Saturday, September 25th - 12:00 am
Update
- Jay Navok
So This Is Christmas (LASM
is Over?)
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Oh,
the places you will go! |
If you’re concerned about spoilers
from the last episode of the live action series in this article, you don’t
have to worry. I’m not going to be discussing the contents of episode 49,
but I will mention one thing.
Given the fact that it ended with “See you again” and that the Toei page
says there will be an important announcement (in big bold font) on 10/1 it
looks like the “FAINAL ACT” may not be so final after all. Here is the text
from the bottom of the Toei page:
People may have been wondering: "Although the final
act has aired, why haven't you updated the Making Of or [special article
series at the bottom of the page]?"
Well, we're going to- our plan is to update once
again on October 1st (a Friday!) A big announcement!..... is there
something left?
I personally do not believe that
there will be a second series, but there could be a film or more likely, the
announcement of the contents on the “Special DVD” coming out in November. (I
believe this is likely because, seeing as how filming has already wrapped,
whatever extras they have would probably have to have been filmed already.)
Maybe there’s an ironic parallel here. In an update
discussing the end of the live action Sailor Moon series, we won’t be
talking about the ending at all. The concern here for me is looking at
Sailor Moon not as fantasy, but as fiction. How has this live action series
worked as an updated component of one of the most famous multimedia
(television, comic, musical) series in the world? Similarly, this site has
been identified strongly with the live action series as we’ve provided many
translations for it, although I have always maintained that we are a
Sailor Moon site first and foremost; what format the series is in
matters not except to framework the discussion.
Thus I’ve found questions as to what
we here at Genvid are going to do when the series end to be a little odd,
because while the live action series is ending, Sailor Moon as
phenomenon- what we here at Genvid are interested in- isn’t ending. The only
way to kill a phenomenon is to forget and ignore it; asking what we would
cover and discuss when the phenomenon ends is actually a contradiction in
terms. But let’s put this tautology aside and discuss the end of live action
format Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon.
I’m going to try to avoid repeating
what I wrote in our
Anniversary update; if you’ve not read that then I suggest going over it
first. However I have to build upon one comment I made there, which is in
regard to the relationship between the actresses and the show itself, and
suppose now is the best time to get this out of the way.
While I’ve been a fan of many shows,
I’ve never been interested in their fandom per say. Sailor Moon has
been a very different experience; ever since joining the Looney mailing list
back in 1996 I’ve observed and occasionally been swept in the various
fandom trends and treats that have come up. What I mean is being more involved than simply viewing a show each week; breaking
the fourth wall and examining the production side of a television show. As a
Sailor Moon fan in 1996 this meant following up on the activities of Janice Sonski, Roland Parliament, and others. I remember the excitement of spotting
one of the voice actors on television or the way people commented on hearing
them talk and shaking their hands at conventions. We were more than passive
viewers of a show that aired on our local UPN affiliate or Fox, etc.
But as I said, Sailor Moon is the
only experience I have with this type of thing. As I’ve seen the red carpet
rolled out by the live action Sailor Moon production staff in regard to
keeping fans active with the new show- for example their weekly “behind the
scenes” updates on Toei or the actress diaries on HICBC- I began to wonder
rhetorically if this was an exception or the rule in terms of contemporary
television programs in the US and Japan. Do other programs (and particularly
with children’s shows) try this hard to keep their audience
involved in the fourth-wall of the show’s production?
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Thanks Toei! |
My contemplation process of this question
involved comparing how I’ve viewed this new show as with when I watched the anime for the first time. Old
friend, former(?) Looney ML rival, and board member Capeboy R commented to
me a few months ago that this year with the live action series has felt like
1997 all over again. That is to say, the same feeling we got when we
followed the end of the anime series so closely. That feeling that we, and
I’m sure others, had in 1997 was something that’s never been replaced or had
anything come close to it. As I’ve already said, I never followed any work
of fiction so close as I have the anime and live action versions of Sailor
Moon- thus it’s a very unique, hard to describe sensation.
