Theatre Thursdays: Sailor Moon Musical 2014

Following the success of last summer’s La Reconquista, Sailor Moon will once again take to the stage in an all new musical production. This summer’s presentation is titled Petite Étrangere (“Little Stranger”) and will focus on the Black Moon arc of the manga, which makes up the latter portion of the anime’s second season. The majority of the La Reconquista cast has been confirmed to return. So far the only replacement is Koyama Momoyo, who’s stepping into the role of Sailor Mercury in place of Matsuura Miyabi.

Personally, this news makes me very excited. For starters, the fact that Yamato Yuuga is returning as Tuxedo Mask implies that this will be another all-female cast, which is great. Additionally, I am anxious to see how the cast has improved now that they’ve had so much experience working together and being on stage.

New Sailor Moon Fansub Group!

Attention all Moonies!

Hey everyone, guess what? There’s a brand-new Sailor Moon fansub group known as Sea of Serenity! There aren’t many active groups subtitling Sailor Moon these days, and even fewer who are exclusive to the series, so it’s awesome to see one pop up.

You wanna know what’s even more awesome? Sea of Serenity has made the musicals a priority and I am just ecstatic about it! While I am thankful to all the groups who have worked to subtitle the musicals, none have ever managed to complete the entire series. As such, the musicals have had a real lack of consistency in their translation and subtitling style. Sea of Serenity has made it their mission to get all the musicals subtitled and create the first complete, consistent translation of the whole of Sera Myu.

Because I’ve been having some computer troubles, I haven’t been able to download any of the videos from their site yet, but I’m fairly certain they are an evolution of a group who subbed a couple of musicals a few years ago and, if so, I really enjoyed their products. They’ve also got lyric translations available on their site, so even though I haven’t been able to watch their latest subs, I can still get a feel for their work, and I’m definitely a fan. In addition to translations, they also include the romaji so those of us who can’t read Japanese can sing along! This is one of my favorite features because I love singing along but sometimes can’t find the Romanization for a given song and have to go by ear. As you can imagine, this is not particularly accurate since I don’t know the language.

The site is brand new, so there are still quite a few empty sections, but what’s there so far is great. So far there are seven musicals fully subbed along with translator’s notes and even a karaoke option (I don’t know exactly how that works, but again, yay for singing along!); over 20 song translations; and some general info about the various incarnations of Sailor Moon (Manga, Anime, PGSM, etc.) which seems to imply they will be branching out from the musicals in the future.

I look forward to supporting this site as it grows and hope you will too!

Web Crush Wednesdays: Evan MacIsaac

Happy Wednesday! Today’s Web Crush is on a Sailor Moon fan who has carved out possibly the most unique niche for himself in the fandom. If you follow Sailor Moon blogs on Tumblr, chances are you’ve seen gifs of this fan—he’s the guy who makes music videos in construction paper cosplay:

Your Best Bets for Feminist Halloween Entertainment

Happy Halloween, everyone! All month long I’ve been talking about some of my favorite spooky entertainment and today I’m going to put together my ultimate entertainment recommendations for getting the feminist most out of your Halloween.

These are simply my opinions and based solely on things I’ve seen, so if something you love doesn’t make the list, let me know! Maybe I just haven’t seen it and can fall in love with something new.

Review: La Reconquista

After months of anticipation I finally got to view the new Sera Myu, La Reconquista. Though the official DVD is not yet available for purchase, it was possible to buy a “net ticket” and watch a streamed performance. These net tickets were only available to Japanese viewers, but thankfully various fans were able to work together to record the stream and subtitle it. Full credit to those involved, as well as the video download, can be found here.

So, what were my opinions? They are to be found under the cut!

First Performances from La Reconquista

As the opening day of La Reconquista draws nearer, the cast is making more and more appearances to promote the show. At a recent event, fans finally got to hear two of the new songs and see the cast in performance:

We are the Pretty Guardians

Web Crush Wednesdays: Meekakitty

Hello all, it’s time for another Web Crush dedicated to a lovely YouTuber. This week it’s Meekakitty, AKA Tessa.

I first came across Tessa when this video showed up in my recommendations on YouTube and I instantly liked her:

Yeah, hello, anyone who recreates the Sera Myu choreography (flawlessly, by the way) and performs every soldier’s part by herself is going to be pretty cool in my book. I kept coming back to this video for the dancing (again, flawless) and decided to check out what else she’d done since I could see she had a lot of videos uploaded and seemed like a fun and personable user.

As I started getting into Tessa’s videos, I saw a lot of interesting content. Many of the videos were intelligent, creative, funny, or (most often) a combination of the three.

She does a lot of music videos too, which are always fun to watch and are really well-made and fantastically edited:

With all this talent to be enjoyed, I very quickly subscribed to Tessa’s channel. I was a little bit overwhelmed by how many videos she’d made though and the close relationship she seemed to have with her followers. I was so intimidated, in fact, that I was hesitant to write about her as a Web Crush. She’s been uploading videos for years and I’ve only recently become a fan so I’m not really an authority on her or anything. The earliest video on her page is dated 2008, but according to the comments, it’s not actually her first video so I don’t even know how long she’s been YouTubing. I realized, though, that I don’t have to be an authority on something or someone in order to say that I like them and want to share it, so here I am, doing just that.

