TV Shows On Home Video: Sailor Moon (1997-2024)

 Hey everyone! Happy New Year! How's it going? Did you all have a good holiday? Mine was interesting to say the least. I've got some great ideas for the blog in 2024. I've now been blogging for nine years and this year will lead up to my 10th anniversary as a blogger in 2025, while this blog is only a little over two years old at this point, so stay tuned for lots of cool stuff coming your way this year. Today I'm starting a series called TV Shows On Home Video. This is similar to what I did with Frosty the Snowman and Frosty Returns in December, but this time it's going to be on a much smaller scale. I'll talk about that more at the end of this post, but right now let's get into the first show I want to cover in this series, Sailor Moon, the original '90s Anime, both the original DIC/Cloverway English dub and the 2014 Viz Media English dub. So, let's get into it.

Premiering on YTV and Global on August 28th, 1995 in Canada and on UPN on September 11th, 1995 in the United States, Sailor Moon was a localized English dub version of the 1992 Anime series, Pretty Soldier Sailor Moon, dubbed and localized by DIC Entertainment, the company behind many cartoons in the '80s and '90s. The series was originally canceled on November 28th, 1995, after the first 25 episodes of season 2, Sailor Moon R, had been aired, which basically was the end of the original 65 episode package that DIC had licensed from Toei Animation. The remaining 17 episodes of the season would air from September 20th, 1997 to November 21st, 1997 in Canada and November 30th, 1998 to December 22nd, 1998 in the U.S.

After that the series went on another two year hiatus, until Cloverway Inc. began work on a new dub for the third season, Sailor Moon S. Unlike the DIC dub, Cloverway didn't edit very much out of the episodes, nor did they remove any episodes. They even kept the musical score and music cues from the original Japanese version, though they did retain the English names for the Sailor Scouts, Sailor Moon, and Tuxedo Mask, and they retained the show's original English dub logo as well. Sailor Moon S aired on YTV from September 12th, 2000 to April 14th, 2001 in Canada, and on Cartoon Network from June 12th, to August 1st, 2000 in the U.S.

Cloverway also dubbed the fourth season, Sailor Moon Super S as well, which aired from September 26th to November 16th, 2000 on Cartoon Network in the U.S. and from April 21st, 2001 to April 8th, 2002 on YTV in Canada. The fifth season was never dubbed by DIC or Cloverway, for reasons which are very apparent if you've ever seen Sailor Moon Sailor Stars, nor did it come to home video. The four seasons that were dubbed and localized had numerous home video releases over the last 27 years, so let's take a look at what came out and on what formats.

On April 30th, 1997 Buena Vista Home Video, the arm of Walt Disney Home Video that put out VHS releases of all of Disney's non-Disney produced shows and movies, released six volumes of Sailor Moon on VHS. Each volume contained two episodes per tape. Volume 1: A Moon Star is Born contained Episode 1, "A Moon Star is Born", and Episode 2, "Talk Radio", Volume 2: Scouts Unite! contained Episode 5, "Computer School Blues", and Episode 7, "An Uncharmed Life", which were the debuts of Sailor Mercury and Sailor Mars respectively, Volume 3: Evil Eyes contained Episode 9, "Cruise Blues", and Episode 14, "Shutter Bugged", Volume 4: Jupiter and Venus! contained Episode 21, "Jupiter Comes Thundering In", and Episode 29, "Sailor V Makes the Scene", which are the debuts of Sailor Jupiter and Sailor Venus respectively, Volume 5: Secret Identities contained Episode 30, "Crystal Clear Destiny" and Episode 31, "A Reluctant Princess", which completed the three episode arc that introduced Sailor Venus, revealed Sailor Moon and Tuxedo Mask's secret identities to each other, and revealed the identity of the Moon Princess, and Volume 6: Good Queen, Bad Queen contained Episode 39, "The Past Returns", and Episode 40, "Day of Destiny", which ended the season, revealed the full story of the fall of the Moon Kingdom to the Sailor Scouts, and saw the defeat of Queen Beryl by Princess Serena. 

On July 12th, 2000, Buena Vista Home Video released a four volume box set, called Sailor Moon: The Doom Tree Series, which contained the first 13 episodes of season 2 on VHS. The first volume contained four episodes while the remaining three volumes contained three episodes each. I don't think these volumes were available individually as the cover art of each volume is exactly the same across the board, though the backs have different artwork and the episodes titles on them. I could be wrong about that since I've never owned any of these VHS releases. I'm relying on the scans of each box to see what they look like.

From November 21, 2000 to March 13th, 2002, A.D.V. Films put out a twenty volume VHS set of the first two seasons of Sailor Moon, which was the DIC dub. Each tape had four episodes on it with Volumes 1-10 containing season 1 and Volumes 11-20 containing season 2.

