Following a failed attempt to launch the Official Sailor Moon Fan Club to international users a couple of weeks ago, registration is now open to fans around the world on the Tokyo Otaku Mode web site. You can pre-order your membership using this link.

Membership to the Fan Club costs $58. There are a number of shipping options, some of which may be expensive for where you live, but there is a free shipping option, which will take a bit longer if you aren’t in a rush to get your membership card and lip gloss. Aside from those original incentives membership to the Fan Club will allow fans to pay even more money to buy Fan Club exclusive merchandise and give them access to the Official Fan Club app for mobile devices.

The first attempted launch of the Official Sailor Moon Fan Club caused the site to be overloaded to the point where no memberships were sold. This time however there appear to be only minor problems. I was able to get my membership with no issues late last night and other fans appear to have success as well.

Last Friday, September 23rd, the Official Sailor Moon Fan Club very disastrously attempted to open registration to overseas fans around the world. The Tokyo Otaku Mode web site was incapable of handing the load of the overwhelming interest from Sailor Moon fans and immediately become unavailable. As promised a new registration date has now been set! The Tokyo Otaku Mode web site has announced that registration will be opened on October 5th, next Wednesday, at 6pm PDT, which is 9pm Eastern Time. Though there has been no indication of what exactly has been done, if anything, to alleviate the server issues suffered last week, Tokyo Otaku Mode has stated that “we are certain that fans will be able to safely purchase their memberships.”.

The Official Sailor Moon Fan Club will cost $58 and give membership until June 30th 2017. Members will get a membership card, transformation brooch designed lip gloss and the opportunity to spend even more money on Fan Club exclusive products. This will also give access to the somewhat terrible Sailor Moon Fan Club App for mobile devices.

Last night at 6pm Pacific Time, 9pm Eastern Time, the Tokyo Otaku Mode web site began accepting pre-orders for the Official Sailor Moon Fan Club. This included allowing fans in Canada, the US and other countries outside of Japan to apply. Unfortunately the web site which hosted the Tokyo Otaku Mode store immediately became unresponsive and no orders were successfully processed. Unlike Kunzite I was not too proud to refresh the page for a few hours which caused long page loads followed by a series of “Bad Gateway” and “Gateway Timeout” errors and eventually 404 errors as the product page for the Fan Club registration was taken offline.

A message was sent out on the Tokyo Otaku Mode Twitter account stating that registration was closing and that it would be reopened at a later date. A full e-mail was later sent out to users who had previously asked to be notified of details about the Fan Club stating that indeed the site was down due to high traffic and that the fans would be able to sign up at a later, as of yet unannounced date, when they assure us that fans will be able to safely purchase their memberships. Fans who had signed up to be notified by e-mail will get some notification when this occurs. If you haven’t signed up for that e-mail notification yet you can still do so following this link to the Tokyo Otaku Mode site. The Tokyo Otaku Mode Twitter account has claimed that registration will be announced well in advance.

Read the full e-mail sent to interested users below:

Hello Sailor Moon Fans,

Thank you very much for your interest in the Official Sailor Moon Fan Club. We are sending this message to update on the current status of membership registration.

Registration for the Official Sailor Moon Fan Club was initially opened on September 23, 2016 at 6:00 PM (PDT). However, due to an overwhelmingly large show of support from the Sailor Moon fan community, our servers were brought down and memberships were not able to be purchased. We would like to offer our most heartfelt apologies for the worry and inconvenience that this issue has caused for everyone who waited for registration to open.

As a result, we have decided to temporarily delay registration until a later date when we are certain that fans will be able to safely purchase their memberships. If you are receiving this message, please be assured that we will contact you again once a new registration date has been decided.

Again, we would like to humbly apologize for the inconvenience that this has caused.
We hope to be in touch again soon with more details!

– The TOM Team
Let’s Enjoy OTAKU Life!

Fan Club membership will cost $58 US and last until June 30th. This will give fans a membership card, access to the Fan Club App for mobile devices and lip gloss fashioned after Sailor Moon’s original Transformation Brooch as well as the option to buy Fan Club exclusive merchandise in the future.

Update: Following issues with the site being inaccessible due to heavy traffic the Fan Club registration page was removed. A message on the Otaku Mode Twitter account noted that registration is currently closed but would be back at a later date.

The Official Sailor Moon Fan Club, previously only open to fans in Japan, has now opened overseas! For a limited time fans in the US, Canada and select other countries worldwide can pre-order a fan club membership for $58 US from the Tokyo Otaku Mode web site. I visited the site immediately after membership opened at 9pm Eastern Time and though I was able to load the fan club pre-order page the site almost immediately become unresponsive, likely due to load, leaving me unable to complete my purchase. Hopefully the traffic will reduce soon allowing users to get their memberships.

Being part of the fan club will give you a membership card, a lip gloss container fashioned after Sailor Moon’s brooch, access to the Sailor Moon Fan Club App for mobile devices and the ability to pay more money for Fan Club exclusive merchandise. The membership period will not last a full year. It will expire on June 30th 2017. This is likely because the Fan Club began in Japan in July of this year, and so the first year will run until June 30th. Though new memberships will only be accepted until October 22nd it has been stated that only a limited number of new Fan Club members will be allowed to sign up, so it is quite possible that registration will close before that date. If you are interested in signing up you would be wise to do so as soon as the web site lets you.

