To celebrate Valentine’s Day this past February 14th, fansubbing group Miss Dream have release a “Definitive Collection” of the 2003 live action Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon series. This is not an official release but rather a fan subbed version of the show. I will always encourage readers to support the official release when possible so please, do your best to buy all of the live action Sailor Moon official releases.

Well yeah I’m not seeing them either but I did happily buy the DVD releases that were out when the show first aired and continue to hope that we will be seeing an official release of this show at some point!

So what is this release and what makes it “Definitive”? Well it includes the entire show, upscaled by C’est la vie remasters, as well as a ton of extra features. The DVDs of the series has a lot of behind the scenes interviews which are all here as well as stage performances, commercials and other promotions. There’s just a ridiculous amount of content here for fans of the series.

How about that upscaling? It’s worth considering that the live action series, often call PGSM by fans, was shot in standard definition interlaced video. This means there is no high definition source. There isn’t even a progressive scan version of this that existed before it was interlaced. It’s shot in 480i, so there’s a field every 60th of a second, so that if you step through the show one frame at a time, there will be interlacing artifacts in every frame where there’s motion. Makes it tricky to get screenshots! There has been software used to deinterlace and upscale the standard definition DVD video source to high definition. I’m always saying that with upscales, like those we’ve seen for the Blu-ray releases of the 90s Sailor Moon anime, you can’t get something from nothing. This is mostly true, but with AI upscaling technology we are able to get a pretty nice picture from a lower resolution source. Miss Dream staff member ThatNerdDave who worked on this release has mentioned that this work was done using Handbrake, Hybrid, Topaz Video, and Adobe Premiere Pro. Is this a better way to watch the series than previous downloads you’ve seen? Probably. I’m always happy to have my DVDs, but this is a nice option too. Have a look at a comparison of the upscaled version and DVD version below.

Miss Dream HD Upscaled version

DVD version

It’s also just nice to see all of these extras. There is obviously just a lot of love that has gone into this release, which is why it’s being dubbed a “Love Letter to Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon”. I’ve long been a fan of this series. I enjoyed watching it in 2003-2004 and have enjoyed it whenever I revisit it over the years. If you’ve seen it before or if this is your first time watching, I hope you enjoy this fantastic series.

Source: Miss Dream

TeamFourStar, best known for their popular Dragon Ball Z Abridged web series, have released the first episode of Sailor Moon Abridged! This show is not simply a shortened version of Sailor Moon but rather a sort of condensed edited down parody of the show. This series uses original character names but voices often resemble those of the original 90s English dub of Sailor Moon. You can check out the first episode on the TeamFourStar YouTube channel. It is also embedded below.

This is not the first Sailor Moon Abridged series. From 2007 to 2012 there was a popular Sailor Moon Abridged series by Megami33 who returns as the voice of Luna in this new TeamFourStar version. The YouTube channel which originally hosted that version no longer has the episodes however you can get them on The Internet Archive. There have been other incarnations of Sailor Moon Abridged but this seems to be the most popular one.

Parody is fair use under US copyright law. These videos are clearly fair use and so anyone making a copyright complaint against them is not behaving in good faith. Of course YouTube is dumb so we will see if these episodes remain online.

A Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon Cafe is currently open in Japan. This special cafe will only be open for the months of November and December and will feature some Sailor Moon art. This includes some new art made by Sailor Moon’s creator Naoko Takeuchi. This image features Mamoru holding Usagi who’s wearing a Princess Serenity style dress while holding her Moon Stick and a heart shaped jewel. The Moon Stick she’s holding is unlike the one in the manga or 90s anime. It somewhat resembles the Moon Stick from the live action series in that the Moon itself is a large gem, but it isn’t identical with the spherical gem between the handle and crescent.

There will be other art featured at this cafe including colour versions of some manga pages which will be on display. You can check out samples of that art at the official Sailor Moon site. File folders featuring this art will be available for purchase at the cafe.

Shall we use this image as the launching point for rampant speculation that a new season of the live action Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon series is in the works? Why not?

Following last weekend’s release of the video of the London performance of the Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon The Super Live Musical fans are able to watch the North American performance of the musical for free on the official Sailor Moon YouTube Channel until August 10th. You can watch it through this link or in the embedded video below.

