The Sailor Moon online community is quite possibly one of the most faithful fan groups in anime-dom. Some fans latch on to one anime for a while, then latch onto the next anime that comes along, and the next...

Other fans become attracted to one anime, then discover another and expand their aniem world to include the newcomer. I have found that Sailor Moon fans are mostly similar to this second type of fans. I have talked to a lot of Sailor Moon fans who, even when they have gotten away somewhat from the series and gone on to other animes, often they will say that they still like Sailor Moon.

Sailor Moon fans also tend to coalesce around certain opinions...even if those opinions contradict other opinions held by other SM fans. The DiC dub sucked. The DiC dub was okay to introduce new people to Sailor Moon. Cloverway did a better job than DiC.

And then there are the opinions on the individual characters.

One subject that has produced almost universal agreement was the unfortunate attempt by Saban to produce a hybrid anime - live action series. Almost all of the fans of Sailor Moon agree that this off-shoot of the series would have been a travesty, and it would have looked nothing like Naoko's original version of the series. PC multiculturalism, a-la Power Rangers would have descended upon the Sailors, and one of them would have even been cooped in a wheelchair.

It is because of Saban Moon that some fans are thankful for the DiC dub.

Recently, Alan Arnold of Animefringe Magazine conducted an interview with Rocky Solotoff, the president and founder of Toon Makers Inc. Solotoff wrote, directed, and produced the Saban Moon pilot episode.

The entire interview, page and all, has been reproduced for your convenience. In it, Arnold and Solotoff dicuss the controversy over this much-maligned hybrid series.

The Interview

Artemis

(comments welcome - please email me at [email protected] and I will post your comments here as well.)