In a shocking turn of events the voice of Sailor Cosmos from Sailor Moon Cosmos Part 2 is Keiko Kitagawa, a popular model and actress who is best known to Sailor Moon fans for portraying Rei Hino, Sailor Mars, in the live action Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon series! This comes as a surprise as many fans likely expected Sailor Cosmos to be voiced by Kotono Mitsuishi who voices Sailor Moon in Sailor Moon Crystal as well as Chibi Chibi. Keiko Kitagawa will also be voicing Guardian Cosmos who is a separate character who protects the Galaxy Cauldron where star seeds are born. Check out some footage of Sailor Cosmos as voiced by Keiko Kitagawa below.

Now it is time to speculate wildly about the true identity of Sailor Cosmos! The Le Mouvement Final musical cast Satomi Okubo as Sailor Cosmos because she’d previously played Sailor Moon which supports the idea that Sailor Cosmos is a future version of Sailor Moon. Since Kotono Mitsuishi voiced Sailor Moon back in the original 90s anime as well there wasn’t another Sailor Moon voice actor to fall back on, unless we consider Kae Araki, the voice of Chibiusa, who filled in for Kotono Mitsuishi when she was off sick at the end of the first season and start of Sailor Moon R. Instead by casting Keiko Kitagawa perhaps this means that Sailor Cosmos in this version is actually a future incarnation of Sailor Mars! Looks like that rivalry finally got settled and Rei got Usagi’s power!

A preview of Sailor Moon Cosmos Part 2 was shown to fans earlier today. Keiko Kitagawa met with Kotono Mitsuishi at a press event to discuss the film. They had previously worked together on Rikokatsu. While some fans were upset that Kotono Mitsuishi didn’t get the role she was quite supportive of Keiko Kitagawa and her performance. Naoko Takeuchi herself was also said to be at the recording of Sailor Cosmos’s lines! Kotono Mitsuishi is Sailor Moon royalty! She’s the star of this movie, the titular character and has been the face of the press of all things Sailor Moon Crystal for the past decade. There’s no need to be upset that she didn’t get to play a third voice in this movie which she’s already all over!

Source: Sailor Moon Official Site

Keep reading for more images from this trailer and the press event.

The second full trailer for Sailor Moon Cosmos has been released on the Sailor Moon official site. These are all characters that we’ve seen in the last trailer but it’s nice to get a new and better look at some of them. Sailor Galaxia features prominently in this one as well as Sailor Chibi Chibi. You can watch the trailer on YouTube or embedded below.

One shot near the end of the trailer showing everyone supporting Sailor Moon is quite similar to a scene from the original Sailor Moon anime during the fight against Queen Beryl in the first season. Intentional homage? I suspect it is. I don’t believe this particular scene is based on a specific page in the manga. Given what’s going on with everyone in the scene this is based on I suspect this may parallel what’s happening and who’s including.

Sailor Moon Cosmos Part 1 will be released in theatres in Japan on June 9th with Part 2 following on Usagi’s birthday, June 30th. No specifics about a North American release are currently known.

Keep reading for more screenshots from this trailer!

There were a couple of big updates yesterday as the official Sailor Moon site was updated with a new Sailor Moon Cosmos poster and trailer. The poster includes Sailor Galaxia, Princess Kakyuu, the Sailor Starlights and even a quick look at Sailor Cosmos in the gem on the bottom right of the poster. The trailer includes a lot of scenes from later in the story. You can watch it on YouTube or embedded below.

To me this trailer feels like it could be the trailer for Sailor Moon Cosmos Part 2, the second of the two films. Sailor Moon Cosmos Part 1 will be released on June 9th with Part 2 planned for June 30th, Usagi’s birthday. I would have expected a trailer like this showing many scenes which are likely in the second film, to be released only after the first part hits theatres. There is no specific distinction in the trailer which makes it apply more to one part or another as it simply refers to the films as Sailor Moon Cosmos.

In this trailer we once again see the Sailor Starlights but also get a good look at Sailor Galaxia, Princess Kakyuu and Chibi Chibi. Chibiusa and Mamoru also feature briefly, which is how they will also be appearing in the films.

What do you think of the trailer? Who were you most excited to see in it?

