April 25, 2023 • 42 mins
Moon Star is celebrating our first year of the show! On April 25th, 2022 Alex launched the little moon-cast that could solo. Today, it has grown into the show we are so proud to present to you each week. We can't wait to see what the next year of Moon Star: A Sailor Moon Podcast will bring.
The Production & History of Sailor Moon Special
Join hosts Chris & Alex as they go over the process of creating Anime by hand - a technique that is rarely used today - and a brief historical overview of the release and reception of Sailor Moon. We cover the original Japanese release, and the North American release up until recent events.
Thank you for a full year of magic. Let's keep going.
Official Website
www.moonstarpod.com
Sponsored In Part By Sailor Moon Video
www.sailormoonvideo.com
Hosted By Alex Summers & Chris Mayek
Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/moon-star-a-sailor-moon-podcast--5540871/support.
The Production & History of Sailor Moon Special
Join hosts Chris & Alex as they go over the process of creating Anime by hand - a technique that is rarely used today - and a brief historical overview of the release and reception of Sailor Moon. We cover the original Japanese release, and the North American release up until recent events.
Thank you for a full year of magic. Let's keep going.
Official Website
www.moonstarpod.com
Sponsored In Part By Sailor Moon Video
www.sailormoonvideo.com
Hosted By Alex Summers & Chris Mayek
Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/moon-star-a-sailor-moon-podcast--5540871/support.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:04):
Hello, and welcome to Moonstar's oneyear special. Today on Moonstar Sailor Moon
Podcast, Chris and I will becovering how the nineties Sailor Moon anime was
produced and some history about Sailor Moonin general. We also just wanted to
thank you at the top of theshow for coming along on this ride with
us this far and say that wecannot wait to see what year two of
(00:26):
Moonstar will bring. Let's we'll startthe show see if year bye. We
(01:03):
know that it started as a oneget an animate, take us through what
once the deals have been made,right, We're not really focusing on money
here, We're focusing on on thetactile version of it. What's the first
thing that happens? I think probablylike it is with any anime even nowadays,
the creator gets together with the teamthat works at the animation studio that
(01:26):
is assigned to produce the anime adaptation, or I'm guessing maybe the creator probably
has a say or a choice ifthey want to work with I would think.
I know there's been some not aSailor moment, but there's been some
controversy later on with like picking studiosand whatever. But anyway, yeah,
(01:48):
I think the first step would obviouslyjust be for the creator to meet with
the whole production team that works atin this case Toy and decide on how
things are going to go. Andthen once they've sort of set Okay,
this is the direction we're going,this is our creative thought here. Who
is first in line in the physicalproduction as far as as far as your
(02:14):
best guests. I guess in mostcases, I think outside of the creator,
it's going to be the director ofthe anime, and then whoever,
whoever the lead overall character designer is, and they would put together like the
storyboards before any actual animation is done, I assume, yeah. And then
once they have everything storyboarded and theplot is you know, discussed for that
(02:39):
week's episode or whatever and finalized,I guess the scripting would come before all
of that, right, like thescripting of even like how the how the
season would go, like how thestory would go, just for like per
episode. Like so let's say let'ssay we're producing episode one. Yeah,
they would write the script before thestory board or would they storyboard before script?
(03:01):
No? And in Japan, theway that anime is made, it's
not like it's not like American cartoonswhere it's animated to people's performances. It's
all in Japan. It's always been. It's created first, and then the
story stuff comes after that, likethe really Yeah, I find that so
I wonder why do you think it'sbecause they're focusing more on the art of
(03:23):
it. Yeah, I guess that'sprobably the only reason. So they do
they do that, They do thestoryboard, and then where do sketch sets
come into play? That would belike the stuff that I have and will
I mean sketch sets and cells arepretty much the same thing, so that
all that would be configured once everythingis good to go and is like approved
(03:47):
overall, and then that stuff happensand then obviously it's fully animated, and
then the voice actors get to recordand then they're to match the to match
the lip movements, what's happening onscreen, and when they're at the end
of this production line, like recordingeverything that's on screen in front of them
(04:09):
in Japan, do you do youknow if they use what method they use
for that um from I think fromwhat I've seen, I don't know if
they use a beep system. Ithink at least back then they I think
from what I've seen that they justlike the director, would just rewind the
scene, however many times it wouldtake if they needed, if they needed
(04:31):
to do something over, like todo retakes or whatever. Yeah, I
want to go back to the cellsa little bit too and discuss like what
is that? What's so tell becauseI know we've talked about it before,
but I want this to be goodreference episode. Tell everybody what a cell
is. Yeah, So, priorto their early two thousands, um,
(04:54):
anything animated, not just in Japan, but any anything animated had to be
traditionally created and hand drawn and handpainted frame by frame and then animated in
like a flipbook style way. Soeverything that you were watching before the two
(05:15):
thousands, you know, it wasa whole team of people that were manually
doing everything. And the cells areon plastic. That's called it's short for
celluloid and anything not just with likeproducing a TV show or movie. It's
like back then for anime, anythinglike a magazine like art for a magazine
(05:40):
cover, art for a CD cover, art for a videotape cover, like
random merchandise. All of that hadto be done by sketchwork and cell work
first, so it was just wayit was way way more involved back then,
and the cell itself once they've createdwhat you were describing the foreground,
(06:02):
and that's done with like inc andspecial types of paint, I believe,
right, do you mean like backgroundand foregrounds? Well, yeah, like
because they have the transparency on thecelluloid. Yeah, And I think both
of them are on the same material, right, the background in the foreground,
but they layer them when they're puttingtogether a scene, and that's so
(06:23):
they can reuse different backgrounds and stuff, right, and just allow It's kind
of like for people who know photoshop, think about like the foreground image would
be the character if you cut themout, like using them if either magic
wand tool or whatever and just completelygot rid of the background, and then
you can like the layer underneath that, and photoshop is literally the next page
(06:46):
of celluloid, which is the background. It's like physical photoshop. Basically taking
stuff like that is probably why certainlike editing programs are the way they are
because they probably based it from thatprocedure or similar one. How long would
you estimate it would take to producea full episode of sailor Moon? You
can probably find that information. Idon't know. I know there's there's a
(07:11):
YouTube video from I think like seasonone or two that shows people working to
make something and like how they animatedsomething. Probably maybe a week, I
don't know, depends on how fastthey're working. Well, I think I
would say they probably have a prettyspecific schedule for stuff like that, and
it sounds like they were doing itquickly, so I would guess a week
(07:33):
a week, maybe two at themost, depending also one how far along
the mango was, because sometimes itwould lag behind because of that. Yeah,
what else could we add about theactual production of the show. One
kind of sad part about it.I guess we've talked about it on the
(07:54):
episode episodes before. But a lotof the people that are many would deem
most iconic to work on the originalseries left after Supers. They left before
Stars because of a lot of internalconflict between them and Toe, like Ikuko
(08:16):
Eto left and obviously and Kunihiko Ikuharaleft who he was them He directed a
bunch of episodes starting in season one, and then he got more esteem as
a director, like he directed thefinale episodes of S and Supers And I
(08:37):
don't know, however, many otherpeople. There were a lot of people
that left after Supers just because ofmistreatment from TOE and disagreement of creative freedom.
It is sort of a sad markon the show's history, but I
think it also probably speaks to thattime period in general for the creation of
(08:58):
a lot of things that were doneby hand like this, because unfortunately,
when you're a creative person working ina world that sees success measured by a
dollar or whatever currency you use,that starts to take over eventually in almost
every circumstance, you know what Imean, And you can see it in
(09:20):
almost any creative project that is onthat level where there's all kinds of merchandising
that goes into it, and allthat stuff is great and everything, but
like the scheduling and all of that, it's pure I have to imagine that
is purely a money thing. Likeif they were given the freedom to do
this in as much time as theyneeded, the quality would be incredible,
(09:43):
but then it would be like,well, we're paying you hourly, right,
I think so, I don't know, so, like it just it
seems like one of those things wherethey did the best with their situation.
