The new release of the first season of Sailor Moon is out on Blu-ray today, June 14th. We have learned from fans that have received the set that these Blu-rays discs have new and improved video quality as well as features not on the releases from 2014. I got my copy today but have not have a chance to watch any of it yet. I did get myself a new Blu-ray drive and plan on doing a proper review as time permits. The release should be available in stores that sell this kind of thing as well as through online retailers. You can support the site by buying it through the link below.
This is a North American English language release by Viz which includes the original Japanese audio with optional English subtitles as well as the new English dub which was done by Viz using the same voice cast that appears in Sailor Moon Crystal.
Sailor Moon: The Complete First Season is coming to Blu-ray … again. As the first season was originally release on Blu-ray in two parts in 2014 and 2015 many fans had been wondering if it was worth it to buy this again. When I posted about this in March I predicted these would just be the same discs bundled in new packaging. I was wrong! With fans starting to get their hands on the release we can now see that this is a new updated Blu-ray with superior video quality to the originals as well as some new special features. Considering getting it? You can support the site by using the link below to buy it.
The original Sailor Moon Season 1 Blu-Ray releases were, simply put, not good. The video quality was bad. It’s an old show. Viz obviously had some pretty low quality standard definition sources to work with. This show is not HD. The original film source was never scanned in high definition. What we got in 2014 and 2015 were pretty low quality releases with obvious video artifacts. At the time these looked much worse than the DVD releases in Japan as well as others which had come out in other countries prior to this. You can have a look at what that release looked like in my review of the Japanese Blu-ray release which looked better.
Original 2014 Blu-ray
New 2022 Blu-ray
So what does this new version look like? Check out this Twitter thread by Fred Francis where he goes through his set and examines the menus and video quality with side by side comparisons of screenshots. I won’t repeat all of his comparisons here on the site but as you can see from the images above the difference really is night and day. The 2014 release is obviously worse looking than the much nicer looking 2022 release. It’s still not HD. It’s still a standard definition master which has been upscaled to 1080p using software. It just looks much better. The standard definition master was likely superior. More recent software algorithms may also been a contributor. Even as the Sailor Moon series went on the quality of releases by Viz improved dramatically to the point where Sailor Stars doesn’t have the same issues that the first couple of seasons did.
In addition to improved video quality the disc menus and even some features are new. This set has an interview with Sailor Moon writer Katsuyuki Sumisawa which had not been released in the earlier set.
Whether or not you consider this set worth purchasing is of course your own decision to make. For me it seems worth the upgrade at the reduced price. The full season costs less than what a half season cost eight years ago.
After some seemingly genuine leaks earlier this months it’s been confirmed that a Sailor Moon/Vans collaboration is coming in June of this year. A listing for a pair of Vans shoes is now up on the Foot Locker web site. Many images of shoes and t-shirts were posted to the Vans subreddit because of course there’s a Vans subreddit. This shows a t-shirt of Sailor Moon with her Moon Stick and one of Luna as well as a couple of shoe designs both in black and white and in colour. The boxes indicate that they will be for sale on June 3rd, next Friday. Sailor Moon Fan Network also has some additional images of the shoes as well as a price list of all of the items.
It’s impossible to say for sure how much supply there will be and how quickly these will sell out but it’s quite likely they will be hard to get your hands on. If you’re looking to get some of these items you can keep an eye on the Vans web site or visit a Vans store if you happen to live near one. I was surprised to see that there are two Vans stores in my area. I suspect that if I went into such a store I may be asked if I was looking for my children! As an item is also listed on the Foot Locket web site these shoes will also likely be available wherever else these kind of things are sold. As of the time of this article’s posting there are no Sailor Moon products listed on the Vans web site, but I suspect they will be added some time soon. Check out all of the currently revealed items below.
This t-shirt shows Sailor Moon with her Moon Stick after it was upgraded to include the Silver Crystal. This is likely one of the $45 t-shirts.
