Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon: Princess Kaguya’s Lover musical review

Posted on January 5, 2022 by Adam

The latest Sailor Moon musical, Princess Kaguya’s Lover, is now available to stream with English subtitles from Japan 2.5D Stage Play World. Tickets allow unlimited streaming for a two week period. I chose December 10th to the 23rd and so I had at long last had a chance to watch this musical a few weeks ago. I’ll share my thoughts in this post.

This musical is a pretty faithful adaptation of the Princess Kaguya’s Lover side story from the Sailor Moon manga. This story had previously been adapted as Sailor Moon S: The Movie so fans of the film will immediately recognize the story of Luna falling in love with a human Kakeru as his lover Himeko travels to space all while the evil Princess Snow Kaguya threatens the Earth! As this musical is a more faithful adaptation than even the S movie, which was itself fairly faithful, there will still be a lot of similarity between the musical and that film.

The musical starts out with a brief overview of the early events of the manga, which is not something included in the manga story it is based on. By the end of this we are pretty much where the manga is at the start of The Lover of Princess Kaguya though Diana is strangely absent, because her existence would be inconvenient to the story. Diana also doesn’t exist yet in the Sailor Moon S film adaptation. I suppose technically Diana isn’t born yet in any version of this story but in the manga we are introduced to her in 30th century Crystal Tokyo and she is in this time due to time travel. She only arrives in the 20th century during the Sailor Moon SuperS season of the original Sailor Moon anime.

We have a shared birthday party taking place which really situates the story in time more than any other. In the musical it is a shared birthday between Minako, Makoto and Setsuna. Minako’s birthday is October 23rd, Makoto’s birthday is December 5th and Setsuna’s birthday is between the two on October 29th. In the manga Setsuna is not included in the celebration, though she is present at the party. It’s okay though as she’s used to being ignored after having spent centuries pining after King Endymion. There’s quite a gap between Minako and Makoto’s birthdays but it’s not uncommon for groups of friends to get together and have a shared birthday party. It’s likely closer to Makoto’s birthday than Minako’s at this point since the events of the musical are leading up to the climax on December 24th, Christmas Eve. Yes, this is a Christmas musical!

An interesting thing which is mentioned in the liner notes for the Sailor Moon Eternal Edition manga is that voice actors Rika Fukami and Emi Shinohara share a birthday on August 8th. It’s possible that the party from the manga was inspired by a real live shared birthday party between those actors who’s birthdays are actually much closer than those of the characters they voice.

One of the main differences between this musical and the manga story it’s based on is the almost complete lack of Artemis. In scenes where he would actually be present in the manga he is instead only referenced. We will see him at the end of the musical… sort of.

The main plot of the musical centers around a comet that is going to hit the earth. At first everything seems fine because the comet just sort of died out. How exactly does this work? A massive object in space can’t just disappear. It’s said that it went close to the sun and burnt out. Was it on its way to the earth or not? The whole thing is very odd. The idea of an asteroid crashing into the earth isn’t unreasonable. The musical makes reference to the comet being roughly the size of the one that wiped out the dinosaurs and another like that would of course be very bad. So why a comet and not an asteroid? Well comets go around and around over and over. Asteroids do too, but that’s a bit what comets are known for since we are able to witness them due to the gas which trails behind them, often caused by water ice which evaporates when exposed to sun light. Since Princess Snow Kaguya, the musical’s villain, is said to be returning after 4.5 billion years, roughly the age of the earth, it seems this is meant to be a return equivalent to seeing a comet again.

It’s curious that since watching this musical a very popular Netflix film, Don’t Look Up, similarly features a comet which threatens to destroy the Earth. I have not seen the film and don’t intend to but from what I understand from this great review of the film, Sailor Moon sadly does not make an appearance.

This musical is all about Luna. After being harassed by the same group of kids or a similar group of kids to those who put a band aid on her in the first manga story she has the exact same thing done to her again. This disorients her and blocks her magic, yet again, which causes her to avoid an accident and end up in the arms of titular character Kakeru, the Lover of Princess Kaguya. Luna falls in love with Kakeru! Sadly Kakeru loves Himeko and while it seems like he may be returning Luna’s affection she’s sort of a Seiya to Kakeru’s Usagi while Himeko is his Mamoru. The difference being that Luna gets to kiss Kakeru.

There’s this very odd thing in the story where we act like going from Tokyo, Japan, to the Kennedy Space Center in Florida is really not a big deal. It’s treated as if it was hopping on a train over to the next city. Knowing that Naoko Takeuchi was inspired to write this story after a trip to Cape Canaveral makes one wonder if she forgot having flown the 16 or so hours it takes to cross the Pacific Ocean and the entire width of the United States of America. Himeko travels there for work. Kakeru on a whim takes a couple of days off to join her. Once he falls ill Himeko brings him back to Tokyo and eventually flies back to the United States. Sounds expensive! Meanwhile Luna sneaks onto two of these flights.

Things get real which means that Usagi and Luna have to explain to Himeko what’s going on. They mention that Princess Snow Kaguya, the fairly lackluster villain of the musical, comes from space. She’s shocked, asking if that makes her an alien? Lady, the talking cat is also technically an alien and Usagi is sort of an alien so maybe show a bit of respect and as a scientist, have an open mind?

It’s repeatedly mentioned that Princess Snow Kaguya was around 4.5 billion years earlier. This date closely coincides with the age of the Earth. As she’s defeated she mentions having seen a light, like that from the silver crystal, 4.5 billion years ago. Does that suggest that there was a Sailor Moon type hero wielding the silver crystal or something like it when the earth was created? Not super clear.

So there’s a big fight and the bad lady is defeated along with a nice song. This means luckily that the plan to launch a spaceship to destroy the comet in a very Armageddon/Deep Impact sort of way isn’t needed anymore. After countless delays to launching due to unpleasant weather and radiation in space along with the main reason for the mission now disappearing do they scrap it? Well no. They instead completely change the goal of the flight and proceed anyway! They aren’t going to destroy the comet but instead they’ll just go on with their newly added crew member to the Moon Base. Wait there’s a Moon Base now? Is it anywhere close to the ruins of Silver Millennium? Does the space ship even have the right amount of fuel for this completely different mission? They don’t need to reprogram a bunch of flight paths? Is the Moon, where they didn’t actually plan on landing earlier that day, even in the optimal place to travel there at this time of the month? So very odd.

As the Silver Crystal was used to save the day it’s suggested it can simply be used to grant a wish and make Luna human. Since when is that an option? The Crystal seems to be a pretty versatile tool which can be used as a sort of energy weapon, to heal people on a massive scale, to purify or cleanse evil. It seems it’s also able to just sort of make wishes come true as well. In this case it’s “make the cat human for a while” which is actually making Luna turn into a human form which she already had which is in itself a bit odd. Is the Silver Crystal like the Dragonballs?

Human Luna shows up and … it’s a totally different actress. Human Luna is the same actress who played the shadow Luna who was showing up in certain scenes. What is odd is that the actress who plays Cat Luna is quite young but the actress playing Human Luna is an adult. This gives an odd impression of Luna’s age. I suppose that the intention in casting a younger actress as Cat Luna was a practical one because a cat happens to be smaller than a person but it makes Luna seem like she’s actually a younger woman and then when Human Luna shows up it seems that the idea here is that this is actually reflecting Luna’s actual age. Her feelings for Kakeru are a woman’s feelings and not those of a teenage girl. As a fan of Sailor Moon since watching the old dub in the 90s it’s always hard for me to think of Luna as anything but the older sounding lady from that dub, even if I understand that the canon seems to instead suggest that Luna is somewhere between Usagi’s age, and therefore a peer of hers, or a slightly older young adult, to match the physical appearance of Human Luna in the manga and S movie. The live action series further confuses this with Luna becoming a very young Sailor Luna, but that’s a whole other story.

We learn that Himeko is pregnant which is something that is very much not in the S movie but it is in the manga. It’s a bit irresponsible to go into space with an unborn child in your womb as it’s being exposed to higher levels of radiation. It is specifically mentioned that there’s a geomagnetic blizzard which I think could be dangerous for the baby once Himeko no longer has the protection which the Earth’s magnetic field gives the inhabitants of the planet while they aren’t in space.

Finally Artemis shows up and what a joke this is! He’s basically a very cheap little projected image on the wall. He doesn’t talk. He doesn’t look anything like Luna. He’s totally shafted in this musical!

