Stephanie “Sugar” Lyn Beard, the voice of Rini and Sailor Mini Moon from the original dub of Sailor Moon S and SuperS, will be appearing at Unplugged Expo at the Westin Harbour Castle Conference Centre in Toronto October 15th and 16th.

Canadian Sailor Moon fans will not only remember Sugar as the voice of Rini but also as one of the PJs from YTV’s The Zone, the after school zone programming block which played many shows, including Sailor Moon, here in Canada. Sugar will be appearing with her fellow PJ Carlos who hosted the Zone during the same time frame.

YTV, like the company which produced the first English dub of the original Sailor Moon anime, is based in Toronto where this convention takes place. It’s no coincidence that so many voice actor appearances occur in Toronto!

I won’t be able to attend Unplugged Expo this year but I have fond memories of my time at the convention 3 years ago during Unplugged Expo 2. Will you be attending this one?

August 28th 1995, 20 years ago today, the Sailor Moon anime first aired on YTV in English in Canada. This marked the beginning of the popularisation of the series in North America, where it acheived a great amount of success, as it had been and continued to do throughout the world. As a Canadian I experienced this first hand as the show played repeatedly on YTV and Global many times a day in popular time slots. Sailor Moon was an instantly recogniseable icon amongst Canadian adults and children alike when the show was in its prime. The series first aired in US on syndication starting September 11th 1995 though many American stations relegated it to less desireable times than Canadian stations had done. I recall getting up to watch the show in the early hours of the morning weekdays on UPN 38 and WPIX as many other fans surely did. Though everyone’s personal experience with Sailor Moon may differ wide spread exposure to the series in the US was less common until Toonami began airing the show on June 1st 1998.

Some of you may be wondering how we can be celebrating the 20th anniversary of the show in North America when we are also celebrating the 20th anniversary of the show in Japan. It took over 3 years for the show to be dubbed and released domestically, with the first episode being aired in Japan on March 7th 1992. The so called 20th annivesary celebration that has been going on in Japan has therefore been going on for over 3 years. The 20th Anniversary brand still appears all over the Japanese Official site which is titled the Sailor Moon 20th Annivesary Project Official Site and the Official Twitter account @sailormoon_20th. At this point we are actually closer to the arbitrary 25th annivesary of the show in Japan than the 20th.

Whatever the case Sailor Moon, as most of us have known it, has been around for 20 years. Here’s to 20 more!