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Sailor Moon

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File:Smoon.png
The character Sailor Moon

Sailor Moon (known as 美少女戦士セーラームーン, Bishōjo Senshi Sērā Mūn, or Bishōjo Senshi Sailor Moon, literally Beautiful young girl soldier Sailor Moon) is a Japanese shōjo [girls] manga (comic book), anime (animated), and tokusatsu (Live action with special effects) metaseries, created by manga artist Naoko Takeuchi. The story revolves around the reincarnated defenders of a destroyed kingdom that spanned the Solar System, and the evil forces they battle.

At 200 episodes, aired in Japan on a first-run basis between March of 1992 and February of 1997, it is the longest magical girl anime metaseries and generally credited with popularizing the concept of a sentai (team) of magical girls rather than ones working alone. Although many shows have followed the same formula, most are generally considered to be relatively uninspired and none have ever been the marketing giant this anime has become.

The anime's first two series contain stories that vaguely revolve around the backdrop of the Silver Millennium (an ancient kingdom on the moon) and the superficially-related kingdom in the future. The third series is quite dark in comparison, while the fourth is sometimes considered 'too' light and silly. The metaseries enjoyed renewed interest in its final fifth series, although its reuse of many plot devices bothered some fans.

The most-recently-produced live-action series is known officially as "Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon", and is the first series in the franchise to have an official English title. Allowing for deviations, it more closely followed the original manga than the animated metaseries in its first few episodes, but proceeded to follow a significantly different storyline than those of the manga and anime later in the show. The first episode of the series aired on October 4, 2003, with its final episode scheduled to air on September 25, 2004.

Although many concepts in the manga, anime and live-action show overlap, there are many notable divergences. Fans caution viewers not to always use information from either source to explain the other.

Story background

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Naoko Takeuchi amalgamated many seemingly disparate themes in the creation of Sailor Moon. Combining her love of space with Greek Myth, Roman Myth, Japanese elemental themes, and Meiji-era sailor-fuku school uniforms, she managed to fuse the popular magical girl and sentai genres and create a completely new and original idea.

The premise is as follows: Immature, underachieving student Usagi Tsukino discovers that she is the reincarnation of Princess Serenity, the princess of an ancient Moon kingdom. Her role as defender of the Solar System has been reissued to her in light of the reemergence of the evil force that originally destroyed her kingdom, the Silver Millennium. (Note: in the original Japanese versions, Silver Millennium is the name of the moon kingdom. In the English dub, "Silver Millennium" seems to refer to the kingdom and the time when it existed.) She fights using the identity of Sailormoon ("Sailor Moon" is used in the English dub, while both "Sailormoon" and "Sailor Moon" appear in the Japanese manga and anime-related sources). As the series progresses, Sailormoon is reunited with other reincarnated defenders—the princess's guardian soldiers. She is also reunited with her lover, the prince of Earth, who serves equally as romantic interest and primary protector.

The Japanese Bishōjo Senshi Sērā Mūn (Bishoujo Senshi Sailor Moon) anime metaseries is composed of five separate series:

  • Bishōjo Senshi Sērā Mūn (Bishoujo Senshi Sailor Moon) (usually referred to by fans as the "Classic" series, to avoid confusion with the entire metaseries)
  • Bishōjo Senshi Sērā Mūn R (Bishoujo Senshi Sailor Moon R) (according to the Memorial Song Box booklet, "R" stands for "Romance," "Rondo," "Return," etc.)
  • Bishōjo Senshi Sērā Mūn S (Bishoujo Senshi Sailor Moon S) ("S" stands for "Super")
  • Bishōjo Senshi Sērā Mūn SuperS (Bishoujo Senshi Sailor Moon SuperS) ("SuperS" is a plural of "Super")
  • Bishōjo Senshi Sērā Mūn Sailor Stars (Bishoujo Senshi Sailor Moon Sailor Stars)

There are three Sailor Moon movies, and these have independent stories that are separate from the series. The movies fall in the general timeline of each of the three middle series (R, S, and SuperS).

There are a few specials as well: Sailor Moon SuperS Special, and Sailor Moon SuperS Plus: Ami-chan no Hatsukoi, both of which take place around the SuperS series. Additionally, there are several Sailor Moon soundtracks available.

English adaptations

English-dubbed anime

A dubbed North American version of the anime was created in 1995, initially airing in syndication in the United States, and on YTV in Canada. Many changes were made to the basic storyline; it was rewritten to be aimed at very young American girls. Purist Sailor Moon and anime fans familiar with the Japanese original disliked it. Plots were vastly changed; others were completely dropped. Some of the changes include: naming the team the "Sailor Scouts" instead of the much more accurate Sailor Soldiers (although the term "Sailor Soldiers" was used much more frequently in later episodes); renaming almost all of the original attacks; censorship of much of the adolescent sexuality; censorship of even small amounts of violence involving humans (such as when Sailor Mars slaps Sailor Moon); and a complete omission of the Japanese version's original music. This North American version was many people's first experience with Sailor Moon, and the differences between the versions led to confusion. However, many fans worldwide would never have known about the series had it not reached North America, thus most fans regard the North American version as a mixed blessing.

