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| Two Japanese icons, one similar yet different journey! |
With VIZ Media owning the rights to the English distribution, especially redubbing the original anime, Sailor Moon is now getting the proper dub it rightfully deserves (for the most part, anyway). However, even though we got the redub of the original and the dub of its reboot, Sailor Moon Crystal, there have been many divisions within the fanbase, when it comes to which voice cast is better. While I mostly agree that it wasn't a great masterpiece, but we got to give the original English dub credit for bringing Sailor Moon to the West in the first place. The way I see, this story draws parallels to another famed Japanese icon that we all know.
The brainchild of Naoko Takeuchi, Sailor Moon started off as a sequel to her earlier work, Codename: Sailor V.
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| "Sai..." |
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| "...lor..." |
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| "V!" |
But it quickly became an international phenomenon that matches those other media franchises in the 1980s, Super Sentai and even other animes we all know and love. Since 1992, Sailor Moon is, without a shadow of a doubt, one of the greatest icons in the history of anime and manga. Although early shojo animes started this trend, but Moonface herself perfected it to a "T", especially with other shows like Cardcaptor Sakura and Tokyo Mew Mew, among others. However, around the mid 1990s, Sailor Moon's path to the West wasn't an easy one. It all started with Toon Makers doing their own version of Sailor Moon, which was a blend of animation and live action. So much so, some fans call this version, "Saban Moon", because of claims that it was made by Saban. But the idea was scrapped, although there was footage of that intro of Saban Moon at a convention long ago, but it was poor quality.
But, that didn't stop other companies from trying to get a shot in doing an English adaptation of Sailor Moon. One of them was the famed animation company, DIC Entertainment.
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| DIC! 'Nuff said. |
DIC, in the French tongue, is an acronym for "Diffusion, Informacion et Communicacion", which translates to, "Diffusion, Information and Communication." DIC is one of the famed companies that made cartoons in the 1980s into the new millennium, next to the likes of Saban, Hanna-Barbera, Ruby-Spears and Disney. Known for such shows as, Heathcliff, Inspector Gadget, The Littles, The Super Mario Bros. Super Show (YAHOO!!), Captain N, the 3 Sonic the Hedgehog cartoons, Double Dragon, Street Sharks, Extreme Dinosaurs, M.A.S.K., Jayce and the Wheeled Warriors and so on and so forth.
As they plan to release the English dub, DIC released their over the top themed promo, saying that it is the biggest thing that hits the West since Power Rangers.
As the English dub came out, anime, as a whole, wasn't exactly full time mainstream yet. This was before we were introduced to Toonami. Anyway, like many anime that came and went, such as Robotech and Voltron, which used other anime, different from one another to make one story, the original English dub of Sailor Moon was not without its faults.
For starters, certain episodes from the original Japanese version were missing, due to certain culture differences, for example, in episode 2 (the real episode 2 from the original) had not just satanic images on the tarot cards from our Monster of the Week, but in one scene, Umino, who was possessed by the aforementioned Youma, lifted up Ms. Haruna's skirt. And in episode 5 from the original, possessed by the Chanela, Shingo kicked Luna in a rather cruel manner. PETA would've had a field day with this if this was aired back then. And in episode 6, Usagi, by means of her transformation pen, disguises herself as an adult (a very, curvy, sexy adult). But, it is not just some of the episodes were missing, they merged the last 2 episodes of season 1 into one. Not to mention the fact that, aside from Nephrite's death among other things, death was omitted, just like in the original Ocean dub of Dragon Ball Z, saying that the Sailor Scouts were captured by the Negaverse, almost like saying that our heroes or villains were sent to another dimension, just like the aforementioned Ocean dub of DBZ.
Next, with the exception of a few like Luna, Artemis and Queen Beryl, most of the characters names were changed.
For example:
Usagi - Serena (taken from the word Serenity)
Ami - Amy (replacing the "I" with the "Y")
Rei - Raye (the pronunciation is the same, but the difference is the spelling)
Makoto - Lita (No relation to retired wrestler/valet, Amy Dumas, either named after rocker Lita Ford, or a pun for lightning and/or named after Leda, one of Jupiter's moons)
Minako - Mina (which makes most sense, after all, in the manga, Artemis calls her Mina)
Then, there is one other hurdle, the same sex relationships. Triple H once said that "Alternative lifestyles are perfectly acceptable in this day in age," but not in the 90s. To avoid any wraith from parental groups and the FCC, to have a relationship with Kunzite (or Malachite in the old dub), Zoisite's gender was changed from male to female. And then, when the dub was handed over to Toei's English distributor, Cloverway, they made the worst edit they can possibly made to ruin even the devoted Sailor Moon fan, turning Sailor Uranus and Neptune from a Lesbian couple into...cousins.
In short, aside from the faults I have mentioned, the reason I like this dub was because of not just the voices, including Terri Hawkes, Katie Griffin, Susan Roman, Jill Frappier, Ron Rubin, Toby Proctor and so forth, but I do like the songs from this dub, including my favorite, She's Got the Power. I mean, come, who doesn't like Stan Bush, anyway? Sailor Moon's journey to the West wasn't an easy one. But, she wasn't the only character from Japan to have such a journey, for a certain radioactive dinosaur when through the same journey, but in a different sort, over 60 years ago.
To Be Continued...
