In what could be the first sign of a Sailor Moon revival in North America, Kodansha Comics USA has announced plans to re-release the Sailor Moon manga, and release for the first time ever in the US, the Sailor V manga. Read the official press release in the lastest news article.
As many of you are aware, Japan was hit by an 8.9 magnitude earthquake yesterday. It's been an emotional period of time during this tragedy and uncertainty. Though I have yet to be there, Japan has been very close to my heart over the years and like everyone else, I hope and pray for the best during this time of need and recovery. I am happy to hear that at this time it appears than anyone who I know that is currently over there is okay, and I hope that the same can be said for anyone else who has family and friends over there.
During this time of need, if anyone is able to help the recovery and relief process, I highly encourage you to do so. The Japan Society is collecting any possible donations here, as is the Red Cross. Staff from Family of Moonlight are starting to coordinate with Brad of MoonKitty.Net (one of the survivors of the quake and tsunami) in putting together care packages to send to victims, more info on how you can help can be found here. If I become aware of any more good places where we can help however we can, I'll be sure to add them here.
Please help if you can, every little bit does help. We wish Japan the best after this terrible tragedy that has befallen there.
Got an interesting news article today. Thanks to Brad for the heads up on this. We may not have a license for an English Sailor Moon yet, but people in the Atlanta area will have a chance to see the Sailor Moon R movie in a theater! Go to the news article for more details as well as a link to the site to get tickets.
I had been waiting to have something to update before saying this, where I sadly have to announce that comparisons are officially on hiatus. I was able to start them up this past summer and keep up a decent pace, however things in my life took an interesting turn near the end of 2010. I'll provide more details later on as I get things worked out, but for right now, essentially I'm failing at life and am unable to actually do comparisons until a few things come together. I didn't anticipate going this long, but I feel that things will be turning around soon.
I'm confident enough I'll at least have a job again fairly soon, and am planning to go to Animazement this Memorial Day weekend with some friends. (If I'm wrong obviously I won't be going, but I don't see me having that issue for much longer) I'm looking forward to enjoying a con with friends and seeing people I don't normally get to see, and would love to meet more people too! I have been asked to be a panelist for Lilly-chan's Sailor Moon panel alongside with her, as well as Elly and James of Miss Dream, Sakura, and possibly more. If anyone else here is planning to go to the con, please stop by! When the schedule is finalized I'll let y'all know exactly when and where the panel will be. For those of you who can't make it, coverage of the panel will be on Family of Moonlight not long after it, and hopefully we'll have a live stream set up for it. We'll see as more get's put together. Also, Lilly-chan is asking for donations for prizes that will be awarded during the course of the panel (yes, we give away free shit!), so if you have fanart or something you'd be willing to donate, please click here for any information regarding prize donations.
I hope I can get various things worked out to start comparisons fairly soon, I do apologize for there being yet another break, and thank you for your patience.
The quest for completion continues today with the posting of episode 53. Just like when I post other comparisons with nothing else to add, I lack something witty to say possibly due to exhaustion, so in the place of anything witty, please watch footage of me starting fires last week. XD Enjoy. =P
A North American revival of Sailor Moon has been rumored since last spring, when Toei decided to start selling international licenses of the franchise again. As of yet, there has been no actual news on this, but that hasn't stopped people from their own speculation. I have been asked by a few people what my thoughts of what I think should happen, be good choices, etc. I've always stayed in the basic stance of who I feel should get it and that it is a matter of time until someone gets the license. Well, to help kill some time and keep my mind off of other things, I decided to sit down and really think about how I would like to see things done from every angle I could think of. I tried to tackle things that I haven't seen discussed elsewhere as well as the obvious points of discussion that is essentially everywhere. So if anyone is curious on every aspect that I want to see in a franchise revival of Sailor Moon here in North America, read my new editorial. I hope I've covered everything that's on y'all's minds, and also hope that this can be used as a frame of reference for companies who plan to head the possible revival.
Happy New Year! I hope everyone enjoyed their holidays! I had an interesting swerve in my life a couple weeks ago, but probably for the better in the long run. Still enjoyed the holidays with my family regardless, and ready to start anew in 2011 in a lot more ways than I had originally planned. With a new year also comes new comparisons, so we'll kick off 2011 here at SMU with the posting of episode 52!
Also, I've been getting involved in other parts of the SMOC. As I'm sure it's no secret by now that I'm good friends with a few of the staff members over at Miss Dream, I've managed to slightly break into the site by joining them in their semi-regular audio podcast sessions. They cover various topics around the Sailor Moon world and its fandom, which end up being a good combination of being insightful and entertaining. I can start being heard on the latest one, and will also be in ones to follow. I'm guessing we'll be on a more regular schedule with them fairly soon with the holidays being over, we'll see. The other ones from last year are worth a listen as well, as is seeing everything else on their site, especially the start of the manga translation project. Yes, a much better translation of the manga than Mixx did over a decade ago, and the first group to use scans of the reprint manga!