Keep reading for more screenshots from the trailer.

We’ve got more cast details and our first look at Princess Kakyuu, Sailor Galaxia and Chibi Chibi from the upcoming Sailor Moon Cosmos films. The movies will start Nana Mizuki as Princess Kakyuu, Megumi Hayashibara as Sailor Galaxy and Kotono Mitsuishi as Chibi Chibi.

Nana Mizuki, the voice of Sailor Kakyuu, is a voice actor known for such roles as Hinata Hyuga in Naruto, Tsubomi Hanasaki in Heartcatch Precure! and Ann Takamaki in Persona 5.

Megumi Hayashibara, the voice of Sailor Galaxia, is a well known veteran voice actor. Some of her more memorable roles include Rei Ayanami and Pen Pen in Evangelion, Pidgeotto and Pidgeot in Pokémon, Ai Amano in Video Girl Ai, Lina Inverse in Slayers, Faye Valentine in Cowboy Bebop and Ai Haibara in Detective Conan.

Fans will surely recognize Kotono Mitsuishi, the voice of Chibi Chibi, as providing the voice of Sailor Moon in both the original Sailor Moon anime and Sailor Moon Crystal. By providing the voice for Chibi Chibi this continues the tradition from the original Sailor Moon anime of having Kotono Mitsuishi provide the voices of both Sailor Moon and Chibi Chibi. As Sailor Moon Cosmos will more closely follow the story of the manga than the original anime this will make sense considering Chibi Chibi’s true identity.

What do you think of the designs for these characters? Are you excited for this new cast?

Source: The Sailor Moon Official Site

The big news from the 30th Anniversary Streaming Event was the announcement of Sailor Moon Cosmos! The two films, Part 1 and Part 2 as was the case with Sailor Moon Eternal, will continue to Sailor Moon Crystal series and cover the Stars arc of the Sailor Moon manga. The current plan is to have these films come out in the summer of 2023 though delays are not completely uncommon with Sailor Moon Crystal. A trailer for the films was shown at the event and then posted on the Sailor Moon Official YouTube Channel. You can watch it embedded below.

The Stars arc is the fifth and final story arc of the Sailor Moon manga so this is likely the end of Sailor Moon Crystal. There’s a lot going on in this trailer! The Stars arc has Usagi meeting the Three Lights and fighting Galaxia. Though it seems that revealing the Sailor Starlights is something that is being kept for a later date we do get a quick look at a poster of The Three Lights in the background in Usagi’s room and an arm seen in the trailer likely belongs to Seiya who is wearing his school uniform. Sailor Galaxia is shown, with her face somewhat obscured. We also got a quick look at Chibi Chibi arriving at the end of the trailer. The final shot has three shooting stars crossing the sky, which would be the Sailor Starlights who are arriving from outside of the solar system.

The film’s title, Sailor Moon Cosmos, is a reference to Sailor Cosmos who is a future incarnation of Sailor Moon who we sort of see in the trailer but sort of don’t.

Mamoru, Tuxedo Mask, is seen briefly in this trailer. Will we see much more of him in the films? What a nice looking golden crystal in that one shot.

Now the speculation can begin about this film! It looks like the art style is fairly similar to what we saw in Sailor Moon Eternal. Does this mean that Kazuko Tadano is returning? The official movie site lists her as the character designer but not the animation director for the films. Since I can’t read Japanese I’m not able to translate anything else.

We haven’t seen much of the Three Lights and Sailor Starlights yet. The songs they performed were a big part of the music for the Sailor Stars season of the original Sailor Moon anime. One would think this would be an important part of these new movies. Who might voice these characters? Perhaps some popular Japanese vocalists! In the original Sailor Moon anime the Three Lights were men as civilians and they transformed into women when they became the Sailor Starlights, though they were voiced by women at all times. The Sailor Moon Crystal series follows the manga more faithfully in which case the Sailor Starlights are women and they disguise themselves as men when they are the Three Lights. It seems likely they could get women to do the voices of these characters, though it could go either way. What popular Japanese pop singers would you like to see voicing the Three Lights?

