Since my last post about Theodore Jefferson’s upcoming book about Sailor Moon, I was able to reach him via email to get a few more details. We’re also planning an interview after his campaign closes, so any questions you still have about The Incredible Untold Story of Sailor Moon can be sent in and we will include them in our interview!

For those of you wondering how this will differ from Roland Parliament’s Sailor Moon Reflections, here’s what Theodore has to say about the focus of his upcoming book:

My thesis is that were it not for Sailor Moon, the entertainment market of the last 25 years would have been very different. I plan to interview many of the people involved in the show’s production, including Andy Heyward and Naoko Takeuchi (if possible). My book highlights DIC’s enormous risk in bringing Sailor Moon to the U.S. and how it paid off.

I want to trace the timeline of the show from the early 90s and the Golden Age through the early 2000s (silver age) up to the present day. My book is the story of how Sailor Moon influenced animation, games and comics, and what the show meant to American culture and how American fans influenced the Japanese version.

In short, Theodore’s book will focus more on Sailor Moon‘s influence on modern pop-culture and the entertainment industry, whereas Roland’s books focuses on how the voice cast and dubbing staff brought life to the characters as well as how the English dub was produced. There are definitely aspects in both books that will appeal to fans, so we recommend checking them out to see if they are of interest to you.

Theodore also sent me the link for his original Reddit thread, where he has added a draft of the first chapter.

And here is an audio clip of an excerpt of that prologue:

The Reddit thread also includes an extended chapter list:

• C’est La Vie is Japanese for Superhero
• Five is a Magic Number: Nakayoshi, TV Asahi and The Golden Age
• The Fuse is Lit: Nine Hundred Million Reasons To Read Backwards
• Never Running from a Real Fight: The Deal
• Grain Futures Don’t Sell Action Figures: Syndication
• Save Our Sailors: The Internet Wars
• Clash of the Titans: Carl Icahn Defeats the Negaverse
• The Lewis and Clark of Anime: How a Card Game Vanquished Denmark
• This One Goes Out To All The Ladies: Toonami and The Silver Age
• The Wait is Over: Sailor Moon Saves the World
• Along Came a Spider: What a Difference Forty Years Makes
• Honors and Privileges: Italian Sports Cars and a Plush Toy Cat
• That’s Teamwork: My Little Incredibles
• Avenged: The Senshi Initiative
• Forty Billion Dollar Tiara: From Princess to Empress
• The Undiscovered Country: The Queen has Returned
• Bonus Chapters:
  • Naoko Takeuchi: The Rabbit on the Moon
  • Andy Heyward: The World of DIC
  • Al Kahn: Monster Man
  • Brad Bird: Mister Incredible
  • Lauren Faust: The Power of Friendship
  • The Original Japanese Voice Cast in their own words
  • The Original American Voice Cast in their own words
  • The Original American Musicians in their own words
  • The Live Action Television Cast in their own words

And here’s a list of some of the key people Theodore would like to interview:

• Naoko Takeuchi – Creator of Sailor Moon
• Andy Heyward – CEO of DIC Entertainment
• Haim Saban – CEO of Saban Entertainment, bid for the Sailor Moon license in the mid-90s
• Sawai Miyuu – Actress who portrayed Sailor Moon in the live action series
• Mitsuishi Kotono – Voice Actress for Usagi Tsukino in both anime series
• Ryan Gagerman – Licensing Executive at DIC Entertainment
• Keiko Kitagawa – Actress who portrayed Sailor Mars in the live action series
• Paolo Casarini – Head of Backstage Licensing, Italian licensee for the original anime series
• Kenji Ebato – U.S. Executive at Toei Animation
• Al Kahn – CEO of 4Kids Entertainment (now 4Licensing Corporation), licensee of the Pokemon franchise
• George Irwin – owner of Irwin Toy
• Mark C. Mackinnon – founder of Guardians of Order (which had a successful Sailor Moon RPG game)

Canadian fans may also be interested to hear that there will be inclusion of some details about the history of the original syndication deal with YTV.

If you are interested in contributing to the crowdfunding campaign, you can do so at Theodore’s official fundraising campaign page.When there are 100 funders (only one more to reach that goal!), everyone gets a bonus perk and if $4000 is raised, there will be an audiobook version. The campaign is currently sitting at $3596. You can contribute as little as $5 to get your name included in the book as a thank you for your contribution.