This t-shirt features Luna. As the shirt is white it may be the less expensive $35 shirt but it may also be one of the many $45 ones.
These are the shoes currently listed on the Foot Locker web site. It seems this is a pair of shoes with different images on each. The right shoe has Sailor Jupiter on the right side and Tuxedo Mask on the front. The left shoe has Sailor Mars on the right side and Sailor Moon on the front. Perhaps other Sailor Guardians feature on the other sides of the shoes. If so that would likely be Sailor Mercury and Venus. These are likely one of the many “Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon Multi” designs. Foot Locker lists them at $80 though that isn’t one of the prices on the leaked price list so it could be an item that isn’t visible in the photo of the list.
This black and white shoe is nice enough looking but it may have looked nicer with black and white manga art.
This shoe shows the entire Sailor Team in full colour. The shoe seems very small so I will assume it is a children’s size.
This last pair shows the Dark Kingdom on the right show and the Sailor Team on the right shoe and the Sailor Team on the left shoe. Again there seems to be a different design on each shoe which may be the case for many of the other designs.
Do you plan on getting any of these items? If so will you wear them or keep them in mint condition? I’m usually a fan of opening and using your products but a shoe is certainly something which will get dirty and worn after not too long. I can’t say I’m in the target demographic of Vans but perhaps I’d get some of these shirts or some shoes for my kids if they’re the right size. What’s your plan to beat the rush and secure some of these?
Update! Shortly after posting this images of all of the products showed up on the Vans Japan web site and Official Sailor Moon site. This is what’s coming out in Japan and we see a lot of the same items I mentioned above however there may be some minor differences. The Luna shirt and black and white shoe aren’t here. Check out those images below.
This shows a couple of pairs of shoes we already saw and a few more.
Here are more shoes and slippers including some interesting looking Luna slippers.
Other merchandise including a bag, toque and socks.
Shirts, including the t-shirt we saw from the reddit post, and another bag.
Last week, May 3rd 2022, the first volume of the much anticipated Naoko Takeuchi Collection of the Sailor Moon manga was finally released. This new version has been delayed a number of times and fans have been excited to finally see it released for a while. They’re wrong to do so. You should not buy this. It’s not a good version of the manga. You should buy the Eternal Edition instead and if you have the Eternal Edition you should read that and just not buy this. It’s your choice of course! It’s your money. You are free to waste your money on a really bad release of the manga. I suggest you don’t. Fans keep asking if they really need to keep rebuying the Sailor Moon manga. Good news! You don’t have to this time!
So what is this version? The Naoko Takeuchi Collection is the equivalent to the Sailor Moon Bunko collection which was released in Japan starting in 2008. I bought all of these and they’re in every sense inferior to the Japanese Complete Editions which were comparable, though slightly smaller than, the English Eternal Editions. The Eternal Editions are great! Big pages with glossy white paper and all of the colour pages from Nakayoshi! The Naoko Takeuchi Collection is a smaller version printed on lower cost paper with black and white versions of those colour pages. Why would you buy this? Are you poor? That’s fine if you are. I have children so I know what it’s like not to have money. If you’re strapped for cash get the digital version of the Eternal Edition with colour pages. It costs about the same.
Granted I haven’t bought this English version. Manga size and paper quality between Japanese and English releases can vary. Pictured above is the English Eternal Edition next to the Japanese Bunko Collection volume 1. The measurements on the Amazon listing for these books tell the same story. The height of this new release (Dimensions: 4.96 x 0.95 x 7.43 inches) is about the same as the width of the Eternal Edition (Dimensions: 7.11 x 0.7 x 10 inches). It’s small. The paper quality of the Japanese release is a cheap greyish newsprint type of paper. This may not be what you’re getting in the Naoko Takeuchi collection but you won’t be getting glossy white pages like with the Eternal Editions and you aren’t getting the colour pages from the original manga.
Update: It seems like one difference in this version is a newer translation. Many people expressed concern with the English translation from the Eternal Edition so the translation in this version may be something that some of you are interested in.