The Official Sailor Moon Fan Club began taking memberships in Japan in March. I was hoping to sign up but was quickly thwarted when asked for a Japanese address. What Prefecture do I live in? Not sure I understand the question. Now the Fan Club is opening up to a number of countries around the world! Registration will begin September 23rd and will be open for only a limited time, closing on October 22nd. Interested fans should sign up to be notified of more details at the Tokyo Otaku Mode web site by providing their e-mail in the very straightforward English language form. This is not the form to sign up for the Fan Club itself. This is a form to be notified how and when to sign up for the Fan Club.

The cost to become a fan club member for 2016-2017 is $58 US. This will include a membership card, access to the Fan Club app for mobile devices and the ability to order club exclusive merchandise. The intention of this move is to give the same fan club benefits that exist in Japan to people all over the world. Some exclusive merchandise is shown in the English poster seen below.

This registration will be open to fans from the following countries:

Australia
Austria
Belgium
Brazil
Canada
Chile
China
Colombia
Denmark
Finland
France
Germany
Hong Kong
India
Indonesia
Ireland
Italy
Japan
Malaysia
Mexico
Netherlands
New Zealand
Norway
Peru
Philippines
Poland
Puerto Rico
Republic of Korea
Russian Federation
Singapore
Spain
Sweden
Switzerland
Taiwan
Thailand
United Kingdom
United States
Vietnam

Those who are not from one of these countries are encouraged to leave a comment when they leave their e-mail address to request that the fan club include their country as well.

The terrible saga of this horrible app continues. The official Sailor Moon Fan Club app is out for iOS devices. This includes a game. You will almost certainly not be able to play this game if you don’t live in Japan. Sorry. Here’s what the game you can’t play looks like.

We’ve previously posted about the new Sailor Moon Fan Club app which was released for Android phones and then posted a review. So much to say there is an official app which is exclusive to Japan which included a game which only worked for Fan Club members, which you needed to pay for and needed a Japanese address to be a part of. I then figured out that you could log in to the game with a free account, which you can’t make anymore, but I happened to have. That method doesn’t work anymore. It also doesn’t work on the iOS version for iPhones. You pretty much can’t play this game if you don’t have a paid Fan Club account.

Still want instructions on how to get this game? You can download it from the Japanese iTunes store. This means creating a Japanese iTunes account. You can follow these steps to do it. I don’t reccommend you do because the app is a terrible waste of time that you can’t play, but you can do that.

Once you load the app you will be able to view the Official Sailor Moon Site. Click on the banner at the bottom of the screen which says “FC …”. You will be asked to log in. If you have an official Fan Club account you can play the game. If not you get this error message.

Sorry.

Just play Sailor Moon Drops instead. It’s not terrible like this app.

Last week I made a post about a new Official Sailor Moon app for Android phones. At the time I mentioned that the included game was only available to members of the Fan Club. This is not technically correct. One does not need an actual paid Fan Club membership to use the game. They are in fact able to play it if they have an account for the Fan Club web site even if they never completed registration for the Fan Club, which requires a payment and for them to live in Japan, or use a deputy service. The bad news? You can’t sign up for such an account anymore. The kind of good news? I did sign up for such an account while trying to get a Fan Club membership before hitting a wall and giving up because I didn’t live in Japan. So much to say I was able to use my account to sign in to the app and play this new game. Anyone else with an Android phone who’s in this specific situation can download the app from the Google Play store. The app should be out on iOS devices soon enough.

I had a pretty terrible time getting this game working. I tried to load it up a few times and managed to play about a game and a half. My phone is terrible and old, hence I can’t take screenshots with it and instead have photos of the phone, but the app also seems to be somewhat unreliable. I spent most of the time staring at a loading screen which seemed frozen. Once I actually got into the game I was surprised to see it wasn’t quite as much like Bust a Move as I expected. Basically you use your finger to pull back and release the orbs in the little tray on the bottom and launch them into similarly coloured orbs. The orbs disappear and you get points. You have a limited time to do this. Honestly I just played that one game. It was frustrating and after a few more frozen load screens, freezing games and finally a freezing time up screen when I completed a game, I didn’t want to play any more. The game isn’t all that great and it doesn’t have much to do with Sailor Moon, aside from having Sailor Moon symbols and characters. I hope you find my review less disappointing than the actual game.

Thanks to Rem and Erica for leaving comments which helped me to get this game working.

Update: July 3rd 2016: Users can sign into the app to play the game if they have a Fan Club account that hasn’t completed registration. You can do this without living in Japan. Unfortunately there doesn’t seem to be a way to sign up for a new account at this time.

News has been posted on the Official Sailor Moon site about an Official Sailor Moon app. No this is not Sailor Drops, the addictive and frustrating puzzle game which everyone loves to hate. This app is basically just an interface to the official Sailor Moon site with a built in game which it seems you can only play if you’re a member of the Fan Club, which you can only do if you live in Japan. For now the app is only available on Android devices. An iOS version, for iPhone devices, will be available soon. Android users can download the app from the Google Play store.

I had to rummage through some old Gameboy games and NES controllers to find my old and busted Android phone which has a bad power button so I can’t take screenshots with it. That’s okay because there’s not much to see. It’s basically a wrapper around the site. I got an error at one point and it just said it couldn’t load sailormoon-official.com. There is a button at the bottom which I believe is the link to play the game but it prompts me to log in to the Fan Club which I am unable to do as I could never sign up since I don’t live in Japan. Check out this great photo I got of the app in action!

All in all this app seems like a colossal waste of time if you aren’t part of the fan club. This may change in the future but for now I don’t think there’s any value in this. Have you been able to get the app to do anything but surf around the official site and Fan Club page?