Janis Carrol, also known as Barbara Goodson, will voice Zirconia in Sailor Moon SuperS

Posted on November 19, 2017 by Adam

Yesterday was Sailor Moon Day at Anime NYC. This included Viz’s Moon Panel, as is often the case with conventions Viz attends. The main thing announced at this panel was that Sailor Moon SuperS would be released on April 10th but we also learned about a new voice acting credit! Janis Carrol would voice Zirconia! That’s great! So who exactly is Janis Carrol? I saw some fans saying how happy they were to see her get the role as she had the perfect voice. This wasn’t a name I was familiar with but I actually was familiar with the actress. Janis Carrol is an alias for veteran screen and voice actor Barbara Goodson known best to many fans as the voice of Rita Repulsa from Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers. Note that she only provided the English voice for that character. The actress who portrayed Witch Bandora in Zyurangers, which was adapted as Mighty Morphin Power Rangers, was Machiko Soga who sadly passed away in 2006.

IMDB redirects searches for Janis Carrol to Barbara Goodson’s page. Why? Browsing through her credits we see the name Janis Carrol listed for a number of other Viz Media titles including Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure. IMDB recognizes that this is another name she uses and redirects users to the appropriate page. Why, then, use this alias which isn’t all that well hidden for anyone trying to investigate? I don’t know for sure but some fans have speculated that this might have to do with union work. Some actors will have their name tied to a union and will use an alias for non union work. I don’t know if this is true in this particular case as I don’t know the specifics of how Viz hires their actors. There are many reasons for which a person may use an alias for certain jobs.

Barbara Goodson previously voiced a few single episode roles in Viz Media’s dub of Sailor Moon R. This includes the monster Falion, a lion Cardian who attacked Sailor Jupiter and her friend in episode 49, as well as the kindergarden teacher, from episode 52 when Minako was protecting a bunch of school children. IMDB lists both of these on their Sailor Moon SuperS page which has a Sailor Moon S Movie image because they’re a bit of a mess. This site used to have a different page for the English dub and it’s generally very difficult to distinguish casts from various dubs on the site.

Barbara Goodson has also provided the voice of a number of other anime characters throughout the years. I remember her mostly from the English version of the anime series Teknoman, originally called Tekkaman Blade, where she played Star as well as the voices of Doris in Vampire Hunter D and some voices in Akira. These were things I was watching around the time Power Rangers was on and I was amazed at how little she sounded like Rita Repulsa in these roles.

We still have not gotten any voice actor information for Queen Nehellenia who first appears in episode 148. Since Sailor Moon SuperS Part 1 only goes up to episode 146 that means we won’t actually be hearing Queen Nehellenia or the Amazoness Quartet in this release, which is likely why we have no voice actor information for them. Since Zirconia and Queen Nehellenia are similar characters, with Zirconia being interpreted as some sort of reflection or alternate version of Queen Nehellenia by some, it is possible that they will have the same voice actors. Since Barbara Goodson is able to portray a range of characters, having her do both roles would work quite well. This is certainly not guaranteed however as different voice actors have portrayed these two characters in other versions.

Sailor Moon SuperS Part 1 will be released on Blu-Ray and DVD on April 10th

Posted on November 19, 2017 by Adam

Yesterday was Sailor Moon Day at Anime NYC in Manhattan. Viz Media held a Moon Panel with the cast of the English dub of Sailor Moon at which they revealed long awaited details about Sailor Moon SuperS on home video! The Blu-Ray and DVD release will be out April 10th and is currently available for pre-order from Right Stuf for $71.99. A Right Stuf exclusive coin is included for the Limited Edition. Though the release isn’t named “Part 1″ the episodes listed are only episodes 128 to 146, the first 19 episodes of the season, even though Sailor Moon SuperS runs up to episode 166, leaving 20 episodes for the eventual second part.

