Watch Act 1 and 2 of the English dub of Sailor Moon Crystal on Hulu now

Sailor Moon Crystal English Title Screen

Sailor Moon fans who have been holding out for the English version can finally watch the new Sailor Moon anime. The first two episodes of Sailor Moon Crystal are now available to watch on Hulu and Neon Alley. We also have some news about the home video release. The Dark Kingdom story arc, which includes Acts 1 through 13, will be released on DVD, Blu-Ray and Limited Edition Blu-Ray February 9th. The three versions are available to pre-order on Amazon. The DVD will be $44.82, the DVD and Blu-Ray combo pack will be $69.99 and the limited edition combo pack will be $79.98.

Sailor Moon Crystal Act.1 Usagi - Sailor Moon - Usagi and Luna

For many fans this may be the first time they watch this series. Act 1, Usagi – Sailor Moon, is the first episode of the series based on the first act of the Sailor Moon manga. In it young Usagi meets Luna who lets her transform into Sailor Moon. Act 2, Ami – Sailor Mercury, wastes no time in introducing us to the second Sailor Guardian the genius girl Ami. Long time fans may note strong similarities between Sailor Moon Crystal’s first two acts and the original anime episodes 1 “The Crybaby: Usagi’s Beautiful Transformation” and 8 “The Girl Genius Is a Monster: The Brainwashing Cram School of Horror”, but this is just because of similarities to the manga. The original anime series told the story at a much slower pace and quickly deviated from the manga so fans will be surprised to see just how much things change along the way with this story. Sailor Moon Crystal was a very faithful manga adaptation, so this is a great way to appreciate the original story. Next week will be Act 3, Rei – Sailor Mars, which again moves the story along quickly by introducing yet another Sailor Guardian. This gives a good indication of the faster pace Sailor Moon Crystal is taking.

Sailor Moon Crystal Act.2 Ami - Sailor Mercury - Sailor Mercury

For those fans living in Canada, or elsewhere who can’t view the region restricted content on Hulu, I would suggest using some sort of proxy to view the content. There are many options to do this, some of which you will need to pay for, but a free option is Hola.org.

Support the site by preordering Sailor Moon Crystal on DVD or Blu-Ray using the links below.

Watch the first two episodes of Sailor Moon Crystal in English this Friday November 20th during Moonlight Party 5

Sailor Moon Crystal Act.1 Usagi - Sailor Moon - Sailor Moon

As we previously mentioned, the English dubbed version of Sailor Moon Crystal will start being released this Friday, with a new episode being released every Friday after this. These can be streamed online on Hulu and Neon Alley. To mark this event Viz will be holding Moonlight Party 5, at 6pm Pacific Time, 9pm Eastern Time, this Friday. This event will stream on YouTube. The episodes themselves are not part of the stream, which does not suffer from the same region specific problems that Hulu does. As always there will be contests where you can win prizes. You can watch the event in the embedded video below.

To learn more about Moonlight Party 5 check out the Facebook Page for the event.

Sailor Moon Crystal Act.2 Ami - Sailor Mercury - Ami and Luna

The English dub of Sailor Moon Crystal will begin November 20th with new episodes every Friday

Sailor Moon Crystal Act.1 Usagi - Sailor Moon - Usagi and Luna

Great news for fans who have been waiting to see Sailor Moon Crystal in English! The anime schedule for Viz Media has been updated with the first two episodes of the English dub of Sailor Moon Crystal beginning Friday November 20th. The 3rd episode will be available on Friday November 27th with new episodes being available every Friday. New episodes can be streamed for free on Hulu and Neon Alley in the United States.

Hulu

If you live in Canada, or in another country in which these services are not offered, you’re out of luck. There are of course ways to make it appear as if you are accessing these sites from another country. A free option is hola.org though there are others.

As we have mentioned before the cast for the English dub of Sailor Moon Crystal will be the same as that of Viz’s new English dub of the original Sailor Moon anime. Chances are if you liked that dub you will like this one too.

Will you be watching the English version of Sailor Moon Crystal? Have you been holding off watching it until this version is out? This is also a great option for children who are too young to follow subtitles.

The Sailor Moon Crystal English dub will premier at Anime Expo on July 3rd in Los Angeles

Anime Expo Logo

The first two episodes of the English dub of Sailor Moon Crystal will be premiered at the Anime Expo convention in Los Angeles on Friday July 3rd at 6pm, as part of Sailor Moon Day. The anime convention’s schedule is now online, where the event was listed. This will be Act 1, Usagi – Sailor Moon, and Act 2, Ami – Sailor Mercury. The English dub, by Viz Media, will keep the same cast that their new English dub of the original anime used. Some of those actors will be present at the convention. Since this convention takes place in California all times will be in Pacific Time.