According to an Instagram Story on the official Sailor Moon The Super Live Instagram account, this is one of the New York shows. That was where I saw the musical in April, though there were a number of shows at that venue so I’m not sure which one this is.

Fans of the musical looking to see it in person can now order tickets to shows in Japan. The musical will be playing at the Sunshine Theatre in Tokyo from October 9th to the 13th.

Fans looking to see the Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon The Super Live Musical finally have the opportunity to watch it on video for free for a short time. This musical, previously unavailable for purchase or stream, can be viewed on YouTube for a limited time. First we have the London 2025 version of the musical which is available from August 1st to the 3rd. Next weekend we will have a video of the North American Tour which will be available from August 8th to the 10th. You can watch the London show by following this link or in the embedded video below.

This is particularly welcome news to me as I have streamed or watched all of the recent musicals but The Super Live was never made available. I was lucky enough to have finally watched a performance from the North American Tour in New York City in April of this year. This is a chance for fans that weren’t able to attend any showings in that tour in person to finally see it!

The musical, like a few others before it, covers the Dark Kingdom arc from the Sailor Moon manga. It makes use of impressive props and effects to create a different type of audio visual experience than is seen in some other musicals. I wasn’t sure what this meant when I heard the effects driven musical described years ago but now that I’ve seen the musical I finally get it. Check it out for yourself to see what this musical is about!

How did you like this musical?

Following the brief news of the live action Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon series airing on Toei Channel which was quickly scrubbed from the site, the series has been officially confirmed to be coming next week! As I suspected this news was posted to the Toei Channel site too quickly and was removed so that the news could be shared on the official Sailor Moon site first. A few days ago I did notice that the show’s page was back on the Toei Channel web site. At the time it wasn’t yet posted on the official site, but shortly afterwards an article did show up!

This will be following the same schedule I had originally posted about. Two new episodes at 5pm Japan Standard Time each Friday with a repeat of those episodes the next morning, Saturday at 8am.

If you’re in the Japan, enjoy the first airing of this fine series in over two decades! For those of us outside of Japan we can only hope that this show returning to the air in Japan will mean that the rights will become available and that we might get an official release on home video!

For a few hours yesterday the Toei Channel Japanese TV station web site confirmed that it was going to be airing reruns of the 2003 Live Action Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon TV series. I saw these posts and pages with my own eyes, did not think it necessary to take screenshots, and now they have all been scrubbed from the Internet. How fun. Does this mean the show will actually be airing on July 4th as was originally announced? Who knows.

I first saw about this from a post on the blu-ray.com forums by user Gowho which linked to a Tweet by the official Toei channel Twitter account (now deleted), a list of next month’s upcoming shows on the TOEI channel web site (still up with no mention of the Live Action Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon series), and a link to the page for the show on the Toei channel web site (now an error 404 page not found). So Twitter has a few people quote Tweeting a now delete Tweet expressing joy that the show is coming back. Fantastic.

The Toei Channel schedule for July 4th does not list the show as playing at 5pm (17:00) but it also doesn’t list any show as playing at 5pm. The length of the shows is included in the table and the show playing at 4pm (16:00) is 60 minutes long and followed by a show at 6pm (18:00). So what happened to Sailor Moon? While the schedule is currently empty it wasn’t earlier! Twitter user Fred Francis was able to grab and share screenshots of the show’s page and schedule for the first 8 Acts, through to the end of July. It listed the first two episodes airing on July 4th with another two episodes airing every week after that along with rerun times for each episode.

What does all this mean? The original idea was pretty straightforward. The show was fairly on brand to have on the Toei Channel and this was clear confirmation that it would air. Did something happen between yesterday and today that made airing it impossible? I really can’t speculate. We will have to keep an eye out on the Toei Channel web site and schedule to see if they get updated. It would certainly be great if the show as indeed airing again. This could lead to a rerelease of the show on home video in Japan and perhaps the international rights could become available once again. When Discotek Media was asked about the rights for the series on a stream on October 16th 2023 they simply said that it wasn’t available from the licenser. Could this have changed?

