Sailor Moon

Sailor Moon R ADV DVD Set

| MoonFigures

Release Year: 2003
Specifications: ADV Films; 945 Minutes; Region 1. Contains uncut Japanese version with English subtitles. NO English language version.
Release: Canada/USA
Status: Official
Paid: Gift

Like the Classic set, this set was released as the ultimate Sailor Moon Season 2 box set for the die hard anime fan in North America. It was released with the episodes uncut, with Japanese language only, and definitely less likely to appeal to fans who grew up with the DIC dub. Oddly, it’s also missing an episode, very sneakily hidden between the numbers on the ends of the box set.

Admittedly this post will parrot most of what I had to say about the season 1 set, but bear with me.

Advertising

I don’t own any advertising for this set to my knowledge. I was only about 14 when it released, and I haven’t seen much more than some DVD advertisements in NewType magazine.

Packaging

Box

The packaging on this set is ICONIC. It features Japanese logos, high quality art, beautiful foil silhouettes of Sailor Moon and the Cutie Moon Rod, and matches the dark blue box merchandise also released in North America, but in a purple complimentary tone to the blue of season 1. Every single piece of the set is well thought out and clearly designed by a fan who understood the aesthetic. ADV put love into this packaging and it shows.

Like the season 1 box set, the bottom of the season 2 set has a foil Cutie Moon Rod that I absolutely love.

DVD Cases and DVDs

The DVD cases feature cute high quality art of Sailor Moon, Chibi Usa, Black Lady, and Neo Queen Serenity. The backs feature screen shots from each episode, and adorable character art of Usagi in her pajamas, and Chibi art of Sailor Pluto.

Notice how episode 67 is missing from the numbers between the sets. 47-66 and then 68-89.

The inside of the case is standard for a DVD set with multiple disks. It has a location for each disk, 4 disks per set, and an episode guide for each holder.

Ironically, this time I remembered to fix the DVD’s… but there’s no character print on them to show off.

The episode guides features art of Moonlight Night, and Sailor Pluto

Audio and Video

This set does NOT include the 90’s Dub.

Like season 1… that’s where the good ends. The audio and video on this set are comparable to old VHS. The only plus side to it is actually owning the entire first series unedited, uncut, and in Japanese with subtitles. I’ve included some unedited screenshots.

Episode 67

The infamous episode 67 isn’t just missing by accident on the text on the side of the box. It’s literally just missing from the entire box set. Conveniently, that is smack dab in the middle of the season, so it would have been just an easy typo, but unfortunately, that is not the case.

It was also missing from the 90’s Sailor Moon dub.

Turns out it seems TOEI and Naoko Takeuchi would not let the episode come to North America. The running theory on the internet and in some second-hand word from ADV is that the episode was deemed too much for the American market.

You can read a pretty great recap of the episode on MoonKitty where they also talk about this issue.

Bootlegs

Bootlegs DO exist of this set, but at the time of writing this, they appear without the box, with the complete season in one of the DVD cases above.

Bootleg sets will likely not be region 1 and may contain other languages other than Japanese and English. If it includes Chinese it is definitely a bootleg copy.

Conclusion

As per season 1, I recommend this set for the completionist, or the fan who just wants to own the complete series in Japanese (minus episode 67). I do not recommend it for fans who are looking for high-quality releases. While the box set IS beautiful and a great shelf piece, the quality of the actual content is less than ideal. This is not a good set for someone looking to casually watch the series. Especially given how expensive it can be.

Sailor Moon Classic ADV DVD Set

| MoonFigures

Release Year: 2003
Specifications: ADV Films; 1060 Minutes; Region 1. Contains uncut Japanese version with English subtitles. NO English dub settings.
Release: Canada/USA
Status: Official
Paid: Gift

This Sailor Moon DVD set was actually a gift I received when I was about 18. I remember looking at another copy longingly in a comic shop display case, but at $150 CAD it was much more money than I had as a teen.

This set was released as the ultimate Sailor Moon Season 1 box set for the die hard anime fan in North America. It was released with the episodes uncut, with Japanese language only, and definitely less likely to appeal to fans who grew up with the DIC dub.

Advertising

I don’t own any advertising for this set to my knowledge. I was only about 14 when it released, and I haven’t seen much more than some DVD advertisements in NewType magazine.

