Do you think the animators sat around with fans pointing at models because everyone’s hair is just flowing in the wind in the latest trailer for Sailor Moon Eternal Part 1! You can watch it on YouTube embedded below.
We get a few new clips here which show us a lot of Mamoru who’s got this weird black rose in his chest. The more we seem to see of this animation the better it looks. What do you think?
Sailor Moon Eternal Part 1 will be released in theatres in Japan on January 8th while Part 2 will be released shortly afterwards on February 11th. Though we don’t have any specifics about a release outside of Japan it seems almost certain that the film will be streaming on Netflix. A specific date for a Netflix release and details about which countries or languages that may include are still unknown.
The original Sailor Moon anime was added to Bell Media’s Canadian streaming platform Crave on September 18th. It was featured in a number of categories and “Sailor Moon” trended on social media platforms the next day. Anecdotally it seemed like a lot of people were watching it, but how did the numbers add up? According to Bell’s streaming overview for the week of September 24th to the 30th the show faired quite well in its first week! It was the 4th most watched program on Crave for the week of September 16th to the 22nd, as can be seen from this excerpt from that press release:
Crave Audience Metrics
Crave continues to have Canadians covered, delivering the best movies, TV series, and original hits all in one place. Ridley Scott’s HBO Max Original Series RAISED BY WOLVES holds the top spot for the second week in a row, followed by the sizzling reality series LOVE ISLAND at #2. STAR TREK: LOWER DECKS takes #3 for the third consecutive week, and the beloved anime series, SAILOR MOON debuts at #4. Here are the Top 10 most-watched programs on Crave for the week of September 16 – 22:
1. RAISED BY WOLVES
2. LOVE ISLAND
3. STAR TREK: LOWER DECKS
4. SAILOR MOON
5. LOVECRAFT COUNTRY
6. THE VOW
7. SPIES IN DISGUISE
8. SOUTH PARK
9. THE THIRD DAY
10. THE BIG BANG THEORY
This is pretty impressive! It was beat out only by HBO’s Raised By Wolves, Love Island, which as far as I can tell does not take place on an island and is almost certainly devoid of actual love, and Star Trek: Lower Decks which streams on CBS All Access in the US. That’s great, you might be thinking, but that was a couple of weeks ago! Well it looks like the series was not in the top 10 most watched shows for the weeks of September 24th to the 30th or October 1st to the 7th.
Canadian Sailor Moon fans can now watch the original Sailor Moon anime on Crave. The streaming service added all five seasons of Sailor Moon to it’s catalogue on Friday September 18th. When we originally posted this news in August it wasn’t clear whether or not the series would be streamed in English but now we know that it is but also that the original Japanese version is not available on the service. This seems like a very odd choice but luckily Canadian Sailor Moon fans can still watch the Japanese version of the original anime for free on Tubi. It’s worth noting that the video quality of the series on Crave looks quite good. It seems that Viz has used some better masters for this than were used for their original Blu-Ray releases. I haven’t been able to do specific comparisons but some fans are suggesting that these are the same versions used for the Japanese Blu-Rays.
The impact of Sailor Moon being added to the service was immediately apparent. Though I didn’t see the show in many categories when I checked the service slightly after midnight on September 18th by mid day Friday it was in many categories on the site including Just Added TV Shows, Buzzworthy and Kid Stuff. Sailor Moon was trending on Twitter in Canada on Friday and, something which is always a sign that news about the show has gone mainstream, I had two non Moonie friends text me to tell me that they saw that the show was on Crave. What’s the best way to show appreciation for the kind gesture while politely telling someone you knew about a thing months ago?
