Cuts & Edits

Welcome, you have entered the Cuts & Edits versus section.
First click on which part of Sailor Moon you would like to see the cuts & edits of (series or movies) and then you will be able to browse each season and learn about all the changes that were made to the original Sailor Moon when it was adapted into English. Each section also has a link to the other part of Sailor Moon.
Also on this page are short overviews about each season/movie as it was adapted into English.

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Sailor Moon Series | Sailor Moon Movies
 
Overview
Pretty Soldier Sailor Moon
vs. Sailor Moon (season 1)
The first season of Japan's Pretty Soldier Sailor Moon (which aired in 1992) was bought by the company DiC Entertainment after winning the war against Toon Makers for the rights for the title Sailor Moon (1995). In the same year that Pretty Soldier Sailor Moon SuperS was airing in Japan, the North American Sailor Moon anime adaptation was being aired in Canada on YTV. Sailor Moon then aired in the United States for the very first time on Cartoon Network 2 weeks later (August 1995).

The first season was heavily censored and rewritten from scratch so that they conformed to the tight American children's cartoons regulations. 5 episodes were removed and the final 2 episodes were merged so that they could remove as much of the violence (and death scenes) as possible. All nudity, religious references, violence, and perversions were either heavily edited or completely removed from the episodes. There was also a lot of inconsistencies throughout this season.

All episode titles were rewritten to cater more for young children, so they were usually only a few words long and were made up of puns, quotes, and metaphors. All of the music composed by Takanori Arisawa from the original Japanese anime was removed and replaced with a new composed selection by Bob Summers. Bob worked for Don Perry Music, which was the company DiC hired to provide them with a score for their up-beat English version.
 
Pretty Soldier Sailor Moon R
vs. Sailor Moon (season 2)

The second season of Japan's Pretty Soldier Sailor Moon (R) came with the combo bought by DiC Entertainment. The term "Sailor Moon R" was never officially used for this season, as they were aiming to keep the American television series trend. It was just referred to as Sailor Moon: Series 2. This, however makes things confusing when we get to season three & four which have new season titles (Sailor Moon S, & Super S). For now, I will just discuss the many changes made to season two of Sailor Moon.

Just like season 1, there were more inconsistencies when it came to the name of items and attack phrases. For the first time, the English adaptation also refers to the city as "Tokyo". The censoring was somewhat reduced, but still weighed heavily on the English version's decision making.

 
Pretty Soldier Sailor Moon S
vs. Sailor Moon S (season 3)
The third season of Sailor Moon (Pretty Soldier Sailor Moon S) was bought (along with SuperS) by the company known as Cloverway Inc. Cloverway had some new ideas for the Sailor Moon dub, but we are unsure if it was their intention or just a lack of time. All original Japanese music tracks were kept throughout this season, except for the opening theme and the song Ai no Senshi, which was made into an English song but using the same music from the original song. Censorship was weakened a bit and the Sailor Says segments removed which allowed Cloverway to leave in most of the scenes throughout each episode. The main cover-ups were with Uranus and Neptune's relationship throughout this season and they became cousins (that or using a slang the slang term "cousin" which can mean lesbian lovers). Like the DiC dub, the main character's names remained North American sounding, but nearly all the monster names and secondary characters kept their original names (depending on the writer).

New transitions were made, which (some) were an improvement from the DiC ones, but new voices and crew joined the Sailor Moon dubbing team and this season lacked its excitement that the first two seasons brought. All the episodes seemed rushed with voice acting and storylines. Because of this, there were lots of inconsistencies with item and attack names. They would go back and forward from DiC powers to a mixture of the Japanese attack names. S and SuperS were aired in 2000 on Cartoon Network's Toonami program and then again on YTV in Canada.
 
Pretty Soldier Sailor Moon SuperS
vs. Sailor Moon Super S (season 4)
Seeing as there wasn't any real DiC dubs for SuperS (other than the SuperS movie), a lot of the attacks in this season were messed around with and sometimes had weird named (such as saying "Jupiter power" before saying the attack phrase... or saying their sailor name). Cloverway was pretty much on their own for this season and you could tell the writers tried to just translate the episodes direct from the Japanese scripts (some of the time) which also resulted in lines not making sense or losing their intended joke from the Japanese version.
 
Pretty Soldier Sailor Moon R Movie
vs. Sailor Moon R The Movie (movie 1)
Unlike the actual second season not carrying the same name as the movie (Sailor Moon R), this would confuse people who were not familiar with the Japanese versions of the series. Although, fans would be able to piece together that this movie belongs to that second season because of the characters, powers, & songs.
 
Pretty Soldier Sailor Moon S Movie
vs. Sailor Moon S The Movie (movie 2)
Movies overview coming soon...
 
Pretty Soldier Sailor Moon SuperS Movie
vs. Sailor Moon Super S The Movie (movie 3)
Movies overview coming soon...