What Did Kazuko Tadano’s Interview Reveal About the Sailor Moon Crystal Movie?

Posted
Filed under Crystal, Interview, Real World
Please, Super Sailor Moon, give us SOME information?

Please, Super Sailor Moon, give us SOME information?

At this point, I’m beginning to think that TOEI Animation simply enjoys toying with Sailor Moon fans’ delicate hearts. Just when you forget that they’re even supposedly making a fourth season to the Sailor Moon Crystal franchise in the form of a movie — bam! — there TOEI Animation is again with just enough information to get your hopes back up.

And that, my dear friends, is exactly where we find ourselves after the most recent release of the fan exclusive Pretty Guardian newsletter.

If it wasn’t enough to just drop the name of famed Sailor Moon character designer and animation director Kazuko Tadano, they also had to throw in just a few dazzling tidbits about Sailor Moon Crystal while they were at it.

Today we’re going to take a look at what she actually said in the interview, and see what information we can glean from it! Are you sitting down for this?

Continue reading →

Happy Birthday Rei Hino!

Posted
Filed under Blog, Rei Hino
Happy Birthday Rei! (courtesy of Sweet Bee)

Happy Birthday Rei! (courtesy of Sweet Bee)

Whether you know Rei best as the cool, silent priestess-type from the manga or the bossy counterpoint to Usagi in the anime, this character managed to strike a very personal chord that still resonates with me today.

In honor of Rei Hino’s birthday, I’d like to take the opportunity to highlight five interesting facts about the high-heeled Senshi of passion and her role in Sailor Moon. Happy Birthday, Rei!

Continue reading →

3 Problematic Names in Sailor Moon Translations

Posted
Filed under Articles, Fandom, Language, Lists, Making Of
Usagi's got some serious questions here

Usagi’s got some serious questions here

One thing that I find fascinating is the concept of what is the “official” Sailor Moon translation. In North America alone, both the anime and manga have had a whopping three different officially licensed adaptations since hitting this side of the Pacific.1

This, of course, doesn’t even take into account all of the subtitled versions, scanlations, and other fan-established terminology.

So what’s the right answer, and why is it so hard for all these qualified translators to “get it right”?

Today we’re going to take a look at some of the more challenging names to translate in Sailor Moon, and about some of the strategies used to get around them. Be sure to take notes — there might be a test at the end!2

Continue reading →

What Does the Full Sailor Moon Timeline Look Like?

Posted
Filed under Articles, In-Universe Lore
Pretty much none of the timeline makes sense... but we'll try anyway!

Pretty much none of the timeline makes sense… but we’ll try anyway!

It’s a very rare occasion that I can make any definitive statements about Sailor Moon that doesn’t require a bunch of asterisks, footnotes, or hedge words just to cover all my bases. But I can say with absolute conviction that the Sailor Moon timeline is… well, screwy.

This is only to be expected, of course, when you consider that more and more story elements were added to both the past and the future as the series continued, requiring all sorts of course corrections to answer some questions, all the while leaving more in their place.

Today we’re going to take a bird’s-eye view of the Sailor Moon timeline and see if we can make some sense out of this tangled ball of yarn, and figure out where some of the (as of yet) unanswerable questions lie. I hope you’ve had your morning coffee, because you’ll want to pay attention for this one!

Continue reading →

How Did the Sailor Senshi Get Their Planetary Names?

Posted
Filed under Articles, In-Universe Lore
How did you get the name "Moon," exactly?

How did you get the name “Moon,” exactly?

It’s a question that I imagine haunts many of us late into the night as the sweet call of sleep continues to stay just out of grasp: are the planets named after the Sailor Senshi… or are the Sailor Senshi named after their planets?

Or, put another way, is the planet Mars named for the Sailor Soldier of fire and burniness,1 or does Rei Hino go by the moniker “Sailor Mars” because that is the name that her planet is known as?

Like all things in the Sailor Moon universe, this question is slightly more complicated that it seems at first blush, so it looks like we’re going to have to get our hands dirty and just dive right on in. Break out your manga volumes and astronomy textbooks, because there’s a lot of background reading we’ll need to do!

Continue reading →

Is Usagi Just a Copy of Minako from Codename: Sailor V?

Posted
Filed under Articles, Characters, Making Of, Manga, Minako Aino, Usagi Tsukino
♪ One of these things is not like the other ♪

♪ One of these things is not like the other ♪

Whether Minako is considered a prototype for Usagi or a completely unique character seems to be a matter often debated among fans — and not without good reason. After all, it’s a well known fact that Ms. Takeuchi originally started Codename: Sailor V as a one-shot story meant to tell the tales of a sailor-suited warrior of justice. Only later did that idea get transformed into the Sailor Moon world that we came to know and love.

The anime even played heavily, perhaps too heavily, on this trope, adding further fuel to the Usagi/Minako copycat fire.

And yet, like practically everything else in the Sailor Moon universe, things are not as simple as they seem.

Today we’re going to take a look at Usagi and Minako’s characters in-depth and and see if we can settle once and for all just how similar (and different!) they really are. I hope you’ve got a talking cat handy, because you just may need one to untangle this mess!

Continue reading →

Happy Birthday Michiru Kaioh!

Posted
Filed under Blog, Michiru Kaioh
Happy Birthday Michiru! (courtesy of Non's blog)

Happy Birthday Michiru! (courtesy of Non’s blog)

Sailor Neptune — talented violinist, painter, and a Sailor Soldier who will rip your heart out in the pursuit of her mission.

Considering that my first encounter with the anime after Sailor Moon R was through episode summaries, I had actually read about Haruka and Michiru’s misadventures before I ever had any idea what they actually looked like. And yet, somehow, when I first saw the grainy, low-res late-90s screenshots of them, the character designs was a perfect fit for how they was portrayed in the series.

Much like the ocean that she represents, Michiru gives off the image of a calm, gentle beauty, but carries within her an unimaginable force that could break a ship in two.

In honor of Michiru Kaioh’s birthday, I’d like to take the opportunity to highlight five interesting facts about the Senshi of the sea and her role in Sailor Moon. Happy Birthday, Michiru!

Continue reading →