So that's it for now. Expect 2011 to have more comparisons than 2010, and who knows what I'll do next outside of them, keep your eyes peeled.
While I don't have a new comparison for everyone's enjoyment, I do have a nifty surprise that manifested itself upon me recently. last week, I had the chance to purchase the entirety of the Buena Vista VHS release catalog. Normally acquisitions such as this aren't worth mentioning, however this is for two reasons. One, there is no artwork here on SMU for these releases. Two, thanks to the usage of a scanner from my friends over at Miss Dream when we had some Christmas festivities over the weekend, this has now been fixed. ^_^
For those of you who might be wondering how Buena Vista was able to release any of Sailor Moon on VHS, there was a period of time where DiC was owned by Disney. About a couple years after DiC did dubbed its initial 65 episodes, someone in one of these two companies decided to release a handful of episodes on VHS, releasing six volumes that were all from the first season. A few years later, they decided to release the entire Doom Tree saga in one box, containing four VHSs. Now, we can all enjoy the hilarity of some of the most interesting coverart in Sailor Moon history. One of my favorite finds is at least one incorrect screenshot in an episode description on the back of one of the boxes. See if you can find it. =P
Click here to go right to the madness.
Today we continue the Doom Tree story arc of Sailormoon R, as the comparison for episode 51 has been posted. Enjoy! ^_^
So more time went between comparisons than I had hoped, sorry about that. But at least now episode 50 is finally online. Enjoy!
Also, to finish this update, is what some will view with mixed reactions. But it is something that must be done sadly. The forums here have been online for around seven years. It's been filled with some great discussions and all around fun times. About a couple years ago in the middle of SMU's dead phase, the forums started to see a decline of activity. It made sense, as nothing was going on with the actual site at all. When I started doing comparisons again as well as getting involved in the SMOC and networking with other sites, I had hoped to see an increase in activity there. After some months, this is not the case. So after some discussion with the rest of the staff, we decided it would be best to shut them down.
With this decision, I have locked all the forums and taken down the images from the front page. I'm not going to just delete years of discussion, and have put a link in our archives located in the bottom of the News/Misc section.
With the forums done, this does not mean there's no where to have discussion about SMU. We still have the SMU facebook page where site discussion can take place. I was curious as to how to use it for something besides posting site updates, now we have another use for it.
As promised, SMR continues today, with the posting of episode 49. I can't think of anything witty to say here for this, so just enjoy today's comparison!
I realized at work earlier that I possibly forgot one important thing for the editorial from this past Sunday. I checked this when I got home not long ago and saw this was sadly true. If you have read it already, it shouldn't be hard to spot (hint: it's the chat dialog and the paragraph before and after that), and if you haven't read it already, I suggest you do so. I know I said when I posted the last update on the SMU facebook page that people who are easily offended probably shouldn't read it. Well, I take back that statement, as people who are easily offended are very likely the ones who need to read that the most. My intentions of that giant rant really is not meant to be a giant insult to a large group of people, it is a call to use common sense, as well as a call to challenge unfounded information floating around on the internet. Maybe some of the comments in there are somewhat rash and demeaning, but I've been an avid user of the internet for a few years shy of 20 years and am sick of seeing the same bullshit over and over again. So I wrote that piece to do my part in hopes that a decrease of all of that will occur, idealistically I'd like to see it gone completely, but I know that's too much.
Onto other things. I will have another comparison up sometime this weekend. Though compared to the nothing of some years the one comparison every other weekend looks amazing, I'm not satisfied by that slow pace any more than all of you. I mention this because in about a month or so, this has a good chance of changing. Around the SMOC prior to comparisons being done again, I had told people to get me a TV so I can have two in my room and start them again. While no one then offered to send me one, suggestions were made on how I can do them with what I have access to, and obviously I eventually tried it out and it worked better than I thought. Thankfully, next month in like the middle or end of it, I will finally have a second TV in here being given to me by my girlfriend after she goes and picks is up from her folks' place out of state around then. This is great for two reasons, first off I will be able to see more being able to sit further back in my room, saving some time in general as I go through them. Second, the big one, is that I can type notes on my laptop as I go as it's not a screen, saving a huge amount of time in not having to write anything down, more so in the fact editing my notes on screen is worlds faster than reading my horrible writing and typing everything into the database. This TV means the time it takes me to do a comparison is almost cut in half.