The first two series of Sailor Moon that came to North America (Sailor Moon, and Sailor Moon R) were dubbed by a company called DiC Entertainment. The first two series, in addition to their dedicated airings on the USA Network and YTV, were aired in syndication, usually early in the morning, on affiliates of the FOX Network in the states, and on stations of the Global Television Network in Canada. DiC subsequently fell into breach of its contract to dub Sailor Moon, allowing Cloverway Inc., the American branch of Toei Animation, the Japanese studio that produced the original version of the anime, to pick up the dubbing rights to Sailor Moon S and SuperS. The production of the North American versions of S and SuperS was strikingly different from Sailor Moon and R in that all of the original animation and BGM was kept, keeping the two series relatively close to the Japanese version. However, many Sailor Moon fans disliked Cloverway's "Americanization" of the two series by the addition of slang words (such as phat) with no corollary in the Japanese series. Nonetheless, it was generally agreed among the fan community that S and SuperS represented a major improvement over DiC's dubbing of the first two series. S and SuperS were aired on the cable television network Cartoon Network in their Toonami programming block, and on YTV. The movies were also dubbed by Cloverway and aired on Cartoon Network and YTV. The broadcast syndication licence for Sailor Moon in North America recently expired, so the show is now nowhere to be seen on television in any English-speaking country.

Pioneer Entertainment (now Geneon Entertainment) has rights to release Sailor Moon S, SuperS and the movies on DVD and VHS both in the dubbed and uncut versions. In 2003, ADV, under its ADV Films division, released the English dub of Sailor Moon and Sailor Moon R as a set of fourteen DVDs. ADV also released a subtitled version of the entire Sailor Moon and Sailor Moon R series in two separate DVD boxsets -- uncut, except for the removal of next episode previews and episode 67, and using different versions of some openings than were in the original. ADV's license to distribute Sailor Moon and Sailor Moon R expired at the end of March 2004.

The removal of episode 67 was due to Toei Animation's refusal to grant ADV the license to distribute the episode. It is unknown why Toei took this action. Possible reasons include it containing strange fantasy elements even atypical of the metaseries (For instance, Chibi Usa finds a dinosaur). Its absence is notable due to it being the requisite 'holiday' episode that is featured once per series (and the few times the girls all appear in bathing suits, to the joy of male viewers).

So far, no American company is known to have the rights to release the Ami or SuperS specials, nor the Sailor Stars series. Toei Animation has expressed that they do not want to licence Stars for a North American release due to content that some American viewers may find inappropriate for children. Due to this, the difficulty of circulating fansub tapes in the past, and the series' long run, many fans have not actually seen the entire series in full.

Toei has also stated that it does not ever intend to licence its most-recently-produced live-action Sailor Moon series outside of Japan, so viewers outside the country, including those in North America, have to rely on alternate means to watch the show.

When Sailor Moon was up for bid by Toei to be produced in North America, Haim Saban attempted to get the rights to it so that his company could make an original live action (similar to Power Rangers) and American-style cartoon version of Sailor Moon. They even made a two-minute pilot for their version of Sailor Moon, which was ultimately rejected. (see [1] for a download to the video)

English-language manga

The manga was translated into English by TokyoPop.

By and large, the TokyoPop names match the Cloverway names with a smattering of the original Japanese names, to avoid confusion for American audiences (with the exception of Usagi Tsukino, given the nickname "Bunny"). The manga is flipped to read left to right.

English-language reference

Possibly due to the large number of variances in the localizations, the original Japanese names are more commonly used in the U.S. The poor quality of the early dub and the somewhat bad first impressions TokyoPop (then Mixx) left on fans at first may also have contributed to a general disdain for the American names.

Character listing

Protagonists

Princess Serenity and the Yon Shugo Jin no Senshi

These five senshi are Sailors Moon, Mercury, Mars, Jupiter and Venus, and are the first to be introduced in the series. They serve as Earth's protectors. (The name, "Yon Shugo Jin no Senshi" (or "Yon Shugo Shin no Senshi"), in Japanese, means "soldiers of the four guardian deities", which is the official name of the team.)

Sometimes they are called "Inner Senshi" by fans, and many soundtracks and Japanese promotional materials also call them, in English, the "Sailor Team."

The Senshi are also called 'Princesses' in the manga and English dub, but not explicitly in the original language anime or the live action show.

Gaibu Taiyōkei Yon Senshi

Sailors Pluto, Neptune, Uranus and Saturn compose the "Gaibu Taiyōkei Yon Senshi", which means "four soldiers of the outer solar system." They protect the solar system from external threats. They are introduced in the third series, with the exception of Sailor Pluto, who is first seen in the second series. Sometimes they are called "Outer Senshi" by fans.

Notes on antagonists

In the North American dub, all of the different groups of antagonists are lumped together under the generic term "Negaverse", without really differentiating between them. This changes somewhat by the S and SuperS series, where the antagonists are seen in their proper (if renamed) group.

Note about "Moonies": The fans of this anime sometimes like to refer to themselves on the Internet as "moonies" (with a lowercase m), not to be confused with the critical term sometimes used to refer to members of the Unification Church. Some children of Unification Church members are Sailor Moon fans, and thus might be called "Moonie moonies".

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