And that's probably why we got sucha quality product to begin with. Yeah,
but they burnt out because of thattoo, and they left over it,
which is sad. Do you thinkthis type of thing happened a lot
(10:05):
in other anime situations? Oh yeah, yeah, especially back then. I'm
sure it still happens today. Butyou know, with how involved it was
to traditionally create anime back then,you could probably find I'm sure, like
on if you look on different JapaneseWikipedia pages for certain series and certain studios,
(10:26):
I'm sure you can find all kindsof stories. Oh yeah, I
might dig around and see if there'sanything worth including. Let's do a little
bit about the history of the showin general. So the show was initially
planned both as an anime and amanga, but it was only supposed to
be one season. Because of itspopularity, they asked her to continue drawing
(10:52):
the manga, which initially she struggledwith, and that's why we ended up,
like I said, with the HellTree or the Doom Tree arc.
That's where the first delay came from. And Sailor Moon itself is adapted from
fifty two chapters of the manga,which was published in the Naka Yoshi magazine
from nineteen ninety one to nineteen ninetyseven. Have you ever seen any of
(11:16):
the like Nakayoshi magazine, like anyoriginal scans or pictures of that or anything.
No, I don't think I've everlooked it up. I mean,
I've probably seen it without even realizingit. It's kind of like the way,
like it's all very similar to herart style. I don't think she
was the only artist they published,but I think it was that kind of
(11:37):
thing. It's something that I thinkif I was a Japanese kid at that
time, I absolutely would have beenlike getting that magazine. Yeah, you
know, and I don't think wereally had anything equivalent to that over here
in the United States because all ofthe like magazine subscriptions I can think of
(11:58):
were geared towards adults. Yeah,except maybe maybe like Zoo Books, And
that's not a real magazine. That'sjust like you know what I mean,
Although there was like teen Beat andTiger Beat or whatever the hat, but
like, that's nothing like this.That was kind of a comic release taken
seriously, you know, So Ithink it's cool that they actually have stuff
(12:20):
like that. Yeah, what isTV Asahi? Do you know? That's
a channel. Is it probably theirpredominant animation like Channel, I think I
think one of them. Yeah,I think I think Japan had a bunch
of TV stations that showed anime backthen, like New Anime probably so.
(12:43):
It says it premiered on TV Asahion March seventh, nineteen ninety two,
which the show it was taking overfrom was called Goldfish Warning. I've never
heard of that, but it soundsadorable. Have you ever heard of it?
Yeah, I vaguely know what itis. Tell me about it.
I think it's a children's show too, Like I think I think it is
like even more very apparent that it'sgeared towards children and Savramuna's yeah, that's
(13:13):
like I know of every little aboutit offhand. I'm gonna look it up
and we'll talk about it later forfun. But so saramuon once it had
that time slot, it appears itran for the full two hundred episodes at
that time slot until it concludes onFebruary eighth, five years later, which
I think it's impressive that it heldthe same time slot the entire time.
(13:33):
Yeah, because stuff gets shuffled alot at least here based on like how
it's performing and stuff. Yeah,so, because they were doing the anime
at the same time as the manga, sometimes it would lag by like a
month or two, and that's oneof the reasons why this anime in particular
(13:56):
does not follow the manga exactly.How do you feel about that in general
in terms of the original Sailor Moonseries, I don't. I'm not really
all that bothered by it because youknow, a lot of the filler episodes,
especially in the later seasons, aregreat and you don't even really know
(14:18):
that that they're filler. So yeah, I agree, they feel more like
character development than anything. There's ahandful that I really would classify as filler,
but even those are fun and somethingthat I think works to its advantage.
It almost spoiled me because this wasmy first anime, and I loved
that I could read the manga andhave a completely different experience with the same
(14:39):
characters, and then watched the animeand it was something else. But it's
still similar enough, but you knowwhat I mean. And then I would
see other stuff like Inuyasha, Ithink is a good example where it's exactly
the manga like almost verbatim, andit's kind of like, well, why
if you're going to read one,why watch it? Or if you're gonna
(15:01):
watch it, why I read it? You know what I mean? Like
with not having much differences, Iwould just get having seen the whole anime.
So to me, I actually thinkthat is an advantage that happened accidentally
because it gives the anime a placeto stand on its own, separate from
the manga. Yeah. Oh,this I thought was interesting. Though.
(15:24):
Nayako has said that because the animewas created by predominantly a male staff,
she feels like it has a slightmale perspective. What do you think she's
referring to? Probably I would thinkthat just the way that characters would handle
things in the show would be theway that a guy would, at least
(15:46):
over Japan and Japan culturally at thattime. I don't really agree with that,
but I think it's probably a culturalthing over there. I think that
could be part of it. Idid notice when I was watching the Pluto
channel that has like the Japanese onit. Yeah, there are some they're
not panting shots. I hate thatword, because they're in their sailor outfits.
(16:10):
It's like a unitard. But whatwould you call it like you see
under their skirts sometimes, And Ithink little moments like that. When she
draws in the manga, anything thathas any kind of nudity or whatever,
it's done in a very soft way. It's done in a very non sexual
way, in my opinion, AndI think little moments like that, it's
not like they were oversexualized. ButI don't think she would have included that.
(16:34):
Yeah, and I think she probablywould have given certain characters more femininity
than is in the anime. LikeI think specifically, Makoto's character in the
manga comes off both masculine and feminine, but in more extreme ways on the
feminine side too, And in theanime it's kind of like she's very much
(17:00):
a tomboy, but then oh shebakes like it's not quite as nuanced.
I don't think for some of thecharacters either. But I also I think
when you make something like this thatis so much from your heart, it
would be really hard not to bevery protective over it when it's like put
into other formats, you know whatI mean. Yeah, So I could
(17:23):
see why she feels that way.After its initial run, it kind of
faded away for a while and thenThe series got a new resurgence in two
thousand and nine in Japan and itwas rebroadcast starting on September first, and
(17:44):
then also in Italy the next year, and Naoko like greenlit this and was
producing new artwork to promote it,which is kind of exciting because it had
been dead for a little while bythat point. Do you remember were you
part of the fandom at that pointtwo thousand and nine. I don't,
yeah, because I would have beenin um, I think fifth grade or
(18:04):
sixth grade, so I think bythen I wasn't thinking about Sailor Moon quite
as much as I was thinking aboutlike Narutoon, Bleach and that. Right.
Yeah, I didn't really start embracingout way more. Well, I
guess no, because like a yearlater was when I started. I got
(18:27):
my first cells and they were bothof Hadaka, So yeah, but a
year feels like a long time atthat age. Yeah, I guess,
yeah. So you were probably likejust leaning in a little at this point.
