Sunday, September 06, 2009

BREAKING NEWS: Major Sailor Moon Channel Update Coming? And New DVDs!

Visitors heading towards Sailor Moon Channel will be greeted with the following message:


お知らせ

ただいまメンテナンスを行っております。

9月7日(月) 19時頃を目処にサービス再開予定ですので

ご利用の皆様には大変ご迷惑をおかけ致しますが、

何卒ご了承いただけますようお願い致します。

(C)NBGI


Translation:


Information

This site is undergoing maintenance at the moment.

We expect to resume service at 19:00 September 7th.

We are very sorry for the inconvenience.

We appreciate your patience!

(C)NBGI (Namco-Bandai Games Inc.)

This is roughly in about 4 hours from now, so we'll keep you updated first thing in the morning. We wonder if the layout will change? Maybe Naoko Takeuchi will have a new posting? Perhaps there will be some belated acknowledgment of the series' resurrection? Or maybe there could be no change at all?

EDIT: As of Monday, Sept. 7th, 2009, there was no change at all. Sorry for the false alarm!

We've also learned of some new DVDs, thanks to an email we just received from avid reader Ami-Chan! Toei announced these on September 1st via their online store, and the first half-boxset (episodes 1-24) will be released on December 11th. We'll be watching online stores over the next few days and we will provide you with links on where fans can order these. We will caution you though that these will probably not have any subtitles so be sure you have something handy to help you understand the episodes when you order these. And, the MSRP is ¥12,600 which works out to about $135 US. Which is... kind of a lot. We're hoping that if a dvd release is announced for North America it will not cost that much! These DVDs are only going to be produced until December of 2011, so if you are planning to get these, you only have two years! Maybe it's a little reassuring to know when Sailor Moon will disappear again? Nonetheless 2 years isn't a whole lot of time. These are likely going to be copies of the remastered DVDs which were released a few years ago (and these remastered episodes are currently airing on ANIMAX). Toei has also posted an image of what the inner jacket will look like, but sadly it looks like the audio will still be monaural and the video aspect ratio is only 4:3. But, anything is better than nothing, right? Toei has released the second cover and inner jacket pictures as well. This boxset will contain episodes 25-46 and will be released January 20th, 2010. We have them pictured for you below (sorry we couldn't find a bigger picture of the inner jackets). As of this writing, there is no word on the movies and specials, but it's probably safe to assume that they will be announced soon as well.

EDIT: The inner jackets will have some glittery foil on them :). And we found larger pictures of the inner jackets!

EDIT: We have high-res images of the first two volumes now thanks to ANIMAX!

Volume 1:

















Volume 2:















EDIT: It appears that Toei has set up a 20th anniversary page for Sailor Moon!
Maybe there is something bigger coming up ahead? All the covers and inner jackets are listed too!

6 comments:

Lauren said...

I have it as my homepage. Nothing has changed, except the picture at the homepage, which gets changed weekly.

I can't read Japanese, nor do I know of a translation site that gives a direct AND complete translation, so I haven't looked at the buttons or clicked on them to see if anything has changed.

esahC said...

It's rising pretty fast, but we're not THERE just yet. I'm still waiting on that new English dub for starters.

Debbie Anne said...

Why do you say "only 4:3"? This is the correct aspect ratio for Sailor Moon, as it was not produced for widescreen TV's. To put it in a widescreen format would require cropping off the tops and bottoms of the frames.

sailordees said...

I said only 4:3 because many fans were hoping for a widescreen release or something other than what was released before. Thanks Lauren, I noticed it now too :( sorry for the false alarm!

On the bright side, I am starting to put a list together of retailers, but I have to make a couple tiny edits to this article first.

Ohmstar said...

Wow, I can't wait! I only ever got the Japanese SuperS and Stars DVDs, and never got around to buying the rest. Now I'll probably sell my other sets off and get these! I would really like if they'd release a new movie set to go along with these, since the old movie box set is out of print. I think having three DVDs in no box next to these nice boxes would look a little silly.

sailordees said...

Yeah I'm surprised that they haven't listed anything for the movies yet. The covers they show on the page are really ugly compared to the others!