Check out a preview of the Sailor Moon Crystal Character Song Collection CD

Posted on April 9, 2015 by Adam

A Sailor Moon Crystal Character Song Collection CD will be released on April 29th. A preview of this CD has been posted to the Official Sailor Moon site. Just what is this? This is not music or songs from Sailor Moon Crystal but rather songs performed by the voice actors from the show. The old Sailor Moon Anime frequently had these and occasionally included them in the series. The site mentions that it has been nearly 20 years since the release of a Character Music Collection. This should be a surprise to fans of the 2003 Sailor Moon Live Action series which had many albums and singles of character songs by the main cast.

The full track listing in Japanese is on the Sailor Moon official site. There are 10 tracks in total. Songs will be performed by the voices of Sailor Moon by Kotono Mitsuishi, Sailor Mercury by Hisako Kanemoto, Sailor Mars by Rina Sato, Sailor Jupiter by Ami Koshimizu, Sailor Venus by Shizuka Ito, Tuxedo Mask by Kenji Nojima, Jadeite by Daisuke Kishio, Nephrite by Kosuke Toriumi, Zoisite by Masaya Matsukaze and Kunzite by Eiji Takemoto. All of the Sailor Guardians have their own solo tracks, as does Tuxedo Mask. The Shitennou all perform together on one track. Two duets are done, one with Sailor Mercury and Sailor Jupiter and the other with Sailor Mars and Sailor Venus. The final track has all of the Sailor Guardians performing together.

You can preorder the CD from Amazon Japan or CD Japan for 3240 yen, about $27 US.

The voice cast from Viz’s Sailor Moon Crystal dub will be the same as the cast of the new dub of the original anime

Posted on April 8, 2015 by Adam

This past weekend was Anime Boston at the Hynes Convention Center in downtown Boston. At the convention Viz announced the voice cast for their upcoming dub of Sailor Moon Crystal. We’ve known for some time that Viz had the rights to dub Sailor Moon Crystal and it seemed only logical that the dub cast would be the same as the cast for Viz’s new dub of the original anime. This has been confirmed to be the case. Only the main voice actors were mentioned but it stands to reason that all of the cast will return. The slide shown above confirms Sailor Moon, the Sailor Guardians, Tuxedo Mask and the cats are all returning.

Usagi Tsukino/Sailor Moon – Stephanie Sheh
Ami Mizuno/Sailor Mercury – Kate Higgins
Rei Hino/Sailor Mars – Cristina Vee
Makoto Kino/Sailor Jupiter – Amanda Miller
Minako Aino/Sailor Venus – Cherami Leigh
Mamoru Chiba/Tuxedo Mask – Robbie Daymond
Luna – Michelle Ruff
Artemis – Johnny Yong Bosch

This is no surprise. These voice actors are all on board to do the dub through SailorStars, the final season, so why wouldn’t they also keep them to do the Sailor Moon Crystal dub?

The series will be using the updated animation used for the Japanese Blu-Ray releases. As mentioned in my reviews of these Blu-Rays there are a number of minor animation updates for these which are generally cosmetic.

Source: Fandompost

Sailor Moon S episodes 94 and 95 are now available on Hulu

Posted on April 6, 2015 by Adam

The two latest episodes of Sailor Moon S are now available to stream on Hulu and Neon Alley. This week’s shows are all about love as episodes 94 and 95 deal with romance. First we have Unazuki dreaming of her first kiss and then we have a deepening of the romance between Umino and Naru.

