Sailor Moon as drawn by Panty & Stocking with Garterbelt artist TAGRO

TAGRO - Serenity and Guardians

TAGRO, a Japanese manga artist best known for drawing the Panty & Stocking with Garterbelt manga, has done some interesting Sailor Moon fan art. TAGRO does tons of art of various anime characters and Sailor Moon seems to be his latest interest. He’s drawn all five of the main Sailor Soldiers and Tuxedo Mask to date. The art style is certainly a change for Sailor Moon, making the characters look like something out of Panty & Stocking with Garterbelt characterized by their super deformed “chibi” look and lack of feet. The various high rez group shots make great desktop backgrounds for a wide screen display.

TAGRO - Tuxedo Mask

TAGRO posts his works at Japanese art sharting site pixiv. You can check out his profile for more of his works. A free registration is required to view all of his art. You can also follow @TAGRO on Twitter. His profile currently refers to himself as “Sailor TAGRO”.

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Countless Sailor Moon references in Ebiten

Ebiten episode 2 - Sailor FukuSailor Moon posing

Ebiten is an animated Internet series that has also played on TV in Japan. The second episode of the show features more Sailor Moon references than you could ever hope for as the main character relives many events from Sailor Moon, transforms into Tailor Moon and breaks the fourth wall by making reference to the similarities. Not only are there references in the characters and actions in the episode but many sequences are nearly frame by frame recreations of counterparts in Sailor Moon. I’ve tried to put together a list of as many of these as possible. Fans of Sailor Moon would be best to simply watch the episode in question and marvel at the similarities. The first episode is available streaming at Crunchyroll or from NyaaTorrents.

With that being said keep reading for a bit of a play by play of the similarities as they happened. For the most part these similarities were to the first episode of the Sailor Moon anime and to the Sailor Moon R movie.

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First look at Toon Makers’ Sailor Moon’s space ship and other cels with backgrounds

Toon Makers' Sailor Moon - Sailor Moon's Galleon

Every day we’re seeing more and more cels from the Toon Makers’ Sailor Moon pilot being sold on ebay. Today we get our first look at cels that come with hand painted backgrounds which give us a great look at what this show would have looked like. The Toon Makers’ Sailor Moon show, sometimes called Saban Moon or Fox Kids Sailor Moon, was a pilot for a Sailor Moon show that mixed live action footage and western animation. Luckily for fans in the west we got the Dic dub instead but these cels are a great close up look at what this show may have looked like if Sailor Moon history had been much different.

The main new thing we see in this set of cels is Sailor Moon’s space ship referred to in the script which we had an exclusive first look at, as the Galleon. This ship appears to be destroyed by Queen Beryl’s own ship the Dark Galleon in the clip of the show we’ve seen. Galleon is a term generally used to describe very large multi decked ocean faring ship from the 16th to 18th century. This auction of a cel of the Galleon comes with a background of space and stars. It, like the other auctions from this seller, are not “Buy it now” so we’ll have to wait a week to see who ends up buying this one. You of course should not bid so that I can win them all real cheap…

Toon Makers' Sailor Moon - Sailor Mars on her Sky Flyer

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Tuxedo Mask’s face and Mercury’s wheel chair from Toon Makers’ Sailor Moon

Toon Makers' Sailor Moon - Darian, Tuxedo Mask (Saban Moon)

More and more auctions for cels from the Toon Makers’ Sailor Moon series have been popping up on eBay. I just wanted to share a few that stood out. The Toon Makers’ Sailor Moon series, known as Saban Moon or Fox Kids Sailor Moon, was a concept for a show, only ever developed as a pilot, which combined live action footage and North American animation.

Most notable in the new cels is that we can finally see the face of Darian, also known as Tuxedo Mask. This version of Darian is not decked out in a Tuxedo and Mask, something he may or may not eventually do. Many have remarked his similarity to a Disney Prince. His way of dressing is pretty ridiculous, but based on the voice-over script which we posted a transcript of, this is likely Darian from the past, before the “Princess Warriors” went to Earth to live as normal girls. I believe in his later appearances he would be dressed in a Tuxedo and Mask, but no images of that have been seen to date.

Toon Makers' Sailor Moon - Sailor Mercury's wheel chair (Saban Moon)

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Complete Toon Makers’ Sailor Moon voice-over script

Toon Makers' Sailor Moon voice-over session script title

Here’s a Sailor Moon News exclusive first look at the full script for the animated segments of the Toon Makers’ Sailor Moon series pilot. This concept of a show, which never made it past the pilot stage, was a mix of live action and North American animation. It’s often referred to as Saban Moon, Saban Sailor Moon or Fox Kids Sailor Moon. This script is for a voice-over session scheduled for May 11th 1994. The project was referred to as ‘Project “Y”‘ possibly to hide the specifics of this being about Sailor Moon, which seems futile as the name is all over the script.

