Sailor Moon Monopoly game review

Sailor Moon Monopoly - Board

The Sailor Moon Monopoly game is now out in stores and online. I got my copy from an EB Games store in Ottawa (the Canadian equivalent to GameStop) a while back and it seems like many fans have done the same. With the game in hand we can get a good look at exactly what’s going on with the various pieces! As we’d discussed earlier this seems to be Sailor Moon S the game for reasons which I can’t really fathom. The various characters are mostly all from Sailor Moon S, mainly the villains being the Witches 5, Professor Tomoe and Mistress 9 as well as the inclusion of all Sailor Guardians including Sailor Moon S’s new additional Sailor Uranus, Neptune and Saturn. With the Viz video releases now having reached the end of Sailor Moon SuperS this seems an odd way to do it. Perhaps the game was simply in development for too long or this may have been an intentional choice as many of the Sailor Guardians introduced in this season would not appear in Sailor Moon SuperS and a Sailor Moon Sailor Stars Monopoly game would not be as recognisable to fans. For whatever the reasons, it’s Sailor Moon S Monopoly!

As with many other versions of Monopoly this really is the same old game we’ve seen time and time again with a different esthetic. This was immediately obvious to me as I’ve played countless hours of the game in my youth and I even spent quite some time programming a Monopoly computer game in Turbo Pascal when I was a child (the game mostly worked well but lacked houses, hotels, Chance and Community Chest cards). This is good for purists who want to have the same game experience as normal Monopoly. One thing which I think is fairly odd however is the completely random grouping of characters for most of the properties. Allow me to rant a bit about each one.

Sailor Moon Monopoly - Mortgaged Properties

First we have Luna and Artemis, as a single property, bundled with Mimette of the Witches 5. Wouldn’t it have been easier to just use this, one of the only two pairs of properties, as Luna and Artemis? Mimette does not fit with Luna and Artemis at all. The characters don’t ever actually interact.

Next we have Eudial, Viluy and Tellu. This actually works! They are 3 of the Witches 5 and since there are no sets of five properties (most are groups of three) this sort of works!

Then there’s Cyprene/Ptilol with Kaolinite and … Sailor Chibi Moon! Kaolinite does have a brief interaction with Chibiusa at some point and the two characters do show up together in succession in the later versions of the Sailor Moon S credits. Cyprene and Ptilol fit only with Kaolinite. It would have made more sense to have put Mimette with her fellow Witches and then put Chibiusa with either her parents or maybe with Sailor Saturn!

Next is Sailor Mercury, Mars and Jupiter. There are all Sailor Guardians so this works decently. Aside from Sailor Moon they do spend some time together before Sailor Venus joins the show so I’ll say this is one of the three less terrible one.

Sailor Moon Sailor Stars episode 167 - Professor Tomoe and Hotaru

Next is Sailor Venus, Professor Tomoe and Sailor Pluto. None of these characters have much to do with each other, except perhaps for a brief interaction between Sailor Venus and Pluto in one episode of Sailor Stars. Sailor Venus belongs with the Sailor Guardians from the first season while Sailor Pluto fits in better with Sailor Uranus and Neptune or even with Sailor Chibi Moon. I would personally have put her with King Endymion but that’s because I like trolling people. Professor Tomoe is a villain and if he’s going to be paired with anyone but his fellow villains from the season it should probably be his daughter, and not the Sailor Guardians who steals his baby from him in Sailor Stars.

Next is Sailor Uranus and Neptune with … Tuxedo Mask! Naturally Sailor Pluto would have worked better here. There’s nothing these two lesbians love more than the show’s male love interest! At least Sailor Uranus and Neptune are together where they belong.

Sailor Moon Monopoly - Board

On the last side we have Sailor Moon with Sailor Saturn and Mistress 9. This sort of works since Sailor Moon fights Mistress 9 and sort of saves Sailor Saturn but these characters would fit so much better elsewhere. Saturn should be with her father or her friend Chibiusa and Mistress 9 could easily fit with the villains! It does of course work that two versions of Hotaru be grouped together.