Fans who attended the panel mentioned that the set would also include the Sailor Moon SuperS Special though this isn’t specified on the product listing. This special has never seen a release in English before. The Sailor Moon SuperS Special originally aired on Japanese TV between Sailor Moon SuperS episodes 131 and 132. Since it’s not standard episode length and doesn’t have an episode number it isn’t really considered to be part of the show proper. It also doesn’t continue the story of the Dead Moon Circus but instead involves a few flashbacks and some side stories. The first side story shows us what Sailor Uranus and Neptune were up to during this season and the other tells the story of a Vampire girl Lilica who is one of Chibiusa’s classmates. This story is an adaptation of the first of Chibiusa’s Picture Diary from the manga. It makes sense to include these with the TV series if that is indeed what is going on here. The Japanese DVD release included the SuperS Special along with the first SuperS DVD. One would expect they will be doing the same when Sailor Moon SuperS gets its upcoming Blu-Ray release in Japan.

Update: A poster handed out at the event confirms that the “Never-before-seen TV Special” will be included in the set. This would be the Sailor Moon SuperS Special. This can be seen in photos of the pamphlet on Twitter. Thanks to Liza from our Facebook page for finding this confirmation.

https://www.rightstufanime.com/Sailor-Moon-Super-S-Limited-Edition-Blu-ray-DVD

Anime NYC will include Sailor Moon Day on November 18th!

Posted on November 11, 2017 by Adam

Next weekend, November 17th to the 19th, is Anime NYC in at the Javits Center in Manhattan. This event will include an entire day dedicated to Sailor Moon on Sailor Moon Day November 18th! Attending will be the English cast of Viz’s new dub of Sailor Moon and Sailor Moon Crystal. This includes Stephanie Sheh, Sailor Moon, Kate Higgins, Sailor Mercury, Cristina Vee, Sailor Mars, Amanda Celine Miller, Sailor Jupiter, Cherami Leigh, Sailor Venus, Sandy Fox, Chibiusa, Erica Mendez, Sailor Uranus, Lauren Landa, Sailor Neptune, Christine Marie Cabanos, Sailor Saturn, Robbie Daymond, Tuxedo Mask, and Chris Niosi, Pegasus. Viz Media will also be in attendance. This convention is sponsored by many leading companies in North American anime including many who are associated with Sailor Moon, so it seems likely that they will also be involved with the event. Sponsors include Crunchyroll, who stream Sailor Moon Crystal, Viz Media, who licenses and releases Sailor Moon in North America, Kodansha Comics, who are releasing the English Sailor Moon Manga, and Tokyo Otaku Mode, who run the Official Sailor Moon Fan Club.

Also attending as a musical guest is Yoko Ishida who performed a number of songs for the original Sailor Moon anime! She sang Otome No Policy (Maiden’s Policy), the ending theme for Sailor Moon R, Ai No Senshi (Guardian of Love), and Suki to Itte (Say You Love Me).

Are any of you planning to attend this convention? Unfortunately at this point Saturday and weekend tickets are already sold out. Friday and Sunday tickets are still available but those attendees will be missing Sailor Moon Day.

John Eric, Michael Yurchak and Erik Scott Kimerer are voicing the Amazon Trio in Sailor Moon SuperS

Posted on August 16, 2017 by Adam

The cast of voice actors playing the Amazon Trio has been announced! This past weekend was Otakon, an anime convention in Baltimore Maryland. At the convention there was a Moon Panel held by Viz in which they have announced the voice actors who will be playing the Amazon Trio. This includes John Eric as Tiger’s Eye, Michael Yurchak as Hawk’s Eye and Erik Scott Kimerer as Fish Eye. The Amazon Trio are basically pick up artists who target men and women in order to peak at their mirror of dreams once they’ve succeeded, or failed, at seducing them. Tiger’s Eye targets young women, Hawk’s Eye targets older women and Fish Eye targets men of all ages.