A note on language while discussing these movies. I’ll generally be referring to the Sailor Starlights as women with pronouns to match and the Three Lights as men with the equivalent pronouns. A lot has happened since the 1990s as far mainstream acceptance of transgender, genderfluid and non binary identities. It might not be evident how exactly to classify these characters by modern standards. As the story tends to have the Starlights identifying as women while they’re Sailor Guardians and the Three Lights identifying as men in their civilian identities I’ll be using language which fits that when discussing those characters. Since the Japanese language doesn’t use pronouns in the same way as we do in English I expect this isn’t something that is likely to be addressed in the official canon but am happy to update this practice if there seems to be cause to do so. If any of this seems incorrect or inappropriate feel free to bring it up in the comments.

Are you excited for these films? Do you think they will actually be released in 2023?

Keep reading for many more screenshots from this trailer.

Sailor Moon Sailor Stars Part 1 was released on Blu-Ray and DVD a couple of months ago, on June 18th. Fans who haven’t already picked it up can get from stores locally or from online retailers such as Amazon. Since it’s been out a while I’ve had the time to watch the entire set and so I wanted to give some general impressions about it. Though the video quality of these releases has generally not been great, this series looks better than sets in the past have. The new English dub is pretty good, as it has been for the rest of the series, and the script remains mostly unchanged.

Viz Blu-Ray

Japanese DVD

First let’s look at the video. The quality certainly does not compare with that of the Japanese Blu-Ray sets which have been released more recently, but it’s fairly good. To be sure this won’t look like a newer anime series such as Sailor Moon Crystal does on Blu-Ray. This Blu-Ray was mastered from older standard definition video which was put through software to upscale it to high definition. What that gives is something that I wouldn’t really say looks any better than the Japanese DVD releases which came out well over a decade ago. That said I’m not sure that comparison really matters. We’ve never gotten Sailor Stars in North America before. The subbed version was out on Hulu a few years ago but there was no dub and that release used similar source material as this. When it comes to comparisons, we don’t have an old North American release to compare it to. This release certainly looks better than nothing, which is the baseline!

Viz Blu-Ray

Japanese DVD

In this post I have provided comparisons to the Japanese DVD release. Since the Japanese Blu-Ray releases have not gotten to Sailor Stars yet I don’t have that for comparison. It’s pretty difficult to conclusively say if one is better than the other. The Viz Blu-Ray is certainly HD, in that it is 1080p, but that HD image lacks detail that would be there if it had been mastered from a film source. Anime of the time was drawn on cels and shot onto a film intermediate which was then transferred to video before broadcast. We have been told that this higher quality film version of Sailor Moon is lost. It is fairly evident from close examination of screenshots, or even upon viewing the video itself, that this is an upscaled version of standard definition video. There has also been some amount of post processing done in order to clean up the image. This means the colours will look more solid and have less noise on them, but potentially at the cost of detail, but is it detail that matters? Sailor Moon, like most traditional animation, is largely chunks of solid colour separated by solid black lines. The filters used seem to be optimized to this, giving a consistent colour and clear lines. Had this been a live action series with actors with pores and hair as well as other textured things, a different type of upscaling filter would likely have been used. While we shouldn’t necessarily mourn the loss of some grain there is a loss of detail in the backgrounds which aren’t as much just solid colours as we can see from the example of the cherry blossom tree behind Professor Tomoe in the above pictured image. Had we gone back to the film source for these, something which we’ve been told is impossible, then the image would likely look much better. If you check out my review of the Japanese Blu-Ray sets and look at the samples of the Make Up! Sailor Guardians on Blu-Ray you’ll see what that could have looked like.

Viz Blu-Ray

Japanese DVD

With earlier releases by Viz we had more ghosting, which means a double image or shadow near some lines, as well as some interlacing artifacts. I didn’t notice any such problems in this set. No doubt the quality has improved likely due to the fact that these episodes were made four years after the first season so the quality of the masters available get a little better with each year. This is likely also why the ADV releases of Sailor Moon seasons 1 and R were the worst while the Pioneer releases of Sailor Moon S and SuperS looked much better. Don’t take my word for it though! Check out the many comparison images here and later in the post to judge for yourself. There’s no objectively correct answer to how much post processing looks best, sometimes it’s just a matter of personal preference. While there has been some change in quality with these screenshots due to jpg compression it should give a good idea of what each looks like.