Episode 94, Protect the Pure Heart: The Three-Way Battle, is all about the purity of the first kiss. The main character and target this week is Unazuki Furuhata. Upon listening to this episode it seemed that Unazuki’s voice sounded a lot like Sailor Iron Mouse’s. This is because Miyako Endou, the actress who normally portrays Unazuki, did not voice her for episode 94. Instead she was voiced by Eriko Hara for this episode only. Eriko Hara also provided the voice of Sailor Iron Mouse in SailorStars as well as a number of monsters including the Dream Princess from episode 11. The main plot focusing on how pure a first kiss is. This all seems a bit silly. Yes Unazuki is young and there’s no shame in saving yourself for the right person but this story takes it a bit far. This kind of purity is often associated with a first sexual experience which is in itself a bit silly, but even more ridiculous when applied to something as innocent as a kiss. There is this pervasive idea presented in this episode, and throughout the series in general, that a young woman’s feelings are somehow embarrassing and that she should protect her innocence as if it was something sacred. We see this in Usagi’s reaction every time it’s asked if she’s kissed Mamoru. To me this seems like a somewhat antiquated point of view, the opposite being to allow women to be free to decide how to pursue their sexual interests without worrying about being shamed for it. When Unazuki has her pure heart removed what remains is a sort of husk without a soul intent on kissing anything that moves, which happens to be Makoto and Usagi. This insinuates something very impure and wrong about promiscuity which seems a bit too much like slut shaming to me. Rei needs to use her scroll to suppress her sinful desires.

In one scene Michiru mentions that the first kiss was between Adam and Eve. This is subject to some debate but I’ll avoid getting back on my soap box for this minor point. Usagi imagines the first kiss being being Adam and Eve who look just like her and Mamoru. She pictures two naked people kissing, complete with the somewhat visible outline of a nipple. No censoring on this one. It looks like they’re lying in grass. Must be the Garden of Eden.

Episode 95, Let Moon Help With Your Love Problems, once again focuses on Umino and Naru’s relationship. We’ve actually seen this touched on a number times at this point. Umino is trying to advance things, because saving someone’s life a bunch of times isn’t quite cutting it, so he goes to Usagi for advise. The brilliant idea is to enrol the two in a kind of game show for couples. Unfortunately Haruka and Michiru are also competing! Too bad the Death Busters have their eye on the monument they are doing all of this around. Luckily Haruka and Michiru drop out at the last minute. Why is this fortunate? Well if they hadn’t then perhaps the Daimon would have targeted them for their Pure Hearts instead of Umino. How differently the series would have played out had that happened. But I’m getting ahead of myself. Umino confesses his love to Naru in an impassioned speech which brings the audience to tears just as the Daimon bursts out. Naru is targeted and once again Umino shoves her aside and takes the attack for her. This is becoming a habit for him! Oh well Umino doesn’t have a Talisman. A humorous scene takes place during the battle. Some eligible bachelors invite the girls to dance. “Let’s dancing”. They accept and then they turn into monsters and attack them. Never accept an invitation for a dance during combat!

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Sailor Moon Crystal Act 19, Time Warp – Sailor Pluto, Review

Posted on April 5, 2015 by Adam

The latest episode of Sailor Moon Crystal is now available to stream on Crunchyroll, Hulu and Niconico. This week is Act 19, Time Warp – Sailor Pluto. The gang travels to the future and are confronted by Sailor Pluto, but not after Mamoru and Usagi spend the night together.

As the episode opens Chibiusa is pleading for Sailor Moon to come to the future to help her mother. Artemis doesn’t care much about that, but has the idea that if the Black Moon Clan is the one that attacked her future city, that might be where Sailor Mercury, Mars and Jupiter are waiting. It would be nice to think that the gang goes to the future to rescue Chibiusa’s family, but in reality they have the ulterior motive of rescuing their friends. Regardless they decide to go, but not before a sleepover!

Chibiusa wants to sleep at Mamoru’s, but she’s not alone! Mamoru tucks her into bed with Luna-P which is kind of funny because it looks like Luna-P is a full sized human and that the ball is just a head. Following this Usagi and Mamoru share a tender moment in which Usagi expresses her jealousy for Chibiusa and then they have sex. This happens in the manga as well. It’s fairly obvious what happens but here it’s even less ambiguous. They kiss, they lie down, they hold each other’s hands and they sleep together. We later see them the morning after where Mamoru puts a white shirt on Usagi. He’s wearing one, Chibiusa is wearing one and Usagi is wearing one. It looks like Mamoru has nothing but white dress shirts in his closet and that he loves putting them on women. I’m not sure why anyone finds this comfortable. These aren’t the shirts that Mamoru wears under his tuxedo. Those have little folds on the collar and frills along the front. These are white dress shirts Mamoru keeps seemingly exclusively for putting on women who don’t fit in them. Not sure I see the appeal of this comfort but it seems to work for him.