Anime Expo will take place the weekend of July 2nd to the 5th in Los Angeles California. The convention will feature many guests from the English dub of the original Sailor Moon Anime and Sailor Moon Crystal. In attendance will be Stephanie Sheh, the voice of Sailor Moon, Cristina Vee, the voice of Sailor Mars, Amanda Miller, the voice of Sailor Jupiter, Cherami Leigh, the voice of Sailor Venus, Robbie Daymond, the voice of Tuxedo Mask and Sandy Fox, the voice of Chibiusa and Black Lady. Kyle Hebert, who played the Priest who turned into the monster Boxy in the new dub, will also be at the convention though he may not be involved in the dub of Sailor Moon Crystal or the Sailor Moon themed events.

KISS and Momoiro Clover Z

Also at the convention will be Momoiro Clover Z, the band which performs the Sailor Moon Crystal opening theme, Moon Pride, and ending theme, Gekkou or Moonbow. Momoiro Clover Z will be performing on Thursday July 2nd with KISS members Paul Stanley and Gene Simmons. The two bands recently collaborated on a single released as Momoiro Clover Z vs. KISS. Watch the video below.

Friday is Sailor Moon Day at Anime Expo. This starts with the Official Sailor Moon Panel by Viz Media and the cast of Sailor Moon from 10am to noon. Following this from 1pm to 2:30pm will be a screening of Sailor Moon’s best episodes, though we don’t know what those will be at this time. From 4:30pm to 5:30pm will be a Sailor Moon Cosplay gathering. Then from 6pm to 7:30pm is the English dub premiere of Act 1 and 2 of Sailor Moon Crystal. Other events listed in their schedule that will likely be relevant to Sailor Moon fans are the Viz Media panel on Thursday July 2nd at 1:15pm and the Viz Animation Panel featuring Neon Alley on Saturday July 4th at 4pm.

Viz Media

Source: Anime Expo schedule via Moonkitty.net

Sailor Moon Crystal Deluxe Limited Edition Blu-Ray review

Sailor Moon Crystal Deluxe Limited Edition Blu-Ray vol. 1

The first volume of the Sailor Moon Crystal DVD and Blu-Ray was released on October 15th. There are a few versions of this release at different price points. I ordered the Deluxe Limited Edition Blu-Ray version. This release only contains two episodes of the series, act 1 and 2, showing us the introduction of Usagi and Ami. You can order the volume 1 deluxe limited edition Blu-Ray (Amazon Japan, CD Japan), regular edition Blu-ray (Amazon Japan, CD Japan) or DVD (Amazon Japan, CD Japan). The deluxe limited edition has a lot included, but at 5994 yen (about $53 US) it’s a hefty price tag for only two episodes. These are Japanese discs. The Blu-Rays are region A meaning they will play in a North American Blu-Ray player or PS3, but there are no English subtitle or audio tracks.

Sailor Moon Crystal Deluxe Limited Edition Blu-Ray vol. 1 - Moon Stick charm and bracelet

The packaging is impressive. The first thing you will notice when opening to box is that it plays the Moon Pride theme song. Inside are the Moon Stick charm and charm bracelet. Should you choose to continue to spend large amounts of money on the limited edition Blu-Rays you will be able to collect the other 12 charms.

Sailor Moon Crystal Deluxe Limited Edition Blu-Ray vol. 1 - Booklet cover

Also included are two books. The first includes art from the show, episode summaries and interviews with Munehisa Sakai, director, and Kotono Mitsuishi, the voice of Sailor Moon. The second is a book of storyboards of the opening and ending themes for the series.

Sailor Moon Crystal Deluxe Limited Edition Blu-Ray vol. 1 - Opening storyboards

There is not a ton to the Blu-Ray itself. As mentioned there are only two episodes, which auto play when the Blu-Ray is started. As we previously mentioned there are some scenes which have been reanimated since the original streaming version was released. This includes the changes to the intro. For example, Queen Serenity has white hair in the intro instead of being blonde like in the intro for the first two streaming episodes. These changes are minor and cosmetic. It doesn`t fundamentally change the experience of watching the show. Overall the video quality is quite good, which is not surprising as the Crunchyroll HD feeds were comparable. The disc has some special features. Mainly the textless opening and ending themes. There are also two audio commentaries, though as they are in Japanese I did not find much use in listening to them.