Yet there was a major difference in
terms of following the anime versus the live action series. I don’t mean in
the fact that we can now see the LA series within hours of an episode’s
release (instead of months) or that I (and many others) can now understand
the show without subtitles. I am referring instead to the particular way in
which we see the show’s characters and understand the development of the
show’s plotline.
The Japanese voice actresses of the
Sailor Moon anime were a powerful part of the anime’s imprint upon us fans,
but the show was entirely driven by its characters as fictional people in a
fantasy world. As North American fans, viewing the Japanese version of the
show was actually different in this regard from the US version, because to
us not knowing much about these seiyuu apart from a couple of blurbs
on Hitoshi Doi’s webpage, they were a veiled cog. The US voice actors were
more outspoken since we got to see them on our television programs, but even
being able to shake the hand of Stephanie “Mina” Morgenstern (which I,
admittedly, have not had the chance to do yet) wouldn’t change the way you
saw Mina, because Stephanie’s private life was just that- private- and the
fact is that she was an actress that was qualified; she simply
provided Mina’s voice. (Hence voice-actress.)
The nature of a live action series
means that instead of veiling its performers, they take center stage. How
was it that we first gained details of Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon?
What was it that made all the Japanese newspapers? What was the very
first Live Action Sailor Moon article on this site? The announcement of
who would play the inner senshi.
It wasn’t the series’ plotline
(although a small abstract was provided, assuring us that it would
tentatively follow the first manga arc’s subject matter), it was detailed
information on whom the aspiring models/actresses were that would be
performing the parts of our beloved sailor soldiers.
This is a dialectic shift in
the way we as fans view and consider a series as phenomenon. The actresses
as people were as important, if not slightly more important, to the show’s
dynamic as it was the characters that they portrayed. Thus the creation of a
diaries website, the release of a visual book, fan signing events, etc; to
put this in perspective, can you imagine the seiyuu of the Sailor
Moon anime keeping updated diaries? And if they did, would we really care
that much? (Further putting aside the fact that most of them were in their
late 20s or 30s-40s, potentially married, etc. This too is a very different
dynamic for male fans as compared to the diaries of rising teen models.) I’m
certain Mitsuishi Kotono’s diary would have been rightly entertaining but
there’s probably a reason Han Keiko doesn’t have the Sunday slot on the
HICBC page.
The issue becomes the way we relate
to and view the characters of the live action series. Hino Rei is both
Sailor Mars but she is also Kitagawa Keiko and the two are inseparable from
each other. Because of the fact that we’ve intruded upon her private life
through the diaries and her other model appearances, we inevitably have a
different view of Kitagawa Keiko than we would have had she lived in a
closet for the last year. And due to the fact that our view of her effects
our viewing of the character, the actions taken by these girls, and the
words written by them in their diaries- thanks both to the technology of the
internet and the level of interaction which PNP/Toei/HICBC have provided for
us- have irrevocably shaped the way we perceive and understand the live
action Sailor Moon television program, for better or for worse.
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The
respectful road to stardom is long, harsh (and stupid?) |
Starting on the positive, I believe
Keiko has truly deepened the experience of many of us with regard to Hino
Rei. I’ve noticed a wide berth of fans (particularly those who were Minako
fans from the anime) who have come to appreciate Hino Rei a great deal
thanks to Keiko’s portrayal. While I would like to attribute this entirely
to her acting skills, however, I don’t think that’s the case. Among male
fans it’s also partially the appeal she has as a young woman (as well as the
foibles she has told us through her diaries that have drawn even those not
attracted to her physically to appreciate her unique nature), but most
subtly, it’s her zeal with which she takes to the character and her love of
Hino Rei that has strung us along and caused us to appreciate Rei more than
before.