I was in this time, acouple of years out of well,
a couple of years into college,my first roll through at it, and
(18:51):
I kind of remember when this startedto happen because it bubbled up in Japan,
and then it came over here afew years later when we start getting
new merchant stuff. I remember thewall scrolls and things like that, and
Hot Topic I want to say,started putting out, you know, random
things with Sailor Moon stuff on it. It was one of those times where
(19:12):
like I used to come in andout of the fandom, you know,
in phases. Yeah, and thatwas one of the moments that really brought
me back in. And then Crystaldropped and I hated the first season of
it, and I left again andmy left I mean, like I was
just doing other things. But itwas so disappointing because I don't know if
you remember, but the build upto Crystal was huge. Yeah, and
(19:36):
then it Yeah, and then itdropped and we got what season one was,
and I was like, what itwas a very It was a great
example of like, don't oversell it. Yeah. But yeah, So that
was when Sailor Moon got its firstresurgence, and then we kind of had
another one recently which is not referencedhere, but it's when all of the
(19:56):
movies and stuff started coming out alittle bit. Yeah. When did that
begin? I think I think itwas during COVID like when the first Eternal
stuff started dropping press wise. Ithink you're right, so like twenty twenty
one probably, yeah, maybe twentytwenty two. So that's kind of the
(20:17):
general history of the original production asfar as the Japanese series goes. For
Sailor Moon, the English dub,so this is the nineties English one that
we talked about a lot. Thisone came about in nineteen ninety five and
there was a bidding war between Tunemakersand Renaissance Atlantic Entertainment who they wanted to
(20:41):
produce an American live action animated hybridadaptation. Yeah, it's a mouthful that's
known as it was called Sabon Moonfor a long time. Have you seen
this? Yeah? Yeah, didyou go ahead? Even before the footage
got found, like within the lastyear. Um, you would see cells
(21:04):
of the live of the American SailorMoon on eBay. It seems like it
was I don't know if it wasthe same person just relisting them, but
yeah, they would. They wouldcome up and like and search results all
the time. That's so funny.Um. I My first exposure to it
was back in the day there wereallegedly ways to obtain things on the Internet
(21:32):
through citrus wire and or other youknow what I mean. But like,
for some reason, somehow when youwould search sailor Moon, there was like
it was this, have you seenthe video? And it's not the full
pilot, but it's like the onethat came out before that, which like
the recording in the room. Doyou know what I'm talking about? Yeah,
And it was like it looked tome like, I imagine this was
(21:55):
a room of people from the BiddingWar, and this was the little video
package that they had put together tobe like, this is our idea of
what we're gonna do. We allsaw that back in like you know,
two thousand and one or whatever.Yeah, And it was one of those
things that in the fandom everyone waslike, we know that they messed it
(22:15):
up a lot in a certain way, but aren't we glad that didn't happen
though, Like it kind of evenback then to me, it always sort
of helped me be like, well, you know, I'm aware of the
changes, but like, at leastit wasn't that yeah, because if it,
well, I would have still watchedit, as insane as it is.
(22:37):
I don't know that a lot ofother people would have. Yeah,
we're gonna do a whole special inthat one someday too. So anyway,
we all know Deek Productions LP,which by the way now is called Wild
Brain, ended up getting the licensefor the first two seasons for the English
(23:03):
language release in North America. Wereyou I can't remember, but were you
around to watch it when it wasairing in nineteen ninety five. No,
I wasn't born yet, right,So this is something that they actually brought
up. I think it was SusanRoman, but they put it in like
(23:26):
the most ridiculous time slot at likein some places it was on at five
am, and for me, itwas like six thirty or seven in the
morning, and it would be onlike weekdays, not on Saturday morning cartoons
really, or it was on toNami at like you know, three in
(23:48):
the morning or whatever. Yeah,so they really kind of set it up
to fail when they initially released it. And I don't know if you know
this, but they completely stopped producingthe dub in November of nineteen ninety five
after the first two seasons minus seventeenepisodes. They didn't even finish the second
season, and they were just like, we're done. Did you know that,
(24:11):
No, I don't think so.Yeah, and so this brings me
back to something we've discussed before,but they referenced it here without actually naming
the project for what it was.It was SOS Save Our Sailors that helped
create a fan petition that garnered overtwelve thousand, five hundred signatures and that
(24:32):
got the attention of General Mills,like we discussed with the whole pop tart
thing. Yeah, and they agreedto sponsor and syndicate the rest of the
Sailor Moon dubbed through something called theProgram Exchange. This is actually considered also
an early example of successful fan activismin general, which I think is pretty
(24:52):
interesting that Sailor Moon gets to claimsomething like that. Yeah, this is
something that I think is very uniqueto being part of a fantom of a
show or a franchise when it's brandnew, so you're like experiencing it as
it's rolling out right, going throughthe roller coaster of all of that is
(25:15):
something that people who kind of discoverit later don't get to participate in.
But that's why I want to dothe show, because I like want to
give them the best lens of likewhat that might have been like, you
know, in case they're curious,like, what do you think where you
would you have reaction been if you'relike, okay, i've seen bits of
this show season one, season two, announce just gone. What would you
(25:37):
have felt like in that climate?I mean, I yeah, I definitely
would have been, especially by thetime that season four ended and people would
be wondering about stars. If youif you had the means to look it
up, like if you were oldenough to look up that there was a
final season, I would I woulddefinitely. Yeah, I'll feel that way.
(26:02):
Well, let's think. Let megive you a better reference. Though.
This is nineteen ninety five, soyou don't have Internet like you do
today. You have dial up ifyou're lucky. That also, there was
no Wikipedia. Google I believe innineteen ninety five did not exist yet I'll
have to fact check that. Ifit did, it was pretty new,
so finding information was not like itis today either. And the only way
(26:23):
you would really be able to tellthat they stopped production on it is that
the episode has just stopped happening.Yeah, you fall in love with this
show. They put out all ofthis merchandise, which, by the way,
another thing I have a lunchbox,like a ten lunchbox from the nineties,
and its features Moon, Mercury,Jupiter, and Mars. But there's
(26:44):
no one else on it. AndI was thinking about it and I was
like, oh, this was producedbefore Venus joined the cast, because it
took like a full like think aboutthat. We're we haven't even met Venus
yet, and we're film we're recordingour one year special right now, I
know. Does that make sense?So like there was a whole year of
(27:06):
merchandise where most of the characters arejust not included because they weren't released yet,
which I find so fascinating. Yeah. But anyway, so we know
that going back to the d Coalthing, Deeke ended up getting it and
they had to make mandated cuts tocontent and length, which reduced the first
eighty nine episodes by seven, Sothey cut seven full episodes out. And
(27:32):
it was originally meant to like bounceoff of the success of the Mighty morphin
Power Rangers two. Doesn't that comparisonor that parallel come up a lot the
Sailormen of Power Rangers. I don'thear it that much personally, really,
(27:52):
I've seen it and maybe it's justbecause I'm reading these things, but I
swear it's been mentioned a few times. The series, the English version,
premiered in Canada on August twenty eighth, nineteen ninety five, on something called
YTV. Have you ever heard ofYTV? I think that might have been
like what cartoon network is down here, because I know that even going into
the two thousands, they were theywere one of the channels that played anime
(28:15):
in Canada. Yeah, and theyhad um this little live segment between the
shows because they played digimon and stuffon there too. And for a while
it was Sugar, Yeah, thevoice of Mini a Moon, And I
watched some of the clips of heron there, and I just have to
say, what a charismatic, hilarious, fun individual. Are you going sure
(28:41):
ye happy? Or are you fourtwo? Or Agimus drink thankster? You
know where I like run the mob? Would you ever do something like a
lot of stuff is going to happenfor your you. I'm good of predicting
the stuff that's for me. Iknow you're not being nice. This is
didn't see who's the real Zorre?You're one? Choose three four summer Yah?
(29:06):
Done baby. Now you've got togo back to Canada. You feel
a little bit disconnected and don't knowhow you can help. Do you think
that you know everybody of our agescan help something like this? Absolutely?
Do you think it's important to growand change as a person as you get
older? Absolutely? The hip hophebrewly it touched me. I just did
(29:27):
like a rubble to nip. Yeah, shame model, Na man Hi,
thank javany le ask you the questionson this cheek? Why is it friend
to throw up sometimes because they getrid of all that nasty ate the night
before? He swore? Oh?Sorry? How come there's something called puberty?
(29:52):
And what is it? It's somethingbetween adult and child? What's between
our an adult and a child?Isn't that illegal? I think Peaberti is
around age twelve? Oh okay,what does God look like? Now?
Um? I don't believe in God? Do you believe in Santa? Okay?
(30:18):
I've seen you in my dream.If you have any kind of message
for Jay Leno, now is thetime to tell him. He's kind of
Bakersfield. Yeah, yes, youknow him? Yeah, well yeah yeah
Bakersfield. Hey you want a Zerberg? Zerberry? You're not a Zerbert?
