(Pretty Soldier) Sailor Moon Reviewer: Iryl Email: Private. Website: http://www.hugglebunny.com ---------------------------------------------------------------------- The Anime and Manga Episodes: 166 Seasons: 4 Movies: 3 Specials: 1 Price: $17.98 Movie DVD (amazon.com) $9.99 Movie VHS (amazon.com) $26.98 DVDs (amazon.com) ~$80 Boxed DVD Season (amazon.com) Price Varies - Original Japanese Boxed Season DVDs (amazon.com) $14.98 VHS Dubbed in English (amazon.com) $9.99 VHS Subtitled in English (amazon.com) $9.95 Manga (amazon.com) Rated: PG13 Catagories: Action Romance Comedy Magical Girls Cute/Fluff ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Review Synopsis: A young girl meets a black cat and becomes a powerful but untrained and unwilling warrior, Sailor Moon. Fighting for love, justice, and the right to like that mysterious guy in the tuxedo, she gathers her friends, all ancient warriors reborn in the modern world. Together, these girls fight the forces that threaten Tokyo and try to find their lost princess -- as well as their purpose in the grand scheme of things. Age Rating: The English Dub is squeaky clean thanks to the overzealous efforts of DIC. The original Japanese has a bit more violence, lechery, outlines of nudity, and homosexual themes. The manga has outlines of nudity and homosexual themes, but less violence and lechery. Adult Content: The Japanese anime series contains occasionally lewd jokes (Rei's grandpa is a dirty old man) and more tangible outlines of the girls when they transform. Sometimes in the Japanese, characters slap each other. There are two definite homosexual relationships in the Japanese anime, though the more prominant of the two (Sailors Uranus and Neptune) is subtle enough to allow some to insist that the couple is only close and not romantic. This, however, is a case of people trying to deceive themselves. Uranus and Neptune are a romantic couple. The other couple is among the enemy, two male generals named Zoicite and Kunzite (English dub: Malachite). Though Uranus and Neptune are a couple in the manga, the generals are not. In the English dub, almost all references to lechery (including jokes) are changed or deleted, slaps are taken out, Uranus and Neptune are made "cousins," and Zoicite is made a girl. A much later villian named Fish Eye is also made into a woman to avoid homosexual themes. For a full list of specific changes made in the English dub, please visit the faq (frequently asked questions) at sailormoon.org, subsection "Cuts, Censorship, and Changes." The faq at SailorMoon.org was done by Ken Arromdee and is in no way affiliated with the Christian Anime Reviews project. Magic: Teenaged girls with sparkly powers. If you can handle Harry Potter, you can handle this. Overall -- What You Really Want to Know: The relationship between Uranus and Neptune is more innuendo than outright romance. I think that even the sometimes-ambiguous Card Captor Sakura makes a bigger deal out of its homosexual themes. Though the two women are always together, they rarely touch (and even then, only hands), never kiss, and never really do anything romantic. Innuendo is mostly verbal or situational -- often for humorous purposes; Uranus is often mistaken as a man and likes to flirt with younger girls, and there is occasional teasing talk of jealousy. For actual wording of innuendos in the Japanese, again I reference the faq at sailormoon.org. If you want to avoid the pair altogether, they don't show up until the third season, Sailor Moon S, but the homosexual villians, Zoicite and Kunzite, are there for the whole first season. The English dubbed version has all possibly offensive things removed, yes, but there are drawbacks due to the fact that though they excelled at censorship, they did a notoriously bad job on more sensible things. One of the things they assumed was that mostly children would watch it -- this is not necessarily true, therefore many young adults have beefs with what DIC did to the anime. There are problems with continuity, plot holes, and glitches due to attempted Americanization. For example, changing the names of the characters means that they cannot show us the names written down. That just makes more work for them. Next, because dubbing anime wasn't in its fullest swing yet, they didn't have excellent voice actors. The characters are actually rather more annoying in the English dub because of this. They also tend to change a lot of dialogue and sometimes plot, remove jokes, change serious moments into jokes, etc. Of the two, Japanese dialogue with subtitles or English dialogue, I would recommend the Japanese just because the plot is so less . . . tainted. DIC went on something of a rollercoaster of editing -- they changed a few essential things at the beginning to make things "easier" for their viewers and later had to deal with the complications these changes entailed. Sometimes, the way they dealt with complications just made the story more confusing. But for my personal recommendation, I say avoid the anime altogether and buy the manga. Three reasons. First, it's cheaper for the same story because it's more compact. Second, the anime has an annoying habit of pearling shows together that don't really advance the plot -- they're sort of filler shows with your basic, won't-remember-it-tomorrow monster. Third, it has less mistakes in your mother tongue and there are no annoying voice actors to worry about. There are some stipulations for the manga, though, and I'll tell them to you now. Like with the Japanese anime, you'll have to be able to handle some mild homosexual themes. In the manga, Uranus (transformed) kisses Usagi/Serena when they first meet. It is a very airy, quick, and surprising kiss, not romantic, but it is a kiss from one woman to another on the lips. This, even in the Japanese culture, is not usually done. Another situation is that between Sailor Star Fighter, whose everyday name is Seiya, and Usagi/Serena. In the anime, untransformed Seiya is male and becomes female when he transforms. In the manga, Seiya is always female but (with the other two Sailor Stars) pretends to be male. The problem lies in her romantic feelings toward Usagi/Serena. I don't remember if there is any kissing between the two. If there is, it's not much. Usagi/Serena has Mamoru/Darien, a real live male, and is faithful to him. Names: In case you need them, here's a list of Japanese and English names of the main characters, plus their Sailor titles. Japanese names will be last name, first name, since that is the correct format in Japanese. SAILOR TITLE JAPANESE ENGLISH Sailor Moon Tsukino Usagi Serena Princess Serenity Princess Serena Sailor Mercury Mizuno Ami Amy Anderson Sailor Mars Hino Rei Raye Hino Sailor Jupiter Kino Makoto Lita Sailor Venus Aino Minako Mina Sailor Mini-Moon Chibi-Usa Rini (Japanese: Chibi-Moon) Tuxedo Mask Chiba Mamoru Darien Shields Prince Endymion Prince Darien Sailor Uranus Ten'ou Haruka Amara Sailor Neptune Kaiou Michiru Michelle Sailor Pluto Meiou Setsuna Trista Sailor Saturn Tomoe Hotaru Hotaru Note: Much of my information was found in the FAQ at SailorMoon.org . Credit for many details should go to Ken Arromdee. <--- http://hugglebunny.com/animereviews/ --->