A second Sailor Moon Crystal soundtrack will be released in Japan on July 27th. This 2 CD soundtrack is called “Sailor Moon Crystal Official Soundtracks II”. Why the plural in soundtracks? I don’t know. A sound track refers to the track on a film which includes the music as opposed to dialogue and sound effects. What we call a soundtrack was once referred to as the music from the sound track of a movie. In that sense we really are just referring to the one track but we also talk about tracks on a CD which is a totally different thing. None of these things are actual tracks. There’s no 8 track or record or even a film real medium to Sailor Moon Crystal. A track is just a concept we use to refer to something which exists as computer files on hard drives and CDs. We don’t really mean the sound track of a movie when we say Soundtrack anymore. Anyway I’m ranting. I’ll give them a pass for being really Japanese.

You can pre-order the CD from online retailers such as Amazon Japan and CD Japan for as little as 3000 yen, about $30. This is more than the singles we’ve seen before because this is a full 2 CD set with background music from the entire season. Also included are TV sized versions of all of the opening and ending themes heard in the Infinity arc. A track listing is on the Sailor Moon official site. Here’s an English track listing I got through Google Translate with some help from a translation by Miss Dream!

Disc 1

1. Super Sailor Moon’s Theme
2. In Love With the New Moon (TV size) by Etsuko Yakushimaru
3. Sea Serenade
4. Mysterious Encounter
5. Haruka and Michiru
6. Professor – Pharaoh 90
7. Kaolinite
8. Anxious Dream
9. Hotaru
10. Mysterous Guardians
11. Ripples on the Heart?
12. Man or woman, is that so important?
13. Eternal Eternity (TV size)
14. Uranus and Neptune Make-Up!
15. Sailor Uranus
16. Sailor Neptune
17. Possessed Soul
18. Daimon
19. Moon Cosmic Power Make-Up!
20. Planet Power Make-Up!
21. Arrival of the Sailor Guardians
22. Magnificent Counterattack
23. Moon Spiral Heart Attack!
24. Chibiusa and Hotaru -Flute version-
25. Chibiusa and Hotaru
26. Chibiusa Make-Up!
27. Maiden’s Advise (TV size)
28. Mimi Hanyu
29. Witches’ Song

Disc 2

1. The Three Guardians of the Outer Solar System
2. The Three Guardians’ Mission
3. In Love With the New Moon (TV size) by Mitsuko Horie
4. Mistress 9
5. The Witches’ Awakening
6. A Ruthless Challenger
7. A Fierce Battle with the Witches
8. Sorrowful
9. Bonds of the Sailor Gaurdians
10. The Holy Grail’s Glow
11. Crisis Make-Up!
12. Rainbow Moon Heart Ache!
13. Only Eternity Brings the Two Together (TV size)
14. Shadow of Fear
15. Planet Eating Demon
16. She Who Brings Destruction
17. Hotaru’s Feelings
18. A Sorrowful Decision
19. Infinite Battle
20. Disappearing Planet
21. Silence Glaive
22. Light of Rebirth
23. In Love With the New Moon (TV size) / Momoiro Clover

The second of three CD singles with theme songs for Sailor Moon Crystal Season III was released on Wednesday May 25th. You can order it along with the first CD from Amazon Japan. It features the second version of the opening theme, In Love With the New Moon, this time sung by Mitsuko Horie, the voice of Sailor Galaxia from the original Sailor Moon anime. The new ending theme is Maiden’s Advice by Misato Fukuen, the voice of Chibiusa. This is a CD/DVD combo. The CD includes the second opening and ending in full length versions as well as karaoke versions. The DVD includes music videos for both songs. This includes shorter TV sized openings and full length versions. The CD is not very expensive, about $13 US plus a bunch of shipping, and I would suggest picking it up to support the show though if you’re feeling cheap I’m sure you can find it somewhere.