Finally we have the only grouping that works well, and that is Neo Queen Serenity and King Endymion. The only issue here is that they don’t really appear in Sailor Moon S so they don’t fit with the game at all.

Live Action Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon Act 9 - Makoto the cop

Other groupings make some sense! The railroads are all items, either Talismans or Sailor Saturn’s Silence Glaive. The utilities are replaced by Sailor Moon’s items, that being her broach and rod. Jail and Free Parking are unchanged. It seems like there’s an opportunity here to use something a bit more Sailor Moon themed for these. Maybe Pharaon 90 sends you to the Tau Star System or something like that. A missed opportunity which leaves art which ultimately clashes with the rest of the game.

Sailor Moon Monopoly - Tokens

When it comes to the game pieces they are nice! These are the three Talismans, Sailor Moon’s Cosmic Heart Compact and Spiral Heart Moon Rod, and the Holy Grail. They’re all things and not characters but then aside from the dog most Monopoly game pieces are just things anyway.

Sailor Moon Monopoly - Money

The money is a bit odd. The colours and values are more or less kept from real Monopoly with different characters appearing on each bill. The money is all shown with an M with a slash through it. Moon dollars or something of the sort. It’s not like Sailor Moon takes place in a universe they don’t use normal currency. We frequently see prices and money in the series being yen. Is there some rule that a themed Monopoly came have some weird non existent currency?

Sailor Moon Monopoly - Love Cards

Finally we have the Love and Friendship Cards. These seem to basically be Chance and Community Chest cards with the flavour language changed and the same dollar amounts and consequences. The descriptions of what is occurring are just random events occurring during Sailor Moon S.

Sailor Moon Monopoly - Friendship Cards

Should you buy this game? If you wanted to I imagine you already would have! It’s just one of a very, very, very long series of Monopoly games with images based on many franchises. The specific decisions made in adapting this game seem to be pretty poor as someone with a minor amount of effort would likely have been able to put together property groupings and other aspects of the game which work much better. It seems like someone with next to no knowledge of the franchise was given a list of characters, art and perhaps episode summaries of Sailor Moon S and that they threw together a version of Monopoly that superficially seemed to have made sense. For my money the Sailor Moon games by Dyskami Publishing are a much better way to play a Sailor Moon game.

Keep reading for more photos of this game.

Continue reading

Check out the board and pieces for the upcoming Sailor Moon Monopoly game

Sailor Moon Monopoly - Board

A Sailor Moon Monopoly game is coming! A listing for this game has been up with many retailers for a while now but we can now see, from the GameStop listing for the product, what the game’s board will look like! The game will retail for $39.99 US and will be released November 9th according to GameStop’s site. With the release of this version of Monopoly there will be as many different types of Monopoly games as there are Funko Pop toys at GameStop! The box and board feature all characters from the Sailor Moon S season including all 10 Sailor Guardians as well as other villains from that season such as Professor Tomoe, the Witches 5 and Mistress 9. Neo Queen Serenity and King Endymion are also on the game though those characters don’t make a proper appearance in the S season. As a long time Monopoly player it seems obvious that the values on most of the board match what people would be used to only all spaces are replaced with Sailor Moon themed characters and items. Properties are all characters with other characters and items making up others squares. I’ve listed a breakdown of what characters are replacing for every original Monopoly space:

Mediteranian Avenue – Luna and Artemis
Baltic Avenue – Mimete

Oriental Avenue – Eudial
Vermont Avenue – Viluy
Connecticut Avenue – Tellu

St. Charles Place – Cyprine/Ptilol
States Avenue – Sailor Chibi Moon
Virginia Avenue – Kaolinite

St. James Place – Sailor Mercury
Tennessee Avenue – Sailor Mars
New York Avenue – Sailor Jupiter

Kentucky Avenue – Sailor Venus
Indiana Avenue – Professor Tomoe
Illinois Avenue – Sailor Pluto

