A rumour is suggesting that Sailor Moon Crystal season 4 is coming in 2018

Posted on April 15, 2017 by Adam

A couple of screenshots of alleged conversations with Yasuharu Takanashi, Sailor Moon Crystal’s music composer, are suggesting that Sailor Moon Crystal’s 4th season will be airing in 2018. People in the fan community are referring this as a rumour of further delays for the upcoming season. As rumours go, this one doesn’t seem to have much weight to it. I’m reporting this as it’s being discussed in the fan community and I wanted to weigh in on it’s legitimacy and not because I think there’s much validity to the rumour itself. Let us look at the evidence provided and consider how reliable the claim is.

I originally saw this in a Tweet by Twitter user Chase the CHECH (@iHasMangic) who included two screenshots. The first is from a Facebook Messenger conversation. When asked if season 4 was coming he stated “Season 4 for Sailor Moon 2018?”. The question mark is a bit questionable. The profile image and name match that of Yasuharu Takanashi’s Facebook profile. The second screenshot is of an Instagram conversation. When asked about the possibility of a 4th season in 2017 he responds “2018! (smiley face) (thumbs up)”. Again the user name, in this case @nassy_takanashi, and profile photo match his Instagram profile. Since originally posting this I’ve been in contact with the user who posted this to Twitter and Adrian, the user who originally had these conversations. Adrian also posted these screenshots to the Pretty Guardians Facebook group and a post on the Genvid Forums. These include alternate screenshots of the same chats.

We can ask ourselves a few questions. Are these screenshots legitimate? Is Yasuharu Takanashi indicating that Sailor Moon Crystal is delayed until 2018? If he is, is such a claim a reliable indication that the series is indeed delayed? I can’t make any certain claims about the authenticity of these screenshots. One could easily fabricate something like this, but would they? If I were going to fake a screenshot I might attempt to make a more clear confirmation without confusing question marks and emoji, but then I’m not in the business of doctoring screenshots these days. With matching avatars it doesn’t seem out of the question that these are legitimate. Having seen a number of different versions of these screenshots and spoken to Adrian about it I don’t think there’s much of a reason to doubt the validity of these.

If they are indeed real screenshots, what is actually being said? The language is a bit confused but it does seem like Yasuharu Takanashi is indicating that, in his opinion, the series will be continuing in 2018. If this is indeed what he means, we can again ask ourselves if that is a reliable source. Yasuharu Takanashi composed the music for the first three seasons of Sailor Moon Crystal. It is entirely feasible that he will continue in this role if the show should continue, and we’ve received indication via the official Sailor Moon web site that more Sailor Moon Crystal is coming. As someone working on the show he may have an idea of the schedule. He may not as well. He may have been working on the show, be working on it now or be scheduled to work on it in the future and not actually have a specific idea of when the animation, voice acting and other production work will be completed and when the final distribution is scheduled for. If he did actually know when the show would be coming he may not be at liberty to disclose this. This chat isn’t a confidential discussions between professionals or close friends but rather a fans who reached out and got an answer.

Take it all with a grain of salt! If others weren’t reporting on this I wouldn’t have bothered to post about it myself but as it’s being thrown around I wanted to share it for context. There are a lot of ifs going on. If they all turn out we may be getting new episodes in 2018, but with so many unknowns I wouldn’t make any certain conclusions about this actually happening. I tend to only give consideration to information shared through official sources such as those posted on the Official Sailor Moon site. Even when we get information through official sources we’ve seen that such situations are likely to change anyway. For now the only official word we’ve gotten is that more Sailor Moon Crystal is planned and we have gotten no timeline of when this would occur.

As always if we hear anything official on this topic we will be sure to share it as soon as we can.

Sailor Moon S Part 2 will be released on home video June 20th

Posted on April 14, 2017 by Adam

We finally have a specific release date for Sailor Moon S Part 2 and it just squeaks in to Spring on June 20th! The DVD and Blu-Ray sets are up for preorder on Right Stuf and these include a June 20th release date. The DVD set has an MSRP of $39.99 while the Blu-Ray is priced at $69.99. Right Stuf has them for $35.99 and $62.99. We also have a good look at the box art including the back which has details about the release.

We’d previously learned from Viz’s Moon Panel at Anime Boston that we’d be getting the sets in June but we didn’t have a specific release date until now. Sailor Moon S Part 2 includes… well the second half of Sailor Moon S. This covers episodes 109 to 127 which concludes the story of Hotaru, the Death Busters and all that fun stuff. It includes Japanese audio as well as Viz’s new English dub of the original Sailor Moon anime. This will be the first time these episodes are heard in English as Viz has no longer been releasing episodes in an effort to promote their home video releases as they’d done in the past.

