What do you get when you cross a American Rock Icon with a popular J-pop band? A rather interesting collaboration. Recently Momoiro Clover Z who is known for their song “Moon Pride” from Sailor Moon Crystal made a recent collaboration with Rock and Roll Hall of Famers and Rock Legends, KISS (who happen to be one of the authors favorite bands) to do a song and a recent music video of their new song “Yumeno Ukiyoni Saitemina” while KISS also made a song with them entitled “Samurai Son”.

In a video that was on youtube showed the two meeting as well as making the video as well as showing the girls judging by their body language and a video of them in KISS makeup as huge fans of the group and seemed both bands enjoyed working with one another on this collaboration.

For those who aren’t familiar with KISS, KISS is the band who has been around since 1973 and are well known for their over the top makeup, costumes, stage show and rocking tunes from “Detroit Rock City”, “Rock and Roll All Nite”, “Calling Dr. Love” to name a few. All these helped propel the band to becoming one of rock’s well known and famous icons today. During the bands last night of their Japanese leg of their tour in Japan at the Tokyo Dome their special guests will include Momoiro Clover Z on March 3rd.

For those who are curious, here is their music video for everyone’s viewing pleasure and also KISS themselves made their version of the song as well. Enjoy Moonies 🙂 : “Yumeno Ukiyoni Saitemina”

Coming January 28th (As of this article its now past) is the release of the recent Sera Myu Musical “Petite Étrangère” which came out in summer 2014 in Japan. For us Moonies out in the US, the musicals are unfortunately still out of our reach for actually attending unless you visit the country, but the DVD is the next best option in this case. The more recent musical is based off of the Sailor Moon R storyline that the upcoming Sailor Moon Crystal season will be covering (coming to a Crunchyroll source nearest you) which features the debut of Chibi Usa into the story along with Sailor Pluto, one of the Outer Senshi.

Extras include a behind the scenes making of feature that shows how the musical was made, a “party” video and commentary from the from some of the main cast of the show.

Currently the DVD is released at 8,424 Yen (70 dollars US) and was released the same time as Momoiro Clover Z’s new song “Yume no Ukiyo ni Saitemina” which is a song that was collaborated by Rock and Roll Hall of Famers, KISS. For those who are interested, the DVD is available on this link.

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

Breaking news coming from Viz Media’s camp. Viz is holding a special event this coming Friday at 11PM Eastern/8PM Pacific on Hulu and on Viz Media’s Youtube to live stream the first 4 episodes of the new redub to Sailor Moon. Viz as you may know this year acquired the US liscensing rights to the anime which includes Sailor Moon Crystal and the redub to the original anime.

Not only will Viz have the special stream, but during which they’ll be showing more info to the release of the redub and holding a photo contest which includes them giving away Sailor Moon swag and promo stuff for lucky contest winners.

All info for the stream will be on Viz Media’s Facebook page and info on the stream can be found there and on the streams twitter which is @sailor_moon_na including the link for the Youtube stream. To further help all you Moonies on the internet, Click Here for the Youtube stream that’s going to be shown on Friday or check your Hulu.

Source for pic: Viz Media