ADV Aquires Sailor Moon Season 1 and 2 Rights (October 17th, 2000)

Well folks, it seems as if pop tart sales have fallen greatly...... Ok, that was mean (for those of you who can figure that out), but I'll explain that later. It seems that ADV has bought the rights to SMC and SMR from DiC. As many of you probably know by now, Pioneer had tried to aquire these rights earilier this summer, but were unsuccessful in doing so, stating that DiC had asked for a large sum of money that supossedly no one would ever pay. Since then, DiC has been sold by Disney. While it's unknown if the price of these rights changed or anything related, it is a fact that ADV has bought the rights. It is my assumption that ADV feels that Sailor Moon is very profitable and probably thought that they could make money even after spending that large sum of money on it. And this is true, Sailor Moon is very profitable, but only if used correctly, and from the news, it doesn't look like it will be. The Sailor Senshi page has a bit more news on this than some news sources, and it does not look good. It seems that right now, ADV only has the dub in their possesion. It's possible for them to do a sub, but they don't have the uncut japanese masters and say that it will take a long time to get them, and that right now they're only planning to re-release the dub episodes and promise new tapes by Christmas. Personally, considering ADV's track record for anime, I don't like the fact that they have SMC and SMR rights. A thing ADV is known for is releasing episodes for an anime very slowly, months have gone between episode releases. They also don't seem to be interested in doing a sub and seem to be hiding under the excuse that it will be a long time before they can get the uncut japanese masters. I call this an excuse because I could probably get uncut japanese masters and/or laserdiscs within weeks if I feel like it. I also feel that ADV sales will probably not do as well, seeing as they seem to only be re-releasing the DiC dubs on VHS. All in all, the only things we're likely to see from this news are the DiC episodes on VHS. Since there are no plans of a sub, distros will very likely keep up their subs (I know I am) until more news is announced. I don't like this news, the first two seasons aren't getting nearly the amount of respect they deserve. If only we had kept buying our pop tarts.......