Having Erik Scott Kimerer play Fish Eye is a change as this character was previously voiced by Deborah Drakeford and portrayed as a woman in the original English dub of Sailor Moon. Fish Eye is a man in the Japanese version of the series but he looks quite feminine and often dresses like a woman which makes it easy for viewers to mistake his gender. He was likely made female to avoid having a gay character in the English dubbed version of the show as was done with Zoisite. Similarly Haruka and Michiru, Amara and Michelle in the dub, were made cousins to distract from their lesbian relationship. It is certainly good to see a gay character portrayed as it was originally intended. Seeing gay characters as villains is potentially concerning but in Sailor Moon when good and evil characters with varying sexuality are seen, this is not really a problem.

If there had been a woman provide the voice of Fish Eye would not necessarily have meant he wouldn’t be a man. Many male characters, usually children, have women providing their voices and it wouldn’t be out of character for Fish Eye to have a feminine voice. The character has been portrayed by women in numerous versions of the Sailor Moon musicals. Still it continues to be good that Viz’s new dub of Sailor Moon is more faithful to the original version with less changes to anger fans.

As with the announcement of Chris Niosi as Pegasus from a few weeks ago this applies to the Sailor Moon SuperS dub of the original Sailor Moon anime but, should the Dream arc of Sailor Moon Crystal ever be released in Japan and then dubbed by Viz, this will likely be the cast to voice these characters in that series as well. The last news out of Japan on that series is that the Dream arc will be released as two theatrical films.

Source: @Sailor_Moon_NA on Twitter

Chris Niosi will voice Pegasus in the new dub of Sailor Moon SuperS

Posted on July 27, 2017 by Adam

This past weekend was San Diego Comic-Con and, as is the case with many conventions which Viz Media attends, there was a Moon Panel. We didn’t get much in the way of new information at this panel but we did learn that the new voice of Pegasus from Viz’s new dub of Sailor Moon SuperS will be Chris Niosi. Chris Niosi is not only a voice actor but he has also done a great deal of fan and professional animation work. Check out his web site or Twitter feed for more of his stuff. Though nothing about Sailor Moon Crystal was mentioned, with the two movies which will cover the Dream arc having been announced in Japan, it seems only logical that Chris would also provide the voice for Pegasus and Helios once those films are released and ultimately dubbed for North American release.

Also of note at the Moon Panel at Comic-Con was an appearance by Mike Daniels, a football player fro the Green Bay Packers. He attended the panel and then posed for photos with some of the staff.

Meet Mary Long, Roland Parliament, John Stocker and Todd Haberkorn at Fan World in Niagara Falls July 21st to the 23rd

Posted on July 22, 2017 by Adam

Good news for Sailor Moon fans both sides of the border! This weekend is Fan World in Niagara Falls. This convention will be held at the Conference & Events Center at Niagara Falls on the New York side of the border but it’s close enough for fans on the Ontario side, which has the nicer falls, to attend as well. This events will include voice actors and voice directors from the original English dub of Sailor Moon! One of the series’ great couples, Melvin and Molly, will be there as Mary Long and Roland Parliament make an appearance. In addition to providing the voice of Melvin Roland Parliament was also voice director for the first 65 episodes of the dub. John Stocker, who was voice director for the rest of the episodes, that being the later half of Sailor Moon R as well as all of Sailor Moon S and SuperS, will also be at the convention. John Stocker also did a few voices in the series including Raye’s grandfather.

Also in attendance is Todd Haberkorn who voiced Jadeite in Viz’s new dub of Sailor Moon and Sailor Moon Crystal. Will any of you be at this convention this weekend?

