Sailor Moon S Part 1 Unboxing Photos

The Sailor Moon S Blu-ray and DVD combo set has arrived! It contains episodes 1-19 of Sailor Moon S, or if you prefer, episodes 90-108 of the series as a whole. This would get you half-way through the series, which clocks in at 200 episodes.

I opted for the “gift with purchase” special edition from Right Stuf Anime. At this point, I figured I have the special coins exclusive to Right Stuf for the other two sets, so I may as well complete the collection, you know?

I’m not a fan of unboxing videos, so you will probably never see one from me, but my trusty S7 Edge (whose nickname is Chibi-Usa due to how blindingly pink it is – pink body, rose gold shell and a Chibi-Usa uniform cell phone charm) has a decent enough camera, so onto the gratuitous shots! Hopefully these will help you decide whether or not the set is worth getting for your collection.

First up, the gift with purchase coin…it looks exactly the same as the previous coins, except now it has Sailor Moon’s 3rd transformation phrase and compact on it:

Then we have the outside of the packaging (holographic cardboard):

Front

Spine

Inside spine – with placeholder for set 2 (due Spring 2017)

Back paper insert

After unwrapping and peeling away the paper insert, you have the “real” back of the box:

Inside the package, you have the placeholder for set 2, the Blu-ray/DVD case itself, and a 96-page booklet. The booklet is made of the same stock as the previous booklet (I’m guessing about a 100# card stock for the cover and 80# text stock for the pages). So not super high-quality, but not cheap, either. It doesn’t feel like it will fall apart if you actually try to read through it.

And here is a sample of one of the photos in the book…the book contains episode summaries, bios and pictures like these:

The set itself consists of 6 discs – 3 Blu-rays and 3 DVDs. The pattern between the Blu-rays and DVDs repeats so you can’t really tell a difference between them except that the shades of colors for the DVDs are slightly lighter and the outlines of the senshi are reversed (the left is the pink Blu-ray and the right is the pink DVD).

And that’s about all for the set, minus grading the Blu-ray quality (TBD in another post). If you liked the previous sets, this is more of the same (which is a good thing, in my opinion – I’d love to have a comprehensive set that actually looks the same, as that has been impossible for any Americans buying legitimate English releases since the show was released on home video).

I’ve decided to finish watching my other Blu-ray sets before reviewing this one, so that will take me a couple of weeks. I’d love to be really ambitious and do posts about each episode, but I have to see where the holiday season takes me in terms of reviewing other items. Luckily for By Moonlight, I nearly had a public fit dealing with the hoards of holiday shoppers today, so I know my period of going out “for fun” is coming to a close very shortly, which means much more posting!

Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them Review

I just got back from seeing Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them and let me just say OMG! I am by no means a film critic, so please forgive me if I am not as descriptive as them. I will not give an in-depth review of the film because to even touch on the plot would give away too much. I loved the writing, acting and costumes. The detail given to the magical creatures was breathtaking. I have fallen in love with Wizarding World all over again and I can not wait for the other 4 movies to come out.

For me one of the best parts of the movie was when we got to venture down into Newt’s suitcase. I WANT THAT SUITCASE. I sadly cannot get into my other favorite parts of the movie because it give too much away. Let me just say, I originally thought the movie was going to be about how Newt found all his creatures to write his book and few got out – I was wrong.

Till next time.

Fantastic Beasts: Cases from the Wizarding World

Prior to the release of Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, JK Rowling released a mobile game for the movie. I have been playing the game for two days now and I am mildly intrigued.  The premise of the game is simple: Investigate cases where destruction was caused by a creature. In order to identify the creature you have locate clues, which comes from a list of items you have to find from each location. It is a very simple game that children will enjoy. I am not embarrassed to admit that I am addicted already; for no other reason then I like seek and find games… Plus I love anything to do with Harry Potter. I am only on level two, so I do not have a large pros/cons list.

The pros: You get to make potions again and cast spells.

The only cons that I have noticed so far is that it costs 20 points every time you enter a level to gain a star to unlock a clue, and you can not receive a star until you reach a certain level of points.

I am going to be seeing Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them tomorrow and provide a review once I get back. I will try to make sure that no spoilers are included in the review.

PS: I am not a professional blogger and it has been a while since I have participated in a blog; so please forgive any grammatical and spelling errors.

Time for ANOTHER Pokemon Adventure…

TBD!

Hype for Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them

Review coming soon!

Sailor Moon S is Here!

Well, not physically here with me, because I put myself on a budget until we sell our house so it’s the free economy shipping for me…

But it IS on sale now at some places (Best Buy is probably your best chance unless you live by a retailer that specializes in anime), and mine will be here Saturday, so I thought it would be fun to reminiscence about when I first saw Sailor Moon S and what a big deal it was in America at the time. I’ve been very purposely and carefully avoiding watching the revival of S on Hulu because I wanted to watch it all at once with the new English cast, so the Blu-ray will be a total treat for me.