Sailor Moon Crystal Deluxe Limited Edition Blu-Ray vol. 1 - Box

Overall this set is expensive and while there are a decent amount of cool knick knacks, only including two episodes lowers the value. If you’re a collector or completist, it may be worth picking up, but if you’re just looking to watch the show, the streaming versions are perfectly acceptable. It’s quite likely there will be an eventual North American Blu-Ray release with English audio and subtitles. Fans who don’t like to watch their anime raw may prefer to wait for such a release. If you’re looking to watch the updated animation with English subtitles, you can download them from Sailor Moon Center. As of posting this article only episode 1 has been released (720p, 1080p), but episode two should follow shortly.

Sailor Moon Crystal Deluxe Limited Edition Blu-Ray vol. 1 - Box

Keep reading for more photos of the set.

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Some Sailor Moon Crystal scenes will be reanimated up for the DVD and Blu-Ray release

Streamed version to Blu-Ray comparison - Sailor Moon Crystal Act 2 - Ami and Luna

Top: Original streaming version.
Bottom: New Blu-Ray version.

The upcoming Blu-Ray and DVD release of Sailor Moon Crystal, coming October 15th in Japan, will include some touched up scenes. A lot of fans had issues with the quality of some of the animation in Sailor Moon Crystal when it was first streamed and now some of these scenes have been reanimated. A video has been released on the official Sailor Moon YouTube Channel showing new scenes.

This video on it’s own doesn’t show anything obvious but when we compare these clips to the original version we see the difference. Screenshots included in this post show that some scenes seem to have been completely redrawn though many others have not been modified at all. The footage only contains scenes from the first two episodes as there are only two episodes included in each volume of the DVD and Blu-Ray release. There has not been any announcement about a North American video release. Pre-order the volume 1 deluxe limited edition Blu-Ray (Amazon Japan, CD Japan), regular edition Blu-ray (Amazon Japan, CD Japan) or DVD (Amazon Japan, CD Japan).

Streamed version to Blu-Ray comparison - Sailor Moon Crystal Act 2 - Usagi and Mamoru

Top: Original streaming version.
Bottom: New Blu-Ray version

How do you feel about these changes? Many fans are happy with them though this brings up an age old debate amongst fans of all things about the state of a work of art as either a fixed event in time or a constantly growing and evolving work. Certainly many movies will have a “director’s cut” or include a few new scenes in a video release, often including the original version. The extreme example of this would be something like the Star Wars Special Editions including drastic often unwelcome changes and who’s director is openly hostile towards fans of the original unaltered versions. Somewhere in between are things like the Final Fantasy Advent Children Complete Edition. I consider myself a bit of purist, as can be inferred from my less than kind reviews of these Star Wars DVDs or the Ghost in the Shell 2.0 Blu-Ray. That said, I understand these changes to be minor and generally positive without any major change to the original work. All redrawn scenes have the same poses as the originals, just with slightly more polish. No guns replaced with walkie-talkies here!

Streamed version to Blu-Ray comparison - Sailor Moon Crystal Act 2 - Ami and Usagi

Top: Original streaming version.
Bottom: New Blu-Ray version

One has to wonder what motivates this change? Why not just do it right the first time? It’s no secret that the show’s production was quite rushed, including a number of delays. With a twice monthly release schedule there are obvious time constraints with making this show. Perhaps there was just a shortage of time with the first few episodes. It’s also possible that the show’s success was underestimated and with a higher budget it’s now possible to go back and put more polish on some of the more sloppily done scenes. It remains to be seen if such changes will continue for many of the later episodes or if the higher quality of animation will simply become commonplace in the future. Act 3 had some pretty questionable scenes but the latest episode looked quite good.

Episode 1 of Sailor Moon Crystal edited with DIC dub audio

Sailor Moon Crystal DIC dub Sailor Says clip

Here’s something cool that a fan whipped up. It’s the first episode of Sailor Moon Crystal edited to fit with dialog from the first episode of the English dub of the original Sailor Moon anime. It actually fits quite well though the episode is shorter than the full version as some scenes did not exist in both version. In a few instances a short clip from the original anime is included but for the most part it’s video from Sailor Moon Crystal and audio from the old Sailor Moon anime. She even included a Sailor Says segment! Watch the episode in the embedded clip below.

Since both the first episode of Sailor Moon Crystal and the original Sailor Moon anime followed the manga closely this fits very well. Only in a few scenes did things not really work, such as Molly talking to Serena who isn’t actually in the room, but it mostly worked. A similar exercise would probably work decently for act 2 and potentially act 3 as the episodes where Ami and Rei are introduced in the original Sailor Moon anime followed the manga quite well. I spoke to Jessica who created this clip about the possibility of more episodes but there are currently no plans to do so as this would become impossible as the series progresses and deviates greatly from the source material.

Source: Jessica aka Time Machine on YouTube.

