The story of the Americanized Sailor Moon begins in 1993, about two years before the debut of the dubbed Sailor Moon we know today. At the time, animation studio Toon Makers teamed up with Renaissance Atlantic Entertainment, the producers behind the original Power Rangers, in an effort to make an English version of the series. The two companies pitched a project combining live action with animation that ultimately never took off. We only got a glimpse of what came of the project in a short music video shown at an anime convention in the 90s. But now, we have the full first episode. In a two-part series ( part one | part two ) set over several months, Ray Mona details her journey to uncover Saban Moon. With the help of Kotaku reporter Cecilia D’Anastasio, who tried to find the missing episode in 2018, she got former Bandai president Frank Ward’s approval to get a copy of the footage from the Library of Congress which she included in the video her. . The pilot starts at 1:43:48 in the second part of Ray Mona’s series, and it’s incredible to finally get a look at the series that never came to be. The episode splits its time between an animated and live-action format, with every Sailor – even Luna – played by a real-life actress during their time on Earth. During the sequences set in space, the show switches to an animated version that swaps the original look of the Sailor Moon characters for something you’d see in a classic Disney film. It’s a completely different take on the series and, I must say, it was worth the wait.