In the pre-sex conversation Mamoru sees Usagi almost disappear. What is this? Is Usagi meant to be disappearing because of all this time travel? This is really not how time travel works. If past Usagi was affected I can understand the time travel plot of having future Usagi disappear, as silly as this concept is. But here it’s future Usagi that is in danger while past Usagi is fading a bit. How odd. Perhaps that’s not what this is meant to be at all though. Perhaps this is an omen Mamoru has about the future dangers to Usagi.

We decide to go to the future! Everyone has one job and one job only to ensure this is a success! Hold on to Chibiusa’s hand and don’t let go! They do this and as soon as the time travel starts everyone lets go! Well done folks. This leads to some confusion in the future.

Sailor Moon, Tuxedo Mask, Sailor Venus, Luna and Artemis are the first to arrive at the Space-Time Door. Sailor Pluto is there and she doesn’t seem to care that they are Sailor Guardians! She uses her lethal Dead Scream attack on the whole lot of them. Time travel is sort of frowned upon and Sailor Pluto’s job is to kill people that do this. She’s pretty soft on Chibiusa though as she does nothing to punish her for traveling through time to save her mother. Sailor Pluto makes a comment which I’ve seen translated differently so it’s hard to interpret. In the English translation of the manga and of Sailor Moon Crystal she mentions that “You guys” have always caused trouble for her, which one would assume means Chibiusa and Sailor Moon. This insinuates that she knows fully well who Sailor Moon is and who she has become in the future but is still willing to kill her! The other translation I’ve seen in the French version of the comic simply says that Chibiusa is causing her trouble, or in another French translation that Sailor Moon treats Chibiusa like Sailor Pluto has. If Sailor Pluto really does know who Sailor Moon is murdering her seems like a pretty extreme reaction to running into her in the Space-Time Corridor. While the true identity of Sailor Moon is a mystery to the viewers and inhabitants of the 20th century it doesn’t seem like it’s something she keeps secret from the future inhabitants of Crystal Tokyo.

We learn that Chibiusa is a Princess! Boy I wonder who her parents are then? We see an image of her in a princess dress that is very similar to the one Princess Serenity and the young Queen Serenity wore. Perhaps this is simply the style in the future.

The villains this week are Chiral and Achiral of the Black Moon Clan. In the original anime they were Droids but in the manga and Sailor Moon Crystal they are human. In the manga Chiral is white and Achiral has darker skin. In Sailor Moon Crystal they are white and whiter. What’s next. A white Sailor Pluto? In the manga Sailor Pluto has darker skin. She isn’t black but she is certainly more tanned than the other Sailor Guardians. In Sailor Moon Crystal she’s not much darker than most of the other characters.

While being attacked Sailor Moon tries to use her Cutie Moon Rod but is unable to. We see it partially in black and white but it’s handle is still in colour. An obvious animation error which I expect to be fixed in the Blu-Ray release.

We get to Crystal Tokyo. It’s really bad here. We get a look at what it was like before the “explosion” and it looked quite nice but we also see an image of Chibiusa amongst a lot of bodies of what appear to be normal inhabitants of the city. Their clothes are completely ancient looking. They seem to match closely to what we saw in Silver Millennium on the Moon back in the day or even on Earth during this undetermined time period. Surely it’s not that far fetched that society would revert to some classic looking styles in the distant future. Some formal wear resemble very old clothing in many ways, such as the Tuxedo that King Endymion wears or the dress that Neo Queen Serenity wears. Why then does Chibiusa have a 20th century style school uniform? Her 20th century clothes stick out amongst these other examples of clothes which appear to some 1000 years older, all of this being set 1000 years in our future. But what do I know about style?