So, 16 years ago (OMG), Sailor Moon S finally debuted in English on Cartoon Network’s Toonami, which I still stubbornly say was 20x more amazing than the Toonami the kids have to deal with today. It was a bittersweet summer for me, as my best friend at the time (who helped fuel my Sailor Moon madness) and I were no longer speaking for what would end up for the rest of our lives (so far). A few years back, when we had first really gotten into Sailor Moon seriously and had gotten access to the internet, we discovered there were OTHER Sailor Senshi (Neptune? Uranus? Freaking Saturn!?) and dreamed of the day the forbidden episodes might reach our shores. We weren’t savvy enough at the time to find fan-subbed Japanese episodes ourselves, and our internet connections definitely couldn’t handle it even if we did.

So, I got to usher in anime history pretty much solo, although my neighbor popped in and out for random episodes, which was nice. I remember the first feeling that swelled in my heart when the debut episode of Sailor Moon S aired…

Disgust! The voices…ugh, they were horrible!

The DiC dub may have been a butcher job of what the original intent of the show’s script was, but the voices were pleasant (random British and Boston accents aside). The Cloverway dub was so horrible, that save for the few voice actors that returned, I genuinely wondered if I could keep watching it on air and if I would have to just wait for the DVD releases so I could watch it with subtitles. I never really had a dog in the dub vs. sub fight of the 90’s and 00’s, but boy, Cloverway sure could have persuaded me to pick a side.

I seem to remember that Sailor Uranus and Neptune were the only passable new voices. Sailor Pluto was a huge disappointment…(RIP, Susan Aceron) but Sailor Pluto has come full circle now, because in the new Viz dub, she is perfect (although it’s so weird to think the woman who voices Ash in Pokemon is now Sailor Pluto!).

Something I was really excited about was seeing what they would do with Uranus and Neptune’s relationship. The rumors online (Save Our Sailors was the source for most of them at the time) were that they were going to be “cousins”, which I just couldn’t believe. Naive, high school freshman me thought for sure that a mature, girl-positive anime like Sailor Moon would finally break free of its bondage and be honest with its relationships in English!

Nope. Rumors confirmed; they were definitely made cousins in America and were not a couple. As a reminder, it was totally cool for Naru to date a 30-something man in the English dub, but not for two high school girls to date.

Should we talk about the music? That was a huge shock to a fan that had only ever seen the DiC dub. I shamefully admit that I did not appreciate the music the first 50 or so episodes. It sounded so old-fashioned and so very early 90’s anime. I was used to the more J-Pop appeal of newer anime music (at the time) like Fushigi Yugi (which ironically, was only produced a year later than Sailor Moon S), and I really liked the DiC music. But, as an adult, I have to say that I’ve come to love the original music, especially the gameshow-esque transformation songs. Rose-tinted glasses have definitely helped the musical appeal of the show now, ha ha. But with that said…I love the Crystal transformation music the best. (Oh, I am a fair weather fan, aren’t I…T_T)

And then, the last travesty, which occurred in episode 13…

…Sailor Mini-Moon?

Mini-Moon.

ERLACK!!!

Maybe if I hadn’t have known thanks to the internet that her name was supposed to be Sailor Chibi-Moon, and learned about the origin of the name and all that prior to seeing the dub, I wouldn’t have noticed or cared…

But it was not meant to be. I literally cringed every time they said her name, and refused to ever let it leave my lips. It was Chibi-Moon, FOREVER. Take a thousand seats, Sailor Mini-Moon.

So reading through all this, you would think that I was immensely disappointed in what was supposed to be a breakthrough in the fandom.

But there was so much good, it really did outweigh the bad. And the good is why I can’t wait to sit down and watch this all the way through again this weekend, because after everything we know and after seeing how much care Viz has taken with the fandom this time around, I really can’t see how it couldn’t get better.

• Meeting four new Sailor Senshi – definitely the most exciting development for the entire series yet, being that you met four new senshi in season 1 and only one in season 2. And one of them was the freaking bad guy! That was pretty intense for high school freshman me.
• The more personal stories about the girls – Usagi celebrating a birthday, Minako finally taking the leadership role in one episode and addressing why she looks just like Usagi (even if it was just the slightest nod to the original source material), Rei’s crush thinking she is in love with Haruka (pu pu pu pu…)
• Expanding the lore of the Sailor Senshi and taking it down a surprisingly dark path for the four Outer Senshi (Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, Pluto).
• I’m pretty convinced that Sailor Uranus was the original Christian Grey.
• The ending credit music was top-notch for this season. Tuxedo Mirage is still one of my favorite songs to listen to and it really captures the “miracle romance” theme of Sailor Moon. I definitely still tear up when it catches me off guard in the car!

So yeah, despite everything, I’m really excited to be able to relive this part of my childhood, even if it wasn’t the best period of my life (as both a normal teenage girl and as a Sailor Moon fan). Part of me wants to tear into the episodes right away, but the other part of me wants to finish watching the dubs of the previous episodes first and transition into it. Both sides might lose if I get too engrossed in Pokemon…

Out of the first series, I think S is definitely my favorite season. In Crystal, I’m still not sure – I feel like I need to see the whole revived series before I make a decision (but I’m partial to season 1 right now, although season 3 was so good).

It’s such a great time to be a Sailor Moon fan right now – enjoy it!