It may very well be the case that the similarity is intentional and that one or both of the evolutions of Galarian Slowpoke, that being Slowbro and Slowking, which we will see only when the DLC is released are planned to be some sort of magical girl inspired Pokémon. This could include a tiara, a bow, a skirt or something of the sort. Is there any precedent for this?

While I think an obvious reference may be unlikely something more subtle is certainly possible. There have been a number of references to other pop culture characters and even real people throughout the series, including many to characters in Japan. To me Ledian always looked like a Power Ranger, something out of a Japanese Sentai series. In the latest game Falinks is a group of six small Pokémon who work together as one which is similar to a Sentai team. Tyranitar resembles Godzilla quite a bit. More than that Ohmega, a Pokémon which never made the final cut for the original games, is a mechanical giant lizard who closely resembles Mecha Godzilla. Kadabra and Alakazam are psychic type Pokémon who are bending spoons, inspired by real life scam artist Uri Geller. Kadabra’s Japanese name “Yungerer” is clearly a play on his name. Uri Geller sued over Kadabra’s name and likeness.

Nintendo certainly doesn’t want to commit any copyright violation with Slowpoke or its evolutions, but a subtle reference isn’t something which is likely to cause any legal troubles. We will have to wait until later this year to see what Galarian Slowbro and Slowking will look like. The first DLC, coming this summer, will allow access to the Isle of Armor, where trainers will get the item which will evolve Galarian Slowpoke into Galarian Slowbro. The second DLC, to be released this fall, will allow access to the Crown Tundra where trainers will be able to get an item to evolve Galarian Slowpoke into Galarian Slowking. It’s likely that Game Freak will reveal what these Pokémon will look like prior to the DLC’s release. I’ll certainly be waiting patiently to see if an upcoming Nintendo Direct confirms my suspicions!

Are you playing Pokémon Sword or Shield? If it wasn’t obvious I’ve been playing quite a bit. My friend code is SW-1634-7770-3416. Let me know in a comment if you add me so that I knew who I’m getting request from. My name will be Adam G. though my Pokémon trainer’s name is Blitzy. If you haven’t picked up the game yet you can support the site by buying it using the links below.

The Sailor Moon Eternal films are coming to theatres in Japan on September 11th 2020. We don’t have a ton of information about these films but a recent mock interview shared with Japanese members of the Official Sailor Moon Fan Club gives us some morsels of information about the films. We could have inferred most of this information already, but it’s nice to get some confirmation about some of these things.

I am not currently a member of the Sailor Moon Fan Club so I did not receive this newsletter however I read about it on the Tuxedo Unmasked web site. If you don’t already follow that site I suggest you do as there’s a ton of research that goes into those articles which I always enjoy reading. If you can read Japanese you can check out this scanned version of the Sailor Moon Official Fan Club Members Only Special Issue volume 13. I do not, so I will be referencing Tuxedo Unmasked’s translation.

The interview isn’t with an actual person who exists in the real world. Instead it’s a fake conversation between Luna and Usagi in which they destroy the fourth wall and talk somewhat in character about the upcoming films. This reminds me a bit of the Sailor Moon Memorial laserdiscs which are season recaps hosted by Usagi and Luna. So what does the interview tell us?

First there’s a reminder that the movies will come out “After the Olympics” which is a bit vague. The 2020 Summer Olympics, which will take place in Tokyo, will run from July 24th to August 9th. The film has already been announced to be released on September 11th so this bit of dialogue is less precise than what we already know. The actual release date appears on the page and later in the interview.

Then Usagi asks Luna what actually happened in Act 4 of the manga. We already knew that these two films will cover the Dream arc of the Sailor Moon manga which is the story which was adapted as the Sailor Moon SuperS season of the original Sailor Moon anime. This means it will include the Dark Moon Circus, Pegasus, the Amazon Trio, the Amazoness Quartet, Zirconia and Queen Nehelenia. Despite the similar characters the actual stories of the manga and anime differ quite a bit though, so Sailor Moon Eternal will be new to fans of the original Sailor Moon anime!

We learn that the new movie will be about the Dead Moon Circus who break free of a mirror during an eclipse. That eclipse was is seen at the end of the final episode of Sailor Moon Crystal’s third season many, many eclipses ago. We will see Usagi and Chibiusa switch bodies, which is something that also happened in the original Sailor Moon anime though this was a minor story contained to one episode. It is also mentioned that this is a very Chibiusa intensive story! This arc is basically a romance between Chibiusa and Pegasus/Helios so there’s no ignoring that she will feature heavily.

More importantly they ask where the visuals for Sailor Uranus, Neptune and the other Sailor Guardians representing the outer planets are. Luna muses that this must mean that Hotaru’s awakening will be in the second film. This fits with what I had been assuming about the films. These characters only appear in the second half of the manga’s arc and it seems like a good split of the films would be to include them only in Sailor Moon Eternal Part 2, or whatever it is we will be calling it. This would start with us seeing what Haruka, Michiru, Setsuna and Hotaru have been up to for the past while and having them join the rest of the team. In the original Sailor Moon anime this never happens during Sailor Moon SuperS and the short six episode arc which starts off Sailor Moon Sailor Stars does its own quick version of these events. If this information is to be trusted it seems unlikely we’ll be seeing any designs for these characters for the first film, though I still think it may be possible they will appear briefly as an end of movie teaser.

Following this exchange we get some quotes from Chiaki Kon, the film’s director, Kazuyuki Fudeyasu, the film’s writer, Kazuko Tadano, the animation director, Kotono Mitsuishi, the voice of Sailor Moon and Misato Fukuen, the voice of Chibiusa. These are some nice little comments but they don’t really tell us anything new about the films. Misato Fukuen comments that she will finally get to see “an important character” who we can only assume is Pegasus. It seems they’re all being very careful not to tell us anything!

