Mercedes Varnado, who goes by the stage name Sasha Banks as a WWE Wrestler, wore a Sailor Moon inspired outfit on Saturday’s Royal Rumble event. If there was any doubt about the inspiration she later tweeted a photo of herself in the costume with the caption “Sailor Boss”. Watch her entrance in this embedded Tweet from the WWE account.

30-Woman #RoyalRumble Match entrants thread ⤵️

1️⃣ Can #TheBoss go the distance?? @SashaBanksWWE pic.twitter.com/BvI4FoZG40

— WWE (@WWE) January 30, 2022

Born in 1992 she shares a birth year with the original Sailor Moon anime and recalls watching the series at a very young age when it played on TV around 6am. Though I watched Sailor Moon in Canada where it played throughout the day at popular times I also watched the series around 5:30am and 6am on UPN 38 and WPIX back in the mid 90s. She spoke about this in an interview with comicbook.com.

“My first thing wasn’t Star Wars, it was Sailor Moon. When I was maybe like five years old, I started watching Sailor Moon, and I had no idea of what time was or anything. It always came on at 6:00 AM in the morning, but I would stay up all night just because I would know it would come out sometimes dark, sometimes in the morning, I had no idea. But I had to stay up and watch my Sailor Moon because I thought I was just like Serena,” Varnado said. “I was a meatball head, I was clumsy, I was always late for school, and she really taught me how to believe in myself, my own powers, and the powers of the universe and the moon. So still to this day, she is my favorite and I can’t believe how much she’s played a role in my life.”

Are you a fan of Wrestling and Sasha Banks? What do you think of her costume?

Singer Dua Lipa’s latest music video for the song Levitating is a joy to watch for fans of classic anime. The art style seems inspired by 80s and 90s anime while the content of the video itself seems to be influenced by Sailor Moon. The Moon is featured prominently. A locket with a crescent Moon on it is very similar to Sailor Moon’s first transformation broach. The crescent Moon frequently appears in the background. There’s even a short magical girl style transformation! You can watch the video on YouTube embedded below.

Though the Sailor Moon references are surely intentional the art style of the video itself doesn’t match Sailor Moon much. I would say that it more closely resembles 80s anime styles. Many have compared it to Creamy Mami, an anime series from 1983 which I am not personally familiar with. The colours and designs do appear to be similar. A friend of mine pointed out the similarity to Dirty Pair, from 1985, which I think could also be an inspiration. Creamy Mami can be streamed for free on Retrocrush.

The video’s animation was done by NOSTALOOK who specialize in making retro style anime. A full length music video done in traditional style animation certainly is impressive! I’m certainly looking forward to seeing what else this group makes. You can follow the group on Twitter, Instagram or YouTube.

Do you like the video? What elements do you think are inspired by Sailor Moon and which might be from other series?

Source: Crunchyroll

This weekend are the FIG Rhythmic Gymnastics World Cup series qualifiers in Tashkent, Uzbekistan. The Uzbekistan team performed a Sailor Moon inspired 5 Balls performance complete with Sailor Moon outfits and Smusic! The team placed first, gold, in this qualifying performance. You can watch a video of the performance below.

Evidently the outfits the team is wearing are meant to resemble Sailor Moon herself. While five different costumes to match the various Sailor Guardians would have been nice, there are probably good reasons, perhaps rules of the competition, which meant that having matching uniforms was preferable. While the music for the performance starts out as generic music unrelated to Sailor Moon it quickly switches to something fans will instantly recognize. We have an instrumental version of the Sailor Moon opening theme Moonlight Legend followed by an edited version of the actual theme song by DALI, without the vocals. This then cuts to some background music used in Sailor Moon S when Sailor Uranus and Neptune transform before finally going back to Moonlight Legend to end the performance.

While I am not an expert in Rhythmic Gymnastics I believe this win qualifies the team for a spot at this summer’s Olympics in Tokyo, if they had not qualified already. These qualifiers, like the Olympics themselves, were originally scheduled for 2020 but delayed to this year due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. Could we be seeing a similar performance again at the Olympics?

Source: Moon Sisters on Facebook

Canadian hip-hop artist KILLY”s latest music video is for a song called Sailor Moon! You can check out the video below.

Check out this link to buy or listen to the song on various streaming services and stores. So what does this song have to do with Sailor Moon? Well it seems that KILLY’s “bad bitch” leans on him like Sailor Moon! The song mentions SRT though I don’t imagine this a reference to .srt files, the SubRip Subtitle files sometimes used for downloaded fan subbed versions of anime such as Sailor Moon! The song isn’t exactly full of references to the show, but it is in fact called Sailor Moon and KILLY does appear to have a fondness for the character!