Don’t do it! Don’t buy! It’s not worth it! Save your money! Okay do you still want to buy them? All right then you can always buy and pre-order them using the Amazon links below which helps support the site.
Or better yet buy the not terrible Eternal Edition. You will be happy with that version. I certain have been.
The big news from the 30th Anniversary Streaming Event was the announcement of Sailor Moon Cosmos! The two films, Part 1 and Part 2 as was the case with Sailor Moon Eternal, will continue to Sailor Moon Crystal series and cover the Stars arc of the Sailor Moon manga. The current plan is to have these films come out in the summer of 2023 though delays are not completely uncommon with Sailor Moon Crystal. A trailer for the films was shown at the event and then posted on the Sailor Moon Official YouTube Channel. You can watch it embedded below.
The Stars arc is the fifth and final story arc of the Sailor Moon manga so this is likely the end of Sailor Moon Crystal. There’s a lot going on in this trailer! The Stars arc has Usagi meeting the Three Lights and fighting Galaxia. Though it seems that revealing the Sailor Starlights is something that is being kept for a later date we do get a quick look at a poster of The Three Lights in the background in Usagi’s room and an arm seen in the trailer likely belongs to Seiya who is wearing his school uniform. Sailor Galaxia is shown, with her face somewhat obscured. We also got a quick look at Chibi Chibi arriving at the end of the trailer. The final shot has three shooting stars crossing the sky, which would be the Sailor Starlights who are arriving from outside of the solar system.
The film’s title, Sailor Moon Cosmos, is a reference to Sailor Cosmos who is a future incarnation of Sailor Moon who we sort of see in the trailer but sort of don’t.
Mamoru, Tuxedo Mask, is seen briefly in this trailer. Will we see much more of him in the films? What a nice looking golden crystal in that one shot.
Now the speculation can begin about this film! It looks like the art style is fairly similar to what we saw in Sailor Moon Eternal. Does this mean that Kazuko Tadano is returning? The official movie site lists her as the character designer but not the animation director for the films. Since I can’t read Japanese I’m not able to translate anything else.
We haven’t seen much of the Three Lights and Sailor Starlights yet. The songs they performed were a big part of the music for the Sailor Stars season of the original Sailor Moon anime. One would think this would be an important part of these new movies. Who might voice these characters? Perhaps some popular Japanese vocalists! In the original Sailor Moon anime the Three Lights were men as civilians and they transformed into women when they became the Sailor Starlights, though they were voiced by women at all times. The Sailor Moon Crystal series follows the manga more faithfully in which case the Sailor Starlights are women and they disguise themselves as men when they are the Three Lights. It seems likely they could get women to do the voices of these characters, though it could go either way. What popular Japanese pop singers would you like to see voicing the Three Lights?
A note on language while discussing these movies. I’ll generally be referring to the Sailor Starlights as women with pronouns to match and the Three Lights as men with the equivalent pronouns. A lot has happened since the 1990s as far mainstream acceptance of transgender, genderfluid and non binary identities. It might not be evident how exactly to classify these characters by modern standards. As the story tends to have the Starlights identifying as women while they’re Sailor Guardians and the Three Lights identifying as men in their civilian identities I’ll be using language which fits that when discussing those characters. Since the Japanese language doesn’t use pronouns in the same way as we do in English I expect this isn’t something that is likely to be addressed in the official canon but am happy to update this practice if there seems to be cause to do so. If any of this seems incorrect or inappropriate feel free to bring it up in the comments.
Are you excited for these films? Do you think they will actually be released in 2023?
Keep reading for many more screenshots from this trailer.