Viz’s Sailor Moon R The Movie Blu-Ray looks fantastic and is well worth buying despite the unpopular cover art

Posted on April 23, 2017 by Adam

Sailor Moon R The Movie was released on DVD and Blu-Ray April 18th and it looks amazing. I’m not talking about the lacklustre cover art which everyone seems fixated on but rather the video quality of the actual Blu-Ray. This is a top quality release which seems to come from the film source. The level of detail is absolutely not something which could have simply been gotten from software upscaling, which is what has been used for all of the home video releases we’ve seen for the Sailor Moon TV series to date. But don’t take my word for it! Look at these screenshots to see the difference. Prior to this release I watched the Japanese DVD as my gold standard. The French DVD release which came out in 2014 looks great too, but is still in the same ball park. It has a slightly cleaned up image and a higher resolution due to them having different TV standards. The old DVD we got from Pioneer in 1999 is borderline VHS quality, but it is an unmated full screen so there’s a bit more to the picture. This new Blu-Ray is in a league of its own. View the full sized versions of these pictures to see the difference. There’s a small amount of loss of quality from the JPEG compression on these uploads but it should give you a good idea of the difference.

Viz Blu-Ray (2017)	Japanese DVD (2002)
French DVD (2014)	English Pioneer DVD (1999)

Pay attention to small details in the image like Fiore’s nose or the lines on Mamoru’s face. This new Blu-Ray image is not something which could have been extrapolated through software from any of the standard definition masters. This is a high quality HD transfer from film source and it looks as good as we could hope for! Fans who were lucky enough to have seen the film in theatres probably noticed that they could see a lot of detail in the image and we see that in this release as well. Look at another comparison between a wide shot of the street which gives us a lot of small details of individual characters.

Sailor Moon R The Movie Blu-Ray - Wide shot of the street

Viz Blu-Ray (2017)

Sailor Moon R The Movie - Japense R2 DVD 2002 - Wide shot of the street

Japanese DVD (2002)

It’s really refreshing to see such a nice quality release from Viz considering some of the earlier stuff we’ve gotten from them. I’ve always said that they’re doing the best that they can with low quality masters and this seems to confirm that idea. They’ve gotten a lot of criticism for using too much post processing and such but at the end of the day if you start off with a low quality master there’s really only so much you can do to try to make it look nice. The minor differences between the different releases of the original anime don’t add up to much but this release is on another level. This is a great movie, part of the best of what Sailor Moon has to offer, and at the relatively low price it’s being sold for it’s a no brainer to pick it up.

But wait, you’re all thinking, what about this terrible box art??? Indeed, the cover art isn’t the best. For weeks fans have been criticizing it. I’ll agree that it isn’t the best box art compared to their other releases but is that what’s most important? We’ve gotten a lot of really nice looking boxes with great little booklets and the video content always looked kind of terrible. Here we have the opposite, a box which isn’t that nice and a top quality release inside! All things considered I’d rather we get a release with a cover drawn by 3 year old with crayons if we could somehow keep getting quality releases like this!

Let’s look at what else is in this release. First off is the feature, which is only 1 hour long. This is the first of the Sailor Moon movies and it includes both a new English dub by Viz and a Japanese audio track with English subtitles. Sailor Moon R The Movie is one of my all time favourite films and my favourite of the Sailor Moon movies. It includes some of the best animation seen in the series. I watched the film in Japanese with English subtitles as I’d already heard the dub in theatres and found it to be good. Having seen a number of different versions of the film countless times I didn’t notice anything amiss with the translation, but as I don’t speak Japanese I can’t comment on it more than that.

Also included is the Make Up! Sailor Guardians special. This originally aired with Sailor Moon R The Movie in theatres in Japan. It was also included in North American theatres when it played here. This is a fun little extra, running at only 16 minutes, with some new animation but mostly recycled clips from the TV series. This extra feature also looks great. This makes me wonder what kind of masters TOEI had access to when they put it together! This release was obviously mastered from a film source but the TV clips included also seem to come from a higher quality source even than we’ve seen with the Japanese DVD releases. With the upcoming Blu-Ray release of the original Sailor Moon anime in Japan being advertised as being software upscaled from standard definition sources I wish they had access to the same source material they used in 1993 when this special was put together. Just look at this shot of Ami from her first appearance early in the first season with the fine detail in the lines. It isn’t the best but it’s nothing like what we’ve gotten in any other TV release of the series. Let’s hope the Japanese release we get in June looks something close to this!

