R2 DVDs into R1 Dvds?

#1SailorMoonFan · Post by **#1SailorMoonFan** » Mon May 29, 2006 12:34 pm

Will the R2 DVDs of Sailor Moon ever make it here in the states? I'm sure everyone would want all 200 episodes and the 3 movies remastered with better sound quality! No black spots. No white spots. The only thing is that annoying yellow line at the bottom. Anyway, please post your opinion on what you think the chances of us getting the box sets are. I personally think it will come in a couple of years.

Sailorasteroid · Post by **Sailorasteroid** » Mon May 29, 2006 1:49 pm

Almost by definition, no. The US is in Region 1. Japan is in Region 2.Here is a guide to DVD regions. You would have to get an R2 or region-free DVD player in order to play them, so there's really no market. Your best chance to find them is an importer, anime store, or web site. Plus they have no English version, dub or sub, so very few people would even want them.

#1SailorMoonFan · Post by **#1SailorMoonFan** » Mon May 29, 2006 2:26 pm

Almost by definition, no. The US is in Region 1. Japan is in Region 2.Here is a guide to DVD regions. You would have to get an R2 or region-free DVD player in order to play them, so there's really no market. Your best chance to find them is an importer, Aime store, or web site. Plus they have no English version, dub or sub, so very few people would even want them.

No, no! I meant getting everything off the R2 and putting them on R1 DVDs. And then subtitling them.

Umino · Post by **Umino** » Mon May 29, 2006 3:22 pm

#1SailorMoonFan wrote:No, no! I meant getting everything off the R2 and putting them on R1 DVDs. And then subtitling them.

Well, I'm sure someone is already working on subbed bootlegs with the R2 DVDs. (Infact, I think I even remeber seeing some for Stars)

Cardcaptor Takato · Post by **Cardcaptor Takato** » Mon May 29, 2006 4:40 pm

At this point, I don't think that the Sailor Moon DVDs would be re-released. Toei is pretty much hellbent on keeping the licenses to Sailor Moon expired and the franchise dead in the U.S. I don't think it would be very profitable for them to re-release the DVDs either, especially when it hasn't been that long since the licenses expired. I'm sure there would be more fans pissed that they have to re-buy the DVDs all over again than there would be fans who would be willing to shelve out another $500+ for multiple copies of a show they've already seen a million times. There's already enough anime fans complaining about the ridilicous number of re-releases Evangelion and Robotech have had. I seem to remember people even complaining about how they wished they didn't waste their money on Geneon's single volume Sailor Moon DVDs and bought the cheaper thinpack set instead.

Although Sailor Moon still has a large fanbase in the U.S., it isn't as popular as it used to be and Toei seems to be more interested in their recent hit Pretty Cure series than re-releasing a decade old little girls' cartoons that only die hard fans would care about collecting uncut DVDs for all over again. The only way I could see how a re-release of Sailor Moon would work is if Toei waits a few years until the R1 Sailor Moon DVDs become rare collectible items and then they could possibly re-dub the series and release it as a special 20th Anniversary collector's edition or something. But for now, I think it would be too soon for Toei to re-release the Sailor Moon DVDs and it could possibly even hurt the franchise more than help it. Multiple releases of the same show aren't always a good thing. *coughevangelionandstarwarscough* But hey, at least now you could probably find the R1 DVDs for dirt cheap if you look hard enough on the Internet now that the rights have expired.

artemis_is_my_dawg · Post by **artemis_is_my_dawg** » Tue May 30, 2006 2:50 pm

whats Sailor Moon R2? or R1? are they making a new season or something?!

EDIT: ok, nevermind, I'm completly blonde!

Post by **Tiff** » Tue May 30, 2006 2:52 pm

artemis_is_my_dawg wrote:whats Sailor Moon R2? or R1? are they making a new season or something?!

R2 and R1 stands for Region 2 and Region 1. And if you read all the posts, sailorasteroid pointed out what that meant.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dvd_regions

There's his link again. Please read it if you don't understand.

