This Unearthed ‘Sailor Moon’ Live-Action-Cartoon From 1994 Looks Really Corny
Sailor Moon was very nearly a half-animated half-live-action monstrosity that should make us all a little grateful for DIC.
If you’ve been into anime for long enough you may know about the half-live-action half-animated Sailor Moon show that was almost our North American reality. It didn’t make it far, just a concept and a pilot, and for years all we could find of it was the opening song shared around early two-thousands anime forums. It was a glorious disaster and I remember my friend and me talking about how much we wished we should see the true terribleness that was the full pilot.
Instead, we would periodically return to the potential opening song, share it with newcomers to the Sailor Moon fandom, and feel fortunate that it had ever been greenlit. The DIC version may have been edited down, cut to pieces, and dubbed with a complete lack of care or understanding of the show. But it wasn’t this. And besides, we had the manga if we wanted the actual complete story.
Fighting Bad Pilots By Moonlight
But YouTuber Ray Mona answered our prayers twenty-two years later with the two-part documentary The Western World of Sailor Moon. Part one was uploaded back in March. But part two, uploaded on August 20th has made waves with the inclusion of the long-lost pilot. And it is every bit as bad as you may think.
If you don’t want to sit through a few hours of documentary, I’ve included just the pilot above. But honestly, I suggest watching the whole thing when you get a moment and supporting all of Ray Mona’s hard work. They deserve it.
Winning Love By Daylight
From the cheesy animation to the less-than-seamless transition from live-action to 3D to 2D, to how obviously the writers’ room was phoning it in, this whole thing is a mess. And I’m pretty sure the transformation locket we see on screen was the exact plastic licensed-Sailor-Moon-toy that I had as a tween. But you’ll need to watch for yourself. And then you too can feel fortunate that we got the poorly dubbed version of Sailor Moon that we all grew up with and loved.
Victoria (aka Sailor Moon) and Luna. Who for some reason has merged with Artemis.
The documentary itself is full of nuggets of information that any moonie would want to know. Like the proposed Americanized names of the scouts (which were all changed as if “Amy” and “Rey” weren’t right there) and the fact that the sets were recycled from Saved By The Bell.
Luckily, somebody came to their senses and realized dubbing the already existing show would be easier and yield a better product than trying to recreate the entire thing from scratch. But maybe this isn’t the worst timeline after all. Maybe out there is a version of all of us who grew up with Saban’s half-live-action Sailor Scouts.
Would you have watched this version of Sailor Moon? Did you know about this version before Ray Mona’s documentary? What’s your favorite detail from the pilot? Let us know in the comments!
Ja Ne, Adventurers!