The Sailor Moon 30th Anniversary is underway and to celebrate there will be a special live event on April 28th which will be broadcast on the official Sailor Moon YouTube channel. This event will feature voice actors from Sailor Moon Crystal including Kotono Mitsuishi, the voice of Sailor Moon, Shizuka Ito, the voice of Sailor Venus, Shoko Nakagawa, the voice of Diana, and Hyadain, a musician who previously did the music on the Sailor Moon The Super Live musical. You can watch the event on the 28th at 10pm Japan Standard Time, 7am Easter Time, using the embedded link below. Not much to see there right now but there is a convenient countdown showing when the event will start. The official site claims anyone can watch it for free which suggests it should be available to watch worldwide.
What will be discussed? It could be almost anything! It seems likely something will be announced. Evidently the best thing to get news about would be a continuation to Sailor Moon Crystal as a Stars story arc. We don’t really know what form this could take. The theatrical films Sailor Moon Eternal Part 1 and 2 performed quite poorly at the box office. It’s hard to say if they remained profitable with home video and streaming sales because movie accounting is usually deceptive and intentionally obscure. It’s also quite difficult to account for factors such as increased sales for Sailor Moon merchandise which is difficult to tie directly to any streaming series or movies. I certainly hope it’s something Sailor Moon Crystal related but I have learned not to get my hopes up too much.
The choice of hosts for the event is a bit curious. Kotono Mitsuishi is usually included in these things so that’s not odd. Shizuka Ito being included doesn’t make much more sense than any other Sailor Guardian if we’re talking about a Stars story arc. A Sailor Moon Crystal style Sailor V series seems unlikely so I’m not sure what that connection could be. Shoko Nakagawa is probably not there simply because of her work as the voice of Diana. She’s a popular media personality who hosts the popular Pokémon Sunday. Hyadain’s involvement could be related to many things. As he did the music for the Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon The Super Live musical he may simply be there to discuss the upcoming performance of the musical at the Japan Parade in New York which is coming up on May 14th. He may also be there to discuss his involvement in an upcoming musical or that he is contributing music to new episodes of Sailor Moon Crystal.
What do you think will be announced at this event? You’re allowed to say nothing! It might be nothing…
The Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon Prism On Ice event which was originally planned for the summer of 2020 and was more recently going to take place later this year has been delayed for a third time. It is now scheduled for June of 2023. Though it isn’t explained explicitly on the Sailor Moon Official Site it seems likely that this delay is once again due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic which has seen rising cases in Japan even over the last couple of weeks.
The event, featuring Russian figure skater Evgenia Medvedeva, was originally announced before the pandemic began. The star headed back to Japan early in 2020 to be ready for the event which was ultimately delayed due to the state of the pandemic in 2020, then again in 2021 and now once again in 2022. She is currently back in her home country of Russia. The ongoing Russian war and invasion of Ukraine may be causing complications with the event but there hasn’t been any specific indication of this.
As has been the case in the past those who already have tickets have the option to attend with the specific date when they can attend being dictated by the date on which they originally had tickets. Refunds are also available for those who are unable to attend at the new date and time.
Needless to say this sort of delay poses a particular challenge for any international fans who had made plans to attend. Hopefully this delay was announced early enough that no one is going be stuck with a plane ticket and hotel reservation planned around an ice show which isn’t currently scheduled!
Are you excited for this ice show? Let’s hope a home video release happens after this event is finally held.
Great news for fans of the Toon Makers’ Sailor Moon series! An hour and a half documentary titled “The Western World of Sailor Moon” was released on March 15th. It explores the early days of Sailor Moon’s release in the west with a specific focus on the infamous Toon Makers’ Sailor Moon pilot, also known as Saban Moon. In this episode of Tales of the Lost Raven Simone covers the history of the pilot which we already knew but also does some research and uncovers some new information which had not previously been made public! Rather than read on and get some details you should probably set aside some time and watch the documentary via this link which is also embedded below.
All that has ever been seen of this pilot is a short music video which was shown at an anime convention as seen in this clip. Readers of this site may recall that I posted a lot about this pilot about a decade ago. At the time a number of animation cels and the script were auctioned off on eBay. I posted a lot of images of those auctions and, before I had financial responsibilities like children, spent a significant amount of money to buy some of those cels as well as the voice over and animation script which I scanned and shared on the site.