Viz Blu-Ray

Japanese DVD

Moving on from the video quality to the content. This is the first time we’re getting an English dub of Sailor Stars which is quite a treat. For years people considered this season to be impossible to market to the North American public, though I never really understood why. Is it really all that scandalous to have men who transform into women and vice versa? Sure, the Sailor Starlights’ outfits are fairly revealing but as far as anime goes this isn’t terribly shocking. It’s a joy to finally hear Sailor Stars in English. This is a cast we’ve heard for the past four seasons and three films as well as for Sailor Moon Crystal so even though it’s a departure from the DiC/Cloverway dub of most of our youth, for me there was still enough familiarity with the cast that it feels like Sailor Moon. The new actors for the Sailor Starlights do a great job. Having women play them as both men and women works well. This was the same approach which was used for the Japanese dub many years ago. The alternatives, either having two actors per character or having men do the voices would likely not have worked as well. For those who don’t appreciate the English version they also have the option of listening in Japanese with English subtitles.

Viz Blu-Ray

Japanese DVD

The episodes included are the first half of Sailor Stars. This includes the amazing six episode Nehelenia arc in which she is given a very different ending as she got in Sailor Moon SuperS. The rest of the episodes are about Usagi getting to know The Three Lights, more specifically Seiya, as she grows further and further out of touch with Mamoru who is away and somehow completely out of touch. This parallels the Sailor Starlights who have appeared and who fight Sailor Galaxia’s Sailor Animamates. My feelings on Sailor Stars have changed over the years. I originally found Seiya sort of annoying as he was just a distraction from Usagi’s true relationship which she never waivers from. This is generally true but I find the story much more appealing. She is hurting and though there is no infidelity he fills a need she has for companionship. His interests in her are not reciprocated which is more tragic than anything. I’ve given more thoughts on all of the episodes in my individual reviews which you can find by searching the episode numbers in the search field on the site if you are interested. So much to say it is a very good half season and I’m glad that everyone can see it now, assuming some fans haven’t already seen it some other way!

There aren’t a ton of special features included. Each disc has an Art Gallery which doesn’t seem to be Japanese concept art but more likely something by Italian artist Marco Albiero who does a remarkable job of duplicating the original anime style. For whatever reason the Blu-Ray viewing software I use to take screenshots couldn’t load the Art Galleries so you can take my word for that.

Also included are three voice actor interviews. The first is with Laura Post, the voice of Nehelenia. Having also been in SuperS it’s a bit odd to see this interview here but she mostly talks about her appearance in those first 6 episodes which fits.

Next we have an interview with Stephanie Sheh, the voice of Usagi. This is the longer of the interviews. She does the whole thing with her dog! A few things stood out to me. First she mentions that the season was pretty long. This is objectively untrue as Sailor Stars is the shortest Sailor Moon season with only 34 episodes. One can hardly blame her for thinking this though as Usagi and Sailor Moon dominate this season like no other. It would be difficult to count but it seems likely that Usagi had more lines in Sailor Stars than any other seasons except perhaps the first one. There was much less focus on other Sailor Guardians. Chibiusa who dominated SuperS is gone, along with her father, for most of the season. Stephanie Sheh also makes a joke that it was lucky that Usagi didn’t have a cell phone because if Mamoru didn’t respond to a few texts this would be a sign of trouble. More generally she is lucky that this occurred at the dawn of the Internet age where it would be believable that Usagi would not have access to e-mail or chat software. I consider myself an early adopter of the Internet and I had no Internet access at home while Sailor Stars was airing. Ami is shown to communicate with some people through the Internet, but she is clearly an outlier amongst her friends. She also mentions that she ships Usagi and Mamoru and thinks her relationship with Seiya is inappropriate. This is probably best as such a view reflects her character’s! There’s also a funny bit where she wonders what’s up with the Starlights, asking similar questions that many fans have like if they’re men who turn into women, women who turn into men, women dressing as men or what? All around I found the interview very humourous. It’s obvious that Stephanie Sheh has spent a lot of time with the Sailor Moon character throughout the years and has many thoughts about the series.

