YouTuber finds long-lost footage of an American version of ‘Sailor Moon’

This is not a drill: there’s an American version of Sailor Moon, and thanks to a YouTuber’s sleuthing, the long-lost footage has been finally discovered!

On August 21, YouTuber Raven Simone, simply known as Ray Mona, uploaded a mini-documentary, Finding Saban Moon: The Western World of Sailor Moon (Part 2), detailing her chronicles on how she managed to collect information and uncover the long-lost pilot episode of the American version of Sailor Moon, known as Saban Moon.

Ray Mona explained in the long-hour documentary that she reached out to numerous people who were part of Saban Moon, including Ron Wasserman who was believed to be possibly part of the musical arrangement of the show, and Tami-Adrian George and Stephanie Dicker who played the role of Sailor Jupiter and Sailor Moon, respectively, among many others.

She also teamed up with Kotaku reporter Cecilia D’Anastasio, who also investigated the lost episode in 2018, to ask for Bandai America President Frank Ward’s approval to obtain a copy of the footage of Saban Moon from The Library of Congress.

As shown in the pilot episode also uploaded by Ray Mona, Saban Moon would have been a mix of animated and live-action treatments. In the first half of the clip, the Sailor Scouts were seen fighting evil forces in space as animated characters. Shortly after they escaped into the vortex that would lead them to Earth, the Sailor Scouts turned into real-life characters, including Luna the cat.

This isn’t the first time Ray Mona uncovered a never-before-seen media from the past. Her sleuthing skills had also unearthed the lost Mean Girls DS Game in 2021.

Sailor Moon fans took to Twitter to rave about the American version of the show—from expressing their excitement to making some memes out of it.

Saban Moon was a project by Toy Makers, Power Rangers producers, and Renaissance Atlantic. The show was supposed to be the North American version of the beloved Japanese series Sailor Moon but with a different storyline.

Sailor Moon is a hit animated series based on Naoko Takeuchi’s Japanese manga series of the same name. The series follows the story of Usagi Tsukino who transforms into Sailor Moon after she received a brooch from the cat, Luna, that she saved.

 

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