The situation with Hino Rei is a
funny business, particularly among American fans that often grew distaste
for the way the DiC dub portrayed “Raye.” She was vicious at times,
downright nasty at others, and many saw that as a turn off. But Keiko’s
nature as contemplative and intelligent (forgiving her poor test taking
skills) shone through from the beginning. She matched well with manga Rei,
and she knew it; I don’t think I’ll ever forget that initial interview with
her talking about JUST HOW MUCH she was Hino Rei. She loved the
character of Rei, she talked about how she loved the character of Rei and
what Rei’s great points were, and many of us for whom Rei was a
foul-tongued, hot-tempered character saw those views tempered by the “real”
Rei whom had always lay in the background and whom Keiko was able to bring
to the forefront by her constantly expressed enthusiasm for Sailor Mars.
Keiko’s behavior outside the series
was also worthy of the utmost respect to her conservative character; Keiko
participated in a police campaign, didn’t do any risqué bikini spreads as
even Miyuu and Azama sunk to, and took herself quite seriously. This is in
stark contrast to one Komatsu Ayaka.
I am a diehard Aino Minako/Sailor
Venus fan. I like Minako's cheerful personality, great style, humour, etc. And I
take great issue with the Komatsu Ayaka portrayal of an Aino Minako who has
none of those characteristics, and whom I find to be a horrible parody of
the real character upon which the Sailor series have been based. While I
can accept that the Minako of the live action series is one different from
the others, and thus they remain untarnished, the changes to the character
permanently damaged the series in my mind.
One school of thought holds that Aino Minako’s character
changes were wrought solely by Toei or perhaps Takeuchi herself, and this
tends to give a lot of credit to the rolling back of rights to
Takeuchi and suggest that she has been in strong control of this series. I
disagree with this philosophy. I don’t think that Takeuchi was as involved
in this show as many speculated early on (I think when the Toei page
described the decisions of individual directors during the series we saw
glimpses of how it was really their show), although I will concede
that Toei was the main player in this operation.
While clearly Ayaka wouldn’t have
had input into the scriptwriting of the character, I think that if she had
been as interested in the characters as Keiko was then we would have seen
some changes. The whole Minako Dies
thing would have still occurred but I sincerely
believe that the character personality change would not have been so
obscenely drastic as it was in this show. And continuing on this train of
thought, as a fan of Minako, it really bothers me that they hired someone
who didn’t know anything about the major character that she’s portraying and
clearly didn’t have any sense of attachment to her like Miyuu and Keiko did
for theirs; I like Miyuu and Keiko more for the very fact that they love the
people they’re portraying, and it ticks me mentally to know that Ayaka
couldn’t have cared less.
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I'm
a big girl now and you can't tell me what clothes not to take off. |
But the
worst of it has been the career choices she’s made; the “real” Aino Minako
wanted desperately to be an idol too, and I would bet everything I have that
she’d never have stooped to the kind of photoshoots and DVDs that her
actress has done. The few bikini shots we saw at the beginning were just a
little trickle; eventually the dam burst with ridiculous photographs, visual
books, and her DVD where you learn about “every part of her body”
(literally.)
As far as
personal decisions go, there’s no moral platform me to stand on and
complain. She can do with herself as she wants. But as a fan of Minako this
really disturbs me, for the very fact that we viewing the show have been
affected in our viewing by the private actions of these actresses, and
because when we watch it we realize that it’s not Minako we’re viewing, we
consciously recognize that it is Ayaka playing Minako.
One major aspect of the series
itself has been the diametric opposition of Sailor Mars and Sailor Venus; I
wonder if it’s simply a curious coincidence that the two actresses have
taken polar paths as well. Of course maybe it’s my view of the characters
here that is being conformed to fit molds- i.e. perhaps I am applying the
scriptwriter’s constructions wrongly. But I think the sharp division in
their private lives- and more importantly, our public knowledge of it-
shaped the way we saw their gap as well.
