Shiny New Adaptation of Sailor Moon to Stream Worldwide – Summer 2014

Step aside boys, the girls are back in town—ready to win love by daylight and fight evil by moonlight! The latest and highly anticipated series of Sailor Moon anime, Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon: Crystal, will be broadcasted worldwide via the popular Japanese video site NicoNico, starting July 2014. (NicoNico started broadcasting anime in the Spring 2013 season.) First announced in 2012, at the 20th Anniversary event for the manga, the Sailor Moon: Crystal release was pushed back twice for unspecified reasons. Naoko Takeuchi, the series’ creator, is heavily involved in this project, as is Toei Animation, the company that put out the original series that ran from 1992 to 1997.

As many sources repeat and emphasize, Sailor Moon: Crystal is not a remake of the anime so much as another go at turning the manga into an anime. In Japan, the anime adaptation of a manga is just that, an adaptation, and thus minor and even major changes are commonplace. Whether due to the more streamlined format of weekly television, or because of artistic license, anime adaptations sometimes veer so far away from the manga that they end up telling different stories. With this new Sailor Moon series, hopefully fans who have read Takeuchi’s manga will be pleased, while those who have only seen the animated show will get a deeper look at the world of the Sailor Scouts.

One of the few pieces of official art so far for Sailor Moon: Crystal is an image of the series’ protagonist, Usagi Tsukino, in her Sailor uniform reaching for what looks like a crystal lotus. The style of the art is notably closer to Takeuchi’s drawings in the manga than the character designs for the first anime series. But we will have to wait and see what the official designs for Sailor Moon: Crystal are before we can make conclusions one way or the other.

The new series is being directed by Munehisa Sakai, who has experience with magical girl anime from his work on Smile PreCure!, HeartCatch PreCure! and Suite PreCure?, as well as earned his battle cred directing episodes of One Piece and assisting on the fourth Dragon Ball animated film. The writer on the new series is Yuji Kobayashi, who has worked with Sakai before on Smile Precure! and Suite Precure?. He has also written two episodes for the Aoi Bungaku series, which—perhaps significantly to manga purists—were adaptations of classic stories from Japanese literature.

Character design is by Yukie Sako, who has an impressive range of experience on shows like Blue Exorcist, Code Geass, Ghost in the Shell, GOSICK, and Mobile Suit Gundam 00. Art design is by Takashi Kurahashi (Precure film, Asura film, Gatchaman Crowds) and Yumi Hosaka (Air film, Tsuritama, Gatchaman Crowds).  The series’ version of the classic theme song will be performed by the colorful J-Pop group Momoiro Clover Z.

Keep an eye on the official site and the 20th Anniversary Twitter for updates.

If you enjoyed B.K.’s article and would like to read others like it, you can read the rest of her work HERE. You can also follow her on Twitter @kobayashiXmaru.

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