Greetings fellow moonies! I have some good news to report on the career of Shoko Nakagawa. The famous multimedia personality, who has ties to Sailor Moon thanks to her portrayal of Diana in the recently aired “Crystal” series (and is an overall fan of the series), has landed a new hosting role on the TV show “Shumi Doki” (an educational variety TV show on Japan’s NHK E channel).

“Shumi Doki” is a well-known program in Japan that allows its viewers to examine various pastimes, and it will be offering a new segment on a cram school featuring prominent anime voice actors, who will cameo on the show as instructors. Nakagawa will play the class president and host the segment, and the talent that appears on the show will make voice acting an attractive career choice for viewers who watch. The Anime Voice Actors segment will air over the months of August and September, and will examine the occupation in depth with the help of a variety of professionals who have made a career out of voice acting. Masako Katsuki, who voiced Sailor Neptune in the original classic Sailor Moon anime series, will be appearing on the episode that is airing on September 15, 2015. Former Sailor Moon voice actors who have appeared on previous episodes of the show include Akira Kamiya (the voice of Dr. Souichi Tomoe) and Shigeru Chiba (who appears in SuperS episode 145 as Kurumiwario). In July, NHK published a book full of the voice actors’ tips and techniques to compliment the segments airing on TV. Masako Katsuki has been acting since 1982, and among a long list of achievements has also provided the japanese dub voices of Julia Roberts, Sharon Stone, and Jodie Foster.  She has also served as a lecturer in voice actor courses at Tokyo Animation College.  It seems that some clips of previous episodes have made their way to YouTube, and we will update this post with a link when we find one.

Greetings Moonies! Moon Chase followers may have noticed that there have not been a lot of site updates lately, and there have been a lot of good reasons for this. The site move did not go as smoothly as originally anticipated, and Sailordees has been busy with graduate school for most of the summer, so any opportunity for vacation time has been treasured as an opportunity to distance herself from recent events. During this last week, something new has come up in her life that will command immediate attention, so unfortunately there will not be as intense of a coverage of the new musical productions as there might have been in the past. Moon Chase does have translators lined up for the magazine articles; however Sailordees has been so busy that there has been no tine to scan them. We at Moon Chase sincerely apologize for this, but this matter is extremely important and will require devotion without any outside distractions so we hope you can all understand. Please do note that, that if there is a major development in the world of Sailor Moon, the staff will keep you updated.

Regarding our site move, we would like to receive feedback regarding any problems, or if there any noticeable differences between the two servers. There have also been some database issues that the Me has been tackling for a few weeks and which Sailordees was able to fix up last night. Some user names have been lost and/or denied, so if you can’t login please re-register and then send us your username and e-mail address so that we can approve you faster. We have a brand new captcha to help us in our efforts to neutralize spam registrations. Users have to play a series of short and simple games to prove they are human. If the flash game doesn’t load, please refresh your browser. For those of you who do have accounts (or will have accounts), please upload an avatar, or add something to your profile to distinguish yourself from a generic user, so if we have to do another overhaul, you are less likely to look like a spammer. We have not heard of any issues so far with the ban script since the move, but if you are banned please let us know via our email at moonchasers@gmail.com.

And finally, we are looking for anyone who is well-versed with working with WordPress and scripting in PHP. This will be the only person on the Moon Chase team that is not required to write articles. We need someone who will help keep things running and fix them when they aren’t working, and occasionally deal with user concerns with registration and banning.  If you are someone who is looking to get into web development or has turned working with WordPress into a hobby, and would like the chance to work with us, please let us know via email.

A few weeks ago, Sailordees posed some questions that the Moon Chase staff and fans had to our contact at Bluefin/Tamashii Nations North America about the upcoming Sailor Moon figures. Here are the questions that were asked and the answers that we received:

MC: When approximately will Sailor Mars, Jupiter and Venus be up for order in North America?

B/TNUSA: Generally, the pre-order window begins about 3-4 months before the month of release.

MC: Will there be an Artemis figure included with Sailor Venus?

B/TNUSA: Likely, however that information is unavailable at this time given that figure’s release’s is still far away.