Finally we have “A Chibi Interview with Stephanie Sheh”, the voice of Chibi Chibi. It’s a short interview where she talks about that character. She mentions being happy to play Chibi Chibi and points out that in the Japanese version the voice of Usagi played Chibi Chibi as well, but it wasn’t clear why. This is funny because in the manga there is a clear connection between the characters which doesn’t actually exist in the anime. It might make more sense for Chibi Chibi to share voice actors with another character, but I’ll avoid the specifics for now. Fans who are familiar with the end of the series will understand why.

Beyond the interviews we have a “Clean Opening” and “Clean Ending” which basically means the intro and ending without Japanese credits overlayed. These are of a very poor quality! The Japanese releases humourously refer to these as being “Non Super” meaning they aren’t HD. While they are technically HD in that they are encoded on the disk as 1080p, they are clearly taken from something of roughly the same quality as a VHS tape. A nice extra to have though one we’ve seen on every Japanese release ever.

As for the packaging this set continues to look quite nice, as have other released to date. This is all new art, whereas the Japanese releases have continued to reuse the original laserdisc box art for decades. The special booklet that is included with the Limited Edition is quite nice, including episode summaries and art of a number of characters. I believe all of this art is once again done by Italian artist Marco Albiero. The booklet also includes a relationship chart which has been the source of some controversy which I posted about closer to it’s release as well as an ad which refers to the first three seasons of Sailor Moon Crystal as the entire series.

Since this booklet is meant to cover the entire series it has cast information and summaries for the entire season. It also includes a nice goodbye message to the fans which I will quote below.

To all the longtime fans and those who joined us during this journey: This previously unreleased season is here because of you. Your support makes the stars twinkle brighter and we couldn’t have done this without you!

Starlight Honeymoon… THERAPY KISS!

All considered I think this set it worth getting. The video quality is not the best possible but it is quite good. While the Japanese Blu-Ray which is coming in November will probably look marginally better, it won’t even have English subtitles, let alone English audio, so it’s of little use to most fans. If you’re only looking to watch the Japanese series with subtitles you can of course always stream these episodes, but buying this set or digital downloads of the episodes is the only way to get Viz’s English dub. I look forward to seeing part two of Sailor Stars and rewatching the final episodes. For those of you who are interested in this set but have not gotten it yet, you can support the site but buying it using the Amazon links below.

Keep reading for more images of the box art and comparisons of the video quality between this Blu-Ray and the Japanese DVD release.

Viz Blu-Ray

Japanese DVD

Viz Blu-Ray

Japanese DVD

Viz Blu-Ray

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Viz Blu-Ray

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Viz Blu-Ray

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Viz Blu-Ray

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Own The Entire Series Today!

Great news for Sailor Moon fans who are really picky about video quality and don’t like having money! The final season of the original Sailor Moon anime, Sailor Moon Sailor Stars, will be released on Blu-Ray in Japan with volume 1 coming November 13th and volume 2 coming January 8th 2020. This follows decent but expensive releases for the first four seasons of the original Sailor Moon anime. While the quality of these has generally been better than what was released by Viz, these are still HD upscaled versions of standard definition source material. By this I mean to say that TOEI did not go back to the film source to get these HD versions but has done post processing on the same masters used for their DVD releases many years ago.

The cost of these is certainly not cheap! MSRP for each volume is 14,800 yen, about $136 US. You can already pre-order the standard or vendor exclusive versions of volume 1 from Amazon Japan. Having just watched the first Sailor Stars set released by Viz and been fairly happy with the video quality it gets harder and harder to justify getting these sets, which only include Japanese audio and no subtitles! Certainly the video quality of the earlier seasons is the worst of the Viz releases and every season the sets look a little better. It’s easy to assume this is due to Viz doing a better job, which is certainly part of what’s going on, but I also think it’s just a matter of the masters for the series looking better for the later seasons. The ADV DVD releases of Sailor Moon’s first season and Sailor Moon R were horrendous but the Pioneer DVD releases of Sailor Moon S and SuperS were much better looking for the same reasons.