It’s hard to explain what a cultural phenomenon Sailor Moon was here in Canada. While the show was of course popular in the United States and throughout the world in the 90s the show really was a mainstream staple which everyone knew about in Canada in the 1990s. It wasn’t just a hit amongst anime fans but something every kid knew about. It played multiple times a day on Canadian channels YTV and Global. Now that it’s gotten prominent attention on a popular streaming platform a lot of people who may not have followed the show much over the past 20 years are likely having a chance to see it again. Though this won’t include the DiC dub for which most people are nostalgic for, hopefully many of them will appreciate this new and more faithful dub for what it has to offer. I wonder how many people this weekend will be watching the show and seeing those early episodes which weren’t originally dubbed such as episode 2, Punishment Awaits: The House Of Fortune Is The Monster Mansion, episode 5, Scent of a Monster: Chanela Will Steal Your Love, and episode 6, Protect the Melody of Love: Usagi Plays Cupid.
For a lot of us including readers of this site Sailor Moon never really went away but for casual fans in Canada I think this is a big deal and I hope this brings the series back to the attention of some older fans and makes some new ones.
Have you been watching the show on Crave?
If you’d prefer to own a physical copy of the show you can support the site by purchasing the home video releases using the links below.
We’ve finally gotten our first look at Zirconia from the upcoming film Sailor Moon Eternal Part 1 and it comes with a challenge for fans to identify her voice actor. I’ll admit that my ear for distinguishing Japanese voices isn’t good enough to be able to make a decent guess at who this is. Have a listen to the clip on Twitter or embedded below to hear for yourself.
— 劇場版「美少女戦士セーラームーンEternal」《前編》2021.1.8公開 (@sailor_movie) September 8, 2020
Do you recognize the voice? If so, give us your guess as to what that might be in the comments below or on social media. Fans are asked to post their guess to Twitter using the hashtags #劇場版セーラームーン and #ジルコニアの声優は誰だ which translate roughly to “Sailor Moon The Movie” and “Who is the Zirconia voice actor?”. You’ll probably want to Tweet in Japanese to have a chance of having it be seen! Three correct guesses will be given a Sailor Moon Eternal movie poster.
A quick look at those hashtags suggests that many Japanese fans are guessing that this is the voice of Naomi Watanabe, a popular Japanese comedian and actress. Her distinctive laugh seems to be what’s making people guess this. We will learn if this is correct on Friday!
The Sailor Moon Eternal Part 1 will be released on January 8th 2021 with Part 2 coming out a month later on February 11th. With the reveal of Zirconia it looks like the main characters from the first film have all been seen.
A listing of next month’s additions to Crave includes the news that the original Sailor Moon anime will be coming to the streaming service on September 18th. The announcement mentions that all five seasons of the series will be streaming and although it is possible this will include Viz’s new English dub of the series this has not been explicitly mentioned. This would be the first time the Viz English dub would be available to stream legally in Canada, though the series has been available in the country on home video for some time.
Americans won’t be able to watch the series on Crave, though they can still watch the series for free on Viz’s web site. They can also stream the series on Hulu for a fee. That service also has Sailor Moon Crystal. Canadian fans can already stream the original Sailor Moon anime for free on TubiTV, though that service only includes the Japanese version with English subtitles. TubiTV also streams Sailor Moon Crystal. Canadian and American fans can also watch Sailor Moon Crystal and Sailor Moon R The Movie on Crunchyroll. Sailor Moon R The Movie can also be streamed on Funimation.
Crave is a Canadian streaming service which is owned by Bell Media, a large media company which owns a number of TV stations in Canada. Bell Canada is also a major provider of TV, Internet and telephone services in Canada. This means that Crave streams some original Canadian properties but as a number of American and other non Canadian series and movies are broadcast on Canadian stations owned by Bell Media, a lot of these end up on the service as well. This includes things like the various Star Trek series. I have a paid subscription for the service which I also use to watch HBO series for an extra cost. It adds up but it’s cheaper than a cable subscription. The movie selection on Crave isn’t as good as some other providers but they have a good selection os TV series. Do any of you have a Crave subscription? Will you be watching Sailor Moon on it?
Prefer physical media to streaming? Why not support the site by buying some of the sets using the Amazon links below?
