On July 6, 2012, it was announced that the Sailor Moon series would be getting a new anime series, and it would contain a new theme song performed by Momoiro Clover Z. Sailor Moon fans eagerly waited for the new anime to come, but it was delayed multiple times. Recently, on January 9th, it was finally announced that the new Sailor Moon anime would premiere this July, and that Toei Animation was going to be "adapting Naoko Takeuchi's original manga and starting from scratch again." Fans got excited again, and many of them now patiently wait for the premiere episode on Niconico.
This would probably be the first time that North American fans of the series would be able to watch their favorite magical girl team beat intergalactic villains on an instant online stream that would be subtitled in multiple languages. However, many of the fans in the U.S. still remember back in 1995 when the first Sailor Moon anime premiered on television, and even though the show was completely edited for content, it was still enjoyable for the American fans. But, it wasn't until after 2000 when the uncut episodes started appearing on DVD. Sailor Moon and Sailor Moon R was released in two subtitled-only season box sets by ADV Films, and both Sailor Moon S and Sailor Moon SuperS was released on bilingual DVD sets by Pioneer (now Geneon Universal Entertainment). Sailor Stars, the fifth entry to the anime series, never came to the U.S. due to the amount of content that would've been considered objectionable to television audiences at the time. Sadly, the DVDs became out of print after both ADV Films and Pioneer allowed the rights to expire around 2004 and 2005. The box sets are now very rare to get, and if anyone finds them for sale on sites like Amazon, they would be expensive to get (both new and used).
For the past decade, other American anime distribution companies, like FUNimation, have been trying to get the rights to the series, but sadly, no company owns the North American rights to the Sailor Moon anime as of now. However, in 2011, Kodansha USA re-released the first volume of the Sailor Moon manga, along with the first volume of Codename: Sailor V (the predecessor of Sailor Moon) on September 13th. This seemed like a sign to fans that Sailor Moon was making a big comeback to the U.S., but after all the manga was released, there was still no sign of the Sailor Moon anime until the news of the previously mentioned reboot.
In my opinion, as both an anime fan and a Sailor Moon fan, if there was possibly any company to get the rights from Toei, it would probably be either Sentai Filmworks or Discotek Media. However, I was able to get the first two uncut season box sets of Sailor Moon on DVD (after I spent a total of $296.46 to get them). Of course, I had to go through the existing flaws in the Sailor Moon R box set since an episode was missing, and the audio in the beginning of one of the episodes had some of the English dub soundtrack on it. Hopefully, since the recent announcement of the reboot, the Sailor Moon anime will finally make a comeback to the U.S., and the episodes could be enjoyed again by the American Sailor Moon fan base once again.
Written by Nolan Schmidt
No comments:
Post a Comment