This all makes me wonder if the person that wrote this fictional exchange actually knows anything we don’t or if they instead are just inferring all of this from what we already know? I can’t say for sure. For now we are all anxiously waiting until September and wondering just when we’ll be getting the movies outside of Japan! I’m hopeful for some sort of limited North American theatrical run around the same time as the film will be released in Japan but that may be too optimistic of me! We may instead only get the film some while later, possibly not until 2021, and it’s not really guaranteed that it will be out theatrically here at all. I’ll be sure to share anything conclusive as that information becomes available!

Source: Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon Official Fan Club Mailer Vol. 13 translated by Tuxedo Unmasked

Keep reading for the full interview translation.

Continue reading →

Wishing everyone a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

Continue reading →

Viz Media has announced that it is making a distribution deal with the online streaming service Crunchyroll. This deal includes Sailor Moon R The Movie, which is available to stream for the first time in Japanese with English subtitles or dubbed in English on the service. The original Sailor Moon anime currently streams on Hulu while Sailor Moon Crystal is available to stream on Crunchyroll. This is currently the only part of the original Sailor Moon anime on Crunchyroll. Will this change in the future?

The advantage of Crunchyroll over Hulu is that the content is finally available to Canadians. Hulu is region blocked outside of the United States. The subtitled version of the original Sailor Moon anime is available on TubiTV but this does not include the dubbed episodes which you can find on Hulu.

The Make Up! Sailor Guardians special which played with Sailor Moon R The Movie in theatres is not available on Crunchyroll. Fans looking to watch that special will need to check out the DVD or Blu-Ray version of the film. It remains to be seen if the other films, Sailor Moon S The Movie and Sailor Moon SuperS: The Nine Sailor Guardians Unite! Miracle of the Black Dream Hole, will be released on the streaming service in the future.

Don’t want to watch a movie for free but prefer physical media? Then why not check out the Blu-Ray versions of the Sailor Moon films using the Amazon links below.

Yasuharu Takanashi, the composer for the upcoming Sailor Moon Eternal films, sent a Tweet including a video of him recording some music on November 22nd. Twitter user @CCTakato noticed that the monitor seen in the background of this clip showed Sailor Moon and Sailor Chibi Moon. It is plausible that this clip is of music for the first Sailor Moon Eternal movie which will be released in Japan on September 11th 2020. Not much of the music can be heard, which is probably deliberate. Check out the footage in the embedded Tweet below.

Though it’s hard to make out the image on the screen it does look like it’s Sailor Moon near the middle and Sailor Chibi Moon on the bottom right. I messed around with the image a bit to try to clear it up and here’s the best I could come up with.

Is this the first still of Sailor Moon Eternal that we’re seeing? It looks like they were watching footage while recording their music, though in this case the video appears to be paused.

How reliable is this? Let’s not forget that Yasuharu Takanashi is the one that told us to expect Sailor Moon Crystal season 4 in 2018! What do you think?

We had previously reported on the then upcoming Sailor Moon x Akiko Kosaka 45th Anniversary Music History Supported By Pretty Guardians concert. At the time there was still quite a bit that was unknown about the concert which took place on November 9th and the 10th, a Saturday and Sunday. One lucky reader was able to attend the November 10th performance and passed on his thoughts about the concert which I’m happy to share. I’ll be paraphrasing some of the highlights of his experience.

The concert took place at Quest Hall, which is located in Harajuku, a district in the Shibuya Ward of Tokyo, which is next to Minato, where Azabu Juban and most locations in the Sailor Moon manga take place. The venue housed a couple hundred people which is quite small compared to what would be used for something like a Sailor Moon musical. The audience was mostly composed of women who would have been old enough to be watching Sailor Moon in the 90s, though there were some younger fans as well.

The goal of this event was to celebrate Akiko Kosaka’s career. She has contributed a lot of music to the Sailor Moon musicals as well as the original Sailor Moon anime and Sailor Moon Crystal. This event seems to have been mostly focused on the musicals, though there were a few songs from the anime as well. Akiko Kosaka performed at the piano for the entirety of the concert, with her music being complemented by a keyboard, guitar, bass and drums. A full set list for both days was posted to the official Sailor Moon Twitter account. You can see those set lists below.

The performers were not in costume though they did wear Music History t-shirts for the second half of the performance. They moved about the stage acting out some of the songs with a small amount of dancing, using the space provided.

The highlights of the show mentioned were the performance of Triple Dreams, a song first performed as part of the 1995 SuperS musical Dream Warriors – Love – Into Eternity… It was also mentioned that Anza, the first actress to play Sailor Moon, and Hikari Ono, who performed a number of roles throughout many musicals, stole the show. The audience seems to have enjoyed the show immensely.

There weren’t a ton of products available at the show. A post on the Sailor Moon official site highlighted some of these, which includes pamphlets, magnets, shirts and water bottles. Artists were also selling some of their own merchandise which were in fairly limited stock. Those in the premium seats got extra merchandise which included a booklet of piano sheet music for three songs and a CD including piano versions of some Sailor Moon songs. In the past such items have been sold on Japanese auctions sites such as Mercari for very high prices.

It does not appear that the show was filmed, making a DVD or Blu-Ray release of this concert unlikely. Though it was not mentioned it is always possible that an audio recording was made for a potential future CD release.

Were any of you lucky enough to attend this concert? What are your thoughts on it?