#sailor moon laserdisc

[himitsusentaiblog]

Japanese Media that Helped Me Come Out

Hey, I wanted to make a post about the shows and movies from Japan that really helped me come to terms with my identity and made me more comfortable with coming out (even if I had a few early aborted comings out before I had real support). Before I begin, a special shoutout has to be given to Ranma 1/2, the first anime I ever saw that involved gender changing content.

I think one of the first foundationally important bits of media for me was Sailor Moon, the original animated series. Or more specifically season 5, Bishouji Senshi Sailor Moon Sailor Stars. This is a series I watched shortly after the episodes aired in four episode blocks at a time on rented VHS tapes from a local Japanese Electronics Store in Dallas, Texas. (R.I.P. Orbit Electronics).

For those not familiar with the series, this season introduces three major new heroic characters, the Sailor Starlights. In their civilian identities they are a boys idol group called The Three Lights and go by the names Seiya, Yaten and Taiki but in their heroic identities they are three women named Sailor Star Fighter, Sailor Star Healer and Sailor Star Maker.

The idea of three women hiding themselves in the guise of men was so fascinating to me and spoke to something deep down inside of me. This may be the reason why Sailor Stars is the series I decided to purchase on Laserdisc back when it was coming out.

The second major anime series from this time that was foundational for my exploration of who I am was 1997's Shoujo Kakumei Utena.

This is a series all about defying societal expectations especially of gender roles and sexuality. It's an amazing if sometimes very couched in metaphor and symbolism coming of age story about a young woman who refuses to conform to her expected role and seeks to become a Prince to defend others. It also contains dialogue like this:

Which, if you are familiar with Trans terminology just holds so much extra meaning. For those who do not know, trans people who have not come out yet are often referred to as eggs, as in they have not come out of their shell yet. Lastly is probably both the most obvious and most ridiculous entry here. the 1999 Rock and Roll, Zombie, Alien Invasion film Wild Zero. This is a movie about the rock band Guitar Wolf, their biggest fan Ace and a zombie apocalypse started by aliens (think Plan 9 from Outer Space but somehow even more wild and ridiculous and with an amazing soundtrack). In the movie, Ace meets and falls in love with a beautiful girl named Tobio.

However, as Ace discovers, Tobio has a penis. This causes him to have a bit of a crisis until his idol, Guitar Wolf appears before him in a bathroom to bestow these words of wisdom upon him.

So yeah, this movie helped me in some very strange ways when it came to accepting who I really am, even if it took YEARS for me to finally crack my shell for real and come out publicly. So, thanks for reading this and thanks for all of your support.

[wizards1977]

HAS ANYONE ELSE seen my favorite Sailor Moon AMV that got deleted from Youtube…it was titled Usagi Swing and it was set to Stupid Intruders by the Vincent Black Shadow and had an image of Usagi from the SuperS laserdisc covers as the thumbnail

[radix-outpost]

The Starlights, fancier than usual.

So, the cover art for volumes 3-5 of Sailor Moon Stars on LaserDisc depicted the Starlights wearing makeup (and also paradoxically hanging out with their civilian selves). Star Maker's is striking, Star Healer's is subtle, and Star Fighter's... does not work for her whatsoever. The crux of this doodle was to find something that did; "Smoky" feels more like her thing.

[bergeronprocess]

Anime Weekend Atlanta haul part 2, including the reusable sticker notebook that enabled me to buy a ton of stickers lol. Basically the pages in it are that same wax paper style backing on stickers, so you can put stickers in and then peel them off later if you want.

I have always adored the Sailor Moon S laserdisc art. I do not have a laserdisc player and will never get one. I plan to have that framed.

I won the Mari juice glass from a Love Live trivia game!

[sailorsoapbox]

I'm so happy right now 😍

[miracle-romance]

ANOTHER Harumichi redraw ??!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!?!?!?!