We get a nice look at Neo Queen Serenity. She’s lying on what looks like a tomb. It has an inscription on it that says “< <>>”. What’s that about? It looks like Roman Numerals to me, but what do they mean? I wondered at first if perhaps this was Neo Queen Serenity’s birth and death dates. She would be born around 1978 and would have died some time in the 30th Century, that being the year 2900 to 2999. MDC is 1600. CXXXIII is 133. I can’t make any sense of this. Anyone have any thoughts on that? One notable thing is that Neo Queen Serenity’s hair appears to be white, not the blonde that it should be. This could just be an artifact of the Crystal which is enveloping her.

Next up is Diana the cat! We learned earlier this week that she would be voiced by Shoko Nakagawa but we don’t actually hear her say anything in this episode. Her presence is overshadowed by the appearance of a familiar face. Sailor Moon immediately recognizes him as being the future version of Tuxedo Mask. Only this man is not dressed in a black Tuxedo but instead all in white. Why not lavendar? King Endymion in the original anime has a lavendar Tuxedo but is this not the case in the manga? Indeed he is almost always seen in black and white and wearing a very light coloured outfit but it is mentioned as being lavender and is shown in the opening colour pages of Act 20 as being of a lavender colour.

A cool effect exists for this episode. Whenever a character had an extreme emotional reaction, surprise, anger, shock, they showed a funny expression with a comical border. Fans can’t help but notice the similarity between these borders and those used in the original English dub by DiC. These borders were used at the beginning in the episode previews and again at the end during the “Sailor Says” segments. The one included below for comparison is from the episode preview for the second episode.

Next up is Act 20, Crystal Tokyo – King Endymion. The next episode preview drops of bit of a spoiler. It’s already been stated that King Endymion is the future version of Tuxedo Mask. The preview has Chibiusa calling him “Papa”. We now know, as if we couldn’t guess it, that Mamoru is Chibiusa’s father. It’s not much of a stretch to figure that her mother, Neo Queen Serenity, is actually Usagi. The series has not done a terribly good job of trying to hide this from us but I feel like by now we are expected to have figured this out a while ago.

Keep reading for more screenshots from this episode and the next episode preview.

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Watch Sailor Moon Crystal Act 19, Time Warp – Sailor Pluto, Saturday April 4th at 6am Eastern Time

Posted on April 2, 2015 by Adam

The next episode of Sailor Moon Crystal, Act 19, Time Warp – Sailor Pluto, will become available to stream on Crunchyrull, Hulu and Niconico starting this coming Saturday April 4th. The show will be available starting at 7pm Japan Standard Time which is 6am Eastern Time, 3am Pacific Time. This week the gang travels to the future and meets Sailor Pluto, the guardian of the Space-Time Door.

Sailor Mercury, Mars and Jupiter remain kidnapped leaving just Sailor Moon, Sailor Venus, Tuxedo Mask, Luna and Artemis to travel to the future with Chibiusa to save her mother. On their trip to 30th Century Crystal Tokyo they are confronted by Sailor Pluto. Will she kill them for trying to travel through time?

More importantly this week Mamoru and Usagi appear to have some sex. Is this the first time this happens? That’s not something we could pretend to understand. It’s been a year since Usagi first slept at his place and a lot can happen in that time. Indeed it’s debateable what even happens here but Mamoru grabs Usagi, lays her down and starts kissing her right before an abrupt scene transition to where Luna and Artemis are also shown sleeping together. They usually sleep in different houses so it does not appear that any sexual activity has happened between these two, but it will at one point in the next 1000 or so years! This episode will briefly feature Diana, Luna and Artemis’s daughter from the future. Her voice actor was confirmed earlier this week as being Shoko Nakagawa, an actress and singer best know for being on the Pokémon Sunday variety show.