I did enjoy the musical quite a bit, though it’s far from my favourite of the Sailor Moon musicals. I was never a particularly big fan of the Sailor Moon S movie. It’s good enough but as the movies go it’s my third favourite out of the three. This is the same story and though the manga lacks some of what makes the S Movie a bit weak, it’s still not my favourite story. I understand and appreciate that a lot of people have a special affection for the S movie, consider it to be the better film and also have a great fondness for this manga story. Those fans should be quite pleased with this musical as it’s a very faithful adaptation. Sailor Moon Crystal has given us an accurate anime adaptation of the manga and this musical does a great job of doing the same with the Princess Kaguya’s Lover side story. If only we could get the rest of the side stories and Sailor V adapted somehow!

Bottom line is that you should absolutely support this streaming event. If you haven’t already signed up you can continue to do so until February 3rd. The cost is reasonable and the musical is well worth watching. If you’re a person who’s watched musicals over the years by downloading fansubs you really should be supporting this official release if you have the means to do so. This will show that there’s interest in Sailor Moon musicals and make it more likely that more get released outside of Japan in the future.

A final thought on the end of the musical where the cast speak to the audience. A lot of them mentioned how happy they were that this musical was actually able to be performed and that they were lucky that everyone stayed healthy throughout. This serves as an interesting reminder of how severe the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic was when this musical took place in Tokyo in September of 2021. Even when I watched this musical in mid December things were going fairly well, pandemic wise, where I live and then in the short weeks since the situation has very quickly become more serious and strict lockdowns are in place in my home province. This musical was delayed a whole year and, like with the Tokyo Olympics, almost didn’t happen. We shall see what the future may bring with regards to a new musical in 2022. I’m hoping for the best but also that if we get a new musical that it’s because it’s safe to do so and that fans are able to travel to Japan to see it without any serious health risks.

Let us know what you thought of the musical in the comments!

Here’s more information on the planned Sailor V anime series

Posted on October 5, 2021 by Adam

Earlier this week I posted about some newly unearthed images which appear to be art from the original planned Sailor V anime series which was ultimately retooled as the Sailor Moon anime we all known and love. I mentioned a few character names but wasn’t sure where those had come from. Twitter user @MinakoMoments posted a couple of images and their translations which are the source of a lot of the older information around about these. While these looked familiar I had obviously missed out on this information. These are from the Sailor Moon Volume Infinity art book, which is a very rare book showing a lot of images of characters from Sailor Moon drawn by other artists and people involved with the series. These images looked familiar to me because I have this book but as I don’t read Japanese I assumed these were simply early designs for Rei, Makoto and Ami. While this is technically true, these are actually Miyabi, Mamoru and Hikaru from the planned Sailor V anime!

Based on the resolution it looks like the Japanese originals from those pages in question come from the Three Lights dot net scans of the Infinity art book. The translation is attributed to a friend of the @MinakoMoments account’s poster @switchpoint. Some of the details from this image were mentioned in yesterday’s article but there’s a bit more here that we can dig into. While I fully realize this may be old news to many this was new to me so I’m sharing it here for the benefit of others who may not have known the specifics before. Close up photos were taken from my copy of the Infinity art book.

At the top of the page is Amano. He was the Umino lookalike from Codename Sailor V. Perhaps I’m saying this wrong. Umino looks like Amano much like Ami looks like Hikaru, not the other way around. Those characters came first and Sailor Moon’s characters came afterwards. It is mentioned that Amano looks handsome when he took his glasses off. In the Masquerade Dance Party chapter of the Sailor Moon manga when Princess D is found to be beautiful behind her googly glasses the girls speculate that Umino must similarly be handsome behind his. Amano seems to resemble Umino in this way as well!

Minako is presented more or less as she is in Codename Sailor V and Sailor Moon with some minor differences. She, along with a few others characters, is 15. Minako was only 13 at the start of Codename Sailor V while Usagi and the other girls are 14 at the start of the Sailor Moon manga and anime series. The plan seemed to have been to age them up a bit for this series. This would put them all in high school, which is something which doesn’t occur until the Dream Arc of the Sailor Moon manga and the Sailor Stars season of the anime. Note that the crescent moon on Minako’s forehead is upside down compared to what we see in Codename Sailor V and Sailor Moon. She looks like a member of the Black Moon clan! In her character description it’s mentioned that she has no specific ability besides her super powers, which is a big difference in this story as her friends do not actually transform. They use their worldly and otherworldly gifts to assist Sailor V. It says that Minako’s special skill is love! She really was the Usagi of this series. It seems that Minako was retooled as Usagi but then was herself brought back into the series as another character, so it’s no surprise that the two characters share some similarities.

Next up is Miyabi Yoronu. In my previous article I called her a Rei like character but now I see that she’s had a real name all along! The image seen through the page I mentioned is in fact this image of Miyabi. She uses a scroll with Rei’s catchphrase “Akuryou Taisan”, an incantation used to exercise evil spirits. That Miyabi had supernatural powers that weren’t related to being a Sailor Guardian is an interesting explanation for why Rei has powers that seem to be completely unrelated to her being Sailor Mars. The character she was adapted from needed these powers because she didn’t actually transform!

Mamoru Chino is not actually related to Mamoru Chiba in any way but by name. This character was clearly later adapted into Makoto Kino. This image of her smoking is why many people were mentioning that she smoked. She is 17, a full two years older than the other characters, and so she would not be in their class or grade though she would still be at their school as both 15 year olds and 17 year olds are high school aged in Japan. Mamoru is known for being strong, like Makoto, but is referenced as having “herculean strength”. Whether this means she truly had the superhuman strength of demi-god Hercules or not isn’t clear. Regardless she still has super powers! Mamoru has telekinesis, the ability to teleport and ESP (extra sensory perception). She also runs fast, which may simply be a side effect of her super strength. Surprised she doesn’t get out of breath what with her smoking. Surprisingly, Mamoru is associated with the planet Saturn and not Jupiter.

Next is Hikaru who is already a character in the Codename Sailor V manga. In this series she was to be the intelligent one which was the obvious inspiration for Ami. In the Sailor V manga Hikaru isn’t mentioned as being particularly brilliant. Though she physically resembles Ami her role was similar to Naru’s as she was simply Minako’s friend and classmate.

So there were only four girls in this series instead of five? The fifth woman on this page is a female human Artemis! She is credited as “fifth beautiful girl” and is shown nude wearing a tiara adorned with Artemis’s crescent moon. What the exact plan was for this gender bending male cat who transformed into a a female human isn’t clear. Perhaps Artemis was meant to be female in this series? It is mentioned in the Codename Sailor V manga that Artemis is a woman’s name, though this seemed to be intended as a joke.

One other odd piece is this ad for the Sailor V Manga where it appears that Usagi is the one dressed as Sailor V along with a white cat, presumably Artemis. This ad was published though by the time the manga it advertised was out, it was quite different than what was in the ad.

So what happened to this series? I believe it was incorrect for me to say that this series was abandoned or scrapped. It’s more accurate to say that Sailor V evolved into Sailor Moon. I’m not privy to all of the behind the scenes decisions but it seems like Codename Sailor V showed promise to be a series. The idea of a girl fighting crime alone was expanded into more of a group show, like we see with these characters who would have helped out Minako. This was in turn further expanded into the girl version of Super Sentai which was Sailor Moon. Minako become Usagi, Hikaru became Ami, Miyabi became Rei, Mamoru became Makoto and then the original Minako became the slightly different Minako. Many of the other elements don’t really map from one series to another. The Dark Agency is not terribly similar to the Dark Kingdom and there wasn’t a real equivalent to Mamoru in Sailor V, though surely some sort of love interest would have popped up eventually. It seems like Sailor Moon, the manga, was made with the intention of it being adapted into an anime series. The Sailor V anime concept was just a step on that path. Wouldn’t it be great if that series had been made? It kind of did, there were just a lot of changes in getting there. The Sailor V anime is like Star Trek with Captain Pike and Number One. Sailor Moon is what we got after the idea evolved a bit.

Sailor Moon Eternal Part 2 Review

Posted on July 23, 2021 by Adam

Sailor Moon Eternal Parts 1 and 2 are both currently streaming on Netflix. This is my review for the second film. You can also read my Part 1 review which was posted last month. I always used to put episode reviews for Sailor Moon Crystal up within a few days of their release but the nature of these movies means that reviewing them is a bit more work! I call this a review even though it’s really more of a vague recap with random commentary and a sprinkling of what might be considered a review.

Part 1 ended on a cliffhanger. Not literally. If it followed the manga more closely it would have ended on a literal cliffhanger as Minako was hanging off of a cliff but stories were moved around to make things fit into movies a bit better. The conclusion to the whole Minako and Human Artemis thing was moved into Part 1 instead of taking place after we get a look at what’s going on with Hotaru and her three moms, which is really where this movie starts off. For the most part, like all of Sailor Moon Crystal, this movie is fairly faithful to the manga source material which it was based on.