The packaging is nice, as with the first disc. It comes with an insert with the lyrics and an ad for the Blu-Ray. The back of the case features Sailor Saturn, Sailor Moon, Sailor Chibi Moon and Sailor Jupiter. This seems like an odd grouping until you see the back of Sailor Mars’s hair on the side. This fits together with the back of the first CD and no doubt the third CD will fit on the right.

What can I say about these songs? I didn’t care as much for this version of In Love With the New Moon as I did the first one. It’s enjoyable just not quite as catchy. The ending theme speaks for itself. Maiden’s Advice embodies everything that is Chibiusa. I feel like I’ll get cavities listening to it!

The DVD features are nothing spectacular. The TV sized opening and endings are pretty much exactly what we see in the episodes only without credits and in lower resolution. The music videos accompanying the full length versions are nice enough. They both features footages of the episodes which we’ve seen to date, right up the end of the latest episode, Act 33. The In Love With the New Moon video shows clips from the entire series, focusing a lot on Usagi’s relationship with Haruka. The video for Maiden’s Advice is all about Chibiusa! It’s just like you’d expect.

The final CD will be released on June 22nd. You can pre-order it from Amazon Japan. The listing shows an image of Momoiro Clover Z though I imagine the art will be consistent with the other releases and perhaps showcase Tuxedo Mask on the cover. This will once again feature the opening theme, In Love With the New Moon, but this time sung by Momoiro Clover Z, the band who performed Moon Pride during the first two story arcs. The new ending theme, Only Eternity Brings the Two Together, will be sung by Kenji Nojima, the voice of Tuxedo Mask. I believe based on the timing of other themes that this new opening and ending theme will be featured during Act 34 which will be available on Monday May 30th. If not, they will almost certainly be featured during Act 35.

Keep reading for more images of the packaging.

The most recent episode of Sailor Moon Crystal is now available to view on Crunchyroll, Neon Alley and Hulu. This week’s title is the longest to date as we get Sailor Moon Crystal Act 30, Infinity 4 – Sailor Uranus – Haruka Tenoh – Sailor Neptune – Michiru Kaioh. But is this the title? That is what the original manga chapter is called and from the title card appears to be the proper Japanese title but the Crunchyroll and Hulu subs and page titles call it “Episode 31 – Act.30 INFINITY 4 Haruka Tenoh, Michiru Kaioh – SAILOR URANUS, SAILOR NEPTUNE”. Why change the name like this? Seems an odd choice! This week we continue to deal with drama related to our new friends and Sailor Mercury faces off against Viluy of the Witches 5.

First things first, we have a new opening theme song. Somehow I didn’t realize we were getting it this week. This story arc will actually have three opening and three ending themes. These are the second batch. The opening theme song, In Love With the New Moon, is now sung by Mitsuko Horie who is best known as the voice of Sailor Galaxia. She also covered the Sailor Stars Song as part of the 20th Anniversary Album. It’s a bit odd to hear a slightly changed version of the theme song we’d just started to get used to. I tend to prefer the first version but I wonder if my feelings would change had I heard this one first. I guess we will be getting this version for another few weeks before it is replaced with the Momoiro Clover Z version of the song. They sang Moon Pride for the first two story arcs of Sailor Moon Crystal.

The new ending theme is Maiden’s Advice, sung by Misato Fukuen, the voice of Chibiusa. The ending theme is full of pink and Luna Ps as far as the eye can see. A big change from the last ending theme we had. This will eventually be replaced by Only Eternity Brings the Two Together, sung by Kenji Nojima, the voice of Tuxedo Mask. A CD single with the current opening and ending themes will be released on May 25th, after which I suspect we will be getting the third opening and closing.

As the episode begins it is immediately obvious that these new Sailor Guardians can’t be our friends. Prelude to drama! Sailor Uranus and Neptune straight up attack Sailor Moon and her friends because we sort of have the same mission but we aren’t friends so we just aren’t. In the process Chibiusa immediately betrays her promise to Haruka and Michiru by revealing that Sailor Neptune’s Mirror is a Talisman. Too bad she doesn’t share Hotaru’s secret and tell us who the big bad guy is but whatever we needed to make Ami work a bit this week anyway.