Packaging

Box

The packaging on this set is ICONIC. It features Japanese logos, high quality art, beautiful foil silhouettes of Sailor Moon and the Moon Wand, and matches the dark blue box merchandise also released in North America. Every single piece of the set is well thought out and clearly designed by a fan who understood the aesthetic. ADV put love into this packaging and it shows.

My favourite detail on the box set is the foil Crescent Moon Wand on the bottom of the box with the technical specifications. It’s a detail that didn’t need to be there, didn’t need to be foil, and yet they still went for it.

DVD Cases and DVDs

The DVD cases feature cute high quality art of Sailor Moon, Luna, and Artemis. The backs feature screen shots from each episode, and adorable character art of Usagi’s bed spread bunny, and the kitten that chews on Luna’s tail in the episode “Loved and Chased: Luna’s Worst Day Ever.”

The inside of the case is standard for a DVD set with multiple disks. It has a location for each disk, 4 disks per set, and an episode guide for each holder.

I apologize to those of you who are irritated that the DVD’s are not adjusted in the pictures. I completely glossed over the pictures printed onto the disks and didn’t think to straighten them up. The good news is you can see them really well, and they look wonderful on the disks.

The episode guides feature vectored line art of the Senshi and descriptions of each episode.

Audio and Video

This set does NOT include the 90’s Dub.

I’m going to be really honest… that’s where the good ends. The audio and video on this set is comparable to old VHS. The only plus side to it is actually owning the entire first series unedited, uncut, and in Japanese with subtitles. I’ve included some unedited screenshots

The subtitles are honestly horrible. The translation I can’t speak for as it has been a while since I watched the full set, but the size and quality of the text is distracting and covers up a lot of the screen.

THAT SAID, this set released in the beginning of DVD’s being available at a reasonable price tag for home viewing. We weren’t seeing the kind of releases we are today just yet.

I haven’t compared this release to the others yet, but maybe that will be another article?

Bootlegs

Bootlegs DO exist of this set, but at the time of writing this they appear without the box, with the complete season in one of the DVD cases above.

Bootleg sets will likely not be region 1 and may contain other languages other than Japanese and English. If it includes Chinese it is definitely a bootleg copy.

Conclusion

I recommend this set for the completionist, or the fan who just wants to own the complete series in Japanese. I do not recommend it for fans who are looking for high quality releases. While the box set IS beautiful and a great shelf piece, the quality of the actual content is less than ideal.

It depends on why you want the set. I love owning it, it looks amazing on my shelf, but I absolutely have not watched it in years.

Sailor Moon Fan Art – Magical Moon Toys

| MoonFigures

If you know me pretty well you’ll likely not be surprised to know that I have a huge obsession with 2 things. Sailor Moon, and comprehensive, inclusive Sex Education.

I’m a weird and complicated woman.

For very obvious reasons I haven’t really mixed the two until recently. Honestly, I’ve had this idea for years, but I didn’t know how I wanted to execute the art without it being weird and problematic. Recently my inspiration struck HARD and these designs had to happen. First, they didn’t focus on the characters, they focused on accessories. Second, it’s like everything fell into place and I just knew what needed to happen.

I sketched out the designs and picked what I wanted to use. The anal beads are cute, but I have plans for them in the next round of designs ❤

While I transferred them to regular paper for organization and making corrections I also added a Stars design. It’s also being saved for later.

The final pieces have been coloured with water colour, and pencil crayons.

The next step was scanning them and turning them into a pattern and t-shirt design for Redbubble. I don’t have step by step process for any of this part, but the final designs are below!

Crescent Moon Wand: a vibrator with 2 silicone parts for double penetration AND bonus rabbit ears for clit stimulation.

Luna Pen: a bullet vibrator with the gem for on/off and multiple settings.

Cutie Moon Rod: a Wand Massager.

Spiral Heart Wand: Clit stimulator.

KaleidoMoon Scope Wand: Vibrating dildo with rabbit ears, and curve for g-spot stimulation.

The patterns are available on Redbubble in the colours listed below. The shirts are also backed with an outline corresponding to the colour you’re looking at.