When asked about his interest in Sailor Moon in an interview with Complex KILLY he said that he wasn’t a huge fan but that he used to watch it when it came on TV while he was a kid. KILLY was born in Toronto and moved to Victoria, BC when he was 8. As a fellow Canadian I know that Sailor Moon played quite a bit on TV here especially back when it was first airing starting in 1995 which means most Canadians who were young at the time are at least somewhat familiar with the show, but KILLY was born in 1997 so he may have seen the show when Sailor Moon S or SuperS aired in Canada years later.

Follow KILLY on Twitter or Instagram for more.

What do you think of the song?

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.

Here’s a music video by Instagram influencer Yuranis León which is called Sailor Moon and has the words Sailor Moon in the lyrics and even has the words Sailor Moon appearing on the screen though I’m not sure what, if anything, it has to do with Sailor Moon.

I don’t think I have a very good explanation for what this is or even who Yuranis León is. As far as I can tell she is an Instagram influencer which I think means she has a popular Instagram account but doesn’t have any sort of “normal” job for which people follow that account other than is just being a very popular account. This is a thing which happens now and I am an old person who does not understand the world I live in. Yuranis León has recently released a music video “Sailor Moon” which is very popular. It has nearly 10 million views on YouTube which is more than many recording artists can hope to get. I suppose this makes her a singer, though her popularity predates this activity as far as I can tell.

So what does this have to do with Sailor Moon? I’m not sure. It seems as if this was a video made by someone who had heard the name Sailor Moon but had no real idea what it was. Everything is pink though Sailor Moon isn’t really about pink things. In the back of the video where Yuranis León spends some time dancing is something which looks like a toy box but this seems to fit more with Barbie than Sailor Moon. If this song had been about Barbie I think it would have worked about as well or maybe a bit better. She has a cat and Sailor Moon also has a cat though this cat doesn’t look much like Luna. The cat does resemble the fluffy white cat Luna from the Toon Makers’ Sailor Moon series though! Could that be a reference? Almost certainly not. Her name is Yuranis which is sort of like Uranus? Not really.

Update:

What do I even tag this in? It doesn’t reference any particular incarnation of Sailor Moon. I’ve chosen “Reference” but I’m not sure there’s even anything that would pass for a Sailor Moon reference in here. It’s just using the words “Sailor Moon”. I can’t really tag it in “Fan Community” because I haven’t seen any evidence that Yuranis León is a fan. I guess she must be to use the name Sailor Moon in this song. Whatever. I watched it. Now you have to watch it. If you have Sailor Moon fan friends who you hate you can send this to them so that they have to watch it too.

Thanks to @JulioDHH on Twitter for spotting this one. He asked fans to flag it and instead I’m sharing this with a bunch of fans which probably isn’t what he would want but here we are. Forgive me Julio!

This past weekend Wonder Woman was released in North America and in many cities worldwide. This film has been a tremendous success. Over the past few days I’ve seen the follow bit of trivia more than once on Social Media:

For the Japanese dub of the film, Wonder Woman is voiced by Kotono Mitsuishi, best known as the voice of Sailor Moon. Like Wonder Woman, Sailor Moon is a princess heroine of divine heritage and based on Greco-Roman mythology.

The source of this information is the IMDB trivia page for the Wonder Woman film. I’m pretty sure this isn’t true! Kotono Mitsuishi did the voice over narration for the Japanese Wonder Woman trailer, which many news sources including this site reported on back in March. It seems likely that this information was mistakenly used as evidence that Kotono Mitsuishi, the voice of Usagi in Sailor Moon and Sailor Moon Crystal, would actually voice Wonder Woman in the Japanese language dubbed version of the film. The narration in the trailer is not the actual voice of Wonder Woman who’s English voice can be heard in the trailer. I can find no indication by doing searches of various sites in English and Japanese that Kotono Mitsuishi will be the voice of Wonder Woman.

It seems quite unlikely that Kotono Mitsuishi would voice this role as she was not the one to do the Japanese dubbed voice for Wonder Woman in Batman V Superman. We can see from the Japanese Wikipedia page for Batman V Superman that this was actually done by voice actress Yūko Kaida who may be known to readers for some of her anime roles. It seems likely that she will be the one to voice the character for the Wonder Woman film. Actors will often dub the voices of the same actors in multiple films especially when there are part of a series where the actors appears in more than one film.

While it is certainly possible that independent of her doing the narration for the trailer Kotono Mitsuishi will also be included with the Japanese dubbed version of the film which isn’t set to be released until the 25th of August we don’t actually have any good evidence beyond this bit of IMDB trivia which indicates that this might be the case. Keep reading for more exploration of the specific research which led me to this conclusion.