We recently received this press release about a new Sailor Moon book in the making entitled The Incredible Untold Story of Sailor Moon:

For Immediate Release, November 6th, 2014

http://moon.sablewolf.net

The Incredible Untold Story of Sailor Moon will be the definitive history of the world-famous television series and manga in the United States.

The book is being written by author Theodore Jefferson, a professional journalist and former marketing consultant for DIC Entertainment.  A crowdfunding campaign for e-book and print versions reached its goal in 12 days.  It is now well on its way to funding an audiobook version.

Mr. Jefferson will bring together numerous sources, including interviews with animation industry colleagues, national correspondents, key entertainment executives and bestselling authors to paint a picture of Sailor Moon that will astonish even long-time fans of the show.

Everyone who reads The Incredible Untold Story of Sailor Moon, including Sailor Moon’s creators, will learn things about the characters they never knew before.

Sailor Moon changed the world.  This book will explain how and why.

Fans may also be interested in watching Theodore Jefferson’s promotional video about his take on the behind-the-scenes aspects of Sailor Moon‘s success:

The Indigogo crowdfunding page for the book includes some additional details:

• Author Theodore Jefferson is a former marketing consultant for DiC Entertainment and will be writing the book with editor Larissa Kayne
• The book will include interviews with various people who worked to bring Sailor Moon to English speaking audiences
• Contributors to the crowdfunding effort can get their name in the book and will be able to suggest a question for interviewees
• The crowdfunding campaign has reached the goal for a printed edition, but is still open and climbing toward the goal for an audiobook edition

Here is the proposed list of chapters for the book (this is expanding on the @sailrmoonuntold Twitter feed as more donations come in):

• C’est La Vie is Japanese for Superhero
• Five is a Magic Number: Nakayoshi, TV Asahi and The Golden Age
• The Fuse is Lit: Nine Hundred Million Reasons To Read Backwards
• Never Running from a Real Fight: The Deal
• Grain Futures Don’t Sell Action Figures: Syndication
• Save Our Sailors: The Internet Wars
• Clash of the Titans: Carl Icahn Defeats the Negaverse
• The Lewis and Clark of Anime: How a Card Game Vanquished Denmark
• This One Goes Out To All The Ladies: Toonami and The Silver Age
• The Wait is Over: Sailor Moon Saves the World
• Along Came a Spider: What a Difference Forty Years Makes
• Honors and Privileges: Italian Sports Cars and a Plush Toy Cat
• That’s Teamwork: My Little Incredibles
• Avenged: The Senshi Initiative
• Forty Billion Dollar Tiara: From Princess to Empress
• The Undiscovered Country: The Queen has Returned
• Andy Heyward: The World of DIC
• Al Kahn: Monster Man
• Brad Bird: Mister Incredible

And here is an excerpt from the book:

You can also follow updates about this book via editor Larissa Kayne’s Twitter account and the @sailrmoonuntold Twitter feed.

Fans interested in this book, which will be more industry focused (and primarily US centric based on the descriptions), may also be interested in Roland Parliament’s recently published Sailor Moon Reflections which is more focused on the acting, directing, and recording aspects of the first 65 dubbed episodes of Sailor Moon. Links for purchasing Roland’s book on Amazon are in the sidebar to the right.

We will be keeping an eye on this one and let you know more details as they come in about how this book can give you a more in-depth view of Sailor Moon‘s beginnings in the US and Canada.

There are some fantastic Sailor Moon cosplayers at Otakon this year- there's more where this came from.

Last year, Otakon featured a panal called, “The World of Sailor Moon,” hosted by Yosenex of Genvid.com. This year, it seems like con organizers made an attempt to streamline the schedule, and one of the casualties was our dedicated Sailor Moon panel.

Instead, two fandoms were put together into one panel, run by college students Tina Maiese and Brandon Auman, who covered SM and Dragonball Z, respectively. While the hosts were friendly and the crowd was enthusiastic, this combo panel seemed to occur at the expense of SM fans- about 75% of the panel ended up being devoted to DBZ.
Read the rest of this entry »

Since there has been a lot of gloom around the Sailor Moon fandom lately, I decided to have a little fun and see if any of the fans had noticed that there is a connection to Sailor Moon amongst the fallout of the recent scandal involving the “Terminated” Arnold Schwarzennegger. Yes, we all know now he kept his love child a secret for 13 years, but our connection has nothing to do with any of his legitimate or illegitimate family. I gave the fans a few hints via our Facebook page:

1. Staff on English dub of Sailor Moon
2+3. Has something to do with Arnold’s other announcement made during the fallout of this week’s scandal. Nothing to do with the kid or the maid.
4. (Because I am feeling nice). This staff member has a tag on Moon Chase. Said staff member was written about within the last year (as of this date).