Atlantic Avenue – Tuxedo Mask
Ventor Avenue – Sailor Neptune
Marvin Gardens – Sailor Uranus

Pacific Avenue – Mistress 9
North Carolina Avenue – Sailor Saturn
Pennsylvania Avenue – Sailor Moon

Park Place – King Endymion
Boardwalk – Neo Queen Serenity

Reading Railroad – Garnet Rod
Pennsylvania Railroad – Deep Aqua Mirror
B. & O. Railroad – Space Sword
Short Line – Silence Glaive

Electric Company – Cosmic Heart Compact
Water Works – Spiral Moon Heart Rod

Community Chest – Love
Chance – Friendship

Income Tax and Luxury Tax – Something with the Witches 5?

The following spaces are unchanged:
Go
In Jail/Just Visiting
Free Parking
Go To Jail

In addition we can get a bit of a look at the “Sailor Moon Money” in this image and we see the following denominations on bills:

$1 – Sailor Moon
$5 – Sailor Chibi Moon
$10 – Sailor Mercury
$20 – Sailor Mars
$50 – Sailor Jupiter
$100 – Sailor Venus
$500 – Sailor Moon

Why Sailor Moon is on both the $1 and $500 isn’t clear! I may be mistaken as it’s hard to see exactly what it says on the $1 bill but it seems to have a crescent moon and the “Sailor” part is clear and the second 4 letter word appears to be Moon from the top of the letters we see. I’m not sure the $ is the appropriate symbol to be using in this case as there seems to be an M symbol to reference Sailor Moon Money when dollars are mentioned but it is a bit hard to make out. Sailor Moon Money has no basis in canon. Throughout most of the series the character live in Tokyo and would use Japanese Yen as currency. I don’t know what currency would be used in Crystal Tokyo but it seems unlikely that it would be called Sailor Moon Money as Sailor Moon is no longer an active superhero at the time, what with being the Queen of that city.

Sailor Moon Monopoly - Box

We also see what the tokens for the game will be. These are also listed on the GameStop site. These are the Cosmic Heart Compact, Moon Chalice, Spiral Heart Moon Rod, Garnet Orb, Deep Aqua Mirror and Space Sword. These are again all items appearing in Sailor Moon S.

Why Sailor Moon S? Why now? Sailor Moon SuperS has now been released in its entirety in North America on home video. Sailor Moon Sailor Stars is out subtitled on streaming services. When it comes to Sailor Moon Crystal we’ve only gotten up to the Infinity Arc, telling the equivalent of the Sailor Moon S story, but these are clearly original Sailor Moon anime based designs and not Sailor Moon Crystal designs like we’ve seen with the Sailor Moon Crystal Dice Challenge game. Surely there is the convenience of having all of the Sailor Guardians appearing in Sailor Moon S allowing for more properties with those characters in it. If we had a first season based game we might be seeing Queen Beryl and the Shitennou alongside Naru and Umino instead. There are certainly reasons for which Sailor Moon S makes sense for the game’s setting, but it still seems odd and a bit arbitrary to me.

Do you plan on picking this game up? How many versions of Monopoly do you own?

Sailor Uranus and Neptune Figuarts Zero figures are coming in 2017

Sailor Uranus and Sailor Neptune Figuarts ZERO figures

Sailor Uranus and Sailor Neptune will be the next two Figuarts ZERO figures released by Bandai. These figures, which are high quality statues, are part of the Sailor Moon Crystal Figuarts ZERO series, which have a slightly different look than statues based on the original anime. The new figures were announced on the official Sailor Moon site and the Tamashii Nations site. Sailor Uranus will be the first to be released, coming in May 2017 for a price of 5000 yen, about $42 US. The Sailor Neptune figure was also shown in an image on a shared pedestal, though we have no details about this figure except that it will be released some time in 2017.

Sailor Uranus Figuarts ZERO figure

Sailor Uranus is holding her Space Sword while Sailor Uranus has her Deep Aqua Mirror. Do you plan on getting these? Have you been buying any of the other Figuarts ZERO figures?