Currently, I believe Tessa and her creative partner Shawna (who appears frequently in her videos) are working on a film. I don’t know much about it, but I’m excited for it, because they are two very creative and talented young women. Even though I’m late to the Meekakitty party, I’m having a lovely time and I invite you to join as well, if you haven’t already.

In the name of the Myu, I will educate you!

AKA, “The Sera Myu Info Post”.

Since the Sailor Moon Musicals are coming back, I’m sure there are going to be new fans looking to get into them. As they have such an extensive history, however, this can be daunting so I thought I’d give an introduction to this wonderful incarnation of the Sailor Moon story.

I promise to be as coherent as I can, but even with all the restraint I possess I may just end up fanboying all over this post.

For starters, where do we get the title “Sera Myu”? It literally just comes from the term “Sailormoon Musical”, which in Japanese is pronounced “Seramuun Myuujikaru”, which fans have shortened to the term Sera Myu. Since the title of the series is usually written as one word (セーラームーン: Sailormoon) in Japanese, this term can be written either with or without the space between the two words. I usually put the space in since I’m used to the English standard of breaking the title into two words.

As I’ve mentioned previously, the musicals began in 1993 and were meant to end in 1997 when the anime concluded airing, as most anime musicals do. The shows experienced unprecedented success, however, and continued to produce 2–3 musicals each year before finally going on hiatus in 2005. These 2–3 shows usually consisted of one new musical, a revised version of that same musical (known as a “Kaiteiban”), and sometimes a special show like a concert or revue.

Since they ran for so long and mounted so many shows, the musicals are grouped into different “Stages” for organization purposes. The shows are officially divided into three stages, but most fans group the shows into four stages; one for each of the four actresses to play Sailor Moon over the course of the shows: Ohyama Anza (now known simply as ANZA), Hara Fumina, Kanbe Miyuki, and Kuroki Marina. By breaking down the Myu this way, they look like this:

Sailor Moon 2013 Updates #2

In an earlier post, I promised that I would keep posting updates for Sailor Moon‘s revival as I got them, so here we go with a few new bits of information!

New Anime:

The new anime is finally in production, according to Miss Dream, and should begin airing sometime between November and January. Personally, this news is disappointing after a year of being told the series would begin Summer 2013, but perhaps that was a mistranslation or misunderstanding. Maybe the show was meant to go into production in the summer and we all just jumped the gun in thinking that summer was meant to be the air-date.

Though to be honest, the new anime is barely even a concern of mine anymore when we have a…

New Musical:

So much news coming for this! The first images of the cast in costume have been released and they look great:

When the new musical was announced I knew that I wanted the costumes to be re-vamped but not fully overhauled and, assuming these will be the costumes they wear on stage, I’m very happy with the new designs. The overall look is much sleeker than the original versions:

These are the 1993 costumes, BTW. They improved quite a bit by the time the shows closed in 2005.

They’ve kept the double skirt, which I am very glad about, though for some reason Jupiter and Venus now have underskirts matching their main color rather than their accent color, which bothers me. The sailor collars are still flared at the shoulders but are less broad and dramatic, and there’s still a braided accent running vertically on the bodice.

Some of the changes: shinier, more plastic skirts which could be a plus depending on how they catch the light on stage or a detriment depending on their movement as they look heavier than the original materials. There are cleaner accents on the belts and shoulder pads which I love because those beads on the belts were always my absolute least-favorite aspect of the original designs. No beading on the skirts’ hems makes me less happy, though, because the way they sparkled in motion was magical in the old shows. They look to be using real boots instead of vinyl covers strapped to character shoes, which is nice, but the brooches are all identical, which is a bummer as I really liked the unique designs all the Sailors got before:

All in all, I’m very happy with the costumes. They’re better fitted and sleeker, but haven’t completely lost the old-school aesthetic.

We also know the title of the show now: La Reconquista. The title means “The Reconquest”, which could mean a few things. I’m guessing means that the show will be kind of like the original musical Gaiden Dark Kingdom Fukkatsu Hen in which the Dark Kingdom is revived and defeated after Sailor Moon’s first triumph over Queen Beryl, rather than being a strict retelling of the Dark Kingdom arc of the manga or anime. “The Reconquest”, however, could still refer to a more faithful manga/anime retelling if they give some focus to the Silver Millennium story and how the Sailors must once again beat the Dark Kingdom back. The title could even refer to the fact that the musicals themselves are back and are going to “reconquer” the theatre, and if this is the case, I hope it means they will continue making musicals for as long as they are successful like they did in the original run.

2013 may be more than halfway over, but things are just beginning to get started for Sailor Moon! I look forward to picking up as much information as I can in the coming months and compiling it here.

Sailor Moon Musicals Are Back!

Okay you guys, my computer was broken for about a week and a half at the beginning of June so I’ve been catching myself up on what I’ve missed out on in that time. Of course I ended up missing out on some of the most exciting news of the year:

Translation by Miss Dream

I mean, do you understand? Do you understand? The Sailor Moon Musical will once again be a thing that exists, not just on YouTube and in crazily expensive memorabilia shipped in from overseas, but as actual live theatre! I just can’t even compose myself right now.