Last time we saw Hotaru she was a baby being whisked away by Sailor Uranus, Neptune and Pluto. We finally see what they’ve been up to, starting with Haruka and Michiru. If I can take issue with the dub for a moment! There’s a character which, referencing Haruka, says that “He’s such a hottie”. Now I know Japanese doesn’t tend to use gender specific pronouns so this is likely not a terribly literal translation. I also understand that there being some confusion over Haruka’s gender makes sense and is a common theme in the series but are we really going to just pretend that Haruka is not very clearly dressed unambiguously as a woman in this scene? I’m not sure what this was all about.

Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon Eternal Part 2 - Setsuna's left hand

Left handed mouse

Back at the house Setsuna is using a left handed mouse. What’s this? Is she actually left handed? I didn’t know this! While looking into this I found an article from Tuxedo Unmasked which mentions that Sailor Pluto may be left handed as she usually holds her Garnet Rod in her left hand. This article also goes into some detail about whether or not Rei is left handed, something I mentioned in my Part 1 review. So she’s left handed? Not likely. The only reason we see her left hand on the mouse is because the movie wants to show us her ring which is on her left hand and this is a convenient way to do so. Have you ever tried to use a mouse with your off hand? It’s very awkward. What’s my evidence suggesting that Setsuna isn’t actually left handed? In a scene a bit later in the film she’s back to using a mouse with her right hand. Ambidextrous? Seems like her handedness is whatever suits the needs of the shot!

Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon Eternal Part 2 - Setsuna is now right handed

Right handed mouse

While Setsuna is browsing an article about the eclipse we see a date! 2016-03-28 or March 28th 2016. I will assume this isn’t the actual date of the eclipse but rather the date on which the article was published. This fits with the date seen in Part 1 where Chibiusa circles April 1st as her date to return to the 30th century. An article about the April 1st eclipse coming out some four days before makes perfect sense. Any problems with this? Well April 1st 2016 was a Friday in the real world and according to Chibiusa’s calendar it was a Thursday. There was also no solar eclipse on April 1st 2016. There was a total solar eclipse on March 9th of 2016 and Japan wasn’t the best place to see it from. So why would the story take place five years in the past? This would probably be because the last new episode of Sailor Moon Crystal we got was on June 27th 2016. Since the series started airing on July 5th 2014 this makes the first few seasons take place within a few years. A six month passage of time since the eclipse is suggested at one point during this film so most of it takes place in late 2016. Most manga arcs seem to take place over about year which could put the Dream arc around 2017 if the events of the first season really are to take place in 2014. If they take place in 2013, when the show was originally meant to start, things line up pretty well. So much to say with a five year gap between Sailor Moon Crystal season 3 and the Sailor Moon Eternal films we can hardly just say it’s 2021 and expect it to make sense that everyone’s just starting high school so the 2016 date seems to work.

The big thing for the start of the film is fast aging Hotaru. This is something we see at the start of SailorStars in the original Sailor Moon anime. All of this growth occurred over a six month period and we get a sense of how quick it has been when Haruka mistakenly thinks they need diapers for their fast aging daughter. Hotaru is spouting out odd poetry and making faithful models of the solar system where events up to those taking place in the present play out in super speed. This makes me wonder just how accurate these are. If individual people are recreated in this model do those people experience joy and pain? Does Hotaru recreate every act of suffering in the history of our planet on a whim in her living room? Does this include the death of her mother as well as her father’s painful memories of it? Alternatively if the exact same information patterns of someone’s life are run over and over again are those actual new experiences or just the one experience? Is there a subjective feeling experienced more than once? The whole thing might be very unethical depending on one’s perspective on these issues.

So! Hotaru gets old and gives everyone their Sailor Crystals avoiding the requirement of a handful more individual stories in which they learn something about themselves and get their shoulder pad upgrades. Hotaru basically gives them all the upgrades herself. How convenient. Most importantly… a Sailor Saturn transformation sequence! Sailor Saturn had a transformation sequence in season 3 of Sailor Moon Crystal but it was a bit different. This one is shorter but a bit more consistent with other transformations. Since Sailor Saturn never did transform in the original Sailor Moon anime it’s always nice to see a transformation sequence. She did have an original anime style transformation sequence as part of a Sailor Saturn game but this was never seen in the TV series or movies.

Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon Eternal Part 2 - Two glass shards

Two shards

Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon Eternal Part 2 - Zirconia picks up one glass shard

One shard

Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon Eternal Part 2 - Zirconia with two glass shards

Two shards again

Sailor Uranus, Neptune, Pluto and Saturn show up to save the day and everyone is back together again! This doesn’t last long, sadly. Later Zirconia dispatches the Amazoness Quartet and then traps Sailor Chibi Moon and Saturn into shards of a mirror. She then picks up one piece of the mirror and then somehow has two in her hands. What’s going on here? Infuriating! This scene is brief but it’s great seeing Sailor Saturn in action since she’s so neglected in the original Sailor Moon anime. The scene of her and Chibi Moon in the circus tent is similar to their scenes in the early part of Sailor Stars when they fight Nehelenia. In a way the first six episodes of Sailor Stars are a more faithful adaptation of the dream arc than all of Sailor Moon SuperS.

We see a young Usagi and Mamoru, which is odd since we sort of already got a fairly extensive look at young Usagi earlier. They turn young in real life and then have a dream where they’re both young which makes me wonder why their real selves needed to even be made young in the first place. How do their dream selves know that their bodies are young? Shouldn’t there be some dysmorphia going on? Regardless, seeing young Usagi and Mamoru in domestic bliss is incredibly cute. What I enjoy about this scene is how similar it is to a major plot point in the Sailor Moon SuperS film. Usagi is in a dream world with Mamoru and questions his unwavering devotion to her. While in the SuperS film this is what she uses to break out of The Matrix, here it’s just a curiosity. Basically Mamoru states that his dream is to live with Usagi and she questions his other dreams like being a doctor. It’s worth noting that many other elements from this arc, like the young versions of so many characters, are also seen in the Sailor Moon SuperS film at many points. While on the surface the movie has nearly nothing to do with the Dream arc of the manga and the SuperS season of the original anime, there are in fact many similarities. These are not likely all intended. Unless some advanced knowledge of one work or another was planned the timelines simply don’t add up. This particular manga story with young Usagi and Mamoru came out in Nakayoshi in December of 1995, the same month in which the SuperS film was released. Since both a manga and animated film take months or longer to go from story to release, these particular similarities seem to be coincidence.

Usagi and Mamoru are now with Helios in Elysion and the whole being young thing wasn’t any sort of lasting problem. What is this place? In mythology the similarly named Elysium is the afterlife. Here Elysion, which is a unique name in Sailor Moon, is another world that seems to be somewhat parallel to the Earth. An analog to it as Helios is himself tied to the Earth and the Golden Crystal. More specifically I wonder just where it is. It is suggested that Elysium is within the Earth somehow and there are references to “the surface”. I wonder if Elysium is compatible with the idea of The Hollow Earth. This is an idea of a world deep beneath the surface of the Earth. Though specifics vary the concept is that the Earth itself is a hollow shell and that within that shell there is a whole other ecosystem where “down” is actually towards the outside of the Earth. I tried hard to see indications that Elysion had a normal sky. We don’t see any stars from it. We don’t see the sun even though late in the story there is light coming from the sky. The Hollow Earth is often described as having a small sun at the center of the Earth. The Moon is seen in the sky in that we can see the eclipse from Elysion, but it isn’t clear if the Moon itself is actually visible. Keep in mind this is one of my own pet theories about Elysion and isn’t necessarily intended in either the manga or Sailor Moon Eternal films, but I wonder if this is a kind of pseudoscientific belief that Naoko Takeuchi was into along with all the weird stuff from the Black Moon arc.

We do this weird thing where we pretend that the maiden that Helios is looking for isn’t Chibiusa and it’s all very silly. He sees this image of a clearly pink haired woman who looks more or less like an older Chibiusa who asks him to find the Golden Crystal. She’s called “Princess Lady Serenity”. He acts as if this is Sailor Moon which makes Chibiusa quite upset, even though she clearly still has Helios’s affection.

All this time Mamoru is just walking around in his dress shirt. Why do we pretend these dress shirts are the most comfortable thing? He gives them out to all the ladies who sleep over. Chibiusa sleeps in one during Part 1 and when he’s sick in bed this seems to be his sleepwear of choice. I often wear shirts of this type for work but I’ll generally put a t-shirt on when I’m at home relaxing, especially if I’m sick and bedridden. This would be a believable “I was out doing stuff and then I came home and untucked my shirt so it’s my after hours casual mode” but he’s been bedridden for a while now and the last time he was out was for the eclipse, as far as we can tell, when he wasn’t wearing his tuxedo (which has a ruffled shirt) but a grey dress shirt and vest. Am I to believe that he took off his grey dress shirt and put on a white dress shirt to climb into bed? This really makes no sense and is probably the biggest plot whole in the movie.