Are you sure? You believe itready Zerbert mistake. Mistake. So after
(30:56):
Sailor Moon Urs wrapped up in nineteenninety nine, Cloverway gets involved. What
are some of the major changes thathappened when it went over to Cloverway.
The voice actresses for Venus and Mercurychange, and oh and Pluto and Sailor
(31:17):
Moon we get Linda Valentine here.Yeah, and also I think I don't
know, it doesn't exactly say why. It could have been due to changes
in the laws or whatever, butthey were able to fully dub Sailor Moons
and Sailor Moon super S. Theyjust were not able to air the uncut
episodes, but they were able torelease them on VHS and DVD. Yeah,
(31:41):
and even though it says that's uncut, they still have certain changes in
it, like making Uranus and Neptunecousins and things like and then the Fishey
change and everything, but they atleast like don't have scenes missing or whatever.
Yeah. So that was for seasonsand four and then Pioneer Entertainment was
the one who handled all the VHSand DVD release and it was first aired
(32:07):
on YTV on September thirteenth, intwo thousand and two, the original airing
that would wrap up all of that, because I'm assuming from there they showed
seasons three and four just to getthrough watching the first dub back then,
Like, are you starting to seehow much effort someone would have to put
(32:30):
in just to do that, havingto scour through a physical newspaper looking at
the TV listings, like, Okay, where is this show? It's constantly
moving, It's constantly on different channels. Sometimes it was on network, sometimes
it was on cable, which aretwo different things. The home video and
stuff would did come out, butit would be kind of like, well,
(32:52):
Suncoast has these random volumes and thenTarget has volume seven, you know
what I mean? Like even thatthere was no Amazon to order from,
so it was just it was likea labor of love to be a fan
for the series, and that's whyI think it has such long term dedicated
fans in general. There's just alittle thing here that I highlighted too.
(33:19):
We know what a lot of thechanges were, right, They edited out
some of the bathing scenes that hadsome nudity in it, or they would
like edit it to cover the nudityif they wanted to still include the scene,
Sailor Moons, what does this say? Some of the dialogue was changed,
(33:40):
and then they had to change someof the characters like Zoisite, fish
Shie, Coonsite, Sailor You're Inness, and Sailor Neptune. This was a
very interesting point that I thought theWickie brought up. Changing evil characters genders
to female also had the side effectof creating more diverse female characterizations, as
(34:00):
the evil female characters did not havethe same body type, so they inadvertently
were giving us non binary representation completelyby accident. That was well, I
think that was mainly just with Fishy, more so with Fishey. But if
you want to think about it withZoisite's character, it's they think about the
(34:21):
way the world is now. Ifyou really want to look at it that
way, Zoysite very easily could havebeen a non binary or a trance character
who is like, well, I'mfemale presenting this is the current state of
my situation. I don't know.I think they kind of like as it's
also up to you how you wantto look at it. If you I
think some people are too bothered andcan't handle it, and that's their right.
(34:45):
They don't have to. I thinkother people understand why that was done
and understand the climate of the time, and they just get it and they're
also fine with it. And thenthere's other people who want to say,
yeah, but look at the accidentalpositivity here. Yeah, you know what,
what what camp do you fall in? I guess that's a good point.
Yeah, I mean I do thinkthat, especially for Well, I
(35:07):
guess yeah, for zo Aside andFish, I to um, Debred Richford
and uh, I'm blanking on.I want to say Katie Bell for some
reason, but I don't think that'sno, not for those sites, Chris
Kristin Bishop. They both did well. I mean you can, you can.
You can appreciate their character characterization ofplaying them as female characters. Mhm,
(35:31):
I agree. But yeah, Idon't know. I don't under why
do you think people feel so stronglyabout it? I mean I can I
can see, you know, obviouslyin certain scenes of the original dub it's
like it's not very good acting.But I'm on, like I I'm on
the same page as you from thesense that you know, there's definitely positive,
(35:54):
like really good moments too, andthose don't overshadow. I don't think
the negative like overshadows the positive,especially if you grew up with it,
depending on how old you are.Yeah. Also, this is just general
like reception, but Sailor Moon hasbeen it has been said that it feature
(36:15):
is one of the best known urieor lesbian relationships in history, between Sailor
Urnis and Sailor Neptune, and thatI think has been a really we've talked
about it before, but I thinkthat representation was key for a lot of
people. Yeah. Then they alsoreference the Sailor Moon villains and something,
(36:37):
because sometimes critics will say, like, oh, formulaic monster of the day.
But they were also saying how SailorMoon is two kinds of villains.
They have the monster of the dayand then the thinking feeling humans. Yeah,
and they said that's sort of commonfor anime and manga, but it's
almost unheard of over in like thewestern animation world, or almost don't heard
(36:59):
of in the west, the WestJapan, No, the west of the
US. Oh, you're right,I'm not good at geography, listen,
Linda. Anyway, So yeah,like that makes more I was like,
wait, what So yeah, theywere, but they're basically saying like probably
one of the reasons why it didwell is that there weren't a lot of
(37:22):
things like that over here at thetime. And of course it's been you
know, commended for its portrayal ofstrong friendships and having a cast of very
diverse characters who are all multidimensional andhave very unique personalities and storylines and stuff.
Yeah, okay, that's South Korea. I think we can skip that.
(37:45):
I don't think we need the SouthKorean drama anyway. That's all I
have about the Sailor in history.Is there anything from your experience that you
want to add? It's not reallyabout back then, But I don't know
if I've mentioned it, well,yeah, I think I have mentioned it
(38:06):
in episodes since we've been doing this. But it is really amazing that for
the past the past year now thatmanned rock a which is a long running
Japanese company for toys and collectibles andall kinds of stuff. They have like
(38:29):
physical stores all around Japan, andthey have an online auction once every other
month called the Big Web Auction thatgoes for two weeks. For the past
year now. I don't know ifit's Eto herself, it's obviously someone who
knows her or something. If itisn't her, but she's been. I
(38:51):
know I've mentioned this before that she'sbeen stuff that she drew for, like
magazine covers and laser disc covers andDVD covers for Sailor Moon, like the
original sketches of those those have beenon auction on mand Rock a m regularly
for the past year. Oh mygosh. The laser discovers are some of
(39:15):
the best. Yeah, like yeah, like in the in the last one
that they did, um, thetwo of hers that were up this time.
Um. It was the second tolast cover for Supers, which is
the one where Mamaru and or TuxedoMask and Sailor Moon are embracing and then
(39:44):
and then it was also the sketchfor the cover of the final Japanese s
volume, which is um like likelike, that's all four of them.
The outer's end they serena right,yeah, in the center it's if you
guys want to look up that image, look for the Awakening Sailor Moon s.
It's the cover art for the Englishstuff too, and those both the
(40:07):
sketches for both of those covers soldfor eleven thousand dollars when they ended.
Oh, oh my gosh, worthnot I would never be able to spend
that much on something like that.But whoever got it, I hope they
love it. Yeah, and I'mglad that it got something at that level
because it's really high quality. Yeah, that's really cool and I don't think
(40:29):
we got that into detail about that, no. Yeah, thank you for
listening to our one year Special alsoknown as the Sailor Moon Anime Production and
History Special. Those of you thattune in regularly and like the posts and
all of that bring Chris and myselfas much joy as I hope we're bringing
(40:52):
you. So thank you for that. Thank you for what we've gotten a
few more reviews, So thank youfor doing that for us as well.
Definitely appreciate it. And so yeah, I'll see you next week when we
start the seventh volume VHS volume ofSailor Moon titled Green Eyed Monsters By For
(41:14):
more of Chris, you can findhim at Chris Mayek C h R I
S M A y e K onthe socials in YouTube. For more of
me, Alex, you can findme on Instagram at Alex Summer's sfe these.