Another shared dream. This one shared by Mamoru and Usagi, who see the “Deity of Destruction”. The Messiah? Looks like Princess Serenity with a staff, maybe a glaive, to me. The two seem surprised to share a dream, even though this has been happening consistently for the past few episodes.

Usagi is chilling in the park and someone comes by from behind covering her eyes with a sort of “guess who” thing. I hate this game, especially when the person who plays it isn’t someone you play it with a lot. Guess right and it’s not a big deal. Guess wrong and it’s drama drama drama. So Usagi guesses Mamoru, which is odd since she recognizes that Haruka smells like Sailor Uranus. I guess she’s bad at this game too. At this point everyone seems to know who’s who and when Haruka gets close… Mamoru shows up!

The drama continues at Mamoru’s apartment and while things are tense Chibiusa crashes the party! She appears to be oblivious to the problem but we eventually learn that her and Diana are actually trying to get them to make up. Chibiusa’s makeup attempt includes making the Holy Grail! This is an odd thing. Chibiusa remembers seeing this item, which Sailor Moon used back in the day aka the future, in a painting in her mother’s room. So the Holy Grail that is made in this episode actually doesn’t exist yet! Mamoru looks up the Holy Grail in “An Encyclopedia of World History”. I don’t really think of the Holy Grail as being a historical object what with it in all likelihood never having actually existed, but whatever. It’s a show about magical girls.

Finally once Chibiusa and Diana are asleep Mamoru and Usagi have a little moment where they both admit to being jealous and then they probably have sex. But Chibiusa and Diana aren’t really sleeping so Chibiusa maybe sees her parents having sex. I guess it’s in Chibiusa’s best interest to encourage her parents to have sex because that’s how she’ll be made some day, unless human sexuality changes drastically in the next seven or so years.

On to part two which has almost nothing to do with the first half of the episode. Ami enrolls at Mugen Preparatory School, which is a sort of high school exam preraration school given at Mugen Academy but with a ton of students from others schools, hence the variety of uniforms. Ami is a genius, so it makes sense that she goes here, but she’s actually investigating too! She goes up to the 13th floor and sees a scale model of a galaxy. I say galaxy of course because I know that’s what it looks like. Yui Bido, actually Viluy of the Witches 5, refers to it as a scaled down universe, and states that it’s the Tau Star System. Let’s correct some confusing terminology here. The Universe is vast and contains at least a hundred billion galaxies. This model contains a single galaxy. This is hardly a scale model of any Universe as we know it. It’s also referred to as the Tau Star System. What exactly does this mean? A solar system is a star with planets and such around it. A star system can mean a few stars orbiting each other, such as a binary star system, but when you get to galaxy scale, containing hundreds of billions of stars, you don’t call things a star system anymore. So much to say, what we see about this thing contradicts the wildly varying things it’s called. It’s not that hard to get these things accurately, especially given Naoko Takeuchi’s interest in space. I’m sure this won’t get better as the story arc proceed and we learn more about the Tau Star System. Everything we know about physics also tells us that you can’t just scale something down like this. Is this galaxy made up of tiny stars with tiny planets around them filled with tiny people made up of tiny cells and tiny molecules made up of tiny atoms? Whatever. It’s a show about magical girls.

Ami starts to poke around. She throws a pen into a camera which is bad ass. She’s on the 13th floor. She sees a door that is labeled “Underground laboratory”. She’s on the 13th floor and sees a door that leads to a lab which is under the ground, generally accepted to be at floor one. In there she finds Daimons and the enemy shows up. She’s underground at this point. She runs to the nearest window and … she’s back on the 13th floor! What exactly is going on here with a dedicated stairwell that goes down 13 floors but doesn’t open up to any other floor? Is there some sort of portal through space that leads from one floor to another? Anyway Ami is totally bad ass again by jumping out the windows, diving into a pool and transforming while diving, emerging as Sailor Mercury. Pretty awesome. Reminds me a bit of Ami’s first transformation in the live action series which is done while she’s falling.