This Fall’s musical will be called Sailor Moon Le Mouvement Final

Posted on April 8, 2017 by Adam

An update posted to the Official Sailor Moon site this morning revealed that the name of the upcoming musical, taking place in Japan this fall, will be called Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon Le Mouvement Final. The above logo was included with the post. No other details were included.

We have previously learned that almost all of the cast will be reprising their roles with the exception of Karin Takahashi who will not be returning as Sailor Saturn. That role will be played by Mirai. Though we’ve received no official confirmation of the subject of the musical it seems logical that this will focus on the Stars arc of the manga. The wings in the logo suggest we will be seeing Eternal Sailor Moon, who appears at the end of the Amour Eternal musical. The title, French for “final movement”, suggests that this final arc of the manga will somehow finalize the story of these musicals. I had been hoping that after this 5th musical we would somehow continue the story of Sailor Moon with some kind of original musical that takes place after the story of the manga. Perhaps this will still be the case!

Update: I misreported the title as “Movement Final” and not “Mouvement Final”. This is the correct French word for Movement.

Sailor Moon Amour Eternal DVD impressions

Posted on April 7, 2017 by Adam

The latest Sailor Moon musical, Sailor Moon Amour Eternal, was released on DVD on March 15th. What’s that? Still not on Blu-Ray? No. This is a DVD only release despite the fact that there is an HD streaming version available in Japan. The set includes two discs, the main feature and some special features, as well as a special booklet which is a sort of program. Photos of all pages of that booklet will be included at the end of this post. This is a Japanese only release so don’t expect to be able to follow too well if you only speak English. Fans looking for a subtitled version of the musical should check out the fan subbed version by Miss Dream.

First off let’s talk about the main feature, coming in at a whopping 2 hours and 43 minutes, the 4th of the recent wave of Sailor Moon musicals, Sailor Moon Amour Eternal. This was a decent musical with the most notable change to me being the inclusion of the birth of Princess Serenity back in the days of Silver Millennium. We never got much about this time of her life in other series and it’s interesting to see the other Sailor Guardians fully grown at this time in this particular continuity. The main cast of the 5 actors playing Sailor Moon, Mercury, Mars, Jupiter and Venus were replaced for this musical. They will all be returning for this Fall’s upcoming musical.

DVD	HD download

The bad part about this release is sadly the terrible video quality. As with the three prior releases this DVD is 480i video. What this means specifically is that it’s interlaced video, something like the signal we’d get for a standard definition TV broadcast or VHS tape. Oddly the release is still 16:9 widescreen optimized for widescreen displays but somehow not optimized for a progressive scan display, which is what almost everyone would be watching this on. For prior releases I gave Evil Line Records the benefit of the doubt, assuming the release was of low quality due to older cameras used for the recording. Now that we’ve seen 1080p HD releases available to stream in Japan for not only this musical but the last three, it is obvious that this is not the case. This DVD is poorly authored and the company that released it is to blame. Just look at the comparison screenshot between the download version and the DVD version to see the drastic difference in quality. Even if a Blu-Ray release was not viable, a progressive scan release has been the standard for movies released on DVD for nearly 20 years. Many older TV shows are released interlaced simply because that was the limitation of TV at the time but even most early DVDs of movies are progressive scan. No excuses for this one.

Also included with the main feature is a full length audio commentary! This includes the main cast of Hotaru Nomoto, Sailor Moon, Yume Takeuchi, Sailor Mercury, Karen Kobayashi, Sailor Mars, Kaede, Sailor Jupiter, and Rimo Hasegawa, Sailor Venus

The second disc includes over an hour of special features which aren’t terribly appealing. We start out with a 30 minute interview between Hotaru Nomoto, who played Sailor Moon, and Yuga Yamato, who played Tuxedo Mask. As I don’t speak Japanese I can’t really elaborate on the actual content.

Next is a stage presentation for a Birthday Night special event, likely held on Usagi’s birthday of June 30th. This is only a few minutes long.

We then have over half and hour of video showing the recording of the audio commentary. Here we get a picture in picture view of the musical with the five cast members giving their thoughts. Not terribly useful to those who would also watch the entire commentary.

Finally we have an alternate take of the Amazon Trio talking with the audience during the intermission. This one is from the November 6th show. Since these involve audience interactions the intermission for each show would be unique.