The easiest way to stay up todate with everything Moonstar is to follow
the Facebook page and bookmark moonstarpod dotcom. If you liked what you heard
(41:36):
on today's episode, leave us afive star review wherever you get your podcasts.
Moonstar, a Sailor Moon podcast,is sponsored in part by Sailor Moon
Video dot com. Looking for authenticSailor Moon vhs or DVD tapes that contain
the nineties English dub of the show, check out Sailor Moon Video dot Com.
Now. Prices vary based on quality, rarity, and availability. Moonstar,
(41:59):
a Sailor Moon podcast is created forinformational, educational, and entertainment purposes
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the creation of this show. Allaudio clips and sound effects used belong expressly
to the license and copyright holders.
Hello, and welcome to Moonstar's oneyear special. Today on Moonstar Sailor Moon
Podcast, Chris and I will becovering how the nineties Sailor Moon anime was
produced and some history about Sailor Moonin general. We also just wanted to
thank you at the top of theshow for coming along on this ride with
us this far and say that wecannot wait to see what year two of
(00:26):
Moonstar will bring. Let's we'll startthe show see if year bye. We
(01:03):
know that it started as a oneget an animate, take us through what
once the deals have been made,right, We're not really focusing on money
here, We're focusing on on thetactile version of it. What's the first
thing that happens? I think probablylike it is with any anime even nowadays,
the creator gets together with the teamthat works at the animation studio that
(01:26):
is assigned to produce the anime adaptation, or I'm guessing maybe the creator probably
has a say or a choice ifthey want to work with I would think.
I know there's been some not aSailor moment, but there's been some
controversy later on with like picking studiosand whatever. But anyway, yeah,
(01:48):
I think the first step would obviouslyjust be for the creator to meet with
the whole production team that works atin this case Toy and decide on how
things are going to go. Andthen once they've sort of set Okay,
this is the direction we're going,this is our creative thought here. Who
is first in line in the physicalproduction as far as as far as your
(02:14):
best guests. I guess in mostcases, I think outside of the creator,
it's going to be the director ofthe anime, and then whoever,
whoever the lead overall character designer is, and they would put together like the
storyboards before any actual animation is done, I assume, yeah. And then
once they have everything storyboarded and theplot is you know, discussed for that
(02:39):
week's episode or whatever and finalized,I guess the scripting would come before all
of that, right, like thescripting of even like how the how the
season would go, like how thestory would go, just for like per
episode. Like so let's say let'ssay we're producing episode one. Yeah,
they would write the script before thestory board or would they storyboard before script?
(03:01):
No? And in Japan, theway that anime is made, it's
not like it's not like American cartoonswhere it's animated to people's performances. It's
all in Japan. It's always been. It's created first, and then the
story stuff comes after that, likethe really Yeah, I find that so
I wonder why do you think it'sbecause they're focusing more on the art of
(03:23):
it. Yeah, I guess that'sprobably the only reason. So they do
they do that, They do thestoryboard, and then where do sketch sets
come into play? That would belike the stuff that I have and will
I mean sketch sets and cells arepretty much the same thing, so that
all that would be configured once everythingis good to go and is like approved
(03:47):
overall, and then that stuff happensand then obviously it's fully animated, and
then the voice actors get to recordand then they're to match the to match
the lip movements, what's happening onscreen, and when they're at the end
of this production line, like recordingeverything that's on screen in front of them
(04:09):
in Japan, do you do youknow if they use what method they use
for that um from I think fromwhat I've seen, I don't know if
they use a beep system. Ithink at least back then they I think
from what I've seen that they justlike the director, would just rewind the
scene, however many times it wouldtake if they needed, if they needed
(04:31):
to do something over, like todo retakes or whatever. Yeah, I
want to go back to the cellsa little bit too and discuss like what
is that? What's so tell becauseI know we've talked about it before,
but I want this to be goodreference episode. Tell everybody what a cell
is. Yeah, So, priorto their early two thousands, um,
(04:54):
anything animated, not just in Japan, but any anything animated had to be
traditionally created and hand drawn and handpainted frame by frame and then animated in
like a flipbook style way. Soeverything that you were watching before the two
(05:15):
thousands, you know, it wasa whole team of people that were manually
doing everything. And the cells areon plastic. That's called it's short for
celluloid and anything not just with likeproducing a TV show or movie. It's
like back then for anime, anythinglike a magazine like art for a magazine
(05:40):
cover, art for a CD cover, art for a videotape cover, like
random merchandise. All of that hadto be done by sketchwork and cell work
first, so it was just wayit was way way more involved back then,
and the cell itself once they've createdwhat you were describing the foreground,
(06:02):
and that's done with like inc andspecial types of paint, I believe,
right, do you mean like backgroundand foregrounds? Well, yeah, like
because they have the transparency on thecelluloid. Yeah, And I think both
of them are on the same material, right, the background in the foreground,
but they layer them when they're puttingtogether a scene, and that's so
(06:23):
they can reuse different backgrounds and stuff, right, and just allow It's kind
of like for people who know photoshop, think about like the foreground image would
be the character if you cut themout, like using them if either magic
wand tool or whatever and just completelygot rid of the background, and then
you can like the layer underneath that, and photoshop is literally the next page
(06:46):
of celluloid, which is the background. It's like physical photoshop. Basically taking
stuff like that is probably why certainlike editing programs are the way they are
because they probably based it from thatprocedure or similar one. How long would
you estimate it would take to producea full episode of sailor Moon? You
can probably find that information. Idon't know. I know there's there's a
(07:11):
YouTube video from I think like seasonone or two that shows people working to
make something and like how they animatedsomething. Probably maybe a week, I
don't know, depends on how fastthey're working. Well, I think I
would say they probably have a prettyspecific schedule for stuff like that, and
it sounds like they were doing itquickly, so I would guess a week
(07:33):
a week, maybe two at themost, depending also one how far along
the mango was, because sometimes itwould lag behind because of that. Yeah,
what else could we add about theactual production of the show. One
kind of sad part about it.I guess we've talked about it on the
(07:54):
episode episodes before. But a lotof the people that are many would deem
most iconic to work on the originalseries left after Supers. They left before
Stars because of a lot of internalconflict between them and Toe, like Ikuko
(08:16):
Eto left and obviously and Kunihiko Ikuharaleft who he was them He directed a
bunch of episodes starting in season one, and then he got more esteem as
a director, like he directed thefinale episodes of S and Supers And I
(08:37):
don't know, however, many otherpeople. There were a lot of people
that left after Supers just because ofmistreatment from TOE and disagreement of creative freedom.
It is sort of a sad markon the show's history, but I
think it also probably speaks to thattime period in general for the creation of
(08:58):
a lot of things that were doneby hand like this, because unfortunately,
when you're a creative person working ina world that sees success measured by a
dollar or whatever currency you use,that starts to take over eventually in almost
every circumstance, you know what Imean, And you can see it in
(09:20):
almost any creative project that is onthat level where there's all kinds of merchandising
that goes into it, and allthat stuff is great and everything, but
like the scheduling and all of that, it's pure I have to imagine that
is purely a money thing. Likeif they were given the freedom to do
this in as much time as theyneeded, the quality would be incredible,
(09:43):
but then it would be like,well, we're paying you hourly, right,
I think so, I don't know, so, like it just it
seems like one of those things wherethey did the best with their situation.
And that's probably why we got sucha quality product to begin with. Yeah,
but they burnt out because of thattoo, and they left over it,
which is sad. Do you thinkthis type of thing happened a lot
(10:05):
in other anime situations? Oh yeah, yeah, especially back then. I'm
sure it still happens today. Butyou know, with how involved it was
to traditionally create anime back then,you could probably find I'm sure, like
on if you look on different JapaneseWikipedia pages for certain series and certain studios,
(10:26):
I'm sure you can find all kindsof stories. Oh yeah, I
might dig around and see if there'sanything worth including. Let's do a little
bit about the history of the showin general. So the show was initially
planned both as an anime and amanga, but it was only supposed to
be one season. Because of itspopularity, they asked her to continue drawing
(10:52):
the manga, which initially she struggledwith, and that's why we ended up,
like I said, with the HellTree or the Doom Tree arc.