[vhsanime]

美少女戦士セーラームーン (LaserDisc)

[jiabaos]

reliving my childhood by rewatching sailor moon

[piczo]

[protomankini]

Thinking about those sailor moon laserdisc covers

[bestfrownsforever]

ICONS‼️ GETCHUR ICONS HEER‼️

AKA my bad attempt to mix brush textures, arcade floor backgrounds, and the Sailor Moon S laserdisc covers.

[himitsusentaiblog]

Very very very Tangentially related to this blog, But after my friend borrowed it 20+ years ago I finally got back my Sailor Moon Sailor Stars Laserdisc box set. I don’t have a working laserdisc player anymore and they’re kind of obsolete but gosh darn it they aren’t pretty. Probably gonna get some record album frames and just hang them on my walls.

[thefloatingstone]

Random Sailor Moon fact;

If my information is correct, I have been told that when the first season of Sailor Moon was airing on TV, Showing an actual kiss on normal television was still considered really taboo. (Which is also part of why in 80s OVA you’ll see anime sometimes REALLY over exaggerate a kiss. Because it was literally something too saucy for regular Japanese TV)

Because of this, the first season of Sailor Moon used a lot of “work arounds” when showing characters kissing where you see them kiss on screen... without the actual kiss being shown. Which basically means a lot of this;

Season 2 of Sailor Moon starts with an extended anime-only arc where Mamoru has lost his memories, but Usagi regains hers. So Usagi remembers being in love with Mamoru but he doesn’t remember being in love with her and it’s very sad and dramatic. When Mamoru DOES get his memories back and the arc is over, our first scenes of the two of them FINALLY being together after over more than a season comes to this

From what I’ve been told, kissing by this point wasn’t completely forbidden on normal television but was still kind of not done as it was still seen as rather sexual. But by this point Sailor Moon had become an absolute juggernaut of a show raking in views and money. So it was pushing against the whole “no kissing allowed” rules pretty hard. (Mamoru’s hand is still semi in the way of actually showing the kiss itself)

Later on in the season, near the end, the show could actually show Black lady and Tuxedo Mask kiss on screen so I assume by this stage the rules were relaxed even further.

By the time the third season came around... it seems these rules were pretty much nonexistent.

(this is from the movie I know. But you get my point)

It’s just a detail I don’t hear people talk about that much.

I HOPE my sources are correct but if not let me know and I’ll just delete this post to save myself embarrassment X’D But from what I can see, the show matches the information I’ve been given really closely (seriously ALL the kisses in Season 1 are shot in a way that we never actually see the kiss itself)

Anyway, just some interesting trivia.

Japan’s broadcasting laws of what could and could not be shown are fascinating because a lot of “weird shit” actually came about from people trying to use loopholes in the law to show what they want in their stories.

This is why tentacle hentai exists in the first place. Because Japan had it forbidden to show male genitals of ANY form, even direct to video. So you got tentacles which aren’t TECHNICALLY male nudity.

At the same time, you had a lot of Lesbian manga come into the industry in the 70s and 80s. But Japan still had strict laws on what was allowed, so most if not all lesbian manga that came out during this time either had a last episode of “Oh she decided to marry her male friend instead in literally the last 5 minutes” or “oh it turns out the reason the girls felt so strongly for each other is because they’re sisters and weren’t aware of it” or some or other quick tacked on ending to “make it straight”. Because that was literally the only way you could get ANY lesbian content published at all.

Similarly, Sailor Moon had Michiru and Haruka, a clear and delibirate lesbian couple. But unlike Mamoru and Usagi, Haruka and Michiru are never shown kissing in the show at all.

So, much like everything else, work-arounds were put in place to clearly communicate that they are a couple, without showing kissing.