The art which we’ve seen looks quite good. As with previous releases this is box art which was originally used for the initial VHS and laserdisc releases. This art is done by Katsumi Tamegai who was an animation director for many episodes throughout the Sailor Moon series, including the final episode. This art was also used for the Japanese DVD release. Volume 1 has an image of Eternal Sailor Moon on the outside and Usagi with Chibi Chibi on the inside, though she’ll only show up for the last two episodes of the set. I’ve included images of the laserdiscs for reference throughout this post.

The outer cover for volume 2 is an amalgamation of three different laserdisc covers showing each of the Sailor Starlights and their civilian Three Lights counterparts. The inside shows Princess Serenity and a less evil Galaxia which I suppose is a bit of a spoiler!

Included in volume 1 are episodes 167 to 183 while volume 2 will have episodes 184 to 200. This is the same breakdown Viz used with their release as it splits the season evenly with 17 episodes per set. The special features are much like what we’ve gotten with other releases. This includes low quality (non super) creditless versions of the opening and ending credits and 15 second commercials for each episode. A booklet with episode descriptions will also be included.

As always we have vendor exclusives for a number of retailers. You can see them shown in the image above. It isn’t always obvious what these are! Members of the official Sailor Moon fan club who order the set through the club will get A4 sized sticker sheets with each volume as well as a laserdisc jacket sized poster for buying both volumes. We don’t know what images those will include at this time. A4 size is roughly equivalent to a standard 8.5×11″ letter piece of paper. A laserdisc jacket is roughly the size of a vinyl record jacket.

The Amazon exclusive which is available to customers buying both volumes is a box to house both sets which has art similar to the laserdisc box which housed all of Sailor Stars.

The Animate exclusive, which is available only to those ordering both volumes, is a set of three acrylic key rings. Each features an image of one of the Sailor Starlights with their Three Lights alter ego from the box art.

The Seven Net exclusive for volume 1 is an acrylic plate, which I believe is what is sometimes called a pencil board, showing an image of Eternal Sailor Moon and the Sailor Guardians. The exclusive for volume 2 is a B2 sized tapestry featuring an image of Sailor Uranus, Neptune, Pluto and Saturn which was originally on the back of the Sailor Stars laserdisc box. B2 size is about 20″x28″.

Finally the Neo Wing exclusives are a separate A2 sized cloth poster which comes with each volume. These are images of the first two laserdisc covers, that being Eternal Sailor Moon for volume 1 and Sailor Saturn and Sailor Chibi Moon for volume 2. A2 size is about 16.5″x22″.

Have any of you been buying these sets?

Earlier this week Viz Media announced the new English dub cast for their dub of Sailor Moon Sailor Stars which will be coming to home video on June 18th. Though I’m used to calling this Viz’s “new” English dub this is the first time the final season is being dubbed in English and so these characters have not had English voices before! The voice cast includes Stephanie Sheh as Chibi Chibi, Sailor Chibi Chibi, Melissa Hutchison as Seiya Kou, Sailor Star Fighter, Erika Harlacher as Taiki Kou, Sailor Star Maker, Sarah Williams as Yaten You, Sailor Star Hearler, and Carrie Keranen as Sailor Galaxia.

Fans will probably notice that Stephanie Sheh is also the voice of Usagi Tsukino, Sailor Moon, in Viz’s dub. Her being cast as Chibi Chibi follows with the Japanese casting where Kotono Mitsuishi, the Japanese voice of Sailor Moon, also played Chibi Chibi. Why is this casting important? In the manga it certainly makes sense for Chibi Chibi to have the same voice as Sailor Moon! Her true identity turns out to be a future version of Sailor Moon so they should share a voice. In the anime however that identity is not kept and aside from the visual resemblance, due to the characters resembling each other in the manga, they are not the same person or even related in any way. The end of the anime was written before the manga was completed and the casting was likely done before the identity of the character was known or decided. So much to say it isn’t really necessary to have Chibi Chibi voiced by Sailor Moon’s voice actor.