The consideration of Minako’s
personality change becomes case in point for another major aspect of this
series, which is the change to the overall series canon that it has wrought
in the last year. When the series began I don’t think any Sailor Moon fan in
his or her right mind expected this show to diverge from the canon as much
as it has. I would argue the opposite in fact- we expected it to remain
far, far closer to the (manga) canon than the anime or the musicals for
the very fact that Takeuchi appeared to have been involved more.
It brings to mind the following
occurrence from around November of last year: I had translated one of
Takeuchi’s notes from the official Sailor Moon page in regard to the live
action series, and she had commented something to the effect of “at
this rate we won’t see Venus until… December?!” Given how the other soldiers had found
everyone up through Jupiter in just a few weeks, I thought that Takeuchi was
being sarcastic or making a joke, expecting Venus to come a-knockin’ in the
next episode or two, and I added at that comment at the bottom of the
translation. Claudia, our synopsis writer at the time, sent me an e-mail
saying that she didn’t believe Takeuchi was joking at all- its possible
Venus really could come in December! And how right she was.
Other changes follows similar
patterns. Who would have imagined just how long “Darkury” would drag on for,
or that there’d be a Sailor Luna and a Kuroki Mio. And nutball Princess
Sailor Moon… They really took the whole concept of tragedy repetition to a
whole new level The death of Venus (seemingly mocking us for our own
parody text on the front page) further came as a interesting (but to me as a Venus
fan, bothersome) twist.
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This
series took a number of rather unexpected directions, to say the least. |
The anime brought change to the
canon, but those changes were done in a way where they were ultimately
relatively minor, even when they were significant character changes, such as
the making of the Starlights into males. The musicals changed the canon to
suite the needs of a theatre, as well as an audience already intimately
familiar with the series’ canon and getting somewhat bored of it. But the
live action series, airing well over a decade since the series began
circulating in printed form, was to garner an audience without knowledge of
the canon. They could have used this as an excuse to copy the original
nearly exactly, and there’d have been little complaint from the 5-7 year old
girls watching it.
They did the exact opposite, and
threw all of us familiar with that canon for a loop. For me personally,
whether this pans out as a gain or a loss has yet to be seen, especially
since the series itself is technically not over. As of current, it is a
loss. I’d have been accepting of major canon changes, but I don’t care much
for the direction they actually took. More bothersome to me than the overall
storyline road, however, is simply the way the series has been handled;
wishy-washy “dorama” storylines (like Hina) aside, the series’ timing is far
too off. As many have already complained about this ending, there is too
much packed into too little, and too little packed into too much. In
reviewing episodes when the DVDs come out, particularly in DVDs 4 and 5, I
found myself almost falling asleep.
It’s easy to focus on flaws,
however, and gloss over a series’ good points. As Sailor Moon, to me
the series automatically gains a lot of respect. Its CDs get playtime on my iPod, and because it is Sailor Moon, I do like it a lot. I believe, however, that it could have been a lot better, and while
I don’t hold high hopes in whatever is the content of this big announcement
in being able to miraculously fix those issues, it’s hard to pass final
judgment without the real FAINAL ACT. (Which is how it forever well be
spelled in my mind.)
Given the series’ end, even with the
continuation built into it by recent events, this site will clearly be
changing as well. As I pointed out in the one-year anniversary essay, the
Soapbox was never meant to be a daily updated website, but it became one to
better function during the year in which we were covering the live action
series. Now that the series itself has concluded, we are reverting to our
originally intended form.
Beginning in October we will be
updating 3 days a week. We do not have a set schedule for our updates, thus
I’m not telling you in advance what days it would be because I myself have
no idea what days will see themselves with enough content for an update and
what day’s won’t. We are trying to experiment in keeping bandwidth down,
however, and thus I am requesting you only visit this page three days
a week starting in October. My goal is to see whether I can get the bandwidth low enough to roll
the sm.ws server back onto Genvid.com and thus save me a lot of money which
I don’t have.
