New Sailor Moon Anime

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The new Sailor Moon anime it looks like is going to be coming out this summer finally. They say it will be more faithful to the manga. I hope so. Although they might make some changes, of course. One of the changes I hope will be that they bring the shitenou back. I don't understand why she was able to break the spell on the sailor quartet but no them. They got turned to stones, too. I'd just love to see them with the senshi. And of course, that the Stars arc is more faithful to the manga, although even then it didn't make much sense. The Stars were just never my favorites. It was just too tragic, and I hated the Starlights.

When I was a teen back in my country of origin I only had two channels on TV. Well, those were the only two channels in the entire country... cable/hbo/satellite dish tv was not something the country had infrastructure for back then.

I remember that at 6pm every day they would show foreign cartoons. I always disliked US cartoons because they were so superficial and cliche (I'm talking Casper & tom and jerry type of things) but on wednesdays they would show non-US cartoons ...and for a few years they aired Robotech and Sailor Moon back to back (first sailor moon for the girls and robotech for the boys).

So I ended up watching both in Spanish dub.

I wasn't until many years later that I was in college in the US that my 10yr old cousins (girls) were seeing sailor moon in english that I noticed how horrible the translation was. What I remembered the characters and storyline as being rather human and complex in spanish (sailor moon actually was rather serious and poetic in monologues) were flipped into vapid, bovine stupid-talk in the english version. I looked up the japanese version with subtitles on the internet and realized the spanish version I had seen as a kid was far more accurately translated.

..so I bought the first series of the show in spanish dub for my little cousins and a week later they call me in tears because the main characters had all died...something that in the english version was censored off and the whole plot/theme changed along with it.

As a long-term fan, I've been keeping an eye on the new Sailor Moon anime production.

TOEI released a teaser image just this week, so now the series is confirmed to be called Sailor Moon Crystal:

Source: http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/news/20 ... ted-online

The staff behind the project has raised my eyebrows a little. I suppose Takashi Kurahashi isn't so bad as an art director; he was behind the very stylised Mononoke* after all, so hopefully Sailor Moon keeps its washy watercolour backgrounds.

And Yukie Sako's experience on Prince of Tennis, Steamboy and King of Thorn will mean that as chief animation director, Sailor Moon will be moving silky smooth in places.

I'm not 100% sure about Yasuharu Takanashi for the music though. It's a real shame Takinori Arisawa (the original Sailor Moon composer) passed away when he did; his henshin music was one of my favourite things about Sailor Moon (especially for the S movie). Listening to Takanashi's work on Pretty Cure, I find his work rather bland. To me, there's no real energy and no union between the music and the animation. Beyond that, Takanashi doesn't seem to have grasped the idea of strong instrumentals - his work on Log Horizon & Naruto Shippuden isn't offensive... it's just... there, droning on in the background... Luckily, Takanashi got things right with Fairy Tail and the shorter lived Our House's Fox Diety, so hopefully he'll have taken what he learnt there and apply it to Sailor Moon.

Leaving aside Momoiro Clover Z performing the new theme song (urgh), Sailor Moon Crystal will be helmed by Munehisa Sakai. He seems to be a relatively new director as his only credits before now are mostly Dragonball-related, and two PreCure series. Oh and One Piece. So I guess we'll have to see whether he can do Sailor Moon justice.

TOEI seem to be in a weird position right now, relying on big franchises to carry them these days. So fingers crossed they don't mess this up, especially as the manga is now complete, so they know exactly what they're working with. ^^;;

Looking forward to seeing what happens.

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* not to be confused with the Ghibli movie - Mononoke follows an Edo-period medicine seller trying to fend off dangerous supernatural spirits, check it out, it's just like watching a moving kaiga (the intricate historical Japanese illustrations).

I'm looking forward to seeing it. I have only read two volumes of the manga.
Sailor Pluto and Saturn are my favorite scouts.

One of the saddest things happening in all anime lately is the moving away from hand drawn to computer generated/animated. Even those that keep the characters hand drawn but the world/background & objects the characters interact with are computer generated just look awful.

I agree with you. Whilst I'm a fan of Attack on Titan and the new EVA movies for example, the environments are a little too... intricate and... cold, if that makes sense? I found it too easy to lose the characters in the work. At any rate, it's unfortunately becoming an industry standard to rely on CGI a lot more to keep budget costs down; OLM exemplify this badly, where the CGI and 2D don't mesh very well (re: Pokemon, Future Card Buddyfight, Beyblade), though BONES and a few other studios do seem to be getting better at the integration.

In fact, I'm reminded of what French animator Sylvain Chomet said regarding L'Illusionist and Les Triplets du Belleville (Bellevue Rendezvous) and about how computers animate things too perfectly; for both films, he deliberately asked the Montreal team working on the CGI to deliberately stagger the computer frame-rate so it wouldn't stand out so much against the human hand-drawn work.

Hayao Miyazaki himself said something similar more recently and insisted that the planes for his Studio Ghibli swansong The Wind Rises be hand-drawn. And it shows beautifully.

Therefore, I'm rather concerned TOEI may take the cheap route and produce Sailor Moon Crystal along the same lines as the PreCure franchise. There's nothing wrong with PreCure itself per se, it's been a popular franchise in its native Japan the past decade or so (the one attempt at an English dub with Max Heart went pretty badly, so only half the series was translated before it was dropped). But I personally don't want Sailor Moon Crystal to look like any generic magical girl show.