Shoko Nakagawa to voice Diana in Sailor Moon Crystal

Posted on March 31, 2015 by Adam

The new voice of Diana for Sailor Moon Crystal will be Shoko Nakagawa. This announcement was made on the Sailor Moon Official Site which included an image of Diana which is included above. Shoko Nakagawa is a media personality best known as the presenter of Pokémon Sunday, a variety show about all things Pokémon. She is also an actress and singer, having performed a great number of anime series opening and ending themes including many for the Pokémon anime and movies.

Diana is the future daughter of Luna and Artemis who lives in Crystal Tokyo. She is Chibiusa’s good friend, much in the same way that Luna and Artemis are Usagi and Minako’s companions. While Diana did not appear until Sailor Moon SuperS, the 4th season of the original anime, she appears much earlier in the manga. Diana’s first manga appearance is at the end of Act 19, Time Warp – Sailor Pluto, which is this coming Saturday’s episode which will be available on April 4th. Diana appears only briefly at the end of this chapter of the manga, vocalising little more than a simple meow. We will likely not have Shoko Nakagawa saying much until Act 20, Crystal Tokyo – King Endymion, which will be available April 18th.

Watch Sailor Moon S episodes 92 and 93 on Hulu

Posted on March 30, 2015 by Adam

The latest two episodes of Sailor Moon S are now available on Hulu and Neon Alley. This week with episodes 92 and 93 we are introduced to two new character, Haruka Tenoh and Michiru Kaioh. We also get a much better look at Sailor Neptune and Uranus who happen to have very similar hair styles to these characters.

Episode 92, A Handsome Boy? Haruka Tenoh’s Secret, shows us what is really up with Haruka right out of the gate. Minako and Usagi are infatuated with this hot new guy who has been coming around the arcade, and don’t see what’s really up. His beautiful friend, Michiru, appears to be his girlfriend, but not all is as it seems! The target this week is a mechanic and the enemy a cool looking sports car. Haruka and Michiru chase after the Daimon, dropping their motorcycle on her and then disappearing! Not long into the fight we see Sailor Uranus and Neptune, the new Sailor Guardians we previously only got a brief look at. To the audience it seems quite obvious that these are the alternate identities of Haruka and Michiru but to the girls in the show this is not quite as obvious. How could they be, as Haruka is clearly a guy… or is he? Haruka and Michiru show up at the arcade again but this time Haruka is not wearing her jacket and so it’s obvious that she’s actually a woman! This is a shock to Minako and Usagi, while Usagi assures herself that she always said that Mamoru was more attractive. This scene can be seen as being a bit homophobic. It’s not unlike the overplayed trope of a man finding a trans woman attractive but being shocked to learn she is trans. Usagi and Minako’s reactions however are not of revulsion but more of surprise, and they show no negative feelings towards Haruka or the way she choses to express herself at any time in the series. Indeed many characters are shown to have feelings of attraction to her later in the show and these feelings which are not strictly heterosexual are portrayed as being perfectly normal and not presented negatively.

So just what is going on with Haruka in this episode, and later in the series? She is female for all purposes but the misunderstanding in this episode and it’s title. She dresses in men’s clothing but there doesn’t seem to be any real indication that she is trans or that she gender identifies as male. She is a masculine woman who has no problem with displaying her masculinity in the way she acts and dresses. In the manga her identity is more complex, which could be seen as being a trans man, but this is generally not the case in the anime. Much of the gender confusion is harder to express in English due to it’s frequent use of gender specific pronouns. This is less common in Japan, which is why we can frequently have stories which deal with characters whose gender is unknown or mistaken without it being discovered as soon as a “he” or “she” is dropped over the course of normal conversation. When it comes to sexuality Haruka is attracted to women while Michiru appears to be attracted to both men and women. Haruka and Michiru are lovers. Their relationship is presented with little ambiguity throughout the series. In the English dub they were presented as cousins which is a little odd as this shows them as being in a lesbian incestual relationship, rather than in a simple lesbian relationship. Why it was decided that cousins made more sense than simply downplaying their relationship as friends isn’t something I pretend to understand. Regardless this is the original Japanese uncensored version so their relationship is presented as intended, as we expect to see it in the upcoming English dub being done by Viz.