That's where the first delay came from. And Sailor Moon itself is adapted from
fifty two chapters of the manga,which was published in the Naka Yoshi magazine
from nineteen ninety one to nineteen ninetyseven. Have you ever seen any of
(11:16):
the like Nakayoshi magazine, like anyoriginal scans or pictures of that or anything.
No, I don't think I've everlooked it up. I mean,
I've probably seen it without even realizingit. It's kind of like the way,
like it's all very similar to herart style. I don't think she
was the only artist they published,but I think it was that kind of
(11:37):
thing. It's something that I thinkif I was a Japanese kid at that
time, I absolutely would have beenlike getting that magazine. Yeah, you
know, and I don't think wereally had anything equivalent to that over here
in the United States because all ofthe like magazine subscriptions I can think of
(11:58):
were geared towards adults. Yeah,except maybe maybe like Zoo Books, And
that's not a real magazine. That'sjust like you know what I mean,
Although there was like teen Beat andTiger Beat or whatever the hat, but
like, that's nothing like this.That was kind of a comic release taken
seriously, you know, So Ithink it's cool that they actually have stuff
(12:20):
like that. Yeah, what isTV Asahi? Do you know? That's
a channel. Is it probably theirpredominant animation like Channel, I think I
think one of them. Yeah,I think I think Japan had a bunch
of TV stations that showed anime backthen, like New Anime probably so.
(12:43):
It says it premiered on TV Asahion March seventh, nineteen ninety two,
which the show it was taking overfrom was called Goldfish Warning. I've never
heard of that, but it soundsadorable. Have you ever heard of it?
Yeah, I vaguely know what itis. Tell me about it.
I think it's a children's show too, Like I think I think it is
like even more very apparent that it'sgeared towards children and Savramuna's yeah, that's
(13:13):
like I know of every little aboutit offhand. I'm gonna look it up
and we'll talk about it later forfun. But so saramuon once it had
that time slot, it appears itran for the full two hundred episodes at
that time slot until it concludes onFebruary eighth, five years later, which
I think it's impressive that it heldthe same time slot the entire time.
(13:33):
Yeah, because stuff gets shuffled alot at least here based on like how
it's performing and stuff. Yeah,so, because they were doing the anime
at the same time as the manga, sometimes it would lag by like a
month or two, and that's oneof the reasons why this anime in particular
(13:56):
does not follow the manga exactly.How do you feel about that in general
in terms of the original Sailor Moonseries, I don't. I'm not really
all that bothered by it because youknow, a lot of the filler episodes,
especially in the later seasons, aregreat and you don't even really know
(14:18):
that that they're filler. So yeah, I agree, they feel more like
character development than anything. There's ahandful that I really would classify as filler,
but even those are fun and somethingthat I think works to its advantage.
It almost spoiled me because this wasmy first anime, and I loved
that I could read the manga andhave a completely different experience with the same
(14:39):
characters, and then watched the animeand it was something else. But it's
still similar enough, but you knowwhat I mean. And then I would
see other stuff like Inuyasha, Ithink is a good example where it's exactly
the manga like almost verbatim, andit's kind of like, well, why
if you're going to read one,why watch it? Or if you're gonna
(15:01):
watch it, why I read it? You know what I mean? Like
with not having much differences, Iwould just get having seen the whole anime.
So to me, I actually thinkthat is an advantage that happened accidentally
because it gives the anime a placeto stand on its own, separate from
the manga. Yeah. Oh,this I thought was interesting. Though.
(15:24):
Nayako has said that because the animewas created by predominantly a male staff,
she feels like it has a slightmale perspective. What do you think she's
referring to? Probably I would thinkthat just the way that characters would handle
things in the show would be theway that a guy would, at least
(15:46):
over Japan and Japan culturally at thattime. I don't really agree with that,
but I think it's probably a culturalthing over there. I think that
could be part of it. Idid notice when I was watching the Pluto
channel that has like the Japanese onit. Yeah, there are some they're
not panting shots. I hate thatword, because they're in their sailor outfits.
(16:10):
It's like a unitard. But whatwould you call it like you see
under their skirts sometimes, And Ithink little moments like that. When she
draws in the manga, anything thathas any kind of nudity or whatever,
it's done in a very soft way. It's done in a very non sexual
way, in my opinion, AndI think little moments like that, it's
not like they were oversexualized. ButI don't think she would have included that.
(16:34):
Yeah, and I think she probablywould have given certain characters more femininity
than is in the anime. LikeI think specifically, Makoto's character in the
manga comes off both masculine and feminine, but in more extreme ways on the
feminine side too, And in theanime it's kind of like she's very much
(17:00):
a tomboy, but then oh shebakes like it's not quite as nuanced.
I don't think for some of thecharacters either. But I also I think
when you make something like this thatis so much from your heart, it
would be really hard not to bevery protective over it when it's like put
into other formats, you know whatI mean. Yeah, So I could
(17:23):
see why she feels that way.After its initial run, it kind of
faded away for a while and thenThe series got a new resurgence in two
thousand and nine in Japan and itwas rebroadcast starting on September first, and
(17:44):
then also in Italy the next year, and Naoko like greenlit this and was
producing new artwork to promote it,which is kind of exciting because it had
been dead for a little while bythat point. Do you remember were you
part of the fandom at that pointtwo thousand and nine. I don't,
yeah, because I would have beenin um, I think fifth grade or
(18:04):
sixth grade, so I think bythen I wasn't thinking about Sailor Moon quite
as much as I was thinking aboutlike Narutoon, Bleach and that. Right.
Yeah, I didn't really start embracingout way more. Well, I
guess no, because like a yearlater was when I started. I got
(18:27):
my first cells and they were bothof Hadaka, So yeah, but a
year feels like a long time atthat age. Yeah, I guess,
yeah. So you were probably likejust leaning in a little at this point.
I was in this time, acouple of years out of well,
a couple of years into college,my first roll through at it, and
(18:51):
I kind of remember when this startedto happen because it bubbled up in Japan,
and then it came over here afew years later when we start getting
new merchant stuff. I remember thewall scrolls and things like that, and
Hot Topic I want to say,started putting out, you know, random
things with Sailor Moon stuff on it. It was one of those times where
(19:12):
like I used to come in andout of the fandom, you know,
in phases. Yeah, and thatwas one of the moments that really brought
me back in. And then Crystaldropped and I hated the first season of
it, and I left again andmy left I mean, like I was
just doing other things. But itwas so disappointing because I don't know if
you remember, but the build upto Crystal was huge. Yeah, and
(19:36):
then it Yeah, and then itdropped and we got what season one was,
and I was like, what itwas a very It was a great
example of like, don't oversell it. Yeah. But yeah, So that
was when Sailor Moon got its firstresurgence, and then we kind of had
another one recently which is not referencedhere, but it's when all of the
(19:56):
movies and stuff started coming out alittle bit. Yeah. When did that
begin? I think I think itwas during COVID like when the first Eternal
stuff started dropping press wise. Ithink you're right, so like twenty twenty
one probably, yeah, maybe twentytwenty two. So that's kind of the
(20:17):
general history of the original production asfar as the Japanese series goes. For
Sailor Moon, the English dub,so this is the nineties English one that
we talked about a lot. Thisone came about in nineteen ninety five and
there was a bidding war between Tunemakersand Renaissance Atlantic Entertainment who they wanted to
(20:41):
produce an American live action animated hybridadaptation. Yeah, it's a mouthful that's
known as it was called Sabon Moonfor a long time. Have you seen
this? Yeah? Yeah, didyou go ahead? Even before the footage
got found, like within the lastyear. Um, you would see cells
(21:04):
of the live of the American SailorMoon on eBay. It seems like it
was I don't know if it wasthe same person just relisting them, but
yeah, they would. They wouldcome up and like and search results all
the time. That's so funny.Um. I My first exposure to it
was back in the day there wereallegedly ways to obtain things on the Internet
(21:32):
through citrus wire and or other youknow what I mean. But like,
for some reason, somehow when youwould search sailor Moon, there was like
it was this, have you seenthe video? And it's not the full
pilot, but it's like the onethat came out before that, which like
the recording in the room. Doyou know what I'm talking about? Yeah,
And it was like it looked tome like, I imagine this was
(21:55):
a room of people from the BiddingWar, and this was the little video
package that they had put together tobe like, this is our idea of
what we're gonna do. We allsaw that back in like you know,
two thousand and one or whatever.Yeah, And it was one of those
things that in the fandom everyone waslike, we know that they messed it
(22:15):
up a lot in a certain way, but aren't we glad that didn't happen
though, Like it kind of evenback then to me, it always sort
of helped me be like, well, you know, I'm aware of the
changes, but like, at leastit wasn't that yeah, because if it,
well, I would have still watchedit, as insane as it is.
