Review of Sailor Moon: Vol. 8

Introduction

Sailor Moon is synonymous with anime. In the 90`s especially, while Akira was the first name on anyone`s lips, the long running television series wasn`t far behind, and a cult following soon built up that is reflected in the extensive Internet community that still follows the series. It`s surprising then that it has taken me this long to encounter my first Sailor Moon episodes.

It`s always hard coming to these shows in the middle of a run, and it`s equally hard trying to figure out what`s going on, but with a little bit of research and a lot of web surfing, this is the rough outline I came up with. Five girls and two cats must protect the Earth from the Dark Kingdom (Negaverse). Heirs to the power of the ancient moon kingdom, they have been sent to modern day Earth, where by day they go to high school, but by night they use their special powers to battle demons. They are the Sailor Scouts, Sailor Mercury, Sailor Venus, Sailor Mars, Sailor Jupiter and of course, Sailor Moon.

Volume 8 actually contains the first six episodes of the second series Sailor Moon R, so if you are coming fresh to the series, this isn`t that bad a place to start. The episodes are as follows.

43) A Knight To Remember, 44) VR Madness, 45) Cherry Blossom Time, 46) Kindergarten Chaos, 47) Much Ado About Babysitting and 48) Raye`s Day In The Spotlight.

The arc in these twenty-minute episodes follows two aliens who are hell bent on stealing human energy to feed their Doom tree, and the Sailor Scouts battle to protect their community.

Video

A simple 4:3 picture reflects the TV roots of the series. The transfer is adequate, with no glaring problems. The animation is simplistic and rather rough and ready, as you would expect from a TV series as opposed to a feature length animation.

Audio

This is a DD 2.0 English dub, which is adequate once again, if annoying, but the dub is just the symptom of far deeper problems with this release of Sailor Moon. There are no subtitles by the way.

Features

I`ve found something new out about my DVD player. In the options menu, there are four options for what the screen displays when the DVD is stopped, a jacket picture, the player company graphic, a blue screen or a plain black screen. Until now, I though a jacket picture was just a redundant option, but the Sailor Moon disc actually shows a Sailor Moon wallpaper when the disc isn`t spinning. It`s cool, but that`s all there is.

Conclusion

Oh Dear, there I was expecting a revelation as I watched this seminal anime title, and all I got were the Power Rangers again, though this time more Powder Puff Rangers. The evil aliens Anna and Alan attack once an episode by raising up a demon from a pack of playing cards with some nifty flute playing. The Sailor Scouts band together and defeat the demon, but only after they are battered to the point of defeat, then rescued by a mysterious white knight who vanishes after dispensing a white rose and a trite maxim, and everyone lives happily ever after until the next episode.

It`s unclear also, to which audience this really caters. The impromptu moral at the end of every episode places it firmly in the kiddie market, while the Power Rangers antics pushes up that age bracket a couple of years. The girls emotional lives which amount to a series of crushes on the various hunks that show up push this firmly into the Sabrina The Teenage Witch fanbase, yet the short skirts and skimpy outfits bring to mind the hackneyed stereotype of the Japanese middle aged businessman.

But one moment made me wonder, in Much Ado About Babysitting, the trite moral at the end showed one of the babies having a potty emergency that wasn`t in the main episode. I decided to find out more about what may have been cut and found an act of butchery. DIC, who owned the US rights to the first two seasons of Sailor Moon, took the original anime and decided to edit it for a kiddie market. So gone is any evidence of sex, death, violence, relationships and the rather more adult message of the original Japanese show. To make up the time from all the cuts, the moral is crudely tacked on at the end. Imagine if you will, what Buffy the Vampire Slayer would look if edited down for an audience of 5-year-olds.

I`m not going to recommend this. Sailor Moon as it is on this disc is of some entertainment value, but I can`t condone the hack and slash job that`s been done to it. To sell it under the original title is false advertising. Maybe if the cover had SANITISED VERSION written in big bold red letters, but even still, any semblance of storyline vanishes under the censor`s knife.