Lots of you tried to search for Arnold’s name on our blog and turned up nothing! I was actually a little surprised that no one got this. Without further delay, here is your answer.

Andy Heyward

Who is Andy Heyward? Before his current venture of A Squared Entertainment, he was the former CEO and founder of DiC Entertainment. DiC Entertainment was the production company responsible for the first two seasons. Andy Heyward also served as Executive Producer for Sailor Moon. How does this all connect, you ask? Easy.

This is how I came to know about it. I just happened to have CNN on when the news broke that Arnold was putting a halt to his acting career, but then I got distracted by a phone call from a friend. I had missed the news, so I went to CNN’s site to read the rest of the story. To my surprise, I read the name “A Squared”, and a lightbulb went off in my head. Oh yeah, thats’ Andy Heyward’s new production company devoted to making cheezy and tacky cartoons based on prominent celebrities. For those of you that haven’t seen trailer for The Governator, here’s your link. Aren’t you glad this is being shelved? We sure are. And here’s hoping it never gets taken off that shelf again because if we were kids, we wouldn’t have watched this crap. And is it us or does Arnie look a little too square/boxy? Would you have watched this toon as a kid?

Hope this brought a smile to your faces – and if you want me to share more random obscure connections to Sailor Moon as I encounter them, let me know and I shall post!

When possible, we here at Moon Chase try to keep fans updated with where the staff behind Sailor Moon is today. This update focuses on Andy Heyward, the former CEO and founder of DiC Entertainment, which was the production company responsible for the first two seasons. Back in the 80s and 90s, DiC was the name in hit cartoons for children, with big shows like Inspector Gadget, Care Bears, Rainbow Brite, The Real Ghostbusters, the Legend of Zelda, Super Mario Brothers Super Show, and countless others. So, with such a legend in children’s broadcasting, to studios back during the time that Sailor Moon first came along it looked like if DiC had a show, it would be a hit. Of course though, poor Sailor Moon did not have such a smooth run the first time – and fans can check out our first survey results which show how much the fans appreciated the work Andy did for the series. He only got 15% of the fans’ votes! In 2008, the company was folded into Canada’s Cookie Jar Entertainment, and Andy Heyward was left with (supposedly) nothing to do (as the article suggests).

Last year, a press release we came across during the early stages of our campaign told us that Andy was back in action with a brand new company creating webtoons cetnered around celebrities for kids. A few of our staff members questioned some of the ideas that were being tossed around (Gisele Bundchen will never come close to Captain Planet, and we would have gone crazy watching perfect Martha Stewart and her perfect crafts in cartoon form). In this weekend’s USA Today, he is featured once again now that some of his cartoons have come to life. The article has the bit of an air of a “puff piece” to it, and we find it interesting that it drops the name Sailor Moon twice, without really mentioning how and why DiC didn’t produce the movies or the 3rd & 4th seasons of the show. The video has a tiny glimpse of Sailor Moon as well – can you spot it in our shot above? We’re pretty sure that while it was one of DiC’s biggest successes, it was also one of it’s biggest failures due to mismanagement. In the video on the USA Today site, he talks about how there is an opportunity for a strong girl’s property in the wake of the imminent “death” of Barbie and Bratz. How many Moonies are with me that Sailor Moon could kick Gisele’s butt any day? Who would you rather watch?

His new cartoons are cross-platform making apperances on the web, TV (on The Hub) as well as comics. While we admire Andy for choosing to start fresh, it’s our opinion that the shows he’s workin’ on today don’t have the same kind of appeal as the shows he worked on for DiC. Yes, we are in a recession but do kids really need to be learning lessons from Warren Buffet at an early age, or should we let their imaginations run through a world of fantasy for a few years while they still can?

(So the article sort of sanitized something with regards to the sale of DiC: there are many rumors swirling around Hollywood that his divorce to Evelyn Heyward as a result of an extramarital affair had something to do with it. One doesn’t have to look too far on the web to learn about it. We also don’t buy the comment about him never having worked so hard in his life – the cartoons he is working on now are only a fraction of what he did 20 years ago. We’ve known about this for a few years now but kept it in our Moon Chase files for pondering…Oh Sailor Moon, so many scandals behind your scenes…)