Now I can't promise that this means more per update, mostly due to the chance of shit-tastic episodes like 47 popping up, but it makes multiple comparison updates much more possible. The weekend I did the last batch of Classic episodes was hell, but they deserved to be done in one shot after so damned long. I would like to not have to go too far into 2011 to be done, and that will help big time. Obviously plans are prone to change, I just wanted to mention it because I feel really good about it.
Another thing I feel good about is adding Moon Sticks as an SMU affiliate today. One, because these comics are just completely awesome and hilarious. Two, because it was an affiliation request from this site months ago that made me wonder what she meant, which led to be climbing out from under the rock to figure it out and start doing it. This site is a must visit on my list, if you haven't yet, you should now.
With my revived involvement in the SMOC, there has been a few things that have been frustrating to me. So much so I felt the need to write an editorial ranting about them. That's right, for the first time in over 5 years, a new editorial has been posted. I was hoping to have the first editorial in so long be about the North American Sailor Moon revival, as it seems to be just a matter of time in my opinion. But that time has not arrived, and I feel the need to address some stupidity that's rampant on the internet.
Now onto things that don't piss me off, we have a new affiliate in MoonKitty.net. Brad over there has had the site running even longer than SMU has been online, and does an amazing job keeping up with everything going on worldwide for Sailor Moon. Moonkitty is what I feel to be one of the elite Sailor Moon sites available on the internet, and I highly recommend those of you who haven't been there before to go there and enjoy all the things the site has to offer.
Today we continue our journey through the dubbing process of Sailor Moon R, for episode 48 has been posted for your reading pleasure. And I am overjoyed that it wasn't half as bad as the previous episode was. My two screens played side by side for minutes without anything at one point, I shed tears of joy.
Also, as I bring SMU to the present, I've added code for site affiliates. Apparently people have been doing this sort of thing for years to give each other more exposure, and I've lived under a rock. So welcome to last decade for me. The first two sites we're doing this with is Miss Dream, a Sailor Moon translation site that's grown so much in the less than year it's been online who I'm also good friends with some of the staff there, as well as Family of Moonlight, mentioned here previously showcasing the fans of the Sailor Moon community.
It feels good to be in the swing of things again. Now to catch up on other things around here as time goes on.
Alrighty, in the mass shit-fest that was episode 47, there's actually MORE that was not in the comparison originally. So to save time for everyone who has already read the comparison, here's a breakdown of what has been added. First off, things I actually wrote down but missed when adding the comparison to the database, noticed by forum user Gamer8585:
* The dub and original had slightly different flute melodies played. Not a big deal really, it's still the same instrument used.
And stuff I missed altogether. I blame this part on not doing episode 46's comparison myself, and part for not reviewing it prior to this episode knowing there were two recaps. These were noticed by forum user RattleMan.
* In the opening narrative, during the Beryl battle, Moon correctly uses "Moon Prism Power" in the dub. In the battle itself the previous episode, "Cosmic Moon Power" was used.
And now, I can hopefully put episode 47 to rest. Now that I have made this statement twice in less than 24 hours, I'm almost expecting a tape from 1995 with the pilot version to show up at my doorstep to ensure I am never done. @_@;
Today marks a big day here at SMU. For today we finally open the Sailor Moon R page here! After spending hours yesterday and today, episode 47 is complete and posted for your viewing pleasure! As mush as I want to say more right now, I am exhausted, and when y'all read the comparison it will be obvious why. So everyone, please enjoy! ^_^
March 18th, 2011
Dan - Sailor Moon and Sailor V manga to be released in US
March 12th, 2011
Dan - Please Help Stand Behind Japan
March 8th, 2011
Dan - SMR movie in the theater; Con announcement
January 28th, 2011
Dan - Episode 53 posted
January 22nd, 2011
Dan - New editorial: my hopes for a revival
January 3rd, 2011
Dan - Episode 52 posted
December 5th, 2010
Dan - New coverart archive added
November 14th, 2010
Dan - Episode 51 posted
October 21st, 2010
Dan - Episode 50 posted, forums shutdown
September 25th, 2010
Dan - Episode 49 posted
September 21st, 2010
Dan - Editorial addition, comparison plans, new affiliate
September 19th, 2010
Dan - New editorial rant, new affiliate
September 12th, 2010
Dan - Episode 48 posted, affiliate code added
August 23rd, 2010
Dan - Episode 47 comparison add-ons
* In the original, Ail played a different melody while summoning a Cardian. The dub uses the same for everything.
* In the sequence where Luna gives Usagi her memories back, all the scenes of Endymion that were cut in the previous episode were left in the memory sequence in this episode.
August 22nd, 2010
Dan - Sailor Moon R start! Episode 47 posted
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