Sailor Mercury fights Viluy who fights with nano robots. Advanced technology which is basically a swarm of tiny robots all working in unison for something. For whatever reason the cloud of nanobots appears as formulae over Sailor Mercury. Why not? Sailor Uranus and Neptune appear and transform for the first time. The transformation sequences are brief and similar to those from the original Sailor Moon anime. After a few attacks magic beats technology yet again. Viluy’s power level was 202. I’m not sure how accurate this scale really is, but they keep using it. The page of the book which the Holy Grail appears on happens to be 202. What an odd reference.

Finally we see an old friend. Reika and Motoki are at the University and we see a new first year student, Setsuna Meioh. If the resemblance was not immediately obvious this is the civilian identity of Sailor Pluto, who died last season in the distant future.

Next week is Act 31, Sailor Pluto – Setsuna Meioh, in which we will see Sailor Pluto once again.

Keep reading for more screenshots from this episode and the preview for Act 31.

The new episodes of Sailor Moon Crystal, covering the Infinity arc of the manga, will have three different ending themes! When the trailer launched we previously announced that the new opening would be “In Love With the New Moon” sung by Etsuko Yakushimaru and that the ending theme would be Eternal Eternity sung by the voices of Sailor Uranus and Sailor Neptune, Junko Minagawa and Sayaka Ohara. An announcement on the official Sailor Moon site tell us that this is only the first ending theme as there will be two others! Misato Fukuen, the voice of Chibiusa, will sing Otome no Susume or Maiden’s Advice and Kenji Nojima, the voice of Tuxedo Mask, will sing Eien Dake ga Futari o Kakeru or Only Eternity Brings the Two Together.

A CD single with the opening theme In Love With the New Moon and first ending theme Eternal Eternity will be released on April 27th. Two others CDs will be released at about a month interval. A CD single with the same opening theme, In Love With the New Moon, but sung by Mitsuko Horie and the second ending, Maiden’s Advice, will be released on May 25th. Mitsuko Horie provided the voice of Sailor Galaxia in Sailor Moon Sailor Stars and sang the cover of the Sailor Stars theme on the 20th Anniversary Album. A third CD single again with the opening In Love With the New Moon but this time sung by Momoiro Clover Z and the third ending theme, Only Eternity Brings the Two Together will be released on June 22nd. Momoiro Clover Z sang the original opening theme, Moon Pride, which appeared before the first 26 episodes of Sailor Moon Crystal.

All three will be a CD/DVD combo with music videos included. MSRP is 1500 yen, about $13 US, each. You can pre-order these CDs from online retailers such as Amazon Japan (1st CD, 2nd CD, 3rd CD) and CD Japan (1st CD, 2nd CD, 3rd CD).

This coming Thursday, February 27th 2014, a live concert will be held by MTV to celebrate the recent release of the Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon 20th Anniversary Memorial Tribute Album. The concert is being called the “MTV LIVE 2014 supported by SHIDAX with LIVE DAM” and will feature some of the artists on the album. To date Shoko Nakagawa, Mitsuko Horie, Haruka Fukuhara and Momoiro Clover Z have been confirmed to be performing though more may be joining this list. The concert will be taking place at the Zepp Tokyo music hall.

A lot of exclusive merchadise will be sold at the show including t-shirts, towels and a flag. The Sailor Moon official site has images and details of these items. English information is available at the Sailor Moon Collectibles site.

Source: Sailor Moon official site (Translation by ainomessage on tumblr)
Sailor Moon Collectibles ticket on their 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.

The Sailor Moon 20th Anniversary Memorial Tribute Album official site has been updated with the album art, a full list of the tracks and a list of some of the artists on this album which will be released in Japan on January 29th. The songs, listed below, are mostly opening and ending themes from the series. No real surprises there.