The shrine in Elysion is guarded by the Maenads who have hair just like Sailor Moon and Chibi Moon which back in the day would have been like both Queen and Princess Serenity. I guess this really was the style at the time? What a strange coincidence that reincarnated Usagi happened to chose a very similar yet impractical and almost never seen hair style.

So there’s some fighting which is actually the bulk of the movie. I don’t have a ton to say about this. Almost all of the attacks are so similar to the original Sailor Moon anime that I wonder if they were traced. Helios dies in a non permanent death which is actually fairly common for Sailor Moon but I don’t for a moment think it’s a real thing. Does anyone cry for Helios? Of course he’ll be fine.

We then see an interesting scene which is the birth of Princess Serenity. This scene reminds me a lot of the birth of Aurora in Sleeping Beauty. In Sleeping Beauty we have Maleficent, the only one not invited, showing up to celebrate the Princess’s birth only to end up cursing the child to eternal sleep after pricking herself on a spinning wheel needle. Similarly Nehelenia was the only one not invited after Princess Serenity’s birth. Once she shows up an uncharacteristically unkind Queen Serenity, along with the Sailor Guardians, disparage her and tell her she isn’t welcome. She ends up cursing Silver Millennium saying it will fall. This of course does end up happening in the distant past. I wonder if any inspiration occurred between these. One noticeable thing here is that Sailor Mercury, Mars, Jupiter and Venus are all significantly older than the newborn Princess Serenity. Though their ages aren’t specified they speak well, are fairly tall for children and seem ready to fight. I’d guess they are about 6 or 7 here. Princess Serenity appears to be an adolescent in the first story arc. She is arguably slightly older than the 14 year old Usagi who notices physical changes in herself when turning into the Princess. This would put the other Sailor Guardians at over 20 in those flashbacks, though they all appear to be more or less the same age. In the Amour Eternal musical when we see the birth of Princess Serenity the age difference is even greater as the Sailor Guardians are shown to be their fully adolescent ages at that point, similar to their ages in the modern times story of that musical. We know that in Crystal Tokyo adults done age, which include Sailor Moon eternally being in her early 20s, but is there a reason to have people frozen in adolescence in Silver Millennium?

I think if original anime Sailor Moon had been in her mother’s place when Nehelenia showed up she could have found a way to make peace or may even have invited her in the first place. The manga version of Sailor Moon does more killing of villains and less winning them over. Remember that anime Sailor Moon ended up having compassion for Nehelenia after all of the harm she did to her and her friends! Queen Serenity with her blank reflectionless eyes doesn’t seem to have any of that attitude when she seals away Queen Nehelenia.

Once the Moon Effect character song kicks in the movie is really reaching the climax! A lot of this was released in a very spoiler filled music video! This song features vocals by the actors playing all ten of the Sailor Guardians and is included on the “Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon Eternal Character Song Collection Eternal Collection” album. Though Tuxedo Mask and Sailor Moon are still afflicted with the disease which has black roses on their lungs it seems the resolution to this is… to kiss! Everything is fine now! Great!

Did you like Human Artemis? Did you enjoy Human Luna (in the first season)? Well how about human version of the whole cat family including Diana! This is a big deal as this is the first time we see all of the cats in human form in any anime series!

Next up is Eternal everybody! There’s a new Holy Grail and then Sailor Moon becomes Eternal Sailor Moon, hence the name of the movies, but beyond that all of the other Sailor Guardians also get upgraded to their Eternal forms which means those little bubble shoulder pad things which is something we never saw in the original Sailor Moon anime! Sailor Moon finally does her Starlight Honeymoon Therapy Kiss and saves the day! The eclipse, which we can kind of see even though we’re kind of inside the earth, is finally over which is arguably the end of a very long period which only took place over the course of a few minutes, the length of time an eclipse usually lasts for. There isn’t any clear agreement of this but by that timeline the events of this film actually take place within the same day.

Turns out Helios isn’t dead and Sailor Chibi Moon (Eternal Sailor Chibi Moon) kisses him while he sleeps. Do we want to dig up the whole kissing a sleeping person lacks consent discourse again? In this particular case since Helios had previously expressed his interest in Chibiusa when he kissed her in the first film I think that makes this whole situation less of a concern than when Tuxedo Mask did it in the first story arc. The best kept secret of the films, that Chibiusa is actually the one Helios has been looking for, is revealed! She becomes Princess Lady Serenity and gets her Pink Moon Crystal!

Eternal Sailor Moon and Tuxedo Mask now becomes Neo Queen Serenity and King Endymion for the first time without some influence from the future. Everyone gets their lovely princess dresses back and there was much rejoicing.

Sailor Saturn still has the Amazoness Quartet balls. When these four are revived they are the Sailor Quartet! Sailor Cere, Sailor Palas, Sailor Juno and Sailor Vesta are all named after the same celestial objects they had identified with originally but now it makes a bit more sense why! They are Sailor Guardians who’s duty it is to protect Eternal Sailor Chibi Moon or rather Princess Lady Serenity and not related directly to Sailor Moon or Neo Queen Serenity. It’s really fun to see the Sailor Quartet! Sadly they aren’t around for long as they claim that they should be asleep in the jungle so they take off. Why does this matter? You’re here! Let’s get the gang together! Chibiusa should only be a twinkle in Mamoru’s eye but she’s around and actively involved in the fight so who’s to say that the Amazoness Quartet are better off chilling in a jungle somewhere? My two dream concepts for new Sailor Moon series would be a Codename: Sailor V series and some sort of future Sailor Guardian series with Chibi Moon, the Sailor Quartet and maybe Helios fighting some evil and perhaps traveling through time to do it! I won’t hold my breath for that.

Now Helios is there with Pegasus which makes me wonder how this is even possible! Aren’t they kind of the same being? In the original Sailor Moon anime they certainly were, with Pegasus being his name rather than a descriptor of the kind of horse he is, but it seems they are different entities. Kind of weird!

Well the movie pretty much wraps up with a bunch of people going on their way. What we don’t see in the Netflix version is a message saying “To be continued” but this is on the Japanese Blu-ray and it seems like it was in the version shown in theatres in Japan. Why remove this from the Netflix version? No idea! I hope we don’t have to wait quite as many years to get a Stars arc of Sailor Moon Crystal as we did for Sailor Moon Eternal!

The credits are fairly unremarkable. I can’t read any of that! We have a couple of songs here. The first is Moon Color Chainon, the theme song for the Sailor Moon Eternal films. This is actually the first time we hear it in this movie since it doesn’t have an intro like the 90s films did! After this we have the new version of “Rashiku” Ikumasho (I’ll Go As Myself) by Anza! Anza was the first actress to portray Sailor Moon in the Sailor Moon musicals and continued to do so for five years. This song was originally the second ending theme for Sailor Moon SuperS, the original adaptation of the Dreams arc of the Sailor Moon manga, which makes it a fitting song to end the final movie with.

All in all I found Part 2 to be a good movie. It wasn’t as obviously episodic as Part 1 where you could easily see the breaks between manga chapters. That said there isn’t really as much going on with this film which mostly centers on the big battles with Zirconia and Nehelenia.

More generally the Sailor Moon Eternal films just look fantastic. The designs are great and since these movies are shorter than full seasons the animation is better and there seems to have been more time and money dedicated to every minute of this film compared to earlier seasons of Sailor Moon Crystal. We can only hope the Stars arc will look as good, though I’m hoping for a return to a series for that season or that if it will be movies that they make three of them! We shall see.

What did you think of this second film? Let us know in the comments!

Keep reading for more screenshots of the film.

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The original English cast of Sailor Moon will be streaming a panel July 9th at 8pm

Posted on July 9, 2021 by Adam

A Sailor Moon panel featuring the original English voice cast of the 90s Sailor Moon anime is going to be streamed on Friday July 9th at 8pm Easter Time. The panel will be streamed on YouTube. You can also watch it embedded below.