The rest of the voice actors have experience in other anime. The three Sailor Starlights are voiced by women, as was the case in the Japanese version. These characters are men while they are in the civilian disguises as The Three Lights and transform into women when they are Sailor Guardians, their genuine selves. In the manga it’s insinuated these are simply disguises but in the anime they actually transform their bodies. Melissa Hutchison who plays Seiya, the more prominent of the Sailor Starlights, is best known for playing Clementine in the Walking Dead video games. Erika Harlacher who plays Taiki has voiced many anime characters including Kurapika in Hunter x Hunter. Sarah Williams who plays Yaten has voiced many video game and anime characters including Sayaka Miki in Madoka Magica and Jinx in League of Legends. Carrie Keranen who plays Sailor Galaxia has previously voiced a number of single episode character in Sailor Moon including Kazuko Tadashita, one of the animator from episode 21, Saeko Yamamoto and Blizzar, the skier and monster from episode 38, Utonberino, a cardian
from Sailor Moon R episode 55, Amanju, a cardian who was chosen by Ail in Sailor Moon R episode 57, Avogadora, the Droid in Dark Fruit in Sailor Moon R episode 66, as well as the Xenian Flower from the Sailor Moon R movie.

Source: @VIZMedia on Twitter

Support the site by pre-ordering Sailor Moon Sailor Stars using the links below.

Following last week’s news about Sailor Moon Sailor Stars Part 1 coming to DVD and Blu-Ray on June 18th fans can now pre-order the set from Amazon. This includes the less expensive DVD version, selling for just $28.26, as well as the standard Blu-Ray version, which is selling for $61.12 and the Limited Edition Blu-Ray which is $71.73. This is slightly less expensive than pre-ordering from RightStuf, which currently costs $71.99, though users ordering from RightStuf will be able to get the exclusive coin. If you pre-order from Amazon using the links below, or any other Amazon links such as the ones on the left sidebar on the main page, this will support this site.

This set includes episodes 167 to 183. This includes the short six episode Nehelenia arc, which is a sort of bridge between the SuperS season and Sailor Stars, and the introduction of the Sailor Starlights and their alternate identities, the Three Lights! The set will end with the introduction of the mysterious Chibi Chibi! These will be available for the first time with English audio, featuring Viz’s new English dub of the series, as well as Japanese audio with English subtitles. We never got a straight answer as to why Sailor Stars wasn’t originally dubbed but some fans believe that it was because the content would have been considered inappropriate for some viewers. If that was ever true it seems like this is no longer the case!

Do you ship Seiya and Usagi? Will you be getting this release? I’m certainly looking forward to watching it in English for the first time. Though I’ve imported the Japanese DVDs and laserdiscs of Sailor Stars over the years the copies I’ve watched the most were VHS fan subs and a bootleg DVD, both of which used the VKLL subtitle scripts.

A ton of information about the Sailor Moon Le Mouvement Final musical has been released! The musical will start in September and run in three different cities in Japan, those being Tokyo, Aichi and Osaka. As expected this musical will cover the Stars arc of the manga, which has the Sailor Guardians joining forces with the Sailor Starlights to fight Sailor Galaxia.

Check out the new cast members! Note that I don’t speak Japanese so for some of these I couldn’t get a good English version of the name so I just included the Japanese text. I’ll update those when I get some better into.

Seiya Kou, Sailor Star Fighter, will be played by Meiku Harukawa.

Taiki Kou, Sailor Star Maker, will be played by Riona Tatemichi. Riona previously played Rubeus in the Petite Étrangère musical.

Yaten Kou, Sailor Star Healer, will be played by Saki Matsuda.

Princess Kakyuu will be played by 岡村麻未.

Sailor Galaxia will be played by Coco Isuzu (Twitter, Instagram).

Sailor Iron Mouse will be played by Aoki Shion.

Sailor Tin Nyanko will be played by 橋垣美佑.

Sailor Aluminum Siren will be played by 小林由佳.

Sailor Lead Crow will be played by Juri Hirayu (Twitter, Instagram).

There will be two actresses playing Chibi Chibi. Hinari Yamaguchi and 新津ちせ.

There will also be some dancers playing additional villains. These are 椎原夕加里,　肥田野好美,　匂坂あゆ美 and Ayano Nagasawa. A number of them played villains in past musicals.

Performances in Tokyo will be from September 8th to the 18th. Performances in Aichi will be September 23rd and 24th. Performances in Osaka will be held from September 29th to October 1st.

Will any of you be attending this round of musicals?