Great news for fans who use the Funimation streaming service to watch anime. Sailor Moon R The Movie will be added to that service on August 7th. The dubbed and subbed versions of the film will be available to watch for free with ads or, for those who have signed up for the pay version of the service, without ads.
The movie is currently available to stream on Crunchyroll which also has the option of watching the film for free with ads or without ads with a paid subscription. There’s no indication at this time as to if or when Sailor Moon S The Movie or Sailor Moon SuperS The Movie (The Nine Sailor Guardians Unite! Miracle of the Black Dream Hole) would be added to either service. The original Sailor Moon anime series is not on either of these services but American fans can stream it for free on Viz’s web site or with a paid Hulu subscription while Canadians can stream it on TubiTV.
Sailor Moon R The Movie is my favourite of the Sailor Moon films and it’s always a joy to watch. If you haven’t seen it in a while this would be a nice time to watch it!
This afternoon, July 25th 2020, at 3pm Pacific Time (6pm Eastern Time) fans will be able to watch a virtual Sailor Moon Panel, Sailor Moon: The Power of Female Friendship, live on YouTube. This is part of San-Diego Comic-Con’s virtual convention which is being held this year instead of a live convention which would be impossible due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.
The panel will be hosted by comic book historian Jessica Tseang and includes voice actors from Viz’s new dub of Sailor Moon including Michelle Ruff, the voice of Luna, Kate Higgins, the voice of Sailor Mercury, Amanda Celine Miller, the voice of Sailor Jupiter, as well as comic book writer Sam Maggs, and comedian Chris Bryant.
To view the panel head over the Comic-Con site or watch it directly on YouTube (the video will likely be unavailable until shortly before the event starts). It seems like other panels remain available after the original live broadcast so fans who aren’t able to watch the panel live or are seeing this post too late should still be okay to watch it.
Will you be checking out the panel? For those reading this in the future, did you watch the panel and what did you think?
Back in the 1990s Sailor Moon was dubbed into English by DiC and later seasons were dubbed by Cloverway. Recently the series was dubbed into English again by Viz Media. As it turns out there was actually a total other English dub made by Speedy Video! Though information about this has been around in the fan community for a while, I had never heard about it until just a few days ago when I saw @CCTakato posting about it on Twitter. The dub was done by a company named Speedy Video which is based in Malaysia. It does not appear that any of the actors are actually native English speakers but rather that they speak English as second language. This means that the quality of the dub is, in a word, terrible. Speedy Video is well known in the Dragonball Z fan community for the terrible dub of that show which they made..
Though it’s hard to tell exactly what was dubbed by Speedy Video all of the episodes and clips I found were from Sailor Moon R which suggests this might be all they did. Some episodes which fans have tracked down were on VCDs. The VCD format was not as popular in North America as it was in parts of Asia. It is basically a video format somewhat like DVD only with a lower quality to accommodate smaller files which would fit on a CD rather than a DVD. Due to the data capacity of a VCD this means only two or three episodes will fit on a standard CD at a low resolution of 352×240 pixels using MPEG-1 video compression. DVDs by contrast are 720×480 using MPEG-2. A way to think of the standard is that VCD is to DVD as DVD is to Blu-Ray. Why do I know so much about VCDs? Many years before starting Sailor Moon News I did a few fan subbed episodes of Sailor Moon in VCD format. Though the format is popular with pirated movies there were a lot of legitimate VCDs releases over the years. I have one Cantonese Sailor Moon VCD and the entire Dragonflyz series which was never released on DVD.