Simply put when you do an Internet search either in plain English “Wonder Woman Kotono Mitsuishi” or the equivalent in Japanese “ワンダーウーマン 三石 琴乃” you will find mostly information about her having done to trailer narration and those various articles mostly date back to late March when that trailer was released and made headlines. No cast information about the Japanese dub of the film is available on the movie’s IMDB page, the English Wikipedia page or the Japanese Wikipedia page. Why not simply ask someone in Japan what Wonder Woman sounds like in that version of the film? The film won’t even be out in theatres until August 25th. At this time it will likely be available to view with subtitles or dubbed in Japanese, as is the case with most Hollywood movies.

What can we find that appears to related to the actual dub of the film and not to the narration? The first thing I found was a post on the Anime Vice message boards from March 24th. It states that Kotono Mitsuishi will voice Wonder Woman in the upcoming Japanese dub of the film. The source linked? The trailer which she narrated in which she absolutely does not voice Wonder Woman. This one is easily debunked.

I was able to find two other sites which made a similar claim. The Barbie Xanax blog has a post in Italian about “3 Curiosities about Wonder Woman”. The blog post appears be to be from May but doesn’t include an actual date on the post. What kind of anarchist doesn’t put a date on a blog post? The 2nd trivia point is about “Wonder Woman as Sailor Moon” which Google Translates to:

2-Wonder Woman as Sailor Moon

Diana is a warrior princess just like Xena or Sailor Moon. In the Japanese version Kotono Mitsuishi will dub the protagonist, the same who dubbed the paladin dressing up the sailor. Wonder Woman as well as Sailor Moon are both warrior princesses with a divine past behind them and a history derived from Greek-Roman mythology.

This is very similar in content to the piece of trivia mentioned on IMDB. This information is more recent than March, which is when most people were talking about the narration of the trailer. Perhaps this person go their trivia from IMDB or simply misinterpreted the news information themselves.

Finally we have an Indonesian web site Gadis which reports the same information. This translates roughly to.

Dubbed by ‘Sailor Moon’
For release in Japan, Wonder Woman will be dubbed in Japanese. The funny thing is, Wonder Woman’s voice is filled by Kotono Mitsuishi, who is famous for being the voice of Sailor Moon. Hihihi …

This dates to May 30th and could itself be inspired by the IMDB trivia or similarly be a misunderstanding of the trailer narration.

It is indeed possible that this Italian blog poster and Indonesian news site have some information that I’m unable to uncover elsewhere, but I would say this is unlikely. Neither site includes a source for their information.

All of this considered, we must weigh the plausibility of this claim. Could Kotono Mitsuishi be providing the Japanese language voice for a Hollywood movie? Indeed this claim in itself isn’t that unbelievable. She has dubbed over the voices of characters from North American English TV shows and movies throughout her career. Her English and Japanese Wikipedia pages have lengthy lists of her dubbing work which includes the Japanese dubbed voices of Sarah Michelle Gellar, Jennifer Garner, Heather Graham, Kate Beckinsale, Natalie Portman and Amy Jo Johnson.

As I mentioned earlier Yūko Kaida voiced Wonder Woman in the Japanese version of Batman V Superman and, lacking any evidence to the contrary, it would be fair to assume that she will be dubbing over Gal Gadot’s voice for the Wonder Woman film as well.

The claim is not completely implausible but given the lack of evidence and another actress voicing the role in a previous film the existence of the trailer narration seems like a plausible reason for which this unsupported myth came to be believed and was ultimately added to the IMDB trivia page which does not go through much of a vetting process.

This bit of trivia is still interesting when the truth is considered. Kotono Mitsuishi did narrate the trailer and we can draw many parallels between these iconic female heroes of the East and the West. It simply doesn’t appear to be the case that these similarities go as far as them sharing the same voice.

If you’ve enjoy sleuthing which mostly involves looking things up on Wikipedia then you should check out The Reality Check podcast in which every week my cohosts and myself look into various claims, mostly those in the in the realm of science. I got a break from preparing a segment this week but with a burning desire to debunk something I put this post together.

Update: I ended up using this post as the basis for a segment recorded for an upcoming episode of The Reality Check podcast. Look forward to that.

A number of similarities occur between a recent episode of Doctor Who and a story arc in Sailor Moon Sailor Stars! More specifically both stories revolve around obsessions with gazing at mirrors which actually house some sort of monster by people with a yellow reflecting star in one eye. The episode of Doctor Who in question is the season premiere of season 10, The Pilot, which aired this past weekend. In this episode a character, Heather, has a defect in her eye which causes it to have a yellow shine in it. The Doctor’s new companion Bill refers to it as a star and the episode’s original title was “A Star In Her Eye”. In the episode Heather is obsessed with staring at her reflection in a puddle as she gazes at it and invites Bill to do so too. Ultimately the reflection is actually an alien which sucks her into the mirror and then attacks others through reflections. Sound familiar?