The documentary features a number of shots of the Sailor Moon News site, discusses the “Project Y” script which is found on this site and uses images of a lot of the cels I was lucky enough to get my hands on.
There’s a lot going on this documentary so I suggest you just watch it but I’ll touch on some of the specifics which I found most enlightening. Earlier in the doc there’s a bit of an exploration of things from the Toon Makers’ pilot which seemed to end up in the DiC dub. The reasons for this aren’t terribly clear but the narrative of the documentary suggests that these were concepts original to the Toon Makers’ series which were then incorporated into the DiC dub once that was the direction the adaptation of Sailor Moon went. It’s also possible, for some elements, that they were originally conceived of for Sailor Moon itself and then passed on to both the Toon Makers’ pilot and then the dub. There’s not a huge distinction here but it would change where those creative decisions came from. The main obvious factor here is the Sailor Moon logo which is the same in both the Toon Makers’ pilot and the DiC dub. There’s also the Moon Cycle, a North American exclusive toy, which has seemingly no connection to the Sailor Moon anime but looks a lot like the vehicles in the Toon Makers’ series. I’ve long defended this connection on the site and in this case it seems that this toy absolutely originated as a concept from the Toon Makers’ series.
Some names may have been kept. Evidently the name Darien from the dub is similar to Darian from the Toon Makers’ series, which is noted in the script. Raven goes on to speculate that the other names which were mentioned in an early trailer for the Sailor Moon dub, those being Victoria, Blue, Dana, Sara and Carie, may have originated from the Toon Makers’ series. It’s a compelling idea which is certainly possible but I’m not seeing any hard evidence of it. There’s some interesting research about the popularity of names in the 80s and 90s but it also seems likely these names would be popular options for an Americanized dub just as much as a live action series. I’m curious to see if this line of research goes anywhere.
Towards the end of the documentary things get interesting with confirmation of information which was previously speculated about as well as some new completely new stuff. An interview with Lynn Walsh, who worked on the series, gives us all kinds of details which weren’t previously known. She confirms, and gives photographic evidence, that Adrienne Barbeau was in fact cast as the voice of both Queen Beryl and Queen Serenity as had been suspected.
When discussing the studio where the live action footage for the pilot is shot it’s mentioned that it was shot in the same sets used for the “boarding school” in Saved By The Bell. Based on the dates and it being a boarding school suggests this is Saved By The Bell The College Years. The documentary shows some comparisons between the dorm room in the show and scenes from the Toon Makers’ Sailor Moon music video footage. Though there seem to have been some changes it seems likely these were the same sets.
The documentary leaves us on quite a cliffhanger as Raven Simone gets an e-mail from another person in the photograph who she refers to only as the mysterious man in red. He suggests an interview with both him and Rocky Solotoff which will surely be a big part of a future video! I reached out to Raven to share with her some contact information for Tami-Adrian George, who confirmed that she was in fact Sailor Jupiter from the pilot, and she mentioned that she has a lot of additional information for a part 2 to this video. I certainly can’t wait to see what that documentary has in store!
What did you think of this documentary? What information were you most excited to learn from it?
Good news for fans of the original Sailor Moon anime who for some reason didn’t actually buy the Blu-Ray sets that came out eight years ago. Viz has a cheap season 1 set which collects all 46 episodes in Japanese and in English on six discs coming June 14th 2022. Previously Viz had released half season sets for the entire Sailor Moon series. This meant five seasons across ten sets. This new set has a more affordable price tag of $49.99, less than even half a season used to cost! Amazon has the set listed for that full MSRP while Right Stuf has it for $44.99. You can support this site by pre-ordering the set from Amazon using the links in this post.