Kameko · Post by **Kameko** » Sat Jun 03, 2006 7:00 pm

Cardcaptor Takato wrote:At this point, I don't think that the Sailor Moon DVDs would be re-released. Toei is pretty much hellbent on keeping the licenses to Sailor Moon expired and the franchise dead in the U.S. I don't think it would be very profitable for them to re-release the DVDs either, especially when it hasn't been that long since the licenses expired. I'm sure there would be more fans pissed that they have to re-buy the DVDs all over again than there would be fans who would be willing to shelve out another $500+ for multiple copies of a show they've already seen a million times. There's already enough anime fans complaining about the ridilicous number of re-releases Evangelion and Robotech have had. I seem to remember people even complaining about how they wished they didn't waste their money on Geneon's single volume Sailor Moon DVDs and bought the cheaper thinpack set instead.

Although Sailor Moon still has a large fanbase in the U.S., it isn't as popular as it used to be and Toei seems to be more interested in their recent hit Pretty Cure series than re-releasing a decade old little girls' cartoons that only die hard fans would care about collecting uncut DVDs for all over again. The only way I could see how a re-release of Sailor Moon would work is if Toei waits a few years until the R1 Sailor Moon DVDs become rare collectible items and then they could possibly re-dub the series and release it as a special 20th Anniversary collector's edition or something. But for now, I think it would be too soon for Toei to re-release the Sailor Moon DVDs and it could possibly even hurt the franchise more than help it. Multiple releases of the same show aren't always a good thing. *coughevangelionandstarwarscough* But hey, at least now you could probably find the R1 DVDs for dirt cheap if you look hard enough on the Internet now that the rights have expired.

If Toei's foray into the R1 market had been a success they would have probably also released Sailor Moon. I'm glad Sailor Moon wasn't one of thier launch titles because than they would have done thier half-assed job on it. From AoD's review of Air Master:

With this being one of Toei's launch titles, it's got a number of technical flaws that don't fit easily into the other categories. One area is the subtitles, which almost seem sane after watching Interlude. They don't approach the same level of incompetence as that release but it's still an incompetent piece of work here. With subtitles that stretch across the entire screen, include ADR related pieces such as "grunts with effort" and the such, numerous mis-spellings and far too many three-line sections on at once, the subtitle job is just terrible here. It only felt tolerable to me since we had just experienced the worst subtitling job I had ever seen the night before with Interlude.

The release suffers in a couple of other ways; when each episode ends it goes back to the menu instead of carrying on. Each episode is also one chapter which means you can't skip openings or endings or jump to the middle of the episode at the eye-catch. This is still done on some of the more low-end TV releases from major Hollywood studios but it's not something that anime studios have skimped on in the past and shows what's been a theme of Toei's first releases: least effort possible. While this is a plus in that we get essentially a region 2 quality release in terms of audio and video, it comes across as basic incompetence and apparently no market research as to what is expected here. Things as simple as properly working menus, a proper level of subtitling and the inclusion of chapter marks are some serious strikes against this release. The Japanese release also has a few extras across its nine volumes and I hope we get those here eventually, since it's such basic things as clean openings and closing and promotional reel footage for starters.

One area that really makes me call into question the people working on the release is something that required some knowledge from others. One of the first fighters that Maki goes up against is a wrestling type named Roo-cha. For most people, this won't mean anything and will just be another name. In previous translations, he's been called Lucha, though I don't know if that's shown up Romanized anywhere proper in Japan. Why is this important? When the character fights, he wears a Mexican mask that I've been told by people who live along the border and near many Mexican influence media outlets, is that there is thing called the luchadore. Google on that and you'll see that it's got a lot to do with wrestling in Mexico and is related to the mask. So naming the character Roo-cha shows a distinct lack of understanding of the companies own properties. It certainly doesn't inspire confidence at all in just about anything else.

It would have sucked to see such an "effort" put to Sailor Moon.