Canal J has confirmed via a conversation on their Facebook page that Sailor Moon Crystal will be airing on TV in France starting in March 2015. Canal J is a French language children’s cable channel so they will be airing a French language dub of the show, though no details about the dub are available at this time. Fans are interested in seeing the show with French subtitles, but this is unlikely to happen on a children’s channel. For now they can always watch the French subtitled feed on Niconico. I have transcribed and translated the contents of the Facebook message to user Cauldron Tounsyl included in the screenshot below:

Bonjour Cauldron Tounsyl.
Bonne année à vous aussi !
Sailor Moon arrive bien sur Canal J courant mars normalement.
Concernant les doublages je n’ai malheureusement pas l’info.
Très bonne journée

Which translates to:

Hello Cauldron Tounsyl.
Happy new Year to you too !
Sailor Moon will arrive on Canal J in March.
With regards to the dubbing, I unfortunately don’t have any info.
Have a nice day

Sailor Moon first aired in France back in 1993, two full years before airing in English here in North America. As the first to air the original anime outside of Japan it seems for now that France will also be the first to air Sailor Moon Crystal on TV at all, as it is currently only available on streaming services worldwide, including Japan.

With a French language dub of the series in the works I am hopeful that it will also begin airing on French TV stations here in Canada. I used to watch the original French dub of Sailor Moon on TVA on Saturday mornings for a while in the 90s, though they only aired a dozen or so episodes from the first two seasons, despite the fact that all five seasons were dubbed in French.

Source: Sailor Moon Crystal Facebook Page

Here’s a trailer for the Sailor Moon 20th Anniversary Memorial Tribute Album which will be released on January 29th. It gives a preview of each of the tracks and gives us the details about every artists which will be performing a song. As we’ve seen before the songs are mostly the opening and ending themes, with a few other popular Sailor Moon songs included. The official web site has also been updated with more information about each track and artist.

Here is the track listing as well as the artists performing them. We’ll look at who the newly mentioned artists are later in this post.

1: Moonlight Densetsu (Moonlight Legend) – Momoiro Clover Z
2: Heart Moving – Shoko Nakagawa
3: Princess Moon – Haruka Fukuhara
4: Otome no Policy (Maiden’s Policy) – Etsuko Yakushimaru
5: La Solider – Tommy heavenly⁶
6: Ai No Senshi (Soldier of Love) – Mariko Goto & Avu-chan
7: Tuxedo Mirage – Momoiro Clover Z
8: “Rashiku” Ikimasho (I’ll Go As Myself) – Haruko Momoi
9: Sailor Stars Song – Mitsuko Horie
10: Kaze mo Sora mo Kitto… (The Wind, The Sky, Surely…) – Makoto Kawamoto
Bonus Track: Moonlight Densetsu – French Version – Clémentine

Once again we see Momoiro Clover Z, the band who will be performing the theme song for the new anime set to premier in July, performing Moonlight Densetsu. They have previously performed this song twice live and this version sounds much better, having been cleaned up in a studio.

We discussed Mitsuko Horie and Shoko Nakagawa in our first post about this album and then talked about Mariko Goto, Haruko Momoi and Tommy Heavenly⁶ when more details were announced. With this latest news we have five more artists joining the list with Haruka Fukuhara, Etsuko Yakashimaru, Avu-chan, Makoto Kawamoto and Clémentine. Read on more more on each of these artists.

Haruka Fukuhara is a 15 year old actress, model and singer who is well known as the main actress on Cooking Idol Ai! Mai! Main!, a live action and animated cooking show. She has released a number of singles, most of which have to do with cooking.

Etsuko Yakushimaru is a J-Pop singer who has been the vocalist for the Japanese rock band Sōtaisei Riron since 2006. She also writes and composes music under the pseudonym Tika.

Avu-chan is the lead singer of the band Ziyoou-Vachi (Queen Bee). The members of this glamrock Japanese band are all transgender women. Avu-chan is teaming up with Mariko Goto to perform Ai No Senshi.

Makoto Kawamoto is a Japanese singer who has been working since 1996. She is well known to anime fans for performing 1/2, the second opening theme for the anime series Rurouni Kenshin.

A bonus French version of Moonlight Densetsu is also included on this CD sung by Clémentine. Clémentine is a French language singer who primarily works in Japan. This song will be sung in French though no preview is included to date so we will have to wait until the album is released to see what this sounds like.

You can preorder the album from Amazon Japan, CD Japan or JList.

Here’s a video “Luduc versus le doublage” (Luduc vs. Dubbing) recorded at G-Anime 2013 in Gatineau which includes an interview with Terri Hawkes, the voice of Sailor Moon from the English dub of the Sailor Moon anime. This video is primarily in French but the portions with Terri Hawkes, which includes Sailor Moon saying lines from famous movies, are in English.

Mixed in with this are two French interviews, one with Olivier Visentin, an actor who dubs French voices for English movies such as the voice of Jonah Hill’s characters and the other with Jackie Berger who is best known as the voice of Estaban from the French dub of “Les Mystérieuses Cités d’or” or “The Mysterious Cities of Gold”, an anime show that was quite popular amongst French Canadians.

Check out Luduc’s YouTube channel for more of his convention videos.

Readers may recognize the room these interviews are done in from our interview with Terri Hawkes at the same convention.

Earlier this week Toei Animation announced that it made a deal with Viz Media Europe for the release of the Sailor Moon anime in German and French language DVDs. The entire 200 episode TV series will be released by Viz Media Switzerland in German DVDs which will have both German dialogue as well as the original Japanese dialogue with German subtitles. The French release will be handled by Kazé who will be releasing the entire first season of Sailor Moon on bilingual DVDs featuring the French dub as well as the original Japanese with French subtitles.

German and French speaking fans may want to think about picking up these releases as there are still no English dubbed or subbed DVDs currently in print.

Below you will find a few samples of the French language dub. Keep in mind that I recorded these from VHS taped versions of a TV broadcast from the 90s so these clips should not be taken as an indication of the video quality of these upcoming releases.