Redbubble
DeviantArt
SpoonFlower

Sailor Moon Redraw Challenge

| MoonFigures

Back in May the Sailor Moon Redraw challenge resurfaced, and since I was very much trapped at home like the rest of the world, I focused some of my extra time on art.

I recently picked up a pastel, neon, metallic, glittery water colour set from Sakura Media and, well, Sailor Moon invites infinite amounts of glitter into the world. It’s basically a requirement in Sailor Moon art.

Honestly, I think the metallic sheen really adds to the piece. The sparkle in the paint, and the matte of the pencil crayon compliment each other well.

Overall I love how it turned out in the end. She’s definitely drawn in my style, the colours are rich, and the original of the final piece is a lot of fun. It’s a shame the metallic doesn’t show up as nicely digitally.

You can find this picture below in my official galleries:

DeviantArt
RedBubble

Media Used:
Sakura Koi Water Colours
Prisma Colour Pencil Crayon
Liquitex Basics Acrylic

Sailor Moon Advertising

| MoonFigures

Hey There Sports Fans!

I haven’t posted in a while, but I’ve spent the last 4 days working on a project for you all. I’ve been scanning my Sailor Moon advertising collection. The link will live on this page, but for now you can get to it by click on the image below.

I hope you enjoy, and please read the doc about usage 🙂

Pauline

Sailor Moon R: The Movie Aftermath

| MoonFigures

vizmedia-promise-of-the-roseI apologize for making this blog so late. TBH I kept going to write this post and failing to have the words lol.

Seeing “Sailor Moon R The Movie” in-theatre was AMAZING. The day started out with meeting a few members of my Sailor Moon group (Edmonton Sailor Moon Fans) in the mall food court for some Usagi-esque food (crepes, ice cream, or, in my case, bubble tea ^^;). We sat and talked for a bit about everything that’s happening with Sailor Moon, some of the funny things happening in the new dub, and whether people were enjoying it.

Then… it was TIME!

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Picture by Christina Pelly

We lined up for the movie around 5:30-6ish, and got there JUST before they handed out the posters. Unfortunately, the last poster was given out to the person directly in front of myself and my friend Christy. TBH, I’m still bummed about it. We got there that early specifically for those posters, but you win some, you lose some (I’m still looking to buy one if you’re selling!). At least when it was time to go in we were guaranteed a postcard and an envelope as there were multiple MASSIVE stacks.

What was really fricken awesome was walking into a theatre and seeing “Sailor Moon R 7:00” across the sign, and a digital Sailor Moon poster on display. Something we’ve never had the opportunity to see in North America in the entirety of Sailor Moon.

So into the theatre we went with 30 minutes until start! With so much time on our hands, we found seats and cracked open our envelopes to work out some trades.

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Turns out, basically everyone in the theatre got Moon, Venus, or Jupiter. Guess who I got?

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JUPITER!

And I couldn’t find a single Sailor Mercury to trade with. That was super disappointing, but oh well. I LOVE the advertisements that came with the postcard, though. What no one is talking about is that the postcard is on really nice card stock! Same with the postcard version of the movie poster that came separately. Also despite what staff said, the two movie poster advertisements ARE different! Here are some pictures of the fronts and backs of the cards below.

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FRONT of MANGA AD and CHARACTER CARD

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BACK of the MANGA AD and CHARACTER CARD

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Left: Glossy Thin Ad, Right: Postcard Print Ad

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Left: Glossy Thin Ad, Right: Postcard Print Ad

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SURPRISE! Something no one seems to be talking about is that the back of the glossy advertisement gives us a time frame for Sailor Moon Super Part 2 on DVD and Blu-ray.

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Then the lights dimmed, the crowd got quiet, and instead of the expected short, we got a small interview from the voice actors of Tuxedo Mask (Robbie Daymond), Fiore (Benjamin Diskin), and Sailor Moon (Stephanie Sheh). They were adorable and talked about their favourite parts of the movie without being spoilery, and how it felt to be a part of a series with so much behind it.

But to be honest, I don’t remember most of it because I was too busy laughing at Robbie Daymond’s sweater.

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Oh yea. That suckers covered in ROSES. Of course it is.

Then FINALLY, Make-Up! Sailor Guardian began. It was from that point on that there was hardly a dry eye in our entire row.  We’ve all been fans since childhood, and seeing Sailor Moon look so beautiful on such a MASSIVE screen was everything we had ever dreamed of.

