She’s finally back after a long time with a new agent! Alisa Durbrow (Mio Kuroki in PGSM) has landed a leading role in a musical production called “Shinsaku GO!JET!GO!GO!ZERO”, which is a 90-minute show scheduled to run from December 18-December 26, 2010. Right now she is working very hard attending rehearsal lessons to nail down the song and dance routines, as she has had only two weeks of preparation time before her debut performance. There are three different groups performing this musical, and Alisa is part of the “B” Group. On the official page, anywhere that you see a ★, this means that after the shows there will be a fan event where fans can meet all of the stars that performed that day! For more details check out the top of her blog. She posted an entry few days ago, writing that she had some trouble dancing since she hadn’t danced for a long time and that practicing at home was a little hard (but we know she can do it!). Alisa’s fans will definitely not want to miss her acting in this musical! We managed to find an old trailer on YouTube from an earlier production of the musical that fans can watch here. Alisa is grateful for the support her fans have given her as they have helped her gain this role! She also sends her regards to all of her fans overseas! We here at Moon Chase send our biggest congratulations to Alisa and “Ganbatte” for this musical and beyond! Special thanks to the Durbrow family for telling us about this musical!

Alisa has also been modeling wedding dresses for Hula Creative Japan, a business that specializes in wedding and special occasion photos. She models a short dress and a beautiful pink orchid bouquet and headband all over the site, and some photos even feature her with a “pretend husband”. Alisa is the most stylish of all the model brides with her bouquet and cowboy boots! Hula Creative Japan offers lots of different packages for wedding dresses and kimonos (both of which are part of Japanese weddings). She is also modeling dresses for the December issue of Japan’s biggest wedding magazine, Zexy (Shikoku Edition only).

☃ Hey Moonies! We wanted to take this very quick opportunity in between our much needed holiday break to share are warmest wishes for the holiday season and the New Year to all our readers! As you can tell, we haven’t updated during this holiday season, and we are pretty much going to hit the reboot button come January since it’s becoming too much to bring everything we wanted to you all :(. We are currently working on better ways to solve this (such as, not letting my computers get trashed over and over!). We didn’t get around to doing a Christmas special set of posts this year, but we’ll link you to last year’s!

♨ While we would have really appreciated some sun since it is colder than usual in our parts of the world this year, we got the biggest present already – and it’s each and every one of you! Fans gave us a lot this year that we didn’t expect – from announcements of our major news stories at cons, to links on other websites, to the several emails of how much you enjoyed reading our site. Every day that I check the stats I am always surprised to see where all our readers are coming from all over the world – it astounds me that Sailor Moon had such an international audience beyond what any of us ever knew and especially how much support there were for the stars! The day we hit 50,000 hits , we finally realized that we did actually have a place among all you fans which was something that we struggled with from day 1. We didn’t know how this project was going to be received when I first planned it out with my staff and friends, and the support has been overwhelming. We thank all of you for that – this was a record year for the site and we owe it all to you!

Nonetheless, we know some of you are waiting to hear at least SOME NEWS…

☽ We have some very exclusive Alisa Durbrow (Kuroki Mio) news which has come to us all the way from her family in Japan (Domo Arigato Ed and Yukari Durbrow)! We were a little concerned when we didn’t see any mention of Alisa on Junes Agency pages and thought she might have quit the entertainment industry altogether (though her blog still remained). Ed and Yukari told us that Alisa parted ways with her agency in September – she had been with them for 13 years and she wanted to “graduate” and look for an agency that she can do some more music with, among other ventures! In our last post about her, we featured some old songs of hers from when she was much younger (and way before her PGSM time) and we all agreed that she is multitalented – she can sing, act, and model! We were relieved to know that we have not seen the last of her, and ecstatic to learn that she is practicing with her band and getting better at playing her guitar! She is still getting some modeling jobs directly from stylists at magazines. Ed and Yuriko shared this with us too (and we quote): “She thanks very much the fans who supported her for a long time. She hopes to see them when she get a new agency some day.” We look forward to seeing you too Alisa and we really hope to hear more about your band some day!

☽ While Toei’s OnDemand service in North America still doesn’t have as many series as any of us wanted to see, their Japanese counterpart AniBB, continues to do well. On December 17th, they added a new plan allowing for unlimited views a month for ¥ 998 (about $11.04 USD) , and they have thrown the first month in this plan for free! Toei, we really want to see Sailor Moon here in the new year. Please bring it back to North America in 2009! Speaking of Sailor Moon, the “lost” season (Sailor Stars) made it’s way into the article Top Five Things Anime Companies Did Wrong in 2008 under incomplete releases. And we have to agree with every one of their points.

☽ And we have a couple video links for you! CBS has done a really good job with their promotion for Flashpoint which will be returning in January, and Sailor Moon fan CloverPhuu has made a wonderful AMV of Usagi/Serena and Mamoru/Darien to Amy Jo Johnson’s Dancing in Between which was used at the end of the episode Attention Shoppers. Enjoy!

We’ve uncovered some very old Alisa Durbrow (Kuroki Mio in PGSM) videos! We’re not sure how old some of these are, but they are from a variety show where kids would sing Japanese covers of English Hits! We think you will all enjoy these!

Alisa sings Van Halen’s Jump

Alisa sings Michael Jackson’s Thriller

Alisa sings Billy Joel’s For the Longest Time

Alisa sings Big Smile Babies (we think this is an original Japanese tune)

As for what Alisa is up to nowadays, in mid-july she modeled some wedding dresses for a bridal magazine.