The musical group La Soldier has secured the rights to perform the SeraMyu musicals in Germany. We have heard the leader of the group bought the rights for the first SeraMyu musical from her own savings. According to La Soldier’s website, the performances will be very similar to the original, except they will be performed in German.

The group’s premiere performance will take place in April 2012 in Hamburg. The premiere will take place on Saturday, April 7th at Theater an der Marschnerstraße, located at Marschnerstraße 46 – 22081 Hamburg beginning at 6 p.m. The premiere will include special guest star Yuuki Nanami of j-poprock.com singing in the show.

German fans can find more information about La Soldier’s appearances and performances on their website. We will also be keeping in touch with La Soldier and bring you more news about them in the coming months.

Great news out of France today from both a French manga news site, as well as a release! Moonies in France, mark your calendars for July 2012 – the renewal editions of Sailor Moon and Codename: Sailor V will be published by Pika Édition (as we predicted back in July).  It looks like their release schedule will mimic what we have seen in North America and other countries around the world, with the two titles being published simultaneously.  In about a week or so one of our staff members will contact Pika Édition’s distribution arm in Quebec to double check if the releases will be hitting Québécois Moonies (which they likely will, but we just want to make sure).

Sorry Moonies there weren’t any updates over the holidays. Not much has been going on and we’ve been busy preparing things we need to get going throughout this month.  More soon! Happy New Year – and 2012 WILL be a good year for Sailor Moon!

Hey Moonies! Yes, we all know there have been a lack of updates going on this site in the last few weeks. There really hasn’t been anything going on. There was a story from Japan recently about a TV Meteorologist who was inspired to be in her field because of Sailor Moon, and Sailor Moon Channel has new horoscopes posted.

And we couldn’t let this actor update go unnoticed at all – Keiko Han (Luna in both the anime and PGSM, Queen Beryl in the anime) and her daughter Megumi are keeping it in the family! Both are currently appearing in Madhouse’s retelling of Yoshihiro Togashi’s (Naoko Takeuchi’s husband) Hunter X Hunter! Megumi is in the leading role as Gon Freecss, and Keiko Han plays Mito Freecss, Gon’s adopted mother. Megumi was challenged on the first day of recording; while she was working alongside her mother, she still felt some of the pressure from her! She also said that her mother was surprised that she chose to follow in her footsteps, and initially didn’t consider voice acting a career until after she had started university. Oricon conducted an interview with the two of them which can be read here!

Junichi Sato (Director for Sailor Moon and Sailor Moon R seasons) will be making his first American convention appearance! He will appear at Ushicon 2012 in Austinn, Texas, from February 3-5th. For more information, check out the con’s official webpage here!

Hot Topic just recently introduced a new purple Sailor Moon T-shirt featuring Sailor Moon, Chibi-Usa, and Luna-P (or Rini and Luna Ball for you dubbies). Sailordees’ one sentence review: like the design, appeals to the younger fan in me, wish yet again this wasn’t so see through. The Sailor Moon Raglan is also back in stock. Oh, and Hot Topic now has a Sailor Moon Hoodie! Keep your eyes on the site though, the product has just launched and will probably be in stock very soon (fans do not worry, you didn’t miss this). This is a site we have on our daily radar that we check every morning and evening, and the hoodie was not listed this week.

While Hot Topic was the exclusive launch licensee for the T-shirts, FYE is now testing the sales of the T-shirts in their stores now. We contacted a representative of Hybrid Apparel yesterday, and learned that the two will always have different designs for t-shirts. But, if this test is successful then there could be potential to have Sailor Moon shirts at other retailers in the spring. Fans can check out images of the shirts posted at Sailor Moon Fans on Livejournal.

We are not sure that FYE was a wise decision. FYE has only 440 stores nationwide, of which the vast majority of them are concentrated in Eastern states. Hot Topic has 634 stores that are balanced a little more evenly throughout the US. FYE also doesn’t sell their shirts online, and we all know what the demand for these shirts are. It is hard to know if FYE’s success will match that of Hot Topic’s.

For those of you who read Anime News Network and didn’t read the posting on our Facebook page yesterday, here’s our correction reposted here.

“For those of you who have read this week’s ANN Answerman, there’s a major inaccuracy posted. “Dumbing it down even further, it’s a tangled, messy legal nightmare.” The “legal nightmare” is OVER – why else are we seeing anime-related merchandise?! There are only a few hands responsible for working the agreements for each territory, and they have come into fruition one at a time. It took a long time for these hands to reach North America. It will happen soon, major strides began in September. Once again, we invite ANN to stop talking about the rights to Sailor Moon in such a negative light, because you’re not doing the series any good with your words.”

And while we are still talking Sailor Moon politics: Italy isn’t getting the Artbooks. We don’t know any more details about this, but we do have a lot of questions. Did GP publishing ever have the rights, and did they say that they would publish them ahead of any contracts being signed? Were they pulled suddenly by Naoko Takeuchi/PNP? Did they disappear for the same reason that there will be no new toys there this holiday season? On the North America side, we can tell you that the companies are aware of fans’ demand for the artbooks. Until we hear a definite no, we will keep trying. And as far as the Mexico DVDs go? We haven’t been able to keep up with this – but please do your part to support Sailor Moon. Mexican Moonies, let us know if sales are still dwindling (Hey Cycyn, could you be so kind to send us an email to tell us what is going on? We miss you xoxo).

On the bright side, Sailor Moon’s trip to North America should have the absolute and complete go ahead to purchase her plane ticket very close to Christmas.  There should be news in 2012!

Edit: Here are some better pictures of the T-shirt designs being sold at FYE. Photos provided by Hybrid Apparel.

For any of our Swedish moonies who are awaiting a chance to watch Sailor Moon again, the first four episodes will be shown in Stockholm! “Animevolution: From Manga To Ganime” is an anime retrospective being held at the Kulturhuset in Stockholm. Toei Animation Europe will be screening first four episodes of Sailor Moon , as well as the Heart Catch Pretty Cure movie, and four hits from 2006-2007 (“Tori no Uta”, “Sekishoku Elegy”, “Highway Jenny” and “Dunwich Horror and other stories”). Swedish fans are encouraged to attend this festival to support the legacy of Toei Animation and of course, Sailor Moon!

Pauvre Groupe Glénat.  In a new interview from Krinein Magazine with the editors of Glénat manga from France, the company kept their promise to keep fans updated about the whereabouts of the Sailor Moon manga. It also stands to be mentioned that Glénat also had a distributing arm in Quebec, so many of their titles reached Canadian Francophone manga fans.   Here is our translation of the question and answer in English :

Sailor Moon:

Fan: It is Glénat who is the French editor of Sailor Moon and Sailor V, I would like to know why Sailor Moon is no longer in the Glénat manga catalogue, and also because the sales of the manga in Quebec are almost exhausted.

Glénat:  We promised to keep you all aware of the situation since the author has recovered all of the rights.  The answers are beginning to come to us, and unfortunately we will not be the publisher of the next version of Sailor Moon.  You will have to ask other editors to see who has won the contract.  Of course, this is a disappointment for us, but these are the rules of the game.

So the question now becomes, who does have the rights to the manga?  Our bet is that it might be Pika Édition, since they already have the rights to several other Kodansha titles including Negima, Shugo Chara, Tokyo Mew Mew, and Love Hina.  Pika Édition also has a distributing arm in Canada for Francophone manga fans.  But, this is all speculation until an official announcement is made.  France and Francophone fans should still rejoice – after a very long wait there is finally some movement on the Sailor Moon and Sailor V manga!