The panel will feature Linda Ballantyne, the third voice of Sailor Moon, Katie Griffin, the first voice of Sailor Mars, Susan Roman, the voice of Sailor Jupiter, Toby Proctor, the second voice of Tuxedo Mask, Ron Rubin, the voice of Artemis, Jill Frappier, the voice of Luna, and Barbara Radecki, the voice of Sailor Neptune as well as Serena’s mother and Queen Serenity in the first episode. Watch a clip advertising the event below:

Get ready guys!!! This Friday July 9th at 8pm EST the cast of Sailor Moon will be on Geektainment TV on YouTube!! @GeektainmentTV @ronjrubin @LABallantyne @JillsObjets @barbara_radecki @tobyproctor @kissmechaos #sailormoon https://t.co/vbNhUTrTow pic.twitter.com/2cPMe5Gra0

— Celebrity Talent Booking (@CTBsocial) July 7, 2021

The panel will be hosted by Geektainment TV who have done other similar panels on their YouTube page. It is likely that the panel will continue to be available once the live event is completed. Will you be watching the panel live?

Sailor Moon Eternal Part 1 review

Posted on June 14, 2021 by Adam

The Sailor Moon Eternal films are both streaming on Netflix worldwide, outside of Japan, and it’s been nearly six years since I’ve been able to do a review of Sailor Moon Crystal content! Here are my thoughts on the first of the two film. These are usually about 25% story recap, 70% silly observations and jokes and 5% actual review type thoughts.

As with the rest of the Sailor Moon Crystal series these movies are a very faithful adaptation of the manga source material. As Sailor Moon SuperS is the anime season that probably varies the most from the manga, fans will probably find the differences considerable while those who’ve read the manga will find this all very familiar. The main difference in this story would be the relative unimportance of the Amazon Trio who dominate the first half of the Sailor Moon SuperS season, acting as pick up artists for young women, older women and boys. In this film like with the manga they aren’t much more than monsters of the week. Easily discarded.

The movie isn’t billed as a Sailor Moon Crystal movie, though that’s obviously what it is. It isn’t really standalone. Fans of the Sailor Moon Crystal TV and web series will of course be happy to see this continuation of the story they’ve been following. I have to wonder how many fans of the old 90s anime will see these movies appear on Netflix and check them out without having much context. These aren’t anything like the Sailor Moon R, S and SuperS movies from the 90s, standalone stories with little connection to the TV series. That said these movies do present a single story arc which begins and ends with these films. Sure we may not know where Chibiusa comes from or how everyone got their powers but we can more or less follow the story of the Dream arc without needing that back story. Part 2 will have more issues here with the Infinity arc backstory for Haruka, Michiru, Setsuna and Hotaru being particularly important. It’s really mostly an issue of background on characters. One Letterboxd review, for example, asked if the child (Chibiusa) wants to boink (engage in sexual relations with) her dad (Mamoru). I think to anyone who’s familiar with either the original anime series or Sailor Moon Crystal this much, in less graphic terms, is pretty much assumed! So much to say it does seem that some people are coming into these movies fresh and these are the types of questions which must be coming up.

The film starts more or less where we left off. A roughly six month gap occurred during Act 38 and then, in an instant which lasted almost five years in the real world, the movie starts. It actually rewinds a bit and recaps a bit from Act 38 which wasn’t in the first Dreams manga arc. The gang are in the park to view an eclipse during which they see Pegasus. A note on casting here. While almost all of the Sailor Moon Eternal English voice cast are actors reprising their roles either from earlier seasons of Sailor Moon Crystal or the Sailor Moon SuperS dub of the original Sailor Moon anime the voice actor for Pegasus/Helios is a different actor. This wasn’t a huge surprise. Chris Niosi voiced Pegasus in Viz’s dub of the original Sailor Moon anime a few years ago. Since then he was target of some abuse allegations and, following his own admission of his role in such and other events, he was recast in many of the roles which he had been working on. Brian Beacock takes over as Helios in this series. Since the character did not previously appear in Sailor Moon Crystal this isn’t technically a recasting of the role however this is an outlier with most other actors returning. Brian Beacock previously voiced Ail/Seijurou in Viz’s dub of Sailor Moon R!

The girls find a couple of kaleidoscope toys which Mamoru is disappointed to have to buy. These are about $10 which is certainly more expensive than some cheap kaleidoscopes but considerably cheaper than the replica kaleidoscope toy which sells in Japan for roughly $300 US! I guess Mamoru got a real deal there, not to mention they end up being magical items. Not wanting to open up a rift in time and space in the middle of a crowded park the girls opt to spend the night at Mamoru’s, something which is hardly new to either of them. While going to bed Chibiusa and Usagi both wish they were the opposite’s age and if anyone of you grew up in the 80s and 90s I’m sure you’ve seen how this movie plays out!

Chibiusa protests going to bed. This is a habit I am very familiar with as I have two children, the oldest of which was conceived around the time of the last episode of Sailor Moon Crystal. No relation between those events. She asks Mamoru for a story saying that she used to get these from her parents back in the future. The examples she gives are stories about robots and vampires. Wow! Are these real stories??? I suppose technically the Droids from Sailor Moon R are like robots but I wouldn’t describe them as such and those come from the future. Vampires? In the manga we get a side story about a vampire girl named Lilica. It seems unlikely Chibiusa’s parents told her this story as it’s one that Chibiusa herself experienced, unless they’re really trying to mess her up by telling her stories about her own future which took place in their past. Time travel!

So Pegasus shows up looking for a maiden with beautiful dreams and a major plot point here is that we don’t really know if the Princess is Minako or Usagi. Sorry we don’t know if the maiden is Chibiusa or Usagi. At this point we think it’s Chibiusa. Pegasus appears with sound effects that seem right out of Sailor Moon SuperS! An odd choice.

The next morning there’s a tiger loose in the Juban shopping district. What an odd problem that does not on the surface appear to be related to any sort of evil villain at all. It’s been six months since the Death Busters were defeated and it’s evident that neither Sailor Moon, Chibi Moon or any other Sailor Guardians have transformed since. For some reason instead of leaving this escaped circus tiger problem to animal control or maybe the local police the girls decide that they should of course transform? Are they actually equipped to fight a tiger? If they happened upon a bank robbery would they just transform and take down the robbers? Does this mean that, to be consistent with their behaviour, they should monitor a police scanner and fight crimes like Batman? The whole situation seems odd. Anyway it doesn’t work since the grail isn’t around because Sailor Uranus, Neptune and Pluto aren’t there. Luckily they get some new transformation broaches which is good because animal control still hasn’t shown up.

They transform into Super Sailor Moon and Super Sailor Chibi Moon right away. No two stages of transformation needed at this point. Convenient! They get a bunch of news toys. Chibi Moon gets a bell that makes the SuperS sound effect and they both have their $10 kaleidoscopes transform into Kaleidomoon scopes. They fight a could of the Amazoness Quartet, who unlike the Amazon Trio are the main villains of this story arc, and PallaPalla swaps their ages, with hilarious consequences!

I feel like the age swap, in the manga and in this movie, was oddly brief. It could be a major plot point with serious consequences. Instead it’s treated a bit as a joke and a bit of “be careful what you wish for” type wisdom which really is silly since people can’t wish for things. Mamoru and Usagi have this really weird moment where they express how awkward their age difference is. It seems there’s a limit to the age gap! Older Chibiusa seems to have some sort of revelation that she can’t hook up with her father. The two seem concerned and frustrated trying to find a solution which turns out to be … just transform again? Really no one tried this? So we’re okay with transforming to be scabs for animal control but when their fundamental ability to fight an active threat in town is in question they don’t even test their transformations? A bit weak! Seeing young Usagi is nice, though we will see her again later, and seeing not evil older Chibiusa is kind of cool.

Then things really start to seem like a series of episodes and we cut from one character’s story to another. The manga frequently does this in a number of arcs, having a story focus on a certain character. This works well when they are broken up into individual comic acts or TV episodes. In the movie however it’s very obvious that these are a number of stories stitched together. I appreciate the faithfulness to the source material but there is a down side. These aren’t totally contained, with the age swap story bleeding into the Ami’s family sucks story and such, but we can see the obvious separation.

First up is Sailor Mercury and her terrible parents! Ami’s mother works too hard and is never home. This isn’t totally horrible. One can hardly expect a single mother to quit her job so that she can spend more time with her daughter, who’s out studying and fighting crime most of the time anyway, but it does seem like Ami has a rough home life. Ami’s socially awkward mother happens to be the significantly better parent as her hippie father just took off for not so clear reasons, sent some divorce papers in the mail and doesn’t seem to want to have much to do with his daughter. He makes hollow gestures like sending her paintings of fish which does little to make up for his lack of support. Perhaps if he paid child support Ami’s mother wouldn’t have to work graveyard shifts most nights. Ami meets little fairy Mercury, learns a bit about herself and gets these little shoulder pads. Shoulder pads were bit in the 90s but in 2021 no one really has shoulder pads anymore.