Puella Magi Madoka Magica subverted this trope and made its clashing art-style work (regarding the collage-inspired Witches against the super-cutesy hand-drawn artwork for the human characters). True, we've only had one official bit of Sailor Moon Crystal art to work off insofar. There's been no animated footage, so I only speak speculatively. We'll just have to see. The one thing I'm absolutely hoping for is a decent henshin sequence. :p

I only seen a few eps of the old series & thought it was OK. & I also played the translated rom of their Japanese SNES game. I didn't know they were making another version of the show. I may be interested in watching it.

You can almost see her butt in that pic

I watched much of the English version when it was first on. Can't remember how far I got then--it was a while ago.

Rediscovered the Japanese version last year, and quickly realized that the English dub is incredibly inferior in comparison. I also found the live-action version, which is surprisingly watchable. (I mean the one made in Japan around 2003, NOT the never-released "Saban Moon" monstrosity...aagh.)

I will definitely give this a try. Looking forward to seeing how it is re-imagined from the manga.

As long as it hasn't been toned down I'm looking forward to it.

Yes, I'm definitely looking forward to this.

In High School, Sailor Moon was on Cartoon Network. I loved it and watched whenever I could. I had a crush on Sailor Jupiter.

The few eps I seen were on CN when I was in high-school too & I also kinda liked Jupiter but I think Moon when she was a regular person instead of playing her sailor part, had some things I was attracted to too

TL;DR version: Regarding the English dub, rumours are rife that Funimation are the forerunners to dub it.

There have been numerous fan-theories reading into Funimation strongly hinting at "dubbing a magical girl series", based off DVD commentaries and comments made at cons, etc. However, the most conclusive evidence we have so far is from Linda Ballatyne (the third Sailor Moon dub voice actress who worked on Sailor Moon S and SuperS in English) who confirmed that she and the other Vancouver-based actresses at Cloverway Inc were not asked back to work, but instead work with new voice actors was going down to Dallas, Texas. Now, if that isn't a signpost, I don't know what is, because there's only one anime-dubbing company I know of that has a studio in Dallas.

Also, considering the good working relationship TOEI has had with Funimation (unlike with Disney, which led them to wrench away the rights to Power Rangers back in SABAN's hands; and Nickelodeon, who all but killed Digimon Fusion in the US), it wouldn't surprise me if Funimation did win the license - Funimation did save One Piece (not a fan, but I'd be stupid if I denied the resurgence in popularity after 4Kids' handiwork).

So, there you go. I'm hoping for an unedited not-dumbed-down release too.

Source: http://www.crunchyroll.co.uk/anime-news ... dub-rumors

Surely there's more companies other than Funimation wanting to dub this. If that's the case I'll keep to subs.

You do raise an interesting point. Alas, the pool of anime dubbing companies isn't quite as big as you first think...

Considering Sailor Moon's popularity, I'm beginning to wonder myself if Aniplex USA are going to attempt an acquisition. Though, rather like its parent company, Sony, Aniplex is an entity unto itself in what it chooses to license, when it releases it, and whether there'll be a complete DVD/Bluray release and whether it's actually affordable (I got extremely lucky with Madoka). We all saw what happened with the Astro Boy 2003 anniversary series... oh dear...

I can't see Sentai Filmworks getting Sailor Moon either, they're just not big enough to go for major titles, instead going sideways to lesser known projects; I know they're in the process of getting their hands on Log Horizon, and are planning to release Shinsekai Yori (From a Brave New World) on DVD and Bluray shortly.

As far as I'm aware, Studiopolis aren't in the position to acquire licenses; they merely act a dubbing production studio and are at the mercy of whoever hires them for work, both for anime and video games. Now I think of it, I have absolutely no idea who it is that's funding them to continue dubbing Bleach...

I have my doubts too about (NYAV Post, because like Studiopolis, they're completely at the mercy of whoever funds them for dubbing (though they did brilliantly with the recent Ernest and Celestine funded by GKids.)

Moving on, I can't make any assessments about Viz Media because they barely release anything outside the USA. So I'm rather hoping they don't win the rights to Sailor Moon because I'll never see it, just like what happened to Nurarihyon no Mago's dub.

Ocean Group are based in Vancouver, ergo Canada, so they're out if Linda Ballantyne's right. Same with Blue Water in Calgary (they did the international English version of Dragonball and Dragonball GT which I grew up with).

So from my perspective, it looks like Funimation's a strong forerunner. I can't see Nickelodeon funding a dub, they're uninterested in anime altogether following the fall-out they had with Saban and Digimon Fusion. Same with Cartoon Network (unless it's got merchandise to sell, and even then, it's iffy unless it's a product CN have funded themselves so they need not pay any royalties to external parties; re: Ben 10, Adventure Time, Teen Titans Go...)

And considering Disney not even getting anything for their hastily-acquired dub of The Wind Rises, and the fact they're raking in money from their own American acquisitions (Marvel, Star Wars) and American-origin material (both in-house and with Pixar), I can't see Disney acquiring Sailor Moon either.

So, yeah... nothing is conclusive as of yet and I don't dare presume I'm a know all with all the answers; until we get confirmation from someone, it's still an open-field. But I predict TOEI will be keen for someone in the West to pick it up as apart from Dragonball and nowadays One Piece, Sailor Moon has been one of their most successful anime in making the trans-Pacific jump.

I would rather watch subbed as I hear the same dub VA's in everything I watch not the case so much in Japanese.

That's absolutely fine, you're perfectly entitled to do as you want, no qualms from me.

I apologise if my wording gave off the inclination of me being a dub-only watcher or something; my preferences vary massively depending on the anime I'm watching at the time. At any rate, the last thing I want to do is start a ridiculous dub-vs-sub debate - as long as we can watch anime full-stop (period), whatever language it's in is a moot point, right?