This script was included in an eBay auction which I won along with a couple of cels from the series. Photographs of 8 of the pages of the script were included in the auction listing though 14 were included in the full document.

As this is a voice-over script it mostly covers animated segments but also voice overs for the live action footage. There is a big hole in the story between pages 7 and 8. This is because this portion would be filled with live action footage which would not require a voice-over. What specifically happens during this time isn’t clear but a large amount of time appears to have passed and all of a sudden all characters have begun acting like Earth teenagers when the originally had not been. The final two pages of the script included the “voice-over for live action”. This is mostly Luna’s lines. I inserted these two pages in the gap between pages 7 and 8 so that the narrative remained in order. It’s unclear how much time passed between each of Luna’s lines though individually numbered lines likely occurred as one piece of dialog. The lines may all have occurred within a single scene or throughout the entire episode for all we can tell.

Below you will find a complete transcription of the entire script. I have made an effort to preserve all formatting where applicable, which includes only two words that are lower case and a single italicized line. I will include scans of all 14 pages below this transcription. A number of hand written modifications to the original script occurred. I have only transcribed the original script. See the scans for all of the hand written details.

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Toon Makers’ Sailor Moon’s Queen Beryl, Tuxedo Mask and … Rhett Butler?

Toon Makers' Sailor Moon cel - Queen Beryl (Saban Moon)

More and more cels from the Toon Makers’ Sailor Moon show (known to many as Saban Moon) have been popping up on ebay giving us a look at many previously unseen characters. Now we’ve got a look at Queen Beryl, Tuxedo Mask and a monster which looks suspiciously like the monster that fat alley cat and Rainbow Crystal holder Rhett Butler turned into.

Queen Beryl looks just weird. She doesn’t look human, though the original Queen Beryl has no non human features. Her skin is blue, which is just bizarre. Her shoulders are excessive and she just looks angry! Many auctions for cels like this one are selling for $99.99.

Toon Makers' Sailor Moon cel - Darian, Tuxedo Mask, giving Sailor Moon her Star Pendant (Saban Moon)

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Interviews with Susan Roman and Vince Corazza at Anime Revolution

Vincent Corazza interview at Anime Revolution 2012

The Anime Revolution web site has posted a couple more great interviews from their convention where they had six Sailor Moon voice actors present to celebrate the show’s 20th anniversary. First is an interview with Susan Roman, the voice of Sailor Jupiter and the second is an interview with Vince Corazza who played Alan Granger and eventually Tuxedo Mask in the later two season. Vince gives a nice explanation of the rythmo-band technique which was used to dub Sailor Moon which made the lip synching match up perfectly to the video.

You can watch the interviews on the Anime Revolution web site. We’ve also embedded them below for your convenience.

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Sailor Moon 20th Anniversary Panel at Anime Revolution

Sailor Moon voice actor panel at Anime Revolution featuring Vince Corazza, Stephanie "Sugar" Beard, Ron Rubin, Terri Hawkes, Susan Roman and Katie Griffin

Last month at Anime Revolution in Vancouver there was a 20th Anniversary celebration including a panel featuring six of the cast members from the English dub. From left to right this panel includes Vince Corazza, voice of Tuxedo Mask, Stephanie “Sugar” Beard, voice of Rini, Ron Rubin, voice of Artemis, Terri Hawkes, voice of Sailor Moon, Susan Roman, voice of Sailor Jupiter and Katie Griffin, voice of Sailor Mars. The video is split into two parts. The quality isn’t perfect but the sound does come through pretty well so it’s well worth a listen.

Part 1 and Part 2 cover the entire panel. The third clip included below covered a half hour in the middle and is of higher quality. The voice actor portion begins 37 minutes into the first clip as it’s preceeded by some Karaoke and clips of many incarnations of Sailor Moon.

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Katie Griffin, Susan Roman and Vince Corazza panel at Anime Revolution

Vince Corazza, Susan Roman and Katie Griffin at Anime Revolution

This past weekend at Anime Revolution in Vancouver there were six Sailor Moon voice actors in attendance. A fan recorded this panel which featured Katie Griffin, the voice of Sailor Mars, Susan Roman, the voice of Sailor Jupiter and Vincent Corazza, the voice of Tuxedo Mask.

The sound isn’t excellent because of interference from another panel next door but regardless the content of the panel is something fans will find quite interesting.

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