Meanwhile Chibiusa has this whole weird thing with Pegasus who spends a lot less time under the pretence of being a horse in this continuity. We’re pretty late in Sailor Moon SuperS before we discover that this horse Pegasus is actually a dude named Helios but in this continuity we learn it pretty quickly. We don’t really think of him as Pegasus for long. We have the humourous scene where Chibiusa kisses a horse but then he turns into Helios. Whatever. At least she’s not making out with her dad again.

On to the next “episode” of our lives. It’s Rei’s turn! Her grandfather is sick and hot damn, he’s gorgeous! Fans of the original 90s Sailor Moon anime will recall Rei’s grandfather as a creepy old man who lusted after teenaged girls. Sailor Moon Eternal Rei’s grandfather, who looks somewhat like his manga counterpart, is a hunk! He has grey hair but still looks quite fit and youthful. I bet original anime Rei’s grandpa would have had more luck with the ladies if he looked like this! Someone has mentioned that he looks like Colonel Sanders in the parody dating sim I Love You, Colonel Sanders! and I think that fits perfectly. Superficial signs of age but still a youthful appearance. It’s like those men’s clothing catalogues that get young models with their hair died grey to wear their clothes.

Rei wanders into a house of mirrors and is really amazed that one of the mirrors isn’t reflecting an image. Is this really that weird? Isn’t that just like… a piece of glass? Or even a wall? Non reflective surfaces are by far the norm in the natural and unnatural world but Rei assumes this is… magic? Super weird.

We see a young and cute Rei meeting Phobos and Deimos for the first time. She can converse with them somehow and instantly knows their names. We get the humanoid Phobos and Deimos reveal which is something I’ve posted about extensively over the past six months but that still was considered enough of a spoiler that some dude on Twitter felt the need to publicly announce his unfollowing me for daring to reveal this 25 year old information. As I’d mentioned before there was always some confusion over the colours, which had been settled when the movies were released. As we see here Phobos is the fairy on the right, who is dressed in red, while Deimos is the one on the left, dressed in purple.

Young Rei is cute but child bride Rei with Tiger’s eye is super creepy. When PUA Tiger’s Eye in the anime goes after mostly teenaged girls it’s a bit weird but when he’s with a full on a child it’s about as awkward as Mamoru and young Usagi!

Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon Eternal Part 1 - Rei uses a bow right handed

Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon Eternal Part 1 - Mars Flame Sniper

Finally let me rant a bit about handedness, which will be coming back in the next film. Rei’s Mars Flame Sniper has her pulling back the arrow with her left hand. This is the left handed way to hold a bow. We see young Rei doing archery in this story and she pulls back the arrow with her right hand, the correct way for a right handed person. This seems like a mistake. What’s the issue here? Well it would go back to the 90s anime since many of the transformations and attacks in this movie are nearly identical to the ones we saw in Sailor Moon SuperS! Perhaps the person who animated that attack many years ago simply didn’t know much about archery.

Sailor Moon Crystal Act 17

Sailor Moon Eternal Part 1

Makoto is the next to power up. The most notable change since the last Jupiter episode is the photo of her parents. We originally saw this during the Black Moon arc where I couldn’t help but notice that her late father looked suspiciously like Brock from Pokémon. We see this photo again but it’s changed slightly. The frame is different and though her mother and father are posed in the same way her father’s hair is evidently not Brock like at all and they aren’t wearing the same clothes. Why would Makoto have swapped out this photo with a nearly identical one? It’s not like it’s a new photo!

Hawk’s Eye has set up an herb shop which Makoto is drawn to. She gets slapped by her little fairy Sailor Jupiter thing and then gets a weird crown of oak leaves, which leads to her power up and shoulder pads. If they’d had acid washed jeans as part of their power ups do you think we’d still be using them as part of their uniforms in newer incarnations?

Meanwhile we learn more about Helios who comes from Elysion which I suspect could be in the Hollow Earth but I’ll discuss that more at length in my Part 2 review. Mamoru is sick, couching up blood. It’s a bit troubling to see characters with an infectious lung disease given the ongoing pandemic. This is all caused by magic since Mamoru has a black rose inside of him but that doesn’t really explain why others are catching this disease or why Mamoru seems to be the only one who remains sick.

Finally, Minako still doesn’t have her shoulder pads and for whatever reason all of the other girls sort of assume she should have them. This whole plot reminds me a bit of how in Sailor Moon S of the original anime Minako was the last to be targeted for her Pure Heart and she felt self conscious about it. A scene where Artemis is staring at Minako in the shower is cut down for the film. Originally Diana mentions the way he’s looking at her which upsets Luna. I suppose the film is trying to downplay the Artemis/Minako shipping.

Minako decides she wants to be an idol, which is the plot of another handful of original anime episodes, and this seems to be done via an MXC style competition which is extremely dangerous. Indeed Minako ends up falling to her death saved only by Artemis who turns human! This is one of the big spoilerish reveals of the movies! We’d seen Human Luna before but this is the first time we see animated Human Artemis! As a change from the manga we see the end of Minako’s story and her transformation and new attack. This moves the scenes showing us what has been going on with Hotaru, Haruka, Michiru and Setsuna to the second film.

Roll credits! I can’t read any of this but it’s worth noting that Moon Color Chainon, the theme song for Sailor Moon Eternal, plays here in the credits. I expected it would be the opening theme (and may even have claimed that it was) so I was a bit surprised to see these movies don’t have actual openings. Next is Watashi-tachi ni Naritakute or Wanting To Be Together With You which is a cover of the first ending theme for Sailor Moon SuperS, which seems fitting here. This particular version is performed by Sailor Moon veteran Yoko Ishida.

There’s a brief post credits scene which shows us Hotaru and gives us a hint at what we’ll see next!

All around I enjoyed the first film, despite some sort of odd pacing that isn’t really meant to be told in movie format. I might have preferred to see this as a series of episodes which would have had a slightly longer run time but perhaps the animation wouldn’t have been as good in that case. This movie looks great and is a considerable improvement on what we saw in the first 26 episodes. It’s very difficult for me to think of this as one single movie as I was able to, along with every else who first saw these films on Netflix, watch both parts at once. If I saw this in theatres would I have been annoyed at having to wait until the next part? I don’t know. In Japan the time between the two films was barely more than a month.

What did you think of the movie? Let us know in the comments! I’ll get to posting a Part 2 review at some point.

Keep reading for more screenshots from this film.

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An in depth look at the Sailor Moon Eternal magazine

Posted on December 30, 2020 by Adam

The Sailor Moon Eternal magazine which we posted about last week was released on December 24th. Now that I’ve gotten my hands on a copy, and taken many photos of it, I’m prepared to share some thoughts on it. I’m very happy with this magazine! For the price this really is a great value. The magazine costs only 550 Japanese yen, a bit over $5 US, and includes 32 full colour pages with photos of Sailor Moon Eternal as well as other series from throughout the years. Don’t accept the photos I am sharing as substitutes for the real thing and pick a copy up for yourselves if you can. If you happen to live in Japan this is probably easy enough though international fans will find that the shipping cost for such an inexpensive item is significant, as was the case for me when I ordered my copy from Amazon Japan.

I’ll include photos of all pages of this magazine. These aren’t the best they could be as I don’t own a scanner anymore and because I’m in the middle of a move my camera is in a box somewhere. These were taken with my iPhone and edited to create smaller files. If anyone would like a close up photo of anything in this magazine let me know and I’ll see what I can do.

First off is the cover, which is quite beautiful. Note that this is the online exclusive cover featuring Sailor Saturn, Pluto, Uranus and Neptune with Chibi Moon on the back. There is also a cover which is sold in stores in Japan which features Sailor Moon on the cover and Sailor Mercury, Mars, Jupiter and Venus on the back. I was surprised at just how big this was! This is much larger than a magazine and is probably more like a special edition newspaper. The paper quality isn’t the best and there is no binding. These are just loose sheets so the item came packaged in a sealed plastic bag. As indicated on the cover this magazine is released by Sponichi also known as Sport Nippon. Why is a daily sports magazine releasing a Sailor Moon magazine? Not sure!

Pages 2 and 3 feature a two page interview with Nanao, a Japanese actress and model who will be providing the voice of Nehelenia in the films.

Next is a two page interview with Japanese comedian Naomi Watanabe who will be providing the voice of Zirconia.

The following two pages include bios for all of the Sailor Guardians as well as Tuxedo Mask and Helios. The ordering of these, as well as some other elements in this magazine, strikes me as a bit odd. Anyone who reads manga will realize that Japanese is written “backwards” as compared to what is seen in the west where panels will be read from right to left and top to bottom. These bios however are sorted from left to right starting with Sailor Moon in the top left and ending with lowly Helios in the bottom right. All the while the Sailor Mercury transformation sequence at the top of the pages goes from right to left.