From April 15th, 2002 to January 7th, 2003, A.D.V. Films also released the first two seasons of Sailor Moon on DVD. Because DVDs can hold more episodes per disc, the first Sailor Moon DVD run contains six episodes instead of four, so there are only fourteen volumes of this set than the 20 volumes that the corresponding VHS releases had.

 A.D.V. also put out the original Japanese, uncut/uncensored versions of seasons 1 and 2 on DVD. Season 1 was released on July 15th 2003 and season 2 was released on September 23rd, 2003. Both seasons had eight discs each. 

While A.D.V. was releasing the DIC dub on VHS and DVD, Pioneer Entertainment began releasing Sailor Moon S on VHS. This was a twelve volume set containing three to four episodes per tape.

At the same time, Pioneer had a corresponding DVD release to go along with the VHS's. While the VHS releases had the cut version, which was shown on YTV and Cartoon Network, they also included the original uncut versions of each episode on both VHS and on the DVDs. I'm not sure if the DVDs include the cut version or not. While the VHS's had 12 volumes the DVDs were six volumes. Both formats were released from February 6th to November 27th, 2001.

From January 29th, 2002 to May 13th 2003, Pioneer also released Sailor Moon Super S on VHS and DVD. The VHS releases were the final 13 volumes that Pioneer released, and there were only seven volumes of the DVDs. 

In 2014 Viz Media gained the license for all five seasons of Pretty Soldier Sailor Moon and promptly began working on a new English dub, which was the first time that Sailor Moon and Sailor Moon R would have an uncut/uncensored English dub containing all 46 episodes that aired in Japan. The season was released on DVD and Blu-ray in two parts. Part 1 was released on November 15th, 2014 and Part 2 was released on February 10th, 2015.

Sailor Moon R was released in 2015 with Part 1 released on July 14th, and Part 2 released on October 27th. Again, this release contained every episode, including the ones cut from the original English dub by DIC.

Sailor Moon S was released on DVD and Blu-ray with Part 1 coming out on November 15th, 2016 and Part 2 coming out on June 20th, 2017. Of course, by this time streaming had become a thing, so each part was also released on digital platforms such as iTunes, and streamed on Hulu and other streaming sites. It's also interesting that we actually got a Blu-ray release of Sailor Moon at all given that 2014 to 2017 were the major starting years for streaming with shows like House of Cards, Orange is the New Black, Marvel's Daredevil, and Stranger Things becoming massive hits on Netflix.

Sailor Moon Super S was released on DVD and Blu-ray in 2018 with Part 1 coming out on April 24th and Part 2 coming out on November 13th.

Sailor Moon Sailor Stars was released on DVD and Blu-ray in two parts in 2019. Part 1 came out on June 18th and Part 2 came out on November 12th. This is the first time that Stars had an English dub since Cloverway didn't adapt it in the mid-2000s following the end of Super S due to elements that really couldn't be explained away like how Zoycite was changed from a man to a woman in season 1 and Sailor Uranus's relationship with Sailor Neptune was...altered, shall we say, in S. And, again, it's incredible that we even got a physical release of Stars given how big streaming was with new streaming services like Disney+, HBO Max, and CBS All-Access (now Paramount+) being added to the mix in 2017 and 2019-2020. 

Beginning on June 14th, 2022, Viz began re-releasing Sailor Moon on Blu-ray in what the English Dub Sailor Moon Wiki refers to as budget Blu-ray releases. This was basically just the original two part Blu-ray sets released from 2014-2019 re-released as complete season sets, with improved picture quality. Super S and Stars have yet to be released, but Sailor Moon, R, and S have come out and Super S is scheduled to be released on January 30th, 2024, so we'll see if Viz announces a complete season set for Stars or not.

And that, my friends, was the history of Sailor Moon on home video. Like I said, I'm gonna do this for TV shows only. Also, I'm only doing this for shows that aired between 1949 and 2007 that I've seen and love. So I won't be covering any shows that I haven't seen or don't care about. The only show from after 2007 that I'm going to cover the home video history of is going to be The Goldbergs just because I'm fascinated by the history of that show on physical media. So that means I won't be covering any of the Arrowverse shows or the modern Star Trek shows or anything like that, because, for the most part it's the same thing for every show. Each season ends, and the studio puts out a DVD release and a Blu-ray release, with maybe a Steelbook Blu-ray release and that's it. The exception to that is a show like The Goldbergs, or The Orville, that only got released on DVD and not Blu-ray.

That's it for me for today, but I'll be back soon with a comic book review, and then Friday will be my first movie review of 2024 where I'll be reviewing the 2023 short cartoon, Once Upon a Studio. Despite not having access to Disney+ anymore, I'm still able to watch the short because Disney very kindly uploaded it onto the Walt Disney Animation Studios's official YouTube channel a few weeks ago. I've already watched it on Disney+ when it first dropped a few months ago, so I'm just watching it again to refresh my memory. So until then have a great evening and I will talk to you all later. Take care.