Moonlight Densetsu (Moonlight Legend) – Original opening theme
Heart Moving – First season 1 ending theme
Princess Moon – Second season 1 ending theme
Otome no Policy (Maiden’s Policy)- Sailor Moon R ending theme
La Soldier – From the Sailor Moon musicals and Sailor Moon R
Ai no Senshi (Soldier of Love) – From Sailor Moon R and S
Tuxedo Mirage – Sailor Moon S ending theme
“Rashiku” Ikimasho (I’ll Go As Myself)- Second Sailor Moon SuperS ending theme
Sailor Stars Song – Sailor Stars opening theme
Kaze mo Sora mo Kitto… (The Wind, The Sky, Surely…) – Sailor Stars ending theme

We now know of 6 artists who will be doing songs for this album. We still don’t know what artists will be performing which songs. Three of these artists were discussed when news of this album first became available. You can read this article from November to learn more about Momoiro Clover Z, the all girl band currently slated to do the theme song for the new anime, Mitsuko Horie, who provided the voice for Sailor Galaxia, and Shoko Nakagawa, a Japanese singer who has covered a number of Sailor Moon songs and often cosplays as Sailor Moon characters. Keep reading for more details on the three other artists Mariko Goto, Haruko Momoi and Tommy Heavenly6.

Mariko Goto was the guitarist and vocalist for Japanese punk band “Midori” from 2003 until they disbanded in 2010. She began a solo music career in 2011 and has since released two albums.

Haruko Momoi is a Japanese singer, song writer and voice actress. She has appeared in a number of anime series and video games and has been doing music since 2000 as a solo artist and as part of the duo Under17. In addition to vocals Haruko Momoi also plays the keytar.

Tommy Heavenly⁶ is the punk rock alter ego of Tomoko Kawase, a Japanese vocalist. Tomoko Kawase began her career as the lead single for The Brilliant Green in 1995. She began her solo career in 2001 under the pseudonym Tommy february⁶ and then in 2003 began performing a more alternative punk kind of music as Tommy heavenly⁶

There will be different stickers packaged with the album depending on which retailer it’s purchased from. If you want all of these stickers you only have to buy this album 10 times! The images shown are mentioned to be samples, though they are almost all images which match album art for the Sailor Moon Memorial Music Box CD set which was released in 1998. The Yamano Music’s sticker featuring Chibiusa and Diana differers from the Chibiusa cover in the Memorial Music Box.

Well over a year into the 20th anniversary celebration a new Sailor Moon 20th Anniversary tribute album has been announced. This album will be released on January 29th 2014 for a price of 3000 yen, roughly $30 US. The album will have a total of 10 tracks with three of the artists already announced. The date of January coincides with the latest news of when the new Anime wil be released, though this date may be coincidental. Momoiro Clover Z, who will be performing the theme song for the upcoming new Sailor Moon anime, will be doing a track. It’s unclear at this point if the track on the CD will be the new theme song or not. As Momoiro Clover Z have performed Moonlight Densetsu, the original Sailor Moon anime theme song, in concert a number of times already it’s also a possibility that this cover will be their track on the CD. The two other artists which have been named to date are Mitsuko Horie and Shoko Nakagawa.

Mistuko Horie is best known to Sailor Moon fans as the voice of Sailor Galaxia from the Sailor Stars series. As the voice of Galaxia Mitsuko Horie sang the song “Golden Queen Galaxia”, her character single, though she has also provided the vocals for many other songs, both related to anime series she has stared in as well as others. It’s unclear at this point whether she will be performing a song as the character of Galaxia or not.

Shoko Nakagawa is a Japanese singer who has covered many songs from the Sailor Moon anime in the past including Moonlight Densetsu, Otome No Policy and the Sailor Stars theme song. There are currently no details stating whether or not this album will contain previously recorded covers or new material. Shoko Nakagawa is a big Sailor Moon fan and has cosplayed as characters from Sailor Moon a number of times.

Shoko Nakagawa performing Moonlight Densetsu and Otome No Policy:

Shoko Nakagawa performing the Sailor Stars Song:

Shoko Nakagawa performing Moonlight Densetsu:

You can already pre-order this CD from Amazon Japan or CD Japan.

Source: Three Lights and Moon Chase.