Shino Kakinuma, the voice of Naru Osaka in Sailor Moon, will be appearing at Otakon Vegas 2015 alongside her husband, veteran voice actor Toshio Furukawa.

Otakon Vegas will be taking place January 16th-18th this year at the Planet Hollywood Casino in Las Vegas, Nevada.

Fans interested in attending Otakon can purchase a badge online. Full details about registration are available here. Pricing is $39 for the weekend for members pre-registering, $55 for the weekend for non-members pre-registering, $60 for the weekend at the door, or $40 for a day pass at the door. There is also a meal pass available for discounted food at the convention.

The complete list of guests for Otakon Vegas is available here.

Viz Media has released four voice clips on their Youtube page in the past month, showcasing the last two of our original line of five Sailors, Jupiter and Venus!

Our first introduction to Sailor Jupiter is a clip from her very first appearance in episode: “Jupiter, the Powerful Girl in Love”. Amanda Celine Miller plays our outgoing tomboy, Makoto, as she finds out she’s a Sailor Guardian and helps blast away the monster of the day.

Joining Amanda, Cherami Leigh makes her debut as Sailor Venus in a clip from “Let’s Become a Princess: Usagi’s Bizarre Training” where the Dark Kingdom targets Usagi, Rei and Minako (Venus) after they fail to pass an etiquette test.

There are two more clips on the Viz Media page, another scene from Jupiter’s introduction episode where Usagi and Makoto have a conversation over lunch, and one more clip of Minako from “Usagi’s Confusion: Is Tuxedo Mask Evil” where she shares a quiet moment with Usagi, trying to cheer her new friend up.

Also, Viz has posted the second half of season one’s dub on Hulu for a limited time! Check it out while you still can, and remember to preorder your season one, part two sets!
For U.S. Amazon shoppers, you can preorder the combo pack, or DVD only set here. Amazon.Ca shoppers can preorder the DVD set here, and the Blu Ray combo pack here!
Rightstuf has sold out of their gift with purchase combo pack sets, but still have the regular Blu Ray/DVD combo packs, and a DVD edition for preorder, hitting the streets February 10th, 2015! Preorder here for the combo pack and here for the DVD set. Rightstuf also is selling a combination set containing both parts one and two(the DVD/Blu Ray combo packs), with the part one Limited Edition chipboard box and part two, you can preorder that here!
As a quick note for curious fans: while part one had a limited edition set that came with a box to hold both parts, part two is only available in the two regular editions.

2014 was definitely the year for Sailor Moon, not only did our favorite anime got a American distributor for dubbing and distribution rights via Viz Media and got redubbed for everyone’s viewing pleasure (depending on your view of the new dub), but also we got treated to the highly anticipated viewing of the announced new Sailor Moon Series; Sailor Moon Crystal. The anime made its highly anticipated debut back in July and would be released every first and third Saturday of every month via Neon Alley and Hulu here in the United States and the fanbase has been mixed of sorts of this new Sailor Moon from the transformations, the animation, show being too short etc. Well Moonies, here is my view on the new show.

I happen to love Sailor Moon Crystal.

This is something that Sailor Moon should’ve been like back in the day, but we all know what occurred that led to us having a 200 episode series that led 90’s kids loving anime and setting a bar for Magical Girl Anime in its day. This show is based more on the original manga following the trend Full Metal Alchemist before it did with Full Metal Alchemist Brotherhood being based on its original manga. Crystal follows it to where each episode is based on each chapter of the manga (As of this writing, Sailor Moon’s next episode is based on Chapter 12 of the manga). So relax, this is the reason why the show happens to be shorter than the original manga. If you read the manga that was recently released, you’ll be in for a treat.

The controversial part that people either love or hate is the transformations in this show. In my view this adds a modern feel to the famous sequences we all know from the original show. Sure its in 3-D, but the way its animated makes the sequences seamless rather than blocky and not in tuned with the shows animation that some anime have done.

The new theme to the show is “Moon Pride” by Momoiro Clover Z follows the overall feel of the show rather being a random J-pop song. I personally didn’t like it at first because I was expecting a newer take on the classic theme “Moonlight Densetsu”. However, once you hear time and time again, it becomes a theme all its own for this new series and it follows the overall feel of the show.

Overall, I really love Sailor Moon Crystal and I am personally interested in seeing how they’ll cover all the stories of the show from the R, S, Super S and Sailor Stars series in this format and I am supporting this show as long as it keeps bringing more content. Moonies, at least give this show a shot including the new redub of the original too. Because, any support to Sailor Moon will show Toei that the American anime fans still love and direly missed Sailor Moon and wish it remains in the US for years to come and they made the wise choice of giving Viz the rights to Sailor Moon. My esteemed kudos for Viz Media for giving us our favorite Magical Girl to the states once again, and hopefully this time Sailor Moon will be here to stay as long we continue to support the anime.

Happy Holidays, Moon Chase readers!

Today I would like to feature a new piece of Sailor Moon merchandise coming out March 2015 in Japan and April 29th 2015 to the US via Amazon. Bandai is coming out with special Sailor Moon themed Tamashii buddies dolls for your Sailor Moon collection. According to the website they are 9cm figures that feature backgrounds and stands for your favorite anime characters from Dragonball Z, Card Captor Sakura and ones for Sailor Moon. Currently they only have figures for Sailor Moon and Sailor Venus, but here’s hoping more of the senshi will be available for a upcoming line. They’re 1,620 JPY in Japan and also they will be available in the US via Amazon for $13.99 and is currently available for preorder!

Pictures are from the Tamashii website

Happy Holidays!

With the holidays around the corner, there are a number of gifts for the Moonie in your life or even for yourself. To celebrate the ongoing 20th Anniversary of Sailor Moon, a number of the Korean Styled Pullip Sailor Moon dolls have been released. Out right now are Sailor Moon, Sailor Mercury, and Sailor Venus, Sailor Mars,Princess Serenity with Sailor Jupiter just announced and coming out soon.

The dolls range from 17280 ¥ (20250 ¥ for Bandai.jp Special Editon dolls, that come with their school uniforms as well) or $172.99 (cheapest) and $179.99 with a few on sale on a number of sites. Prices below are for standard with the 20520¥ Price for the Bandai.JP Special Editions w/ School Uniforms for Mercury, Mars, and Venus (Site in Japanese) and USD Prices for Tokyo Otaku Mode Store (Site in English).

•  17280¥ – Sailor Moon – $172.99 ($138.39)
• 17280¥ (20520¥ for Bandai Special Edition) – Sailor Mercury – $172.99 ($121.09)
• 17280¥ (20520 Yen for Bandai Special Edition) – Sailor Venus – $172.99 ($121.09)
• 18360¥ – Princess Serenity – $183.99
• 17280¥ (20520 Yen for Bandai Special Edition) – Sailor Mars – $172.99 (Pre-Order DEC. 2014)
• Pre-Order – Sailor Jupiter – Pre-Order (Announced Price is 16000¥. Updates to Come)

Information for the dolls can be found on the JP Groove Site/Blog (Site in Japanese) as well as Sailor Moon Official (Site in Japanese). Sailor Jupiter was announced on 12/12/2014 on both the Groove Pullip Blog as well as the Official Sailor Moon website. More details on her release will come in updates as they are received.

So for the Moonie in your life or even the fashion doll collector in your life, these Pullip Dolls are good gifts for that special person this Holiday Season.

Note: For those interested in purchasing Pullip Dolls in the US or a few other international countries and not paying high amounts of shipping, the JPGroove Website has provided a list of locations to purchase Pullip Dolls. Happy Shopping!