(22:37):
I don't know that a lot ofother people would have. Yeah,
we're gonna do a whole special inthat one someday too. So anyway,
we all know Deek Productions LP,which by the way now is called Wild
Brain, ended up getting the licensefor the first two seasons for the English
(23:03):
language release in North America. Wereyou I can't remember, but were you
around to watch it when it wasairing in nineteen ninety five. No,
I wasn't born yet, right,So this is something that they actually brought
up. I think it was SusanRoman, but they put it in like
(23:26):
the most ridiculous time slot at likein some places it was on at five
am, and for me, itwas like six thirty or seven in the
morning, and it would be onlike weekdays, not on Saturday morning cartoons
really, or it was on toNami at like you know, three in
(23:48):
the morning or whatever. Yeah,so they really kind of set it up
to fail when they initially released it. And I don't know if you know
this, but they completely stopped producingthe dub in November of nineteen ninety five
after the first two seasons minus seventeenepisodes. They didn't even finish the second
season, and they were just like, we're done. Did you know that,
(24:11):
No, I don't think so.Yeah, and so this brings me
back to something we've discussed before,but they referenced it here without actually naming
the project for what it was.It was SOS Save Our Sailors that helped
create a fan petition that garnered overtwelve thousand, five hundred signatures and that
(24:32):
got the attention of General Mills,like we discussed with the whole pop tart
thing. Yeah, and they agreedto sponsor and syndicate the rest of the
Sailor Moon dubbed through something called theProgram Exchange. This is actually considered also
an early example of successful fan activismin general, which I think is pretty
(24:52):
interesting that Sailor Moon gets to claimsomething like that. Yeah, this is
something that I think is very uniqueto being part of a fantom of a
show or a franchise when it's brandnew, so you're like experiencing it as
it's rolling out right, going throughthe roller coaster of all of that is
(25:15):
something that people who kind of discoverit later don't get to participate in.
But that's why I want to dothe show, because I like want to
give them the best lens of likewhat that might have been like, you
know, in case they're curious,like, what do you think where you
would you have reaction been if you'relike, okay, i've seen bits of
this show season one, season two, announce just gone. What would you
(25:37):
have felt like in that climate?I mean, I yeah, I definitely
would have been, especially by thetime that season four ended and people would
be wondering about stars. If youif you had the means to look it
up, like if you were oldenough to look up that there was a
final season, I would I woulddefinitely. Yeah, I'll feel that way.
(26:02):
Well, let's think. Let megive you a better reference. Though.
This is nineteen ninety five, soyou don't have Internet like you do
today. You have dial up ifyou're lucky. That also, there was
no Wikipedia. Google I believe innineteen ninety five did not exist yet I'll
have to fact check that. Ifit did, it was pretty new,
so finding information was not like itis today either. And the only way
(26:23):
you would really be able to tellthat they stopped production on it is that
the episode has just stopped happening.Yeah, you fall in love with this
show. They put out all ofthis merchandise, which, by the way,
another thing I have a lunchbox,like a ten lunchbox from the nineties,
and its features Moon, Mercury,Jupiter, and Mars. But there's
(26:44):
no one else on it. AndI was thinking about it and I was
like, oh, this was producedbefore Venus joined the cast, because it
took like a full like think aboutthat. We're we haven't even met Venus
yet, and we're film we're recordingour one year special right now, I
know. Does that make sense?So like there was a whole year of
(27:06):
merchandise where most of the characters arejust not included because they weren't released yet,
which I find so fascinating. Yeah. But anyway, so we know
that going back to the d Coalthing, Deeke ended up getting it and
they had to make mandated cuts tocontent and length, which reduced the first
eighty nine episodes by seven, Sothey cut seven full episodes out. And
(27:32):
it was originally meant to like bounceoff of the success of the Mighty morphin
Power Rangers two. Doesn't that comparisonor that parallel come up a lot the
Sailormen of Power Rangers. I don'thear it that much personally, really,
(27:52):
I've seen it and maybe it's justbecause I'm reading these things, but I
swear it's been mentioned a few times. The series, the English version,
premiered in Canada on August twenty eighth, nineteen ninety five, on something called
YTV. Have you ever heard ofYTV? I think that might have been
like what cartoon network is down here, because I know that even going into
the two thousands, they were theywere one of the channels that played anime
(28:15):
in Canada. Yeah, and theyhad um this little live segment between the
shows because they played digimon and stuffon there too. And for a while
it was Sugar, Yeah, thevoice of Mini a Moon, And I
watched some of the clips of heron there, and I just have to
say, what a charismatic, hilarious, fun individual. Are you going sure
(28:41):
ye happy? Or are you fourtwo? Or Agimus drink thankster? You
know where I like run the mob? Would you ever do something like a
lot of stuff is going to happenfor your you. I'm good of predicting
the stuff that's for me. Iknow you're not being nice. This is
didn't see who's the real Zorre?You're one? Choose three four summer Yah?
(29:06):
Done baby. Now you've got togo back to Canada. You feel
a little bit disconnected and don't knowhow you can help. Do you think
that you know everybody of our agescan help something like this? Absolutely?
Do you think it's important to growand change as a person as you get
older? Absolutely? The hip hophebrewly it touched me. I just did
(29:27):
like a rubble to nip. Yeah, shame model, Na man Hi,
thank javany le ask you the questionson this cheek? Why is it friend
to throw up sometimes because they getrid of all that nasty ate the night
before? He swore? Oh?Sorry? How come there's something called puberty?
(29:52):
And what is it? It's somethingbetween adult and child? What's between
our an adult and a child?Isn't that illegal? I think Peaberti is
around age twelve? Oh okay,what does God look like? Now?
Um? I don't believe in God? Do you believe in Santa? Okay?
(30:18):
I've seen you in my dream.If you have any kind of message
for Jay Leno, now is thetime to tell him. He's kind of
Bakersfield. Yeah, yes, youknow him? Yeah, well yeah yeah
Bakersfield. Hey you want a Zerberg? Zerberry? You're not a Zerbert?
Are you sure? You believe itready Zerbert mistake. Mistake. So after
(30:56):
Sailor Moon Urs wrapped up in nineteenninety nine, Cloverway gets involved. What
are some of the major changes thathappened when it went over to Cloverway.
The voice actresses for Venus and Mercurychange, and oh and Pluto and Sailor
(31:17):
Moon we get Linda Valentine here.Yeah, and also I think I don't
know, it doesn't exactly say why. It could have been due to changes
in the laws or whatever, butthey were able to fully dub Sailor Moons
and Sailor Moon super S. Theyjust were not able to air the uncut
episodes, but they were able torelease them on VHS and DVD. Yeah,
(31:41):
and even though it says that's uncut, they still have certain changes in
it, like making Uranus and Neptunecousins and things like and then the Fishey
change and everything, but they atleast like don't have scenes missing or whatever.