A note about the various menus on both discs! They use a hilariously cheesy Comic Sans font. Comic Sans is the kiddy or comic style font that you’ll see in a lot of older web sites or perhaps some that are just a little cheap. Over the years it’s gotten a reputation for bad design. In this DVD’s defense however let’s remember that in Japan Comic Sans wouldn’t have the same reputation. I would simply ask our native English speaking fans, what kind of font is any Japanese text written in? Would you be able to tell a fancy and trendy Japanese font vs. a cheap and dated one? Not likely.

Also included is a 20 page booklet which is similar to what you might see in the program sold with the musical. This includes bios for the characters and the lyrics for all songs.

That’s about it. Is this worth it? Costing the equivalent of over $50 US and having abysmal video quality and some fairly lack luster extras this release isn’t terribly appealing to fans who might not actually speak the language. It really would have been nice if this physical release was at least of equivalent or comparable in quality to the relatively cheap digital copies which are available for a fraction of the price in Japan. All said I can’t really recommend buying this, but hard core fans might want to anyway!

Keep reading for more images of the box art, menus and photos of all pages of the included special booklet.

Continue reading →

Sailor Moon S Part 2 will be out on DVD and Blu-Ray in June

Posted on April 6, 2017 by Adam

We finally have confirmation from Viz Media that the second part of Sailor Moon S will be released on DVD and Blu-Ray in June. We previously had only learned, based on an insert included in the Sailor Moon S Part 1 release, that it would be out in Spring 2017. The first day of Summer is June 21st so if the release is out before the 21st it will technically count as Spring! All of this was announced by Viz Media at Anime Boston’s Moon Panel which was held this past Saturday April 1st.

Twitter user Absolute Zero Now was live tweeting the panel and snapped a couple of relevant photos. The first is of a slide stating the release would be out in May but the second stating it would be out in June. This was confirmed by Viz Media as being the updated and correct date at the panel and on Twitter.

This release will include episode 109 to 127, concluding the Sailor Moon S season with the battle with Mistress 9 and the appearance of Sailor Saturn. The set will include the new English dub by Viz which has not previously been heard. Bonus features will include interviews with the cast, production art and more. This release still does not have a listing on the stores of online retailers such as Amazon and Right Stuf. These should be up in the coming months as a specific release date is determined.

Renew your Official Sailor Moon Fan Club membership to receive a Moon Stick Pendant and Stationary Set

Posted on March 29, 2017 by Adam

The second year of the Official Sailor Moon Fan Club will be from July 1st 2017 to June 30th 2018. Pre-orders for new memberships and renewals are now available for fans in Japan and around the world. New and returning fans will get a new membership card and an exclusive Moon Stick pendant. Fans who are renewing are also going to receive a stationary set. Overseas fans will also have access to the Fan Club App and site though it will remains mostly in Japanese. Elaborate instructions for signing up to the Japanese fan club site are included. Though it’s stated that you will get such an e-mail in the future, I was able to use the link mentioned in the document to sign up for the fan club with the e-mail address I used for my Tokyo Otaku Mode account. I tried to use a dummy account I made for my cat to do the same but I got an error stating that the e-mail address was not found, so a membership does appear to be necessary to get access to this site. Current English language versions of the newsletter were available once I logged on to the site. These are the same as the Japanese newsletters, which are also available, but they are posted months after the fact. A comparison of the most recent newsletter appears below. The full newsletter is just a large jpeg file.

Fan Club membership for the year is $58 US. I can’t say I was terribly excited by any of the Fan Club exclusives I had the option to get last year. My lip gloss is sitting in its original box. I’ve still pre-ordered my second year membership from the Tokyo Otaku Mode site. It’s a bit of a gamble on my part in the event that some of this year’s exclusives are of interest to me. The exclusives aren’t expected to ship until October so there will be quite a wait for that.

Do you plan on signing up for the Fan Club or renewing your existing membership?

Mirai is Sailor Saturn in the next Sailor Moon musical

Posted on March 26, 2017 by Adam

The actress playing Sailor Saturn, Hotaru Tomoe, in the fall 2017 Sailor Moon Musical has been announced! The recent article on the Sailor Moon official site mentioned that Sailor Saturn would be played by the actress Mirai, a 14 year old actress who played Chiriko in the 2015 Fushigi Yuugi stage play.

Sailor Moon/Pokémon Crossover CONFIRMED!!!

