Hey Moonies: the time has come for the final crunch for our final survey has come! Currently we are sitting at over 1000 surveys. We have decided to set the final deadline for this phase – fans will have until late Friday night/Saturday Morning at midnight to get their surveys in. We have gotten a lot of really great comments on this survey, and some fans have even gone so far to comment on the quality of currently existing fansubs of the anime, PGSM, and Sera My (some even name the groups involved). If a fan is not satisfied with these fansubs, please say so because it is a good thing for the companies involved to know what is out there and use this information in further negotiations about the series. So for those of you who have yet to take the survey, now is your final chance! Click here to go directly to the survey, and here to go to the post about it.

The older generation of Sailor Moon fans will have something to be excited for this Halloween – a new Sailor Moon costume!  Anime News Network shared the news that Californian costume and lingerie maker Leg Avenue will be releasing a Sailor Moon costume this Halloween.  Leg Avenue via their website announced earlier that they were awarded the exclusive Hot Topic license for Sailor Moon.  Hot Topic posted a behind-the-scenes video of their Halloween photo shoot last Friday on their Facebook page.  Fans can catch the first glimpse of the costume at 1:57, and a better one at 2:30 (pictured).   We had been notified earlier by one of our contacts that costumes were going to be on the way (and more) around the fourth quarter of this year, so to this early was a pleasant surprise.  What do you think of the costume? How many of our readers are going to get this the moment it hits the stores?

Otakon Panelists Zoob Hernandez, Meghan Hartigan, and Alex Fogarty.

If your taste in magical girl anime runs beyond Sailor Moon, then you’re probably familiar with Puella Magi Madoka Magica, the fabulously dark and inventive 13-episode series that aired earlier this year. Even though we didn’t get a dedicated Sailor Moon panel this year (Boo!), we did get something called “The Fine Print on the Contract: The Themes, Philosophies and Birth of a Legacy in Puella Magi Madoka Magica,” so I figured I’d check that out.

Unsurprisingly, Sailor Moon came up as a point of reference; as Madoka is considered a deconstruction of the Magical Girl genre (depending on who you ask, at any rate), it stands to reason that one of the series that helped codify the genre would come up. However, this comparison was to the detriment of Sailor Moon, as the panelists explained that they felt that the heroines in Madoka were much more empowered than the Senshi, who spent entirely too much time going gaga over Tuxedo Mask and acting like stereotypical females.

Is that a legitimate criticism of Sailor Moon? Or just a comment by someone who isn’t really familiar with the show? Honestly, we weren’t sure, so we caught up with panelist Alex Fogarty after the panel and asked him to clarify how he felt about our favorite magical girl series.

“I wasn’t trying to bash Sailor Moon, because it is a good anime…but honestly there are those points where it’s just *imitating the Senshi* ‘Aaaah! Tuxedo Mask!’ Nobody in this anime [Madoka] really does that,” he said, going on to say that nevertheless, Sailor Moon was a classic anime staple that he appreciates.

“[Sailor Moon] helped Madoka Magica to become what it is. Without Sailor Moon, I don’t think Madoka would exist,” he continued.

Okay guys, he gave Sailor Moon proper credit, so I think we can let him off the hook. However, I have found myself wondering ever since the panel whether or not the SM/Madoka comparison is a fair one or not. It’s true that the Senshi can get “girly” in a way that some viewers might find annoying or even offensive, but the twenty-year gap between the two series plays a large role- even with the “OMG Tuxedo Mask is dreamy!” interludes, Sailor Moon was (and still is) considered progressive in certain respects. Furthermore, the two shows were targeted at different audiences- Sailor Moon was intended primarily for girls younger than the Senshi themselves, while Madoka seems to have been targeted at an adult audience- specifically an otaku audience.

In my opinion, Fogarty is right; the heroines of Madoka are more empowered than the heroines in Sailor Moon. However, I honestly have no idea what, if anything, that’s indicative of. Has the portrayal of females in anime progressed? Or is it just a case of comparing apples to oranges? Feel free to enlighten me if you figure it out.

If nothing else though, the current popularity of Madoka may prove invigorating to the magical girl genre the same way that Usagi and co. were in the ’90s, and that’s something I think we can all get behind. I’m certainly excited to see what magical girl shows we’re going to get in a post-Madoka world.

I wish I could take some credit for this; I really do. I wish I could say I called up a bunch of epic-level cosplayers and said “Why don’t y’all dress up as the cast of Sailor Moon for Otakon 2011, INCLUDING Sailor Star Fighter and like five Sailor Neptunes ALONE, and I’ll take lots of pictures?” but no, that’s not how it went down. In reality, the cosplayers collaborated their own awesome photo shoot via the Cosplay.com forums, and we were just lucky enough to get a chance to partake of the greatness. Seriously, more power to these guys and gals for making this happen, I can’t praise them enough. My photographer and I did catch a few cosplayers in between downing Edo Sushi and salivating over original cels we couldn’t afford, but the majority of these images come from the shoot.

Maybe I can’t feel special for initiating this event for the Sailor Moon fan community since I was just a lucky bystander, but on the plus side, who cares about me? You have awesome cosplay to look at, including a downright scandalous amount of Sailor Neptunes! Hit the jump for a costume deluge.

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