Viz’s Blu-Ray sets aren’t the best but they’re the best we’ve got. All Sailor Moon TV series Blu-Ray discs released anywhere in the world are basically upconverted to high definition from a standard definition source using software. This means the show will never look like something which is actually an HD remaster from the film source, as many anime series have done. Viz’s release, mostly in the early seasons, didn’t look that good. I compared Viz’s Blu-Ray release to the Japanese Blu-Rays and DVDs in my review of the first Japanese Blu-Ray set. The Japanese set isn’t perfect either, but it’s nicer than Viz’s set. As the years went on the quality of Viz’s Blu-Ray sets got marginally better until the Stars set which was actually pretty good. This was probably due to a number of factors including the quality of the video masters they had available and the techniques they used in order to clear up the video. This of course raises the question of what, exactly, this set will look like.
My prediction is that this set will just be exact copies of the Blu-Ray discs which were including in Viz’s first season Part 1 and Part 2 sets. Same menus. Same special features. Same marginal video quality. If that’s the case it’s a decent deal if you don’t have these already. It’s evidently a great series and this is your best way to watch it in English or in Japanese with English subtitles. When I watch my Star Trek The Next Generation or Deep Space Nine full series sets whenever I pop in the first disc of a season I get ads for the previous season set, which was included with the set I already bought. This happens because they didn’t author new Blu-Ray discs. They just reproduced more of the discs they had already authored and put them in a bigger box. We don’t know for sure that this is the approach that will be taken here, but that would be my guess. That’s common for rereleased movies and series. There is one bit of evidence which suggests that we may actually be getting reauthored discs. The Right Stuf listing mentions an interview with Katsuyuki Sumisawa as a special feature. As this wasn’t on the original release this would mean at least one disc, potentially all of them, is potentially going to be new.
It’s possible that Viz will go back to their source material and redo the video in better quality. It’s also possible that they’ll use other masters like the higher quality Japanese Blu-Ray releases or some of the other Blu-Ray releases which have been coming out around the world since 2014. They might also take some high quality masters and use newer technology like AstroRes to get the best possible HD version software algorithms can give! This is possible. I think it’s somewhat unlikely. If this were the case then there would be good reason for a fan to want to repurchase these sets in better quality. Personally I’ll be waiting until confirmation of what these sets are like before I decide whether or not to purchase the series again. Getting the same discs in different boxes isn’t enough of an incentive to me, if that’s what this set is. Getting new discs with similar video quality would also not be a terribly enticing release.
Here are some details about this release from the Right Stuf web site:
About Sailor Moon Season 1 Blu-Ray
Sailor Moon Season 1 contains episodes 1-46 of the anime directed by Junichi Sato and Kunihiko Ikuhara.
Usagi Tsukino is a cheerful schoolgirl who often finds herself in unwanted trouble. One day, she saves a talking cat named Luna who gives Usagi a brooch that transforms her into Sailor Moon, guardian of love and justice!
Special Features: Clean Opening and Ending, Trailers, Art Gallery, Announcement Panel & Fan Reactions, Dub Recording Behind the Scenes, Official Announcement, Trailer Moonlight Memories Pt. 1, AX Sailor Moon Panel, Official Cosplay Team Interview, Sailor Moon Day Highlights, An Interview with Katsuyuki Sumisawa
See More
Details
Publisher: VIZ
Media: Blu-ray
Spoken Language: English, Japanese
Subtitle Language: English
Genre: Fantasy, Romance
Themes: Battles, Magical Girl
Age Rating: 14+
Run Time: 1060
Year Created: 1992
Release Date: 6/14/2022
Dimensional Weight: 1
Region Code: A
The special features listed are more consistent with what we got in the older sets except for the Katsuyuki Sumisawa interview.
On March 7th 1992 the first episode of the original Sailor Moon anime, The Crybaby: Usagi’s Beautiful Transformation, aired on Japanese television. The show quickly became a hit not only in Japan but worldwide and now 30 years later the franchise lives on!
I certainly didn’t start watching the show until a few years later when it started airing on English TV here in Canada after which I became a fan quite early on. How about you? Are you doing anything special to celebration this milestone?
