It’s not been a great week for me but one of the few good things to come out of it was the special launch Friday night for Viz’s new English dub of the original Sailor Moon series. This was something I’ve been waiting for since May when Viz announced that they had acquired the license to the original series as well as stream the new Sailor Moon Crystal show. While I’ve been really enjoying Sailor Moon Crystal (that’s a rant for anothe4r day), nothing beats the original show.
I first became a Sailor Moon fan back in the late 1990’s when Sailor Moon was shown on Cartoon Network’s Toonami block, replacing the repeats of Thundercats they had been showing. At first I rejected it as a “girl’s show” but pretty quickly I actually got into the series’ characters and the storyline quite a bit. This show not only introduced me to the world of anime, but it also got me really going on being a writer (My Sailor Moon fan fiction series ran for 11 years) and even helped in my school’s art classes as I got into drawing in the animation style of this show as well as Ranma 1/2. I taped the entire English run of the first 2 seasons (including the “lost” episodes) on VHS and even now still have those episodes in my collection. So this series means a lot to me to say the least.
So late Friday night to coincide with the première of the first 4 episodes, Viz Media held a live stream on Youtube. The stream was plagued with issues. It went down for a good 30 minutes pretty much right off the back. The stream had horrible lag issues that they had to turn off the comments to try to keep things running, and to be honest it didn’t really provide much of anything except to put faces to some of the new voices you hear and show off some of the new merchandise. Both Hulu and Neon Alley were late with putting up the new eps, as it had told everyone that the shows would be up at 11pm EST but the sites didn’t get the first episode up until well passed 11:30 for most people.
But honestly that’s not why I was there. I was there to watch Sailor Moon. It had been advertised as uncut and boy do they mean it. Not only are the episodes themselves uncut from the original Japanese, but they keep the original names, the opening, and closing sequences. If it wasn’t guessed before, this was done for the same little girl’s crowd the original dub was meant for, this was made for Otaku no matter if they are male, female, or anything else.
Picture wise the show has been cleaned up. Of course it’s a 20 year old show so don’t expect any huge surprises visually. But a lot of the scratches and fading has been fixed for both DVD and blu-ray so it does lot better than it did all those years ago.
The bg thing of course is the new voices. Now, I’ve not gotten around to the episode that were uploaded later, just the first 4. And I’ll admit that as a die hard fan it does take some adjustment for the newer voices. That’s not to say they are bad, they aren’t. It’s just you have those voices engrained into you that anything else takes some time to go with. So far with these irst four episodes that you notice is that they aren’t “cartoony” and over the top as the original was. These voices are more natural and realistic. Stephanie Sheh makes a good Sailor moon without the wild and zany voice afflictions the original dub had. Something that realy got my attention was the voice of Naru (Usagi’s friend Molly in the old dub). Gone (thankfully) is the out of place New York accent, in it’s place however is a dead ringer for the original shows dub voice of Sailor Mars. THAT was the thing that took me the most to get used to than anything else. Seeing as the characters are radically different it felt really odd at first. The other big noticeable change was Luna. While this show more closely resembles the young girl voice that Luna had in the Japanese language version, people will always remember the motherly British voice Luna had in the 90’s. Sure it was cartoony, over the top, and out of place, but in a way it made sense. Luna was supposed to be a motherly figure. She was a the one guiding Sailor Moon and helping put the team together (and keeping them from killing each other). I’m glad Viz went the way that they did, but it’s not like motherly Luna was all that terrible either.
Of course in a situation like this there are going to be misses. In the early part of the series that falls to Usagi’s little brother Shingo. No offence to Nicholas Roye, but Shingo is 10 years old. Nic’s voice is way to deep for that character and it really comes off as totally mismatched and awkward. Ever wonder why most little boy voices in anime dubs are done by women and Greg Ayres? This would be the reason right here.
So I’m looking forward to watching the rest of the episodes posted and see how the other characters turn out. I think this is a great project that knows who it’s marketing too and doesn’t try to pretend or pander to anything else. This was the Sailor Moon a lot of fans wanted, we just had to wait for the anime scene in this country to catch up to it.
And before I go I just wanted to announce my fourth book is now out for purchase! kRaveings 3: Star Power is the third in the kRaveings books series featuring the unusual cybergoth hero kRaven and the ghostly Mirakoshi. After being brought in to help in the investigation of the brutal murder of a politician’s daughter, both are left wondering what to do next. When the city’s resident and establish protector The Star arrives, all Hell breaks loose when things aren’t seen from the same perspective. It’s only 99 cents and available at these e book retailers.
Smashwords: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/473594
Barnes and Noble: http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/kraveings-soul-tsukino/1120315269?ean=2940150514362
RT Gomer Productions 