It looks like there will be some
sort of continuation of this series. If it is a film, we will cover it. If
it is the contents of the special DVDs, we will cover it. If the diaries
continue, we will cover it. And as long as the Toei page continues updates
related to this series, we will cover it. However, if there is a full-blown
second live action Sailor Moon series- which, and you can hold me liable for
this later if I’m wrong, I truly doubt will happen- we will not cover it. If there is a
new anime series, though, we sure as hell will cover that,
like Ami on an Advanced Trigonometry textbook.
Thus one way or another we will
still be covering this series for the next few months as part of our regular
content. Once this begins to phase out, we will begin to integrate some more
musicals content. Many actors/actresses from the myu have their own webpage
and we may do similar diary translations. I will also continue to translate
diaries from Azama Myuu’s homepage, and cover the websites of the actresses
(excepting Chisaki Hama) should they develop anything similar.
In addition to this, we have our
normal content, which are the comics, manga coverage, and in the future,
hopefully catching up on overdue anime discussions which were pushed out of
the way in the last year because of the live action series. (Particularly
the 2nd half of the Episode 67 review.) But we will not
be operating on the same schedule starting from October.
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Queen B for Prez! |
Wrapping things up, we at Genvid
would like to say thank you to the actresses who have given well over a year
of their lives to this show, and wish them the best in their future careers,
no matter what paths they try to take to stardom. Thus to Sawai Miyuu,
Chisaki Hama, Kitagawa Keiko, Azama Myuu, Komatsu Ayaka, and Alisa Durbrow,
we say good luck and we will continue to cheer you on and support you. We'll
further extend a hand to our four generals and great Queen, all of whom have
done a fantastic job. Thank you very much Masuo Jun, Matsumoto
Hiroyuki, Kobodera Akira, Ento Yoshihoto, and especially Sugimoto Aya.
(Queen Beryl, now and forever.) Oh and how can we forget Kikawada "Kamekichi"
Masaya?
While there are 5 people on the
staff page of this website, there are many more without whose contributions
the Sailor Moon Soapbox would be a far less worthy place. To begin with, our
wonderful synopsis writers (in order of appearance) who graciously
contributed so much of their time:
·
Claudia
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Aaron and Namiko
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Nae and Wasurenagusa
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Hoshiko and Kenji
Let me
add more thanks to Kenji especially for all the time he’s spent correcting
my translation errors.
I also want to thank
Serecindra for her pictures each week, and
Bill Heineman, without whose media server we’d never have been able to
keep those pictures around.
For all of us involved it’s
been a very interesting year, to be sure. From a long-time fan’s
perspective, this series certainly changed the way we think about Sailor
Moon one way or another. I’m sure many of you who fall into that category
agree with me, whether you loved the series or even ignored it. (Or you myu
fans in the corner silently mumbling about how the myu is the first live
action and the only true live action out there. And how all us PGSM fans are
on ‘the list.’)
For those of you to whom the
live action Sailor Moon series was your first, and only, experience with
Sailor Moon, I am begging you. For the love of god, please watch the anime.
Even if the manga is too intimidating and the myu sound too odd, give the
anime a chance. It's very easy and abundant to find, and I guarantee that
you'll love it as much as the live action series. The first half will make
you addicted, but the second half will change your life.
As it was in 1997, another
chapter in the Sailor Moon chronicle is coming to a close. Even though
there’s still a little bit something left, Toei seems to have treated this
as the ending and we are too; unless it’s a brand new season, whatever’s
left will be a cherry on the sundae.
Does this mean that- should
this topping come out before the new year- 2005 will see dark days again for
Sailor Moon? After all, the last of the manga revisions will probably be
done by then too. Not so fast, though. The anime will be slowly rolled out
on DVD over the next year, and Sailor Moon being Sailor Moon, I think we
could always see some surprises on the horizon. That includes the live
action series being brought to America, which these days I’m no longer
discounting.
But for Tsukino "Miyuu" Usagi, it
seems like the War really is Over. Happy Christmas!
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