It’s no secret that I love the live action series! I hope this leads to something! What do you think? Do you have any insight or leads with info on this? I’ll be sure to post updated information if and when we get it.

Update: After thinking about this a bit I think the reason for this change may be that they were waiting to announce this through other channels. If they planned to post it to the official Sailor Moon site or through an event before updating the channel’s web site, this would explain why they deleted all details about the announcement from the site.

Fans looking to get tickets to the Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon The Super Live North American Tour can now get them through presale. Though general sales for these shows starts January 31st there is a special presale taking place now! Fans were invited to leave their name and e-mail address through the English language The Super Live web site. The idea was that this would result in them sending you a special code to participate in the presale from January 27th to the 29th. In reality I did this and I didn’t get any code. That said, the codes are out there so if you’re looking to get tickets you can check out the details on the Sailor Moon Fan Network page for the North American Tour which includes the codes needed for reserving tickets in your closest city. I picked up tickets to a showing in New York City through this method. The codes are usually something like “SAILOR”, “MOON”, “GUARDIAN” or “LUNA”. Also “JULIAN” whatever that’s about…

There have also been two new cities, Hartford, Connecticut and Columbus Ohio, which were recently added to the North American Tour. Will more dates be added to this? It certainly would have been nice to have showings in Toronto or Montreal but now that my tickets have been purchased, it’s a bit late for that!

The cast for the North American Tour has also been announced. The last time there were shows in the US they referred to them as “Team America” though I haven’t seen that term used yet. This may simply be because there has already been a Team America so they would need a different name to distinguish them so we can instead call them Team North American, even though none of the cities where the show is playing are outside of the United States of America.

The main cast are returning actors who were in the Princess Kaguya’s Lover musical in 2021 as well as the 30th Anniversary Music Festival Chronicle from 2022. Reprising their roles are Riko Tanaka as Sailor Moon, Kanon Maekawa as Sailor Mercury, Rei Kobayashi as Sailor Mars, Kisara Matsumura as Sailor Jupiter and Marin Makino as Sailor Venus.

Sayako Okamura will be playing Queen Beryl. She previously played Princess Snow Kaguya in the last two musicals, as Queen Beryl wasn’t in those stories.

Riona Tatemichi will play Tuxedo Mask, reprising her role from previous performances of The Super Live and the 30th Anniversary Musical Festival Chronicle. She’s played many roles in past musicals including Rubeus in Petite Étrangère, Hawk’s Eye in Amour Eternal and Taiki, Sailor Star Maker, in Le Mouvement Final.

Luna will once again be a puppet who will be controlled by puppeteer Misato Matsumoto who portrayed her in a number of the Nogizaka46 musicals.

The cast will include dancers who portray monsters including Ayano Nagasawa and Ayumi Sagisaka who were in the Amour Eternal, Le Movement Final, Princess Kaguya’s Lover and 30th Anniversary Music Festival Chronicle, Minami Watanabe who was in the Nogizaka46 musical and newcomer Kana Yanagihara.

Have you gotten tickets to any shows yet?

Great news for North American Sailor Moon fans! The Sailor Moon Official Site has posted dates for North American shows of the Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon The Super Live musical. This follows a recent announcement of performances of the same musical in London, England from February 4th to March 19th. There are shows on 19 days in 18 cities in the United States of America. Specific dates and cities are listed below:

Fans who are interested in purchasing tickets can go to the English language Sailor Moon The Super Live web site to leave their contact information and to visit the sites of individual venues hosting showings. It seems at this point that most tickets will be going on sale January 31st.

Though this is being advertised as a “North American” tour the cities which have been announced are all in the United States. Still, many Canadians are likely closer to some of these major cities than some Americans are. I’d be looking at an 8 to 9 hour drive to get to some of these.

The Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon The Super Live musical has been around for years. It first played in Japan back in 2018 and even had a few showings in North America in early 2019. It is the only one of the newer musicals which was never released on home video and so it’s the only one to come out in the past 12 years that I haven’t seen yet. Let’s hope that changes soon!

Do you plan on attending any of these showings? What’s the closest city to you where that you could go to?