Episode 93, Usagi’s Idol: The Graceful Genius Michiru, focuses more on the character of Michiru Kaio than the last episode had. We learn that she is a very talented violinist. The target for this episode is a fellow violinist and the Daimon of the week is a violin monster who uses sound as an attack. Usagi seems quite attracted to Michiru in this episode, though this attraction seems to mostly be about admiration than actual attraction. Still the season is fairly open about presenting attraction between same sex characters as being a perfectly normal part of adolescence.

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The Sailor Chibi Moon Dal (Pullip) Doll is the creepiest yet!

Posted on March 28, 2015 by Adam

The Sailor Chibi Moon Dal doll from the Pullip line has been announced on the on the Sailor Moon official site. Wait, what is a Dal doll? This is clearly a Pullip doll but what’s with the weird name? Much like the Tuxedo Mask Taeyang doll that was clearly a male Pullip doll, this one is called Dal but clearly part of the Pullip line. I said earlier that Taeyang was the male equivalent of the Pullip doll. This is not entirely accurate. These dolls are Pullip’s companions. The first such was Namu, who was Pullip’s boyfriend. Next came Taeyang, Pullip’s second boyfriend. Dal is Taeyang’s 13 year old sister, a rival to Pullip. This doesn’t really fit as Chibiusa is Mamoru’s daughter, not sister, but she is in a way Usagi’s rival. I’m not sure why these characters are being used to describe all these peripheral dolls. I suppose they are just the base models used for the dolls, while Pullip herself is used for most of the girls that were released previously. Dal is a bit shorter than pullip at 26.5 cm, so it makes sense to have Sailor Chibi Moon be a bit smaller. Size, design and cost will mostly resemble the other models as Sailor Chibi Moon would be expected to sell for roughly $150 once released in North America. Her Japanese MSRP is 17,000 yen.

The doll looks creepier than usual to me but that’s probably just because it’s from the Dal line which has a slightly different face mold. Check out this picture of other Dal dolls to get an idea of what those usually look like.

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A Sailor Moon x Isetan Special Collaboration offers many expensive purses, accessories, jewellery and clothing in Japan

Posted on March 26, 2015 by Adam

As announced on the Sailor Moon Official Site a large number of Sailor Moon themed items are available in Japan as part of a Sailor Moon and Istean Special Collaboration. These items including some fairly expensive, and therefore supposedly high quality, purses, wallets, phone cases, jewellery, charms, watches and all kinds of clothes. These are on sale now in Japan as well as online.

First are a number of bags and purses from Samantha Vega. The Moonstick leather bags are fairly normal looking leather bags coming in white, pink, red and blue with a Sailor Moon pattern on the inside. These are fairly expensive selling for 48,600 yen, over $400 US. I guess Kobe beef isn’t the only way to buy really expensive cow pieces in Japan!

If you’re not a snob for real leather, or care about the suffering of non human animals, why not just get the Luna fake leather bag or Artemis fake leather bag for 21,600 yen, about $180 US. These fun looking leather bags have little cat ears and are much more obviously Sailor Moon themed than the more subtle Moonstick leather bag.

But wait. What about the rich students? They don’t need a purse. They need a
Moonstick Rucksack. What’s a rucksack you might ask? That’s what Japanese people call back packs. This school supply will set back students 30,240 yen, about $250 US. What else were you going to spend that money on, books?

So you have a bag but still need somewhere to put all of that money you have because you’re obviously rich if you’re buying these. Why not shove all those yen in the Sailor Guardian long wallets which cost a mere 21,600 yen, about $180 US each. These come in 6 designs. Two for Sailor Moon and one for each of the other Sailor Guardians.

Sure you’ve got a fancy purse and wallet but what to do with your cell phone? You can pick up a Sailor Guardian Mini Multicase for a mere 19,440 yen, about $163 US. Like the wallets these also come in 6 different designs.

Great! Now how about some cool charms to add a bit of bling bling to all of these things. The Sailor Guardian Elementmarc Charm are 6156 yen, about $50 US. There are 6 charms included. A crescent moon, a heart, and the symbols for Sailor Mercury, Mars, Jupiter and Venus.