Let’s be honest, Sailor Moon was animated over two decades ago. Not everything held up to being BLOWN UP to the size of a theatre screen, but that’s acceptable. We’ve all witnessed some of the bad animation still show up on our small parent-approved bedroom televisions. It wasn’t going away.

But the colours, the characters, the love put into making the redub of Sailor Moon R The Movie was very apparent from both TOEI and Viz Media. I’ll be honest, I’ve been trying to keep up with the Limited Edition box sets from Viz and Rightstuf, but since I moved out a year and a half ago… that hasn’t been so easy. On top of that, I now have a whole bunch of new responsibilities, and I haven’t even managed to watch them aside from what I caught during the showing of my own Blu-rays during the International Sailor Moon Day that I hosted during Animethon last year.

Based on that, I was very impressed with what I saw from Sailor Moon R The Movie. Everything was cleaned up nicely, the voice actors were wonderful, and it took me very little time to adjust to hearing them as their characters (though I supremely missed the old VA’s out of nostalgia for sure). Seeing the iconic kiss between Mamoru and Usagi that saves Usagi’s life so beautifully preserved was my breaking point. When the movie comes out in April I very much doubt I’ll be able to watch to that point without crying.

If you couldn’t tell, I had an AMAZING time at Viz Media’s showing of Sailor Moon R The Movie, and I can’t wait to see the next one!

Opening Mars, Mercury, and Jupiter Cards:

Sailor Moon R: The Movie

| MoonFigures

vizmedia-promise-of-the-rose

Tomorrow is the day most Moonies have been waiting for since the beginning of the 20th Anniversary, and the announcement from Viz Media that they would be dubbing ALL of Sailor Moons classic anime and Crystal.

I am going to see Sailor Moon R: The Movie (formally Promise of the Rose) in the theatre.

(I’m Canadian, we’re a little behind ^^;)

I discovered Sailor Moon when I was young. Probably when it first began airing in Canada. Unfortunately, I discovered it at a friends house, and I didn’t have the channel it aired on, but it’s one of the few times I’ve ever said “STOP! GO BACK!” while someone else had control of the television.

There were roughly 3-5 years in there before I rediscovered Sailor Moon, and was able to watch it for myself at home. Every day after school I rushed out at 3:30 pm, in the door at 3:55 pm, GLUED TO MY TELEVISION AT 4 pm. God help anyone who tried to stop me.

It was the beginning of it all. From a couple dolls, a board game, and some bootleg stickers, to a room full of merchandise, a blog, a local Sailor Moon club, and this website. Actually, now there’s even a youtube channel. I’ve run TWO full-day events dedicated to this series, along with several years worth of panels. Most of my art is even Sailor Moon related.

My boyfriend calls me the King of Sailor Moon.

It’s safe to say Sailor Moon has had a major impact on my life.

Getting to see Sailor Moon R: The Movie on the big screen is a little intimidating. I don’t expect to be disappointed, but I do expect excitement, tears, and a lot of fun. I hope it’s as awesome to see as I’m expecting, and I hope to make some new friends. I feel like Naoko Takeuchi and Usagi would really love that.

So, Thank You, Viz Media, and Cineplex, for giving us Moonies this opportunity.

Custom Hot Topic Exclusive Sailor Moon Funko Pop

| MoonFigures

It’s a mouthful! I know!

When the Sailor Moon Funko Pops came in there were several things I needed to do… and they all involved painting customs.

At first, I painted just Sailor Moon’s hair.

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She turned out pretty cute, eh? See some process pictures below. I painted her hair white pearl, and added gold enamel to the gold details (her wand, tiara, and earrings).

That got me thinking. Maybe I should try customizing another one? I could sell it at my Artist Alley tables!

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It started with disassembling each figure and priming them! At this point I had no intention of painting anything more than blush on her face.

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Priming is always my least favourite part of the process. I mean, it’s a start, but it’s just not as cool. There aren’t any details. No colours!

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It was at this point that I noticed the HORRIBLE texture in Sailor Moon’s boot from over spray of the sealant, or the paint, potentially while something was drying. The good boot is from a different body, and that’s what it SHOULD look like.

