Sandy Fox, the new voice of ChibiUsa/Sailor Chibimoon/Black Lady will be appearing at Otakon 2015, accompanied by her husband, Lex Lang (who is also a voice actor, best known for playing Han Solo in Star Wars video games and Sanoske Sagara in Rurouni Kenshin).

From the press release:

Fox began her career in voice acting with an array of voices for “The Simpsons,” “King of the Hill,” and “Futurama”. She is recognized for her unique and child-like voice, and in addition to her roles in “Sailor Moon Crystal” and “ALDNOAH.ZERO,” she has played Mina in “Naruto,” Cylindria in “Pacman’s Ghostly Adventures,” Peashy in “Hyperdimension Neptunia Victory,” and Flonne in the “Disgaea 4: A Promise Unforgotten” video games. She also voiced the faeries and creatures in Disney’s “Maleficent” and various characters in the blockbuster, “Wreck it Ralph.” Fox’s animation roles include Daisy in Disney’s “Princess Palace Pets,” Harmony in “Hi Hi Puffy AmiYumi,” T-AI in FOX’s “Transformers: Robots in Disguise,” Mipsy Mipson in Nickelodeon’s “As Told by Ginger,” and Melody in “My Life as a Teenage Robot.” She has also voiced legendary anime characters, including Mina and Momiji in “Naruto,” Himespetchi in “Tamagotchi,” Sumomo in “Chobits,” Flonne in “Disgaea,” Ritz in “Bleach,” Tachikoma in “Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex,” Marie in “Please Teacher!”, Kyoko in “Akira,” Mistral and Mirielle in “.HACK” and Paiway in “Vandread.” Fox has become internationally known, as well, for voicing Betty for Universal Studios and King Syndicate Features since 1991.

She is also co-founder of H2Om Water with Intention, Love Planet Productions and The Love Planet Foundation, a 501(c) non-profit which creates education and awareness for social and environmental issues.

To go along with some of our Classic Sailor Moon voice veterans Linda Ballantyne, Katie Griffin, and voice director John Stocker, Otakon has two more voice actors to add to the list. Sailor Moon’s new voice actress Stephanie Sheh will be attending the convention, as well as our new Tuxedo Mask, Robbie Daymond! See their press release here!

Otakon has also planned a Sailor Moon Saturday in partnership with Viz Media to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the show! To start, they are inviting cosplayers to attempt to break Anime Expo’s largest U.S. Sailor Moon gathering Saturday morning. Then in the afternoon, attendees will be treated to a preview of the new Classic dub, along with a Q&A with Stephanie Sheh and Robbie Daymond after the episodes are shown. Also, Otakon has stated that this event will feature two never before seen dubbed episodes! There will be an exclusive poster to go along with the Official Sailor Moon Autograph Session hosted at the convention too! Then in the evening, the first two Sailor Moon Crystal episodes will be screened to round off the day. For more details, see their press release here.

Viz Media will bring in some special items for the convention as well. These will be offered throughout the weekend at their booth in the Dealer’s Hall, but quantities are limited when they’re gone, they’re gone!

Our first item will be a limited edition Sailor Moon coin, in an exclusive color for Otakon. This coin can be earned by participating in the Sailor Moon Stamp Rally. Simply ask one of the Sailor Guardians at the Viz booth for a stamp card and then go off on your search to collect stamps and defeat the Dark Kingdom…And earn that fancy coin. Note: These will be handed out in a limited quantity per day.

The other exclusive Otakon product is a Sailor Moon T-shirt! It will be available in both ladies’ and men’s sizes (S, M, L, XL, XXL) and will feature metallic pink lettering on a “deep heather silver” 100% cotton shirt.

The third item is the aforementioned poster, which shall be given out for free at the Autograph Session and the Sailor Moon Panel. Once again, quantities are limited so be sure to get yours ASAP!

Fans in the Baltimore, Maryland area will be able to see Linda Ballantyne, Katie Griffin, and John Stocker at Otakon 2014, from August 8th-10th.

Otakon will be held at the Baltimore Convention Center in downtown Baltimore. To attend Otakon, you will need a weekend pass, currently being sold via their website at $80. Children 8 and under are free. They have an attendance cap of 35,000 people.

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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Author Roland Kelts

One of the most interesting panels I attended at Otakon this year was “Pop Culture From a Multipolar Japan,” hosted by Roland Kelts, author of Japanamerica: How Japanese Pop Culture Has Invaded the U.S. I read Japanamericarecently, so some of Kelts’ points were familiar to me, but hearing him explain in detail how anime reflects the crucial bases of Japanese culture was still enlightening.

However, I was a little surprised when he mentioned Sailor Moon as an example of Japan’s multipolarity. Basically, Kelts said that when the Emperor was revealed to be powerless at the end of World War II, the idea of a trustworthy father figure was taken from Japanese culture in a way it has never really recovered from- hence the “the great leader is actually corrupt” subtext present in many anime.

“I’m trying to get you to think a little bit about this idea that Japan is a multifarious, blender of a culture…a multipolar state because it lost its binaries. It lost its sense of a leader and a people…and so when you have these artists like Tezuka and subsequent generations- Otomo, etc.- writing about the world they live in, it’s much more multipolar in depiction that what you expect from, for example, U.S. popular culture. The superhero stories…instead you get the girls of Sailor Moon.

“You get teams, right? Groups of people who have to work off each other and figure things out. You don’t get the great leader. And if you do get the great leader, the great leader’s corrupt,” said Kelts.

In general terms, I believe Kelts is right- I think the popularity of team-based stories in Japanese culture has to do with the way Japan had to radically realign itself (and in some cases, have itself forcefully realigned by the U.S.) after WWII, including, but by no means limited to, the reduction of the Emperor from the leader of the nation to a powerless symbolic figure. However, how well does Sailor Moon fit his example?

After all, the Senshi may be a team, but Sailor Moon, a.k.a. the Princess, definitely emerges as the ultimate authority figure by the end, doesn’t she? And we all know the other Senshi were kind of useless anyway after Sailor Moon S (oh yeah, I went there! *rimshot*.)

The more I thought about it though, the more I realized that there were other parallels to the situation Kelts described in the story. In the first season, the Senshi are looking for the Princess, this sort of divine figure that will hopefully make sense of everything for them. And it turns out to be…Usagi, seemingly at that time the weakest and most immature out of the whole group. She may not have been corrupt (at least not until PGSM at any rate), but it’s still easy to see that plot point as an expression of the idea that the “great leader” will always ultimately be a disappointment.

And yet, in the end Usagi isn’t a disappointment, is she? Did the Japanese really give up on the idea of a leader figure, or did they just give up on the Confucian, patriarchal version? I think it’s the latter; I apologize if this all seems a bit out of character for this blog, but these are the kinds of questions considering Sailor Moon in a Japanese context, not just an entertainment context, leads you to ask.

Whether you agree with Kelt’s assertion that Sailor Moon is one example of Japan’s trend towards multipolarity post-WWII or not, I highly recommend Japanameria, even though Sailor Moon is only mentioned in passing in the book. It was written before the 2008 financial crisis, which means some aspects of the interplay between the U.S. and Japan have changed in the few short years since Kelts wrote it, but it’s still a great resource if you’re looking to understand why our favorite anime are the way they are.