I have no idea where Japan’s broadcasting laws stand on showing what kind of kisses where at the moment because I don’t actually look into this stuff (I just find it interesting to see how rules shape art) but I’m pretty sure hetero kissing is pretty much accepted in general broadcasted shows

Lesbian kisses on broadcasted shows is actually allowed these days, even outside of uncomfortable fetish anime. Heck Sailor Moon Crystal which is aimed at preteens are now allowed to show girls kissing

And although I know it’s incredibly hard to find real gay rep in anime outside of hentai, yaoi and other fetish material... it DOES look like boys kissing are showing up outside of the “This was made to be kinky” type of OVAs

anyway this post kind of ran away with me but yeah.... my point is Sailor Moon wasn’t allowed to show kisses when it first aired so it basically just.... had characters kissing and framed it so you don’t actually see the kiss. Until it got so popular and made so much money it could almost do whatever it wanted.

(also again, when I say Broadcast I mean shows meant to air on TV and stuff. Because Kissing has been in anime the second the VHS and Laserdisc market happened and OVAs could almost do anything they wanted and that’s why 80s OVAs are so hyper sexualised and violent. Because that’s the only place you could get those kinds of things)

Or I could have gotten my information wrong and this isn’t accurate and I’ve just made a fool of myself.

It turns out you can’t really just google “Japanese Broadcast Laws” and get any kind of helpful information.

It’s like 2AM I’m going to bed

[tessatechaitea]

Cerebus #15 (1980)

If the story so far had revealed that Cerebus has a vagina, I could make a hentai joke here.

The first time I encountered hentai was at an anime convention at a Red Lion Inn in San Jose in 1994 or 1995. I went to the convention by myself because I had recently fallen in love with the cartoon Sailor Moon and wanted to get some Sailor Moon LaserDiscs unless it was actually Sailor Moon dolls I wanted. It was so long ago, how am I supposed to remember?! They had a room where they were showing movies and one of the movies I watched was Sailor Moon R: The Movie. It was subtitled which was great because then I had the story memorized for all the times I watched my non-subtitled LaserDisc. But that wasn't the pornographic anime I saw! I don't even remember what that was but I watched some tentacle fucking movie late at night in a dark room with a bunch of other sweaty nerds. I didn't know that was what was going to happen though so I didn't have my dick in my hands like the other guys probably did. I was as shocked as anybody when they first find out that cartoons where women get fucked by tentacles exist! I mean, how many penises does an alien need?! I grew up thinking the little gray aliens had zero! That Red Lion Inn was the same one where I played in a couple of Magic the Gathering tournaments. Being in a dark room with a bunch of horny anime fans was less awkward and uncomfortable than playing Magic the Gathering against Magic the Gathering fans. Most of them probably couldn't believe they were actually playing against such a cool and handsome dude. It really threw them off their game when I would say things like, "Yeah, I've touched a couple of boobs. I attack with my Serra Angel." I know what you're thinking: "Anime, comic books, and Magic the Gathering?! This awesome dude must have owned every single Stars Wars figure too!" Aw, you're too kind! I'm blushing! But obviously I never owned Yak Face. "A Note from the Publisher" is still being published so I guess Dave and Deni are still married. In his Swords of Cerebus essay, Dave Sim discusses "Why Groucho?" It seems to mostly come down to this: Dave Sim enjoyed the characters of Groucho Marx as a teenager and memorized a lot of their lines. He also mentions Kim Thompson's review of Cerebus in The Comic Journal (the first major review of the series) in which Kim praised Sim's ability to make his parody characters transcend the parody to become unique creations of their own. This review gave Sim the confidence to put Groucho in the role of Lord Julius. Which worked out so well that Sim later adds Oscar Wilde, Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Margeret Thatcher, Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, Woody Allen, Dave Sim, and the Three Stooges into the story. I'm sure I'm missing some but I can't remember every aspect of this 6000 page story. Was The Judge also a parody of somebody? Was the Regency Elf based on Wendy Pini? I don't know! I'm sure I'm missing a lot of references in Cerebus simply because I haven't experienced all the same knowledge sources as Dave Sim. Just like I'm missing a super duper lot of references in Gravity's Rainbow because nobody in the history of ever has experienced all the same knowledge sources as Thomas Pynchon. I've been reading Gravity's Rainbow (for the first time but also the third time because I'm basically reading it three times at the same time. You'll understand when you read it) and I'm surprised by how funny it is. I don't think anybody ever described it as funny or else I'm sure I would never have stopped reading it multiple times prior to this time when I'm actually going to finish it. Although I suppose when I read Catch-22, I had done so on my own so nobody ever told me how funny that book was either. But for some reason, Catch-22 lets you know it's going to be a funny book pretty quickly. Gravity's Rainbow is all, "Here is a description of an evacuation of London which is just stage setting because, you know, the bombs have already blown up, but it makes people feel safe. And after that, how about a scene where this guy makes a bunch of banana recipes for breakfast. Is that funny enough for you?" Oh, sure, there are some funny moments like when that one guy pretends a banana is his cock and then some other guys tackle him and beat him with his own pretend cock. But there's a gravity to the scene that doesn't lend itself to the reader thinking, "Oh, this is a funny book!" But if you make it far enough, you start realizing, "Hey! I'm not understanding this!" So then you reread the section and you start realizing, "Hey! I'm laughing at this stuff! This is pretty funny!" Plus there are a lot of descriptions of sexy things that I'm assuming are really accurate because Pynchon is obsessed with details.