There are a few extras on this disc. When Sailor Moon R The Movie played in theatres it was introduced by an interview with the cast. This included Stephanie Sheh, Sailor Moon, Ben Diskin, Fiore and Robbie Daymond, Tuxedo Mask. When I saw this in theatres I thought it was a bit silly to have it before the main feature. I was there to watch the movie, not see something which wasn’t more thrilling than your run of the mill DVD extra. Having it as an extra like this however is totally reasonable. This feature is about 10 minutes.

Also included is an interview which followed the LA Premiere. This included nearly all of the voice actors from the film, Viz’s Charlene Ingram and the ADR voice director for the film, Suzanne Goldish. The cast present included Carrie Keranen, the Xenian flower, Ben Diskin, Fiore, Cherami Leigh, Sailor Venus, Amanda Miller, Sailor Jupiter, Cristina Vee, Sailor Mars, Michelle Ruff, Luna, Sandy Fox, Chibiusa, Robbie Daymond, Tuxedo Mask, and Stephanie Sheh, Sailor Moon. The only main actors not present were Kate Higgins, Sailor Mercury, and Johnny Yong Bosh, Artemis. The interview included your standard kind of banter about how mind blowing it is to see Sailor Moon the big screen and the fan reaction. Suzanne Goldish, ADR director, tells a humours story about how her notes had her flip flopping from calling the villain Fiole, which means nothing, and Fiore, the objectively correct character’s name and the Italian word for flower. This explains why the voice actors refer to him as Fiole in the pre-movie interview. ADR directors don’t have the star power of the voice actors but they usually have some good insight into the production which makes for interesting stories.

Note that this book is not included with the film.

There is also some character art on the disc itself. I wanted to grab some screenshots but this feature wasn’t included on the DVD and the tool I used to get Blu-Ray screenshots doesn’t support menus. I’ll spare you photos of my TV and assure you these are character designs for the film similar to those seen in the above photo from the Japanese art book. It would have been nice to see a booklet with some character bios and maybe some of this kind of art but there’s nothing in the way of inserts with this release. The Japanese Sailor Moon R The Movie art book includes over 100 pages of content. It would have been easy for Viz to put together 20 or so pages to accompany this film!

We also get the standard trailers which are included in all Viz releases. If you haven’t been convinced to buy the remastered uncropped Ranma 1/2 Blu-Ray release at this point it’s just not going to happen.

So what’s my final verdict? Isn’t it obvious? Just buy the movie! Don’t bother with the DVD as it doesn’t showcase the high quality video of the HD transfer. Buy the Blu-Ray which includes the DVD if you somehow don’t have a Blu-Ray player in 2017. I got mine on Amazon. You can also get it from other retailers like Right Stuf. If you don’t want a physical copy you can save a few bucks by getting it digitally on iTunes or Amazon Video, but be warned that the digital version is currently only available in English. This is a high quality release of a great movie which every fan should own. Go get it!

Now that we’ve agreed that it’s worth getting whether you have another copy of the film or not a practical question is whether or not it supersedes any other release. Should you just throw your old copy out? The old Pioneer release has some advantages, mainly the old dub which some people have nostalgia for an the unmated full frame image. For most people in 2017 with widescreen displays this has limited appeal, but to this day the English release is the only way to get this full pictured version. Even the original Japanese laserdisc version was presented in widescreen. As for the Japanese release it still has some special features which are nice. A rare DVD feature that all of the Japanese Sailor Moon movies have is an isolated music only track which is a nice addition which isn’t on this release.

Keep reading for more photos.

