Sailor Moon

STUB

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Name:

Sailor Moon (美少女戦士セーラームーン bishoujo senshi seeraamuun)

Abbreviation(s):

SM, BSSM

Creator:

Naoko Takeuchi

Date(s):

manga 1991-1995, anime in Japan 1992-1997, live action in Japan 2003-2004

Medium:

Manga, Anime, live action TV series

Country of Origin:

Japan

External Links:

Click here for other articles related to this fandom on Fanlore.

1 The Fandom
2 Dubs, Subs and Fansubs
3 Fandubbing
4 English Dub vs. Original Names
5 Fanfiction
6 References

Sailor Moon, also known as Sailormoon or Bishōjo Senshi Sērā Mūn (sometimes translated as Pretty Soldier or Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon) was originally a shoujo manga created by Naoko Takeuchi. It's notable for being one of the first magical girl mangas that has a group of magical girls instead of just one. The manga has been adapted into an extremely popular anime, a stage musical, and a live-action tv series.

The Fandom

The English-language dub of the Sailor Moon anime is credited with bringing many new fans into anime fandom. [needs citation] The show reversed a common trope in many Western cartoons, where all the main characters are male with one token female. In Sailor Moon, all the main characters are female, with the "token male" being Sailor Moon's romantic interest. The show focused heavily on female friendships and "girl power," making it especially attractive to female fans who might have previously thought of anime as a "guy thing."

The usenet group alt.fan.sailor-moon was extremely active in the late nineties when Sailor Moon was airing in the US (and for some time after it had stopped airing.)

Dubs, Subs and Fansubs

The official dub went off the air in the US in 1996, after only 65 episodes, stopping abruptly in the middle of Season Two. New episodes would not be dubbed for almost two years, and then only 17 more, to finish off the season. Because of this, Sailor Moon was a popular title for fansubbing, where independent fan groups translate the dialogue themselves, and then synch the on-screen subtitles to the dialogue using a computer program. Most Sailor Moon fansubs were distributed on videotapes.

Fandubbing

The first commonly noticed fandub can be regarded as Mark Sprague's Sailor Moon S internet fandub, receiving international publicity on the Sailor Moon News Group. Mark's fandub prompted many others to produce similar productions of their favorite shows.

Following the advent of youtube, several fandubbing projects were conceived to deliver English-language content for Sailormoon fans of the only remaining undubbed season of the show, Sailor Stars. Two examples include projects by Fighter4Luv Productions and CrescentMoonzStudios.

English Dub vs. Original Names

Once the dub came out, there was a fair amount of confusion over what names to use. Purists insisted that only the original Japanese names and terms should be used in fanfic; fans who had come in through the dubs used the names from there. This question became even more complicated when ficcers using dub names wanted to write the characters that hadn't been introduced in the dub yet, such as the Outer Senshi. Some of these writers decided to keep the original Outer Senshi's names while using the dub names for the Inner Senshi; other writers invented new names for the Outer Senshi that felt like they could fit in the dubbed world. One such example is Mark, who has a chart for the character names he used. Haruka became Alexandra, Michiru became Michelle, and so forth.

Eventually consensus agreed that using dub names in fic was fine, provided that the author was at least consistent. Mixing dub and original names became a sign of sloppy writing in the fandom.

Fanfiction

One of the largest online fanfiction archives was A Sailormoon Romance, which was founded in the mid-nineties and succumbed to a server crash in 2007.

Naoko Takeuchi collects fanfic. In her authors notes, she encourages fans to continue writing fanfic for her universe. ^[1]