Aside from a few clips which are available on YouTube episodes 47 and 48 of Sailor Moon R, the first two episodes featuring Ail and An, Yvan and Yvonne, can be found in their entirety. From these episodes we can get a decent idea of how faithful the dub is. Due to the poor sound quality and accents it was hard for me to make out everything so apologies if I’ve misheard anything. Some names are kept while others are changed. Most of the Sailor Guardians have their original names yet Minako is now named Ari Meriko which is very Japanese sounding for something that isn’t her original Japanese name. Ail and An, as mentioned, are Yvan and Yvonne Galaxy. They do not change those names from their civilian to alien identities so it’s a bit surprising that no one catches on that the new transfer students are the bad guys. Naru is called Suzie. Mamoru is think is called Mamoun Chiba but it’s hard to make out what’s being said. Luna and Artemis keep their names.
The Cardians are called Card Devils and monsters are generally referred to as Devils. Some of the common lines are a bit odd like “I will represent the Moon to punish you”. Moon Tiara Action is called Moon Crown Attack. On the episodes I saw episode 47 had no lyrics for the opening and ending theme but then episode 48 had the original Japanese songs for both. These were modified a bit though. The TV length versions were not used but instead the full length versions of the songs were used and awkwardly edited to fit in the short opening animation.
Check out this clip from Sailor Moon R episode 59, True Love Awakens: The Makai Tree’s Secret.
If you’re looking to check out the full episode 47 and 48 dubs I won’t link to them directly though you may be interested to check out the Lost Media Wiki’s page on the subject and if you do some good things may be found on that page. You can check out a number of clips from those episodes embedded below.
Worth mentioning is that one of the title screens on the VCD show that it was released by TVBI in 1997. Is that simply the date of the VCD release or the actual dub of the show? Since Sailor Moon R was released starting in 1993 in Japan and only a couple of years later in North America, this would be pretty late for a dub of the show to be made. For reference Sailor Moon Sailor Stars ended in February of 1997!
I suppose at the end of the day we should be thankful for the DiC dub we got with its various edits, skipped episodes, gender bends and course the terrible erasure of a number of LGBT characters because the alternative it seems could have been, in many ways, worse. The Speedy Video dub of Sailor Moon was not a North American product and not likely intended to be seen here. I can’t imagine a world where this would have been seen on TV in the US or Canada, and that’s probably for the best. If a more faithful dub is what you’re looking for, then the Viz dub is for you. I’ll always have nostalgia for that DiC dub which first introduced me to the series. My condolences for anyone who’s first exposure to the series was the Speedy Video dub. Would such a person ever be able to develop a lasting love of the show?
Above we see Usagi who was happy to have her memory erased but is upset to have it restored because those memories include having seen the Speedy Video dub of Sailor Moon!
Sailor Moon fans on Twitter may have noticed a trending hashtag over the past few days as #sailormoonredraw has been getting a ton of attention. When I spotted it earlier today it said that there were a whopping 530,000 Tweets about the topic! So what’s this all about? Most of the popular and recent results for the hash tag redraw this image:
The original screenshot from Sailor Moon S episode 125
It’s from Sailor Moon S episode 125. While this is the third last episode of Sailor Moon S it’s the last one in the main story as the other two which follow it are sort of terrible. This scene has Sailor Moon facing off against Mistress 9. It seems likely that this image was originally chosen for the intense expression on Sailor Moon’s face. Why it trended could be due to a number of factors but it being a close up of the main character’s face could be a contributing factor. I saw a lot of posts from English speaking people over the past couple of days and going back to three or four days it seems to have trended mostly in Japan.
Thought I can’t tell when exactly this particular image was first used for a redraw I can find instances of it going back to 2019, though it only seems to have started really going viral of the past few days. The trend of redrawing Sailor Moon, or other characters, has been going on for a while as there have been many other Sailor Moon images redrawn by a number of people over the years.
I’ve included a selection of redraws in this post. This is by no means meant to be an exhaustive list of the best as there are too many fine examples to count. I suggest everyone click on the hashtag #sailormoonredraw and check out some of those for yourself! New art has been rolling in all day and I don’t expect this to stop any time soon! Which ones are your favourites? Be sure to leave a comment or tag the Sailor Moon News Twitter account to let us know. Have any of you done a redraw yourselves? If so we’d love to hear about it!
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.