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Sailor Moon S Part 2 will be released on home video June 20th

Posted on April 14, 2017 by Adam

We finally have a specific release date for Sailor Moon S Part 2 and it just squeaks in to Spring on June 20th! The DVD and Blu-Ray sets are up for preorder on Right Stuf and these include a June 20th release date. The DVD set has an MSRP of $39.99 while the Blu-Ray is priced at $69.99. Right Stuf has them for $35.99 and $62.99. We also have a good look at the box art including the back which has details about the release.

We’d previously learned from Viz’s Moon Panel at Anime Boston that we’d be getting the sets in June but we didn’t have a specific release date until now. Sailor Moon S Part 2 includes… well the second half of Sailor Moon S. This covers episodes 109 to 127 which concludes the story of Hotaru, the Death Busters and all that fun stuff. It includes Japanese audio as well as Viz’s new English dub of the original Sailor Moon anime. This will be the first time these episodes are heard in English as Viz has no longer been releasing episodes in an effort to promote their home video releases as they’d done in the past.

Sailor Moon S Part 2 will be out on DVD and Blu-Ray in June

Posted on April 6, 2017 by Adam

We finally have confirmation from Viz Media that the second part of Sailor Moon S will be released on DVD and Blu-Ray in June. We previously had only learned, based on an insert included in the Sailor Moon S Part 1 release, that it would be out in Spring 2017. The first day of Summer is June 21st so if the release is out before the 21st it will technically count as Spring! All of this was announced by Viz Media at Anime Boston’s Moon Panel which was held this past Saturday April 1st.

Twitter user Absolute Zero Now was live tweeting the panel and snapped a couple of relevant photos. The first is of a slide stating the release would be out in May but the second stating it would be out in June. This was confirmed by Viz Media as being the updated and correct date at the panel and on Twitter.

This release will include episode 109 to 127, concluding the Sailor Moon S season with the battle with Mistress 9 and the appearance of Sailor Saturn. The set will include the new English dub by Viz which has not previously been heard. Bonus features will include interviews with the cast, production art and more. This release still does not have a listing on the stores of online retailers such as Amazon and Right Stuf. These should be up in the coming months as a specific release date is determined.

The Sailor Moon Amour Eternal musical will be performed at Anime Matsuri in Houston in April

Posted on February 12, 2017 by Adam

The first ever North American performance of a Sailor Moon musical will be taking place in Houston Texas during the Anime Matsuri convention in April. The news of this special performance of the Sailor Moon Amour Eternal musical was posted on the official Sailor Moon site and Anime Matsuri site last month. The specific date of the musical performance has not yet been announced but it will be during the convention weekend which takes place from April 7th to the 9th at the George R. Brown convention centre in downtown Houston, Texas. This may be a slightly modified version of the musical as the entire cast will not be present. At this time only the Sailor Guardians and Tuxedo Mask, with the exclusion of Chibiusa, will be in attendance. Notice that the poster specifically made for this event features all regular cast members but Airi Kanda who plays Chibiusa.

In addition to the musical there will be many Sailor Moon themed guests. This includes Fumio Osano, Osabu, who is best known as the editor of the Sailor Moon manga. Also appearing are voice actors from the English versions of Sailor Moon Crystal and Viz’s new dub of the original Sailor Moon anime Cristina Vee, who plays Sailor Mars, and Christine Cabanos, who plays Sailor Saturn.

Confirmed guests for the musical are Hotaru Nomoto, Sailor Moon, Yume Takeuchi, Sailor Mercury, Karen Kobayashi, Sailor Mars, Kaede, Sailor Jupiter, Rimo Hasegawa, Sailor Venus,
Syu Shiotsuki, Sailor Uranus, Sayaka Fujioka, Sailor Neptune, Mikako Ishii, Sailor Pluto, Karin Takahashi, Sailor Saturn, and Yuga Yamato, Tuxedo Mask. Also attending are dancers Risa Kawamura, Yoshimi Hidano, Ayano Nagasawa and Ayumi Sagisaka.

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