Page 8 shows us the Dead Moon Circus with Nehelenia, Zirconia, the Amazon Trio and the Amazoness Quartet. Page 9 has Chibiusa and Pegasus with an overview of the film’s story.

Page 10 is an interview with Kotono Mitsuishi, the voice of Sailor Moon, and it also includes a few images from the film, most of which we’ve seen in better quality at this point. Page 11 has information about Momoiro Clover Z and Moon Color Chainon, the theme for the film. It also includes some other staff information.

Pages 12 and 13 are layed out like newspaper clippings telling the story of Usagi and Mamoru’s “Miracle Romance”. This features images from earlier in the Sailor Moon Crystal series.

Page 14 is an ad for the Sailor Moon Cafe. Page 15 is half of a fold out which I’ll explain below.

This Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon’s History fold out is the back side of the centerfold which is actually pages 15 and 18. This shows a timeline of the various incarnations of Sailor Moon spanning manga, anime and musicals. Even the often forgotten live action series gets a mention! The final piece in the history is a poster for the Sailor Moon Prism On Ice show which we hope to see soon!

The centerfold for the magazine is a two page spread of the Small Worlds Tokyo exhibit which included a mini version of Tokyo as seen in Sailor Moon. This features some side by side photos of real locations in Tokyo compared to scenes from Sailor Moon Eternal!

Page 18 is the other half of the Sailor Moon’s History fold out and Page 19 has an ad for VR Dream Flight which is an event I haven’t posted about but probably should have. This is a Virtual Reality experience which lets fans fly around Tokyo with Pegasus, Chibiusa and Sailor Moon.

Pages 20 and 21 show us every single manga cover released in Japan! This includes four full releases and the first two covers of the new colour versions.

Page 22 is an ad for the Moon Color Chainon CD/Blu-ray releases which are coming on January 13th. These are still not in stock on Amazon Japan so I’m hoping that gets resolved in the next couple of weeks. Page 23 is a weird thing which I can’t quite figure out. It seems to be a fake group chat between various Sailor Moon characters though I’m not sure who’s who or what’s going on.

Page 24 is an ad for a Sky Garden Sailor Moon Eternal event which will include a screening of the film, a shop, a cafe and the VR event. Page 25 has a quiz where there are four choices each. Again the order of these question is a bit odd, reading left to right. Some of these are very easy but I’m frankly stumped by question 7 which asks which character is Phobos. Perhaps it will be obvious what colour Phobos and Deimos are in the film but as it currently stands there is only conflicting evidence of this from manga art book sources.

Pages 26 and 27 are ads for the Konica Minolta Planetarium where fans will be able to take their photo with a Sailor Moon poster, buy Sailor Moon themed drinks at the cafe as well as other merchandise.

Pages 28 and 29 show tons of Sailor Moon merchandise which is available for sale from various retailers.

Page 30 has a colour page based on the Nehelenia poster. I’m not sure the paper can be drawn on terribly well but I’m not about to let my children loose on this thing to test that theory out! Page 31 is an ad for 3coins which is a store which is selling a number of fairly inexpensive Sailor Moon products.

Finally the back cover of the magazine shows Super Sailor Chibi Moon!

All in all I really think this is a great magazine. It’s full of ads, yes, but they’re all Sailor Moon ads. For the low price point this is a fun collectible for fans to check out. Below I’ve included a few more close up images of some things in this magazine.

Spoiler! This is Artemis in human form! There was a leak of this image earlier but here is a higher quality version.

Which is Phobos and which is Deimos? Wikimoon mentions that there has been inconsistent evidence of which character is what colour. The two are only ever shown in black and white in the manga so there’s no conclusive evidence there. They are in some of the Sailor Moon art books however in volume IV Phobos is purple and Deimos is red (PIPDIR) while in volume V Phobos is red and Deimos is purple (PIRDIP). Hopefully the film will clear this up once and for all, but will this really settle things conclusively? This reminds me of the controversy in the Transformers fan community where there is a never ending conflict between the cartoon purist FIRRIB camp (Frenzy is red, Rumble is blue) and the toy collecting FIBRIR camp (Frenzy is blue, Rumble is red).

This is an image of Pegasus in a cage which I shared previously in lower quality.

I hadn’t seen this image of Mamoru and young Usagi before so I figured I’d share.

Sailor Moon Eternal Part 1 will be released in theatres in Japan on January 8th 2021 with Part 2 coming shortly afterwards on February 11th. Get caught up with the series before the films are released by using the Amazon links below or streaming the episodes on Crunchyroll or Hulu in the US or on Tubi in Canada. Read the manga stories the film will be based on in volumes 7 and 8 of the Eternal Edition which collects Acts 39, Eclipse Dream, through 49, Earth and Moon Dream, as well as some side stories.

Here are more stills from the upcoming Sailor Moon Eternal films including human Artemis, Phobos and Deimos

Posted on December 26, 2020 by Adam

A few more images from the upcoming Sailor Moon Eternal Part 1 film have made their way online. I stumbled upon a lot of these on social media and don’t have a source on all of them. A few are from Cinemacafe.net and some are scans from the Sailor Moon Eternal magazine which was released today.

The significant things here are age swapped Usagi and Chibiusa, a major plot point of the first film, as well as the human version of Artemis, who is usually a cat, as well as Phobos and Deimos, who until now have been crows. There is conflicting evidence in coloured manga images on which one of Phobos and Deimos is red and which is purple, so it’s not clear which is which in these images. I hope we are able to settle this in the film!

Sailor Moon Eternal Part 1 will hit Japanese theatres soon, on January 8th! Part 2 will be out on February 11th. We still don’t have any official confirmation of a release outside of Japan but it seems likely the films will be streamed on Netflix in the future.

Sources: @news_saturn on Twitter, MoonSticks on Facebook, cinemacafe.net, @chibi_rabbit_ on Twitter, @shinpyh on Twitter and Sailor Moon Forums

Keep reading for more images!

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Check out these new stills from the Sailor Moon Eternal films

Posted on August 13, 2020 by Adam

Update – 2020-08-14: The original post categorized these as a leak as I was not aware that these images had been posted to the official site.

A collection of 10 new stills from the first of the two Sailor Moon Eternal films has been posted to the Official Sailor Moon site. The post advertises a collaboration with Lawson convenience stores for a number of products. These 10 stills will be available from Lawson photocopiers. Though we’d already seen a couple of these, most of them seem to be new showing us single frames from animation which will likely be seen in Sailor Moon Eternal Part 1, which will be released in theatres on January 8th 2021.

Here’s a look at each still individually.

Super Sailor Chibi Moon and Super Sailor Moon posing. We had already seen this as part of footage which was already released so this is a higher quality image than the other samples.

Sailor Mercury posing during her post transformation speech. The pose is similar to past seasons but the designs are updated.

Sailor Mars posing. Again the same pose with new designs. Her wrist seems a bit less limp if that makes sense.

Sailor Jupiter posing. Her hair isn’t holding as well as it has.

Sailor Venus posing. Her finger seems to keep getting bigger.

Super Sailor Moon hugging a faceless Mamoru. We’ve seen this one already as well.

Pegasus and Chibiusa. Many have pointed out that Pegasus is pony sized in these films.
He does seem to be a bit smaller than what we’d seen in the first Sailor Moon anime, but Chibiusa’s size is a bit inconsistent in Sailor Moon Crystal. An earlier image of Chibiusa and Pegasus which we saw made him look much smaller.

Helios. We’d seen his designs but this is the first actual frame of him that we’ve seen.

Artemis, Diana and Luna. Luna’s eyes are now blue, while they were red in previous seasons. This may be so that her eye colour is consistent with human Luna who we will be saying likely in the second film which will be released on February 11th 2021.

The Amazon Trio. Striking a pose!

At this point we are certainly seeing more and more of the art style. While I would like to see more of it in action these stills give us a decent indication of what we’re in for next year. What do you think?

Source: Sailor Moon Thailand on Twitter

Viz Media promises to reprint the Sailor Moon Sailor Stars Limited Edition Blu-Ray booklet after referring to Sailor Uranus and Neptune as being in a “friendship”

Posted on June 29, 2019 by Adam

Sailor Stars – Relationship chart

Sailor Moon Sailor Stars Part 1 was released on DVD and Blu-Ray June 18th but some fans were not pleased with what they got! A relationship chart found in the booklet which is included in the Limited Edition Blu-Ray set refers to Sailor Uranus and Neptune as having a “Friendship”. This was noted by some fans including Erica Friedman of Okazu who wrote an article about it and brought the issue up with Viz directly.