MC: Is there a Tuxedo Mask figure in the pipeline or are there only the heroines being produced?

B/TNUSA: That cannot be answered at this time.

MC: Will the SD/Chibi keychains be available in North America or are those Japanese exclusives?

B/TNUSA: The keychain doesn’t appear to be made by Tamashii Nations, therefore I can’t answer that

MC: Do you know if there is a Sailor V figure being planned?

B/TNUSA: That cannot be answered at this time.

MC:. Do you know of other figures being planned, such as the Outer Senshi (Sailors Neptune, Uranus, Pluto, and fan-favorite Saturn) or Princess Serenity?

B/TNUSA:  That cannot be answered at this time.

MC:  Do you know if either Bluefin/Tamashii Nations, or any other North American company affiliated with Bandai Entertainment will be releasing any of the Japanese Premium Bandai products in North America?

B/TNUSA: The Bandai Premium situation is somewhat complicated, we for example are selling only a select number of Premium items such as those from Dragon Ball Z or Godzilla or Power Rangers/Sentai based on demand.  If there are S.H. Figuarts Sailor Moon items from the Premium Bandai shop (Tamashii Web Store) we will have those available for the U.S. as well.

There is more news regarding the new S.H. Figuarts Sailor Moon  figures, as pictures of the final finished figure for Sailor Moon have been released. Please click here to see pictures of the figure!

Greetings moonies! We really apologize for the shutdown of the kwiksurveys server over the last week that put a halt to our fourth version of the merchandise survey. The website breakdown completely caught the staff at Moon Chase off guard, and it has been very tough trying to get a hold of their technical support staff – while the problem was being fixed, some of our e-mails went completely unanswered. Also, please note that we were not the only website affected by the shutdown over the last week, and that some of the other websites affected have had a similar experience with the kwiksurveys staff.

We lost quite a few surveys as a result of the shutdown, plus it’s hard to find any patterns with the information that was saved – the lost surveys were completely at random. So whether or not you have taken the survey before the kwiksurveys crash, could you please take it again? We especially need comments on the last two t-shirts (Q and R) that were released – their release was the primary reason we decided on a fourth version of the survey, and they will need fair representation on our final report to the merchandising companies involved.

Hello moonies! We are really close to the end! We are really pleased that you have continued to keep the surveys coming in. We do have one concern however, and that is the impression that the survey is for people who have bought merchandise and are responding to their purchases. We would like to remind fans that the survey is for everyone, and we would also like to hear from fans who have not bought any merchandise to find out what their opinions are so we can pass them on.

We have now launched a third version of the survey for fans to fill out. We revised the survey again to include some of the most recent merchandise additions (like the new Sailor Uranus t-shirt). We hope to have several more comments on that t-shirt, so it is around the same as the others (which have hundreds each). We did not get as many comments on our Facebook photo as we had hoped. This photo has now been deleted (but all of your comments have been saved and retained, and they will count when we do our final tally). For those fans who wish to have the prices handy as they fill out the survey, they are as follows (note that all of these products are manufactured by Hybrid Apparel, except for the costume which is manufactured by Leg Avenue):

T-Shirts – Hot Topic prices start at $22.50

T-Shirts – FYE prices start at $16.99

Hoodies – Hot Topic prices start at $49.50

Long Sleeved Raglan Shirts – Hot Topic prices start at $26.50

Costume – Hot Topic prices start at $60.00

We have also revised the survey to include these prices for the fans to make it easier for them as they fill it out.

Right now, the current merchandise releases are the only items that are licensed for the anime versions of the Sailor Moon characters. We are aware that fans are tired of seeing merchandise without the anime at this point – we understand the situation and we do welcome comments on the very last question with respect to this. Please make sure not to specifically ask for aspects of the anime’s release (such as on DVD/BD, TV, actors etc.). We have already completed many surveys to show that there is heavy demand for it as well as what formats the anime should be released on. However, it is okay to comment that you are not motivated to buy anything because the anime has not been re-released yet. Overall, this survey will speak volumes on what is working and not working in respects to the merchandise, so once again we would like to ask Sailor Moon fans to take it!