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A
few years ago, a great and talented Japanese artist named Takeuchi Naoko
designed a manga character known as SeraBuii (Sailor V), for a manga
called Codename: Sailor V.
Sailor
V was a blond-haired young teenager (named Aino Minako, whose written name
can be loosely interpreted as Love's Gold Star) with a magic talking cat
named Artemis. Her super-heroine outfit was a shorter version of her school
fuku (see left).
Sailor
V went around chasing guys and fighting evil, much like the first few adventures
of Sailormoon.
Now,
Codename: Sailor V never gained much popularity, and finally
Ms. Takeuchi came up with another character called Seramun (Sailormoon,
duh).
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Sailormoon (whose name is Tsukino
Usagi, or Bunny of the Moon) had a talking cat like Artemis, named
Luna, who starts her out with the super-heroine gig and teaches her a few
things. Along the way, she meets four other young teenage girls (all about
14 years of age) one of whom just happens to be the original Sailor V (now
known as Aino Minako, Sailorvenus). For some strange reason (it was probably
the extra characters but dont quote me on that) the Sailormoon manga (called
Bishuojo Senshi Sailormoon) exploded with popularity and they made an Anime
series based on it with the same name. They made three movies and a short
feature. The series became a great hit and ran for five seasons in a prime
time slot in japan.
Then the nightmare began.
It caught the eye of the
North American company DiC who bought rights for the show and created a
lame english version, changing most of the character names (even changing
the gender of Zoicite), fucking up the plot, while destroying the original
personalities of the characters. They figured since it was a cartoon, it
must be good for kids, so they marketed it and heavily pushed it on children,
putting it in an early morning timeslot. Needless to say, the show was
not successful in North America and they canceled it after the 65th episode,
about halfway into the second season. Sailormon fans everywhere urged procuders
to bring the show back on the air, but were unsuccessful. Finally the company
USA bought the 65 episodes (only God knows why) and aired them in another
early morning timeslot. DiC made 17 new episodes, shown in Canada but so
far not shown in the US. To me, it does not matter, since the English version
is extremely lame and is just a pathetic excuse for the original. For more
information, check out the pages created by the Man Himself, Hitoshi Doi:Bishoujo
Senshi Sailor Moon. For more details about how
shitty the english dub is, go here.
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