Anyway, I was supposed to be talking about Cerebus, wasn't I?

A Living Priest of Tarim crashes Lord Julius' bath to scold him about a party Julius is giving in a fortnight (which is the amount of time your kid has lost to a video game). I don't know why the priest has to declare he's a living priest. You can tell that by the way he's shouting and foaming at the mouth. Although this is a Swords & Sorcery book so I suppose there are many dead creatures that also shout and foam at the mouth. Sometimes I forget I'm reading a fictional book and wind up ranting and raving about stuff that I'm supposed to just assume is fine. Like when I read The Flash and nothing in it makes any sense at all because The Flash should never have any trouble stopping crime or saving people from natural disasters. The comic book should be over in two pages. Even the writers, at some point, realized how ridiculous Flash stories were and decided the only way to make them believable was to have The Flash battle other super fast people. But that just meant Flash stories basically became bar-room brawls. Two people with super speed fighting is the same as reading a story about two people without super speed fighting. Boring! Some writers even decided that maybe a telepathic monkey would make things more interesting and I suppose telepathic monkeys make everything more interesting so kudos to them. I was going to go on a long rant about telepathic monkeys but then I realized how much I love the idea of telepathic monkeys so why should I create an argument against them? More telepathic monkeys, please.

This made me laugh out loud. Not as much as the chapter in Gravity's Rainbow where the old woman forces Slothrop to eat a bunch of terrible candies. But then it isn't a competition, is it? I mean, I guess it's a competition for my time which is why I haven't written a comic book review in a week or more. Blame Thomas Pynchon for being so entertaining (and also Apex).

Baskin, the Minister for Executive Planning, has come to let Lord Julius know what the revolutionaries have revealed while being tortured. The only bit of useful information was one prisoner's last words: "Revolution...the pits." Cerebus immediately assumes "the Pits" is a location and not a summation of the prisoner's feelings about revolution which led to torture which led to his death. Cerebus, being the Kitchen Staff Supervisor, begins an investigation into The Pits. His first step: threatening the Priest of the Living Tarim. Which makes me realize I transposed the word "living" in the previous encounter with the priest and went on a digression that makes no sense to anybody who has read and somehow remembers that particular panel. I'm sure they were scoffing and snorting and exclaiming to their pet rat, "What a stupid fool loser this Grunion Guy is! Living Priest of Tarim! HA! Ridiculous! What a moronic mistake! He has made a gigantic fool of himself!" I don't know that the almost certainly imaginary people who called me on my mistake as they read this have a pet rat but I do know there almost certainly isn't another imaginary sentient being in the room with them. Cerebus learns that The Pits are Old Palnu that lies under current Palnu. It was destroyed in a massive earthquake long ago and the new city built over the top of it. It's like a Dungeons & Dragons module but with a lot less treasure.

This scene reminded me that I need to finish rereading The Boomer Bible: A Testament for Our Times (which is what it was called in the 90s but is just as accurate for today).

