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.
With the recent Sailor Moon news, this was needed lol pic.twitter.com/J3SmeD7Z6i
— 🔞 Silly Senshi Switch 🔞 (@Switchpoint) August 23, 2022
Surprised it isn't bigger news that the pilot for the long-lost Saban's Sailor Moon has been found in its entirety pic.twitter.com/s1TUkSGlJh
— 🔱𝕋𝕣𝕖𝕧𝕠𝕣 🔱 (@Trevpocalypse) August 21, 2022
The fact that Sailor Moon was once planned to be localized like this is wild pic.twitter.com/UbU7gsRQLw
— ChikoCheez (@ChikoritaCheez) August 21, 2022
This documentary about the lost pilot for the American Sailor Moon series is fantastic. I absolutely love this sort of thing, and @TheRayMona really put together something special here!
Even He-Man makes a cameo! 💪
Amazing story, and amazing work uncovering it! https://t.co/H0spZFYPjt
— Pixel Dan (@PixelDan) August 22, 2022
Everywhere I go I see her.#SailorMoon #SabanMoon pic.twitter.com/UOsVN01pGo
— 💫StardustNova✨ (@StardustNova27) August 22, 2022
>dan and swampy helped create the Americanized Sailor Moon pitch
… it all makes sense now pic.twitter.com/nSqpiU9JLe
— 🍉Delhi 2024 SWEEP(?!)🍉 (@DelhiWacky) August 22, 2022
The best actor in the Saban Sailor Moon pilot is this cat pic.twitter.com/OFuJjjd6yj
— Sarah ☆ (@waffletoast215) August 21, 2022
The abandoned US Sailor Moon pilot being found in *the Library of Congress* is such a hilarious detail to this story. Is a random government employee responsible for an archive of all failed TV pilots? https://t.co/G3KZB2PTrf
— Alex (@lameimpala) August 22, 2022
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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