Casio is making a Baby G Watch. This sells for 17,280 yen, a bit over $100 US. It comes in a nice looking case that looks like the Crystal Star brooch, Sailor Moon’s transformation item from Sailor Moon R.

Sailor Moon is also teaming up with Honey Bunch to make a number of items. Many of them don’t really seem to have all that much to do with Sailor Moon but others, like this the Chibi Moon Crystal Carillon shirt are pretty Sailor Moon themed. At 8640 yen, over $70 US, this may seem cheap when compared to some of the items for sale but that’s a pretty expensive t-shirt.

There are also some Sailor Moon x Secret Honey clothing items which have some Sailor Moon references on them.

The Sailor Moon x Riccimie clothing items look fairly plain but upon closer investigation have things like Sailor V masks, Luna and other Sailor Moon designs on them.

Finally we have the Anna Sui Meets Sailor Moon items. These range from unimpressive phone cases, t-shirts and mugs to jewellery such as a replica Silver Crystal and Key of Space-Time (17,280 yen or about $150 US). Many items like t-shirts and folders just have an Anna Sui meets Sailor Moon logo but others like the jewellery have a bit more Sailor Moon related flair to them. The more expensive bags and jewellery in this collection cost hundreds of dollars like this bag which costs nearly $320 US.

Sailor Moon Crystal Deluxe Limited Edition Blu-Ray vol. 6 review

Posted on March 25, 2015 by Adam

The 6th Sailor Moon Crystal Deluxe Edition Blu-Ray set was released on March 11th. It can be purchased on Amazon Japan and CD Japan. MSRP is 7020 yen, about $59 US dollars. If you’re thinking of importing this keep in mind it is in Japanese only and there are no subtitles. The disk will play in North American Blu-Ray players for this who still want to buy it. There is also a regular edition Blu-Ray and DVD that will be released April 8th, when vol. 7 is being released in a Deluxe Limited Edition set. The DVDs will not likely play in a North American region 1 DVD player.

As with other volumes the disk comes in a collectible box. This one features a silhouette of Tuxedo Mask on the cover. The cover of the disk itself has an image of Usagi and Tuxedo Mask on it.

Every set comes with a charm which goes on the charm bracelet included with volume 1. This release includes Sailor Moon’s transformation brooch. This is the second Sailor Moon item included as volume 1 had Sailor Moon’s Moon Stick.

A 24 page full colour booklet is also included. Amongst the pages are episode summaries, character art for Tuxedo Mask, the Shitennou and Reika, interviews with Yasuhara Takanashi, music composer for the series, and Kenji Nojima, the voice of Tuxedo Mask as well as a page by Fumio Osano, Osabu. Photographs of all pages in this booklet are included at the bottom of this post.

The contents of the disk aren’t terribly exciting. Two episodes are included as usual. This time we have Act 11, Reunion – Endymion, and Act 12, Enemy – Queen Metaria. Many fans took issue with the many changes in Act 12 hoping they would be corrected with the video release but this not the case. Sailor Venus still does not kill Queen Beryl. Sailor Moon still breaks Beryl’s necklace with the sword. The Shitennou still die. Kunzite still says something that sounds like penis. Most of the video releases have some minor updates to the animation. Though I did not notice any specific changes with these episodes it’s likely they are updated as others had been.

There is an audio commentary on this disk. I don’t speak Japanese so it’s hard for me to tell exactly what is going on or even who is present. I would seem that the voice actresses for Sailor Mars, Rina Sato, and Sailor Jupiter, Ami Koshimizu are present. There is also a man who’s identity I couldn’t figure out.

This set will likely appeal to fans with a lot of money or who feel they must have every bit of Sailor Moon on video. The video quality is better than the streaming version but is that difference really worth buying something in a language you can’t understand? I leave that call to you because at this point if you’re likely to buy this you probably already have the other volumes.

Keep reading for more images of the packaging including photos of all pages of the included booklet.