Cerebus and Lord Julius engage in another typical misunderstanding (it's not hard when only half of the people in the conversation care about making sense) which ends up with Lord Julius deciding that the location for the Festival of Petunias will be The Pits. This complicates Cerebus' job of not allowing Lord Julius to be assassinated because the assassins are most likely housed in The Pits (along with their giant snakes (*see cover)). Lord Julius, Baskin, and Cerebus descend into The Pits to find a suitable location for the Festival of Petunias. In doing so, they wind up in a trap and confronted by a masked revolutionary of the "Eye of the Pyramid." Which is odd because you usually have to murder at least a dozen kobolds and several goblins before you reach the room with the boss in it.

Typical unbalanced beginning level module. A giant snake as the first encounter!

Cerebus manages to defeat the giant snake by crashing it headfirst into a wall. The wall winds up being a key support structure and the roof collapses. Everybody makes it out alive but the masked revolutionary evades capture. He will be back next issue to ruin the Festival of Petunias. Aardvark Comment is still just a mostly standard comic book letters page. I'll probably stop discussing it until people start criticizing Dave. Right now it's just "This comic book is great!" and "Keep writing, Dave, and I'll never think ill of anything idea you espouse!" while Dave replies, "I owe my fans everything! I can't wait until I can stop feeling that way and start jerking off onto my art boards and selling those as pages of Cerebus!" Cerebus #15 Rating: A. Good story, good Lord Julius dialogue, good Living Priest of the Living Tarim scenes. I wholeheartedly endorse this comic book and Dave Sim. No way a guy with a sense of humor like this is going to go off the rails, right?!

[kleinesgruen]

“This Sailor Moon Laserdisc was only 30mins long, so they carved art into the blank side“

[sailorsoapbox]

Hello there! I'm confused, so I have a question. Was Ikuko Itoh really in charge of the character designs in S? Everyone says that, but according to Anime News Network, she only designed the characters in SuperS, and Mari Tominaga designed them in S. Is that site a good/reliable source?

Ikuko Itoh definitely was the character designer in S! I took a closer look at the ANN listings, and I think where the confusion starts is that Mari Tominaga likely designed the characters exclusive to the episodes she directed, rather than designing the main S cast (which is what Ikuko Itoh did). However, I’d never seen her being credited as a character designer on Sailor Moon before (and even did some googling to see if this was listed anywhere else), so that’s a bit odd.

Another source of confusion is that TOEI decided to solely credit Ikuko Itoh as Chief Animator rather than as Character Designer, which is unusual since the other two 90s character designers (Kazuko Tadano and Katsumi Tamegai) didn’t get that title. Your guess is as good as mine as to why!

But I would still say that ANN is a good source for this kind of information - it’s just a drawback of their encyclopedia format that they can’t elaborate as to exactly what each staff member did.

There are a few traits that each of the character designers have in common:

They usually do the promotional artwork for merchandise and home video, though it usually goes uncredited. The laserdisc art actually credits the CDs for once: Kazuko Tadano, Katsumi Tamegai, and Ikuko Itoh’s name is present on both the S and SuperS laserdisc art. I checked the Settei (which are the reference sketches/designs that the animators base their drawings off of) but it looks like only Katsumi Tamegai recognizably signed his designs with  “Tame” - if the other two signed their work, I unfortunately can’t read Japanese.

They usually direct the animation for the season finale (or at least climactic) episodes for the seasons they designed characters for. Tadano directed episodes #46 and #88, Itoh directed #125 and #166, and Tamegai directed #200. Sometimes they direct the season premieres too (Tadano co-directed #1, & Tamegai directed #167).

In the case of Itoh and Tamegai, both were promoted to Character Designer after having been key animators/animation directors on the series for some years. Tominaga was new to the series when she began directing episodes for the S season, and only lasted through SuperS, so she would have been an unlikely choice for a main Character Designer.

I hope this was helpful (I tried to give an effort answer here)!