This meant that that body would need to be repainted… I’ll be honest, that won’t be a part of this post. I haven’t finished that figure yet.

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Would you like to make a contract? XD I decided to paint Sailor Moon’s eyes realistically! It started out a little creepy. I thought I was gonna have to call in Homura to take care of the problem.

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This process turned out to be WAY more delicate than I originally thought. I spent HOURS carefully colouring layer upon layer of water colour pencil on sealant, and realized when I moved onto another project that all I needed to do was lightly WET the water colour pencil. Whoops! Learning curves. I still like the effect I managed to achieve, and will keep it in mind for future projects.

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Happy accident! I got some glitter from the gold enamel in her sealant when I washed my brush off in the same water. It frustrated me, but everyone seems to like it XD.

I also upped the blush on her cheeks with soft pastel.

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This isn’t a completed picture yet, but I assembled her without glue to see how she looked before I finished her odango and tails. Uh… SUPER cute! I’m SO happy with those eyes!

I didn’t photograph it, but while working on her I added soft pastel to her hair and left it matte.

The Finished Piece

You may notice that my box is autographed! So far she has Tracey Moore, Jill Frappier, and Linda Ballantyne. The finished photos are also sliiiightly different. The pictures above are for 3 different custom Sailor Moon Funko Pops. The main one in the custom was a commission for someone who didn’t appreciate it, and I wanted one for myself, so I’m updating with pictures of mine. Hope you like her!

Sailor Pluto Amie-Grand Garage Kit

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Paulichu1383449702

By: Amie-Grand
Artist: Minatogawa Amaha
Scale: 1/6

This Sailor Pluto kit has by far been one of my biggest challenges since starting garage kits. Having mailed her out only a few weeks ago and looking back I know I learned a lot, but I know I’m ready for much more challenging pieces because of it.

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Apologies for the lack of parts pictures. I didn’t intend on documenting this build and posting it, but here I am. Pluto is roughly the size of a 12″ doll.

The commissioner for this piece had 2 requests: That I sand down her boobs to a reasonable size (they’re rather pointy), and that I not make custom changes (I like to add eyelashes and rhinestones lol). Admittedly this made me sad, but that’s it. I DID have to custom make her brooch in the end as the piece went MIA, and her earrings didn’t fit as nicely as I had hoped, but it worked out nicely.

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Pluto’s prep work and tags were a little crazy, and VERY hard to get rid of. There were quite a few pieces where I cut the tags off, and had to repair the sculpt.

Next up was Sailor Pluto’s boob job XD. I didn’t sand them down drastically. Just enough to soften those super pointy nipples.

When I removed the tag from Pluto’s body I broke off a piece of the edging that’ll eventually be a part of her skirt. To fix it I carefully cut and glued down a piece of card stock in alignment with the missing piece. Then I puttied in the missing pieces. The seam line between that piece and her body had a LOT of pinholes, so I puttied those in as well, and sanded them down.

Everything was then primed, and I started painting. The black and white primer details are all spray painted by can, but everything else is hand painted by brush.

The most important part of painting Sailor Pluto for me was getting the skin colour right. The fandom is constantly at war about what her tone should be, and to be honest… it varies across all parts of the franchise, sometimes even episode to episode of the original animation. Naoko’s manga art does nothing but contribute to the confusion, but one thing is very clear, her skin tone is darker than everyone else in the Sailor Senshi.

I like the anime skin tone, but I feel like it’s much too orange to actually look… believable, or even good on a figure. So I mixed them. The colour I came up with as a mix of the brown from the manga image, with just a small amount of orange to pull from the anime. For comparison, the leg in the left picture is for a Sailor Jupiter garage kit I have in progress.

Painting was the easy part despite numerous issues. The major one was that when I sealed the black pieces I forgot to shake the can… so it came out white lol. I got that fixed up quickly though.

The hard part was pinning. I had never had to do it on a large scale before, and Pluto is SUPER top heavy (boobs aside lol). It took me 3 years to get Pluto in a place where I could actually pin her properly. In the end I actually ended up taking 3 nails from a batch of leftovers from an Ikea set, cutting off the heads, and using them as pin for her waist. I also used them for her head/neck joint, AND to hold her on her base.

Some of the photo editing REALLY pulls out some of that orange skin tone, but overall I’m still happy with how she came out.