Yeah. So that was for seasonsand four and then Pioneer Entertainment was
the one who handled all the VHSand DVD release and it was first aired
(32:07):
on YTV on September thirteenth, intwo thousand and two, the original airing
that would wrap up all of that, because I'm assuming from there they showed
seasons three and four just to getthrough watching the first dub back then,
Like, are you starting to seehow much effort someone would have to put
(32:30):
in just to do that, havingto scour through a physical newspaper looking at
the TV listings, like, Okay, where is this show? It's constantly
moving, It's constantly on different channels. Sometimes it was on network, sometimes
it was on cable, which aretwo different things. The home video and
stuff would did come out, butit would be kind of like, well,
(32:52):
Suncoast has these random volumes and thenTarget has volume seven, you know
what I mean? Like even thatthere was no Amazon to order from,
so it was just it was likea labor of love to be a fan
for the series, and that's whyI think it has such long term dedicated
fans in general. There's just alittle thing here that I highlighted too.
(33:19):
We know what a lot of thechanges were, right, They edited out
some of the bathing scenes that hadsome nudity in it, or they would
like edit it to cover the nudityif they wanted to still include the scene,
Sailor Moons, what does this say? Some of the dialogue was changed,
(33:40):
and then they had to change someof the characters like Zoisite, fish
Shie, Coonsite, Sailor You're Inness, and Sailor Neptune. This was a
very interesting point that I thought theWickie brought up. Changing evil characters genders
to female also had the side effectof creating more diverse female characterizations, as
(34:00):
the evil female characters did not havethe same body type, so they inadvertently
were giving us non binary representation completelyby accident. That was well, I
think that was mainly just with Fishy, more so with Fishey. But if
you want to think about it withZoisite's character, it's they think about the
(34:21):
way the world is now. Ifyou really want to look at it that
way, Zoysite very easily could havebeen a non binary or a trance character
who is like, well, I'mfemale presenting this is the current state of
my situation. I don't know.I think they kind of like as it's
also up to you how you wantto look at it. If you I
think some people are too bothered andcan't handle it, and that's their right.
(34:45):
They don't have to. I thinkother people understand why that was done
and understand the climate of the time, and they just get it and they're
also fine with it. And thenthere's other people who want to say,
yeah, but look at the accidentalpositivity here. Yeah, you know what,
what what camp do you fall in? I guess that's a good point.
Yeah, I mean I do thinkthat, especially for Well, I
(35:07):
guess yeah, for zo Aside andFish, I to um, Debred Richford
and uh, I'm blanking on.I want to say Katie Bell for some
reason, but I don't think that'sno, not for those sites, Chris
Kristin Bishop. They both did well. I mean you can, you can.
You can appreciate their character characterization ofplaying them as female characters. Mhm,
(35:31):
I agree. But yeah, Idon't know. I don't under why
do you think people feel so stronglyabout it? I mean I can I
can see, you know, obviouslyin certain scenes of the original dub it's
like it's not very good acting.But I'm on, like I I'm on
the same page as you from thesense that you know, there's definitely positive,
(35:54):
like really good moments too, andthose don't overshadow. I don't think
the negative like overshadows the positive,especially if you grew up with it,
depending on how old you are.Yeah. Also, this is just general
like reception, but Sailor Moon hasbeen it has been said that it feature
(36:15):
is one of the best known urieor lesbian relationships in history, between Sailor
Urnis and Sailor Neptune, and thatI think has been a really we've talked
about it before, but I thinkthat representation was key for a lot of
people. Yeah. Then they alsoreference the Sailor Moon villains and something,
(36:37):
because sometimes critics will say, like, oh, formulaic monster of the day.
But they were also saying how SailorMoon is two kinds of villains.
They have the monster of the dayand then the thinking feeling humans. Yeah,
and they said that's sort of commonfor anime and manga, but it's
almost unheard of over in like thewestern animation world, or almost don't heard
(36:59):
of in the west, the WestJapan, No, the west of the
US. Oh, you're right,I'm not good at geography, listen,
Linda. Anyway, So yeah,like that makes more I was like,
wait, what So yeah, theywere, but they're basically saying like probably
one of the reasons why it didwell is that there weren't a lot of
(37:22):
things like that over here at thetime. And of course it's been you
know, commended for its portrayal ofstrong friendships and having a cast of very
diverse characters who are all multidimensional andhave very unique personalities and storylines and stuff.
Yeah, okay, that's South Korea. I think we can skip that.
(37:45):
I don't think we need the SouthKorean drama anyway. That's all I
have about the Sailor in history.Is there anything from your experience that you
want to add? It's not reallyabout back then, But I don't know
if I've mentioned it, well,yeah, I think I have mentioned it
(38:06):
in episodes since we've been doing this. But it is really amazing that for
the past the past year now thatmanned rock a which is a long running
Japanese company for toys and collectibles andall kinds of stuff. They have like
(38:29):
physical stores all around Japan, andthey have an online auction once every other
month called the Big Web Auction thatgoes for two weeks. For the past
year now. I don't know ifit's Eto herself, it's obviously someone who
knows her or something. If itisn't her, but she's been. I
(38:51):
know I've mentioned this before that she'sbeen stuff that she drew for, like
magazine covers and laser disc covers andDVD covers for Sailor Moon, like the
original sketches of those those have beenon auction on mand Rock a m regularly
for the past year. Oh mygosh. The laser discovers are some of
(39:15):
the best. Yeah, like yeah, like in the in the last one
that they did, um, thetwo of hers that were up this time.
Um. It was the second tolast cover for Supers, which is
the one where Mamaru and or TuxedoMask and Sailor Moon are embracing and then
(39:44):
and then it was also the sketchfor the cover of the final Japanese s
volume, which is um like likelike, that's all four of them.
The outer's end they serena right,yeah, in the center it's if you
guys want to look up that image, look for the Awakening Sailor Moon s.
It's the cover art for the Englishstuff too, and those both the
(40:07):
sketches for both of those covers soldfor eleven thousand dollars when they ended.
Oh, oh my gosh, worthnot I would never be able to spend
that much on something like that.But whoever got it, I hope they
love it. Yeah, and I'mglad that it got something at that level
because it's really high quality. Yeah, that's really cool and I don't think
(40:29):
we got that into detail about that, no. Yeah, thank you for
listening to our one year Special alsoknown as the Sailor Moon Anime Production and
History Special. Those of you thattune in regularly and like the posts and
all of that bring Chris and myselfas much joy as I hope we're bringing
(40:52):
you. So thank you for that. Thank you for what we've gotten a
few more reviews, So thank youfor doing that for us as well.
Definitely appreciate it. And so yeah, I'll see you next week when we
start the seventh volume VHS volume ofSailor Moon titled Green Eyed Monsters By For
(41:14):
more of Chris, you can findhim at Chris Mayek C h R I
S M A y e K onthe socials in YouTube. For more of
me, Alex, you can findme on Instagram at Alex Summer's sfe these.
The easiest way to stay up todate with everything Moonstar is to follow
the Facebook page and bookmark moonstarpod dotcom. If you liked what you heard
(41:36):
on today's episode, leave us afive star review wherever you get your podcasts.
Moonstar, a Sailor Moon podcast,is sponsored in part by Sailor Moon
Video dot com. Looking for authenticSailor Moon vhs or DVD tapes that contain
the nineties English dub of the show, check out Sailor Moon Video dot Com.
Now. Prices vary based on quality, rarity, and availability. Moonstar,
(41:59):
a Sailor Moon podcast is created forinformational, educational, and entertainment purposes
only. We claim no ownership overany audio clips or sound effects used during
the creation of this show. Allaudio clips and sound effects used belong expressly
to the license and copyright holders.
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