Sailor Uranus Figuarts ZERO figure



Open your mail in style with a Sailor Uranus Space Sword letter opener

Sailor Uranus's Space Sword Letter Opener

Opening letters is boring but opening them with a letter opener is basically slicing your mail open with a mini sword! The fine people at Prism Stationary are bringing the bad assness of opening mail to the next level with a Space Sword letter opener, based on Sailor Uranus’s weapon. This functional yet beautiful device is made of die cast zinc, is covered in coloured glass gems and stores in a cloth purse. The set also comes with 5 envelopes featuring Sailor Uranus and Neptune as seen in Sailor Moon Crystal. Too bad this doesn’t come with Haruka’s “patron” to pay those bills you’re slicing open!

Sailor Uranus's Space Sword Letter Opener

The item was announced on the Official Sailor Moon Site and is up for pre-order on the Bandai store in Japan. It will be out in January and will cost 4000 yen, about $40 US.

Sailor Uranus's Space Sword Letter Opener stationary and envelope

Continue reading

A new season of Sailor Moon Crystal has been announced and will feature Sailor Uranus, Neptune and Saturn

Sailor Moon Crystal season 3 announcement

It’s official! Following the airing of the final episode of Sailor Moon Crystal on Japanese TV a new set of episodes was announced. This was immediately confirmed on the Official Sailor Moon Site and Twitter account. The image included with this announcement shows Sailor Uranus’s Space Sword, Sailor Neptune’s Deep Aqua Mirror and symbols for all 10 Sailor Guardians. The Space Sword and Deep Aqua Mirror are two of the Talismans that have some importance in this next story arc. Missing is the third Talisman, Sailor Pluto’s Garnet Orb. I guess we’ve seen enough of it with the New Horizons photos of Pluto at this point.

Sailor Moon S episode 92 - Sailor Neptune and Sailor Uranus

As expected this will cover the Infinity story arc for the manga which introduces us to Sailor Uranus, Sailor Neptune and Sailor Saturn as well as the enemies the Death Busters which includes Professor Tomoe, Kaolinite and the Witches 5. This is the equivalent to the Sailor Moon S season of the original Anime. Not a lot of details are included about the actual release schedule of these episodes. It seems likely that these episodes will once again be available to stream on Nicinico and to air on TV in Japan. We don’t yet know which of these will come first. Will we continue with the model of releasing online first, with a more traditional model of releasing on TV first or perhaps have a simultaneous TV and online release? We will have to wait and see as new details will be coming on the official site.

Sailor Moon S episode 112 - Hotaru and Chibiusa

The Infinity arc of the Sailor Moon manga covers 12 acts by the new manga chapter numbering which was used for Crystal. This will likely mean 12 episodes in this story arc. The Dream arc, which is the equivalent of the Sailor Moon SuperS season of the original anime, covers an additional 11 episodes. If another year of the show was coming we would likely get both of these arcs. No such details were included in the press release which is no surprise as the Black Moon arc was not announced until late in the Dark Kingdom story arc of Crystal. At this point we don’t know how many more episodes are being planned. If we get that number we should be able to make a reasonable prediction about how many arcs that will cover.

Sailor Moon S episode 113 - Sailor Neptune, Pluto and Uranus

The Japanese announcements are breaking the story arcs into phases, with the Black Moon episodes being referred to as the second phase and this as the 3rd phase. Some also use the term season though with the first year of Sailor Moon Crystal covering two story arcs and arguably being considered one season this naming convention can be a bit confusing. Is this season 2, the second year of the show, or season 3, the third arc of the show? Is the term season even relevant to a show who’s primary method of distribution was online?

The press release also noted that a rebroadcast of Sailor Moon Crystal will begin next Monday starting with the Dark Kingdom arc.

Note that all but the first image in this post include art from the original Sailor Moon anime and not Sailor Moon Crystal.