Viz Media responded fairly promptly to the concerns on Twitter and through a statement on their web site. This statement makes it clear! Sailor Uranus and Neptune aren’t friends but partners (that being romantic partners and not a couple of gals selling insurance together).

Sailor Stars – Moonlight Legend lyrics

Though the updated version of that statement clearly addresses the Uranus/Neptune relationship dynamic the original message is all about a problem with the “romaji” lyrics in the booklet. Upon close inspection we see that this is actually a reference to the first words of Moonlight Legend which in the English translation are not translated as “I’m sorry” but left as “Gomen-ne”. This seems like a bit of a non issue all considered. In both cases we can get a bit of context if we look back at past versions of the booklet. supersonicjc did some investigation of earlier versions and found that the lyrics issue had been there since the first season. Looking at past relationship charts and the Sailor Stars chart we can see other issues which I think could use some attention.

Sailor Stars – Updated relationship chart

First we can look at the Sailor Stars relationship chart and see what else is there and what else is missing. I jokingly put together an updated version of the chart (above) with all sorts of ships which I support but this wasn’t meant to be anything serious. Since Usagi and Mamoru are listed as “Love” and not “Friendship” then we see that there is in fact an option for listing romantic love that is more than mere friendship. The obvious choice would be to put Haruka and Michiru with a “Love” connection. It’s also a bit odd that the link is put between Sailor Guardians rather than their civilian identities, as is done with other relationships. Jokes aside there is one legitimate relationship aside from the many couples I like to ship and that is Luna and Artemis. Though their relationship was a long time coming it was first hinted at in Sailor Moon R, cemented in the Sailor Moon S film which is arguably canon and finally confirmed in Sailor Moon SuperS with the arrival of Diana. No doubt Artemis and Luna of the future are in the relationship, but I think it’s safe to consider present day Luna and Artemis to have a “Love” connection as early as Sailor Moon SuperS as well as in this Sailor Stars chart.

Sailor Moon S – Relationship chart

Looking at past relationship charts we see fairly similar things. Sailor Uranus and Neptune are not in Sailor Moon SuperS and so they aren’t in that chart. They are introduced in Sailor Moon S and that chart lists them not as “Friendship” or “Love” but rather as “Partners”. This is technically true but they are also, obviously, much more than partners. The term “Partner” is sometimes used for gay and lesbian couples in place of gender specific terms such as “boyfriend and girlfriend” or “husband and wife” for a number of reasons. It distinguishes the platonic “I’m going out with my girlfriends” from the “I had a hot date with my girlfriend”. Guy don’t often use “boyfriend” in this non romantic sense but we’re not talking about boys here. It’s gender neutral use can also potentially mask the nature of someone’s same sex relationship in a social or professional situation where it’s unknown how others may feel about the term. The term “Partner” could also be preferred by some gay and lesbian couples as it sounds more serious than boyfriend or girlfriend for committed couples who due to whatever legal issues in their country may not be able to marry. So much to say the Sailor Moon S chart should have used “Love” for Sailor Uranus and Neptune as they used for Usagi and Tuxedo Mask. Why it isn’t Usagi and Mamoru or Sailor Moon and Tuxedo Mask I can’t say I understand. The term “Partners” is exclusively used to describe Sailor Uranus and Neptune in the Sailor Moon S chart where others who are described by the term in other charts, such as Usagi and Luna, are listed as “Friendship” on this one which was likely intentional.

Sailor Moon SuperS – Relationship chart

Other couples listed in the Sailor Moon S chart, as well as others, are not romantically linked at all. This includes Usagi’s parents Ikuko and Kenji who are only linked through their children. They are present in the Sailor Moon R, S and SuperS charts and in none of these are they shown to be in “Love” or in any way romantically involved. Naru and Umino are also in the R, S and SuperS charts. Though their relationship grows gradually throughout the series one can not deny that they are in a full on relationship in Sailor Moon S and SuperS, if not earlier, with the first indication of their romance dating back to the first season. They are linked only through mutual “Friendship” to Usagi (listed as “Best Friend” and “Friend” in Sailor Moon R) as well as mutual “Teacher/Student” links to Haruna.

Sailor Moon R – Relationship chart

There are others “Lovers” listed in the Sailor Moon R chart, a term unique to that season’s chart, which includes sibling lovers An and Ail as well as Saphir and Petz. The abusive relationships such as Koan and Rubeus or Esmeraude and Demande are not reflected, which is probably for the best.

The term “Partner” which doesn’t appear elsewhere on the Sailor Moon S chart also appears in many places on the Sailor Moon R chart. This includes Luna and Usagi, Luna and Artemis as well as Artemis and Minako. In this sense the usage is not a romantic one, though a case could be made for two of those three couples, but rather in the sense that they are partners in their roles as superheroes.

What does all of this, taken together, tell us? There are a number of relationships in the series which are not acknowledged in these charts. While I can see the concern over Haruka and Michiru’s relationship being downplayed in this way, it’s hard to see how it could have been deliberate “LGBTQ Erasure” as the Okazu blog post puts it, though that text does suggest that “mere lazy editorial decisions” may be the reason. The new dub of Sailor Moon, with this new Sailor Stars dub specifically having a lot of relevant dialogue, makes it very clear that these two are not just friends but lesbians in a romantic relationship. This is an older relationship in which their sexual activities are hinted at as heavily in the dub as they were in the Japanese version. It isn’t something that is, or needs to be, spelled out in black and white but there’s little doubt as to what is going on. As Usagi enters high school in Sailor Stars she suggest, quite awkwardly, that her and Mamoru could take things to the next level, somethings which never happens in the anime. It is clear that Haruka and Michiru already have this more mature relationship between them. Viz has generally stayed true to their commitment to portray this relationship as honestly as the source material did and this relationship chart is at odds with this. It isn’t the 90s anymore and the industry and audience are more permissive about having LGBTQ characters in their fiction, for which we should all be grateful. Whatever the reason for which this occurred, we should be glad that Viz is acknowledging and correcting this oversight.

First season – Moonlight Legend lyrics

As for the song lyrics, this really seems like a non issue. If this was such a big deal would someone perhaps have caught the error the last four times these lyrics were included in a booklet? Going back to the first season we see this same error of not translating their first two words of “Moonlight Legend” occurred in every single release. I seriously doubt Viz will be going back and issuing reprints of five different booklets just because of this problem!

If you’re interested in getting this set, be it the Limited Edition with this booklet or any other version, consider supporting the site by buying it through the Amazon links below.

Keep reading for more images showing the exact same lyric error with every booklet.

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Check out these Sailor Moon socks from Everything Legwear

Posted on June 15, 2019 by Adam

There’s certainly been no shortage of Sailor Moon products in or out of Japan lately and this even includes socks! I was recently contacted by the folks at Everything Legwear to let us know about some of their Sailor Moon products. There are a ton of Sailor Moon socks that you can find on their Sailor Moon store on Amazon. The prices seem reasonable for sets of 2 to 5 socks for $13 to $20 with designs featuring many characters and symbols from the series. The ads below show a few of what I’m told are the more popular items. Though Sailor Moon News does not have a business relationship with Everything Legwear we do use Amazon ads so if you buy products through links in this post this site will get a commission.

We had previously heard that Everything Legwear had the Sailor Moon sock license in 2017 when License Global made an announcement about a large number of companies who had made merchandising deals with TOEI to distribute Sailor Moon product. These, and many other products, have shown up in stores online and in the real world.

I once bought some Sailor Moon socks at EB Games and I’ll be honest, none of them fit! Keep an eye on the sizes as a lot of these are women’s socks which seems to indicate that this adult size 12 shoe wearing man isn’t exactly the target demographic! Hopefully you have better luck!

Have any of you bought socks from Everything Legwear? What do you think of them? Do you plan on picking any of these up?

Sailor Moon News

Bringing you the latest news about the new anime series Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon Crystal and all things Sailor Moon.

Tag Archives: Artemis

Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon: Princess Kaguya’s Lover musical review

Here’s more information on the planned Sailor V anime series

Sailor Moon Eternal Part 2 Review

The original English cast of Sailor Moon will be streaming a panel July 9th at 8pm

Sailor Moon Eternal Part 1 review

An in depth look at the Sailor Moon Eternal magazine

Here are more stills from the upcoming Sailor Moon Eternal films including human Artemis, Phobos and Deimos

Check out these new stills from the Sailor Moon Eternal films

Viz Media promises to reprint the Sailor Moon Sailor Stars Limited Edition Blu-Ray booklet after referring to Sailor Uranus and Neptune as being in a “friendship”

Check out these Sailor Moon socks from Everything Legwear