Although I reported on this same article a couple of days ago when I mentioned that Karin Takahashi would not be returning as Sailor Saturn in the next musical, I mistakenly did not understand that Mirai was being announced as the new actress because her name means “future” in Japanese. I don’t speak or read Japanese! When I plugged the article into Google Translate I was under the impression that the article was saying that Sailor Saturn’s actress would be revealed in the future. A bit of a “Who’s on first” sort of misunderstanding on my part. Apologies for my somewhat sloppy reporting! Hopefully the next cast members revealed aren’t single word names which mean “To be determined” and “Actress”.

Source: @stage_fushigi, @mirai0913_as, Mirai Official Blog, Mirai Profile

Kotono Mitsuishi, the voice of Sailor Moon, narrates the Japanese Wonder Woman trailer

Posted on March 25, 2017 by Adam

Do you like female super heroes? The Japanese Wonder Woman trailer is out and it is narrated by none other than Kotono Mitsuishi, the Japanese voice of Sailor Moon in the original Sailor Moon anime and Sailor Moon Crystal! Watch the trailer below!

For years I’ve tried to argue that Sailor Moon is the most iconic female comic super hero! This was certainly true in the 90s when Sailor Moon was a worldwide phenomenon. Wonder Woman is the other obvious answer people give when asked who the most popular female comic book character is. I have no interest in detracting from her importance as a character but having been featured in one TV series 40 years ago and only in 2017 having her first theatrical film she has some catching up to do! Still when most people in the English speaking world hear “comic book super hero” they think of Superman, Batman, capes and tights, which brings Wonder Woman to mind.

The Wonder Woman film will be released on June 2nd in North America and August 25th in Japan. It stars Gal Gadot who will be reprising her role from the Batman v Superman movie from last year. I think she did a great job in the last film and am looking forward to seeing this film. It’s always great to see a film like this promoting women as being strong, independent and kicking ass.

If you’re a fan of Sailor Moon and Wonder Woman crossovers check out TeePublic to get a cool looking shirt for $14. It will also be on sale at Ript Apparel on Sunday March 26th for just $13. Don’t miss it!

Karin Takahashi, Sailor Saturn, will not be returning for the next Sailor Moon musical

Posted on March 24, 2017 by Adam

An announcement has been made on the official Sailor Moon site stating that most of the cast of the Sailor Moon Amour Eternal musical will be reprising their roles for the next musical which will be taking place in the fall. The exception to this is Karin Takahashi, who was also Sailor Saturn and Hotaru in the Un Nouveau Voyage musical, who will not be returning for the next musical. I thought she did a great job in the last couple of musicals and am sorry to see her go. (Update: The new actress who will be portraying Sailor Saturn is Mirai. I was originally confused by the statement thinking it meant she will be announced in the future, as Mirai is the Japanese word for “future”.)

Returning cast members include Hotaru Nomoto as Sailor Moon, Yume Takeuchi as Sailor Mercury, Karen Kobayashi as Sailor Mars, Kaede as Sailor Jupiter, Rimo Hasegawa as Sailor Venus, Shuu Shiotsuki as Sailor Uranus, Sayaka Fujioka as Sailor Neptune, Mikako Ishii as Sailor Pluto, Airi Kanda as Sailor Chibi Moon, and Yuga Yamato as Tuxedo Mask. We don’t have any specifics about the musical at this time but it seems only logical that this 5th in the recent set of musicals would cover the Stars story arc of the Sailor Moon manga. With the musical taking later this year there is always the chance of other cast changes between now and then, but for the moment only one change in casting is anticipated.

Check out the box art for Sailor Moon R The Movie on home video

Posted on March 16, 2017 by Adam

We previously announced that Sailor Moon R The Movie, recently released to theatres in North America, was coming out on home video April 18th. We now have a look at the box art for this release! The above image showing the cover art and the image showing a bit of the spine are on Right Stuf’s listing for the DVD. This is new art likely made by artist Marco Albiero who did cover art for many international releases of the original Sailor Moon anime. (Update: Marco Albiero has confirmed that he did not in fact make this cover) It includes Tuxedo Mask, Fiore and the Sailor Guardians. Some fans have some not terribly wonderful things to say about this art. What do you think?

The Blu-Ray version is also posted on Right Stuf’s web site but the cover art isn’t included. It seems likely that the image used will be similar.

Some fans have said that they’d prefer to have seen the original Japanese poster for Sailor Moon R The Movie used. An image of that poster is included above. This poster has the distinction of being included in the liner notes of a U2 CD.

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