So I’m assuming most of you know what Sailor Moon is, the Japanese manga and anime series that started the “magical girl” craze in America. However, all it really did was give the genre a name to Western animation lovers because we already had shows like that. I mean, you can make the case that Rainbow Brite or Princess Guinevere And The Jewel Riders were already magical girl shows, though the latter is closer to the actual concept. There are probably more examples prior to Sailor Moon but this isn’t my field of expertise.
Still, we almost didn’t get the Japanese version of the show. Originally it was only the concept that would be translated into a brand new cartoon for the US…and it’s one of the dumbest ideas I can think of. I don’t mean the show itself or the concept, I’m talking from a creation position. Not only is what Toon Makers and Renaissance-Atlantic planned a bad adaptation of an existing Japanese work (think Netflix anytime they’ve tried a live-action adaptation of anime–good luck, One Piece fans) it was so much easier to just dub the show, which eventually happened, clear a few cultural hurdles since this wasn’t for a Japanese media fan audience but your average ten-year-old girl, and call it a day. Instead they wanted to use live-action actors who travel into the cartoon world to battle evil. Even Kidd Video picked one or the other and just kept them in the toon world.
For years the only evidence we had that this mystery pilot for the Western rework of Sailor Moon and the Sailor Scouts existed was footage captured on someone’s camcorder during a panel. YouTuber Ray Mona wasn’t satisfied with that. Already with a series on lost media on her YouTube channel, she decided to track this down and share it with the world. This was not an easy task. That’s why tonight you have three videos: a two-part documentary on all her hard work to find the pilot, and if you don’t want to sit through that the third video is the roughly 10 minute pilot, which is already in part two of the documentary. Whatever path you take…enjoy!
And if you didn’t watch the documentary, here’s just the pilot.
Yeah, I think we got the better deal just dubbing the anime.
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