15 years ago today, on March 7th 1992, the first episode of Sailor Moon, “Crybaby Usagi’s Magnificent Transformation”, aired for the first time in Japan. The series spanned 200 episodes until it’s finale on February 8th 1997. It also spawned 3 theatrical movies, 2 specials, musicals, videos games and an immense assortment of merchandise.

Sailor Moon was based on a Manga series by the same name which began appearing in Nakayoshi in December 1991, 4 months before the premiere of the show, and ran for 52 acts over a span of 5 years.

At its prime Sailor Moon saw great success worldwide as it was broadcast and published in nearly every country in the world. In the mid 90s you’d be hard pressed to go very far without seing some sort of Sailor Moon merchandise. It was likely the most internationally widespread franchise of it’s time. Sailor Moon herself is one of the most popular fictional characters ever, up there with such greats as Santa Claus, Superman and Jesus.

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Transformers Ultimate Bumblebee in action. All this can be yours for only ninety US dollars.

Theres a lot of ground to cover here, with 2 days of the show already come and gone… [Read the rest of this entry…]

I should really know better than to get excited about a video game based on anime, but Lupin is one of those characters and shows I have an endless supply of affection for. Look Inspector Zenigata is playable!

I should really grow my sideburns out again.

Probably not. Like 99% probably not and that’s me being optimistic. Regardless this unreliable source is reporting that there is an English live action Sailor Moon movie in the works and that “one of the major movie studios” is trying to get Joss Whedon to direct. The article goes on to reveal the most absurb cast including a mix of people who are too good for such a role to people I’ve never even heard of. This cast sounds just like any other random idiot’s “Who would you cast in a live action Sailor Moon movie?” list which I must admit I’ve read and written far too many of.

This is not the first rumour of a live action Sailor Moon movie. About 10 years ago you couldn’t go long before hearing about Geena Davis‘s Sailor Moon movie she was set to star in as Queen Beryl. Since then such rumours occasionally resurface in one form or another.

So why am I telling you this? Because someone said it. Because it’s probably fake but it’s of interest. Because when they first announced the Japanese live action series I was 99+% sure it was fake.

I guess now we just have to wait for some idiot to ask Joss Whedon about this before that < 1% bit of doubt is put to rest.

The Canadian Radio-television Telecommunications Commision has approved a request by YTV to have an anime themed channel in Canada. The target of the channel would be 18+ which is a change considering YTV stands for “Youth Television”.

A lot of numbers are thrown around in this broadcasting decision which serve only to confuse people but so much to say the channel will have to be exclusively anime and anime related shows. I suppose it remains to be seen exactly what the CRTC counts as anime. Interest in a similar French channel was mentioned though no details are included. As YTV does not have a French equivalent these requests likely came from elsewhere.

Still far too early to talk about when this may happen or what cable packages will offer it but this is promising for Canadian anime fans who are unable to watch many anime programs broadcast on US exclusive stations such as Cartoon Network. Equivalent Canadian channels such as Teletoon play a fraction of these shows often months to years later.

Of course the reason we can’t just watch Cartoon Network in the first place is because of the CRTC but hey just for today let’s be glad they’ve done something good for a change.

Thanks to Cybersnark for pointing out this post with the news.