Sailor Moon Crystal Act 1 first impressions

Sailor Moon Crystal Act.1 Usagi - Sailor Moon - Usagi and Luna

This morning the first episode of the new Sailor Moon anime, Sailor Moon Crystal, premiered worldwide on Crunchyroll, Niconico and Hulu. The show is free to watch on a number of these services. For more details, check out these instructions on how to watch the show. I personally found the quality of Crunchyroll’s stream to be higher than Hulu or Niconico’s and so I would recommend checking them out to watch the show if you haven’t already.

Sailor Moon Crystal Act.1 Usagi - Sailor Moon - Title screen

The episode, titled Act.1 Usagi – Sailor Moon, resembled the first episode of the original Sailor Moon anime quite closely. This is fairly expected given this series is meant to resemble the Manga closely and the first episode of each series was quite faithful to that. In fact the first Act of the manga is also titled Usagi – Sailor Moon. With only 26 episodes for this series we certainly can’t expect an episode per episode repeat of the original show.

Sailor Moon Crystal Act.1 Usagi - Sailor Moon - Morga

In this episode we get a pretty good look at Silver Millennium, the ancient kingdom on the Moon, as well as Princess Serenity and Endymion through a couple of Usagi’s dream sequences. Once again we have Morga, a monster impersonating Naru’s mother as ordered by Jadeite, as the main villain of the episode. We are also introduced to Luna, Naru, Umino, Shingo, Sailor Moon’s mother Ikuko and her teacher Haruna. We also see mention of Sailor V, who will later be appearing as Sailor Venus, who shows up in a newspaper, is mentioned by Umino and is the star of her own video game.

Sailor Moon Crystal Act.1 Usagi - Sailor Moon - Serenity and Endymion

One aspect which bothered me a bit was the reaction Usagi had to her first meeting of Mamoru. Instead of being annoyed but a little intrigued she is instead completely infatuated with him from the beginning. We shall see how this relationship develops throughout the series. If this show truly does mirror the manga, things should escalate fairly quickly.

Sailor Moon Crystal Act.1 Usagi - Sailor Moon - Super Sonic Wave Attack

Sailor Moon makes two attack in this episode. The first is the same Supersonic Waves attack which she made in the first episode of the original anime, which she almost never uses again. The second was Moon Tiara Boomerang. This attack was first used in the live action Sailor Moon series. In the original Manga the attack was Moon Frisbee and in the original anime it was Moon Tiara Action. In the rereleased Manga books the move was updated to be called Moon Tiara Boomerang, as is seen here.

Sailor Moon Crystal Act.1 Usagi - Sailor Moon - Ami Mizuno

Act.2, as I guess we are now referring to the episodes as acts, will be premiering in two weeks time, July 19th at 7pm JST, 6am EST and 3am PST in the same places. Since Ami is shown very briefly at the end of this episode I would imagine she will be joining as Sailor Mercury as of the next act. This would be consistent with Sailor Mercury’s appearance in the second act of the Sailor Moon manga “Act 2: Ami – Sailor Mercury”.

Keep reading for more screenshots from the episode.

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Video clips and screenshots of the intro and first episode of Sailor Moon Crystal

Sailor Moon Crystal episode 01 - Usagi and Mamoru

This coming Saturday, July 5th 2014, the first episode of Sailor Moon Crystal will finally be released! Earlier today, June 30th 2014, in Japan there was a premiere event where the first episode of the new Sailor Moon anime was played in celebration of Usagi’s birthday. A number of screenshots of the intro and first episode have been released. Some sketchy bootlegged video of some of the episode has been leaked as well. Check out the video below for the complete intro, with the theme song Moon Pride by Momoiro Clover Z, followed by Sailor Moon’s first transformation.

[The video has been set to private since this post was originally made. Check out many screenshots of the video at the bottom of this post to see images from the intro and scene from the episode]

The scene where Luna gives Usagi her broach seems to follow the same scene from the first episode of the original Sailor Moon anime very closely. It remains to be seen if the rest of the premiere episode is as similar.

Sailor Moon Crystal episode 01 - Sailor Moon and Luna

Keep reading for a ton more new images and screenshots from the leaked footage.

Source: natalie.mu

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The Official Extended Trailer for Sailor Moon Crystal is a lot like the old one, but with background music

Sailor Moon Crystal Trailer - Sailor Moon - Tiara

The series premier of Sailor Moon Crystal is just 10 days away! We now have a new “Extended” trailer. There isn’t much new in here. The visuals seems nearly identical to the first trailer, with slightly more drawn out shots, but the big difference with this one is the inclusion of background music. The first trailer had the opening theme “Moon Pride” by Momoiro Clover Z but this one has some background music from the series. Check it out!