I was struck by a surprising similarity to a few episodes of Sailor Moon Sailor Stars. In the first 6 episodes of this season, with the similarities more specifically being during episodes 167 through 169, there was a brief story arc where Mamoru got a shooting star in his eye which was actually a piece of mirror from space. This caused him, and a number of other people, to become obsessed with mirrors gazing at them day and night. The bit of star in their eye caused a yellow shimmer which looks just like that seen in Heather’s eye in Doctor Who. Ultimately Nehelenia was in the mirror, as the shooting star was actually a bit of the Mirror of Dreams which had been confining her and the reflection pulls Mamoru in just like we’d seen in Doctor Who.

Coincidence? I like to joke about these similarities being intended but I’m not convinced anything more than coincidence is really necessary at this point given the countless hours of TV produced every week. It is possible that Steven Moffat, who wrote the episode, had seen the episodes of Sailor Moon in which this took place and used it more for a visual inspiration. The specific story details beyond the superficial don’t really add up.

Looking for more of a Doctor Who/Sailor Moon link? Sailor Iron Mouse, also appearing in Sailor Stars, travels around in a phone booth. Doctor Who travels around in a TARDIS which is disguised as a Police Box which is a specialized kind of phone booth/panic room that a person can use to call the police. This is similar to Bill and Ted’s phone booth which was itself likely inspired by Doctor Who. Whether Sailor Iron Mouse’s phone booth was directly inspired by the TARDIS or through the intermediate of Bill and Ted’s phone booth isn’t something I can definitively determine. Regardless it’s nice to see Doctor Who finally has a Bill in their phone booth. Let’s get a Ted in there too!

A few weeks ago I was rewatching the 1999 hit film “The Matrix” and I came to a realization that I somehow hadn’t before. The Matrix and the 1995 animated film Sailor Moon SuperS The Movie have basically the same story. Both movies’ villains have a massive farm of humans stuck in a simulated reality for the purpose of enslaving them and draining their energy for their own purpose.

In The Matrix a bunch of robots which have captured all of the people of Earth to have them living in pods which plug them into a complex computer simulation, called the Matrix, which exists just to keep people occupied while they are used as a power source to keep the machines running. I’m still not sure why they didn’t populate it with cows.

In Sailor Moon SuperS The Movie the villain Badiane kidnaps the world’s children by the boatload and puts them into these pod like Dream Coffins where they sleep forever in a simulated reality, their dreams. Marzipan Castle appears to be a futuristic spaceship with metallic walls which look like large computer circuit boards. Badiane uses the children as a power source for her Black Dream Hole by extracting their Sugar Energy, which grows inside of children’s dreams, from them. Her plan is to envelop the Earth into her Black Dream Hole, placing all of the humans into Dream Coffins. In the case of this movie it seems likely that cow and calf dreams do not generate Sugar Energy.

Elements of choice and happiness come into both films. In The Matrix we learn from Agent Smith that an original incarnation of The Matrix simulation was a paradise but that this didn’t work. Humans rejected this reality and kept trying to wake up from it.

In Sailor Moon SuperS The Movie, when Sailor Moon enters the Black Dream Hole she goes into a seemingly perfect dream world where she can be alone with Mamoru. When things appear too good to be true she asks him if she is more important to him than Chibiusa. When he chooses her she knows that it’s an illusion and, like Neo being freed from the Matrix, breaks out of her Dream Coffin. Sailor Moon does the equivalent of choosing the Red Pill, a symbol of the truth, to escape her simulated reality, rather than remaining blissfully ignorant like Cypher eating his delicious simulated steak. For her like those early crops of humans a paradise may seem like what she wants but she just doesn’t believe it.

The similarities seems obvious with a little thought, but is it just a coincidence or is there some inspiration at play? The Matrix, released in 1999, was a tremendous influence on decades of movies which followed it to the point where what was groundbreaking at the time seems standard upon repeated viewings since this is what so many films look like these days. But Sailor Moon SuperS The Movie was released in 1995, a whole 4 years before the Matrix. The Wachowskis are huge anime fans with Ghost in the Shell, released in 1996, being their most obvious influence. There was certainly enough time for them to have seen and drawn inspiration from the film. Though the English dubbed version of the film wasn’t out until years later many anime fans had seen the film not long after its Japanese release.

While I’m sure one could splice together clips of the film and present a compelling conspiracy theory for why The Wachowskis absolutely ripped off this movie, I don’t think this one is guaranteed. It’s possible and the timeline would work out, but given we don’t have any specific indication that either Lana or Lilly Wachowski were Sailor Moon fans I’m willing to accept that this may be a coincidence. Stories of simulated realities had existed before in science fiction stories and I don’t pretend that everything that was similar to something which came before it was necessarily an homage or rip off.

The Matrix and Sailor Moon SuperS The Nine Sailor Soldiers Gather! The Miracle of The Black Dream Hole are both great films with a great science concept at their core. Do you think the similarities are more than chance?

Agents Banane, Poupelin and Orangeat?