zemymoon-blog

[zemymoon-blog]

Sailor Moon: The Viz Dub - Episode 1

I’m excited for this, you guys. I know I always say how stoked I am to watch the DiC/Cloverway dub because it’s notoriously bad and all, but there’s a part of me that’s hoping the Viz dub is going to be equally bad but for different reasons: I feel like the harder you try to repair something like this and make it not terrible, the unintentionally worse it ends up being. It’s like how Hollywood keeps trying to redeem the DC Universe but they just keep making it worse.

I’ve also never seen a complete dubbed episode of Sailor Moon before. I don’t know if I can handle hearing anyone but Kotono Mitsuishi speak whenever Usagi opens her mouth, so this will be interesting. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t mind dubbed anime, I just know about this particular show’s reputation when it comes to American adaptations, and I know that it usually involves a lot of people groaning and saying “Just watch the Japanese version”.

Anyway, here we go! “Moonlight Densetsu”, it’s been too long. I haven’t touched the original anime in ages, honestly. I have to say, I kinda missed it!

A voice-over narration is telling me that the name of this episode is “The Crybaby: Usagi’s Beautiful Transformation”, which is not the usual translation of this episode’s title that I’m familiar with, but okay.

From what I remember about the title cards, it’s always Usagi reading the episode title, so I’m going to assume this is Usagi’s dub voice I’m hearing. So she’s not as high-pitched as Kotono Mitsuishi, but then again, who is?

We open on the ever-classic shot of Usagi oversleeping, and immediately we get this gem: “Hi, I’m Usagi Dzoo-kino.”

Excuse me? What the hell did she just say? Usagi Zucchini? Usagi Digiorno? Is Viz retconning Usagi’s name because she eats a lot? I would have gone with Usagi Tortellini personally, but that’s just me.

Ikuko Linguine barks at Usagi to get up and the stereotypical “oh no, I’m late for school!” scene from every anime ever commences, sans toast-in-mouth. Ikuko tells Usagi not to forget her lunch, cueing the dorkiest “thanks, Mom” I’ve ever heard in my life. I’m starting to feel like maybe Viz took the whole “Usagi is clumsy and a dweeb” thing a little too far when voice directing. Isn’t Usagi supposed to be immature but still cute? She’s kinda giving me Kimmie Gibbler vibes here, and not in a good way.

So Usagi books it down the sidewalk and comes across a bunch of shitty kids kicking a cat. Animal abuse aside, why are these kids not in school? Where are their parents?

After chasing them off, Usagi peels a Band-Aid off of the cat’s forehead and somehow it doesn’t rip a bunch of fur off along with it. If this show wasn’t already unrealistic enough, the cat just sits there and lets her peel the Band-Aid off. Usagi chooses to be weirded out by the cat’s crescent moon-shaped mark on its forehead rather than the fact that this is the most passive cat that has ever existed. Seriously, it doesn’t claw her eyes out or anything!

So the cat does a sick backflip and then Usagi runs off to school, loudly wailing and ruining her vocal chords along the way. Her teacher, who also cannot pronounce “Tsukino” correctly, makes Usagi stand outside in the hallway.

I’m going to pause here for a moment so that I can bring up how much I love how stubby Usagi is in the first season. Remember how she looked in Stars? She was like 7 feet tall! Being a Sailor Senshi must provide an excellent source of vitamins and minerals because everyone else gets tall as hell, too. Shit, even Chibi-Usa is WNBA material by the end of SuperS.

Anyway, Usagi stands out in the hallway and her teacher, Haruna, comes out to scold her, and for a brief moment she almost has a Brooklyn accent, which got me super excited because I know Naru in the old dub had a similar accent and I find unnecessary obnoxious accents hilarious and wonderful. Haruna gives Usagi shit for failing a test, which is big talk coming from someone who is leaving their entire class unsupervised so that they can go yell at a 14-year-old for not understanding their schoolwork. Stay in your lane, Haruna.

Naru and Usagi are talking outside when suddenly Umino shows up and HIS VOICE IS SO BAD, YOU GUYS. Like, way worse than I ever could have imagined. It’s really terrible. I can’t even describe it in words. Usagi is so uncomfortable with Umino’s voice that she becomes even more stubby. Naru’s voice is surprisingly bland, which I guess is preferable to “awful”. Maybe it’ll grow on me in time. I hope so, because Naru is the best character in the show (after Usagi’s dad, a.k.a. Yung T$ukino).

Naru brings up Sailor V and Viz had the audacity to replace the classic “SAI - LOR - V” sound bite with what I assume is Sailor V yelling her own name really awkwardly. Did that really need to be dubbed over? It wasn’t even in Japanese.

Speaking of which, why won’t Toei just suck it up and animate Codename: Sailor V already? It’s the perfect story length to be an OVA.

So Usagi pretends not to know who Sailor V is, which I have a hard time accepting because Usagi’s entire life revolves around video games, television, and comic books, and Sailor V is supposedly a hot media franchise in the Sailor Moon universe. There is no way Usagi hasn’t heard of Sailor V before. Even Umino has heard of Sailor V, and Umino doesn’t come across as the type of person who would keep up with media celebrities.

Naru immediately begins sympathizing with some jewel thieves that Sailor V caught because apparently “jewelry is just so beautiful, I can totally understand why someone would want to steal some of it”. Doesn’t your mom own a jewelry store? Don’t you see and handle jewelry basically every day? You’d think someone who is around something all the time would be unfazed by it, and aside from that, wouldn’t someone whose family relies on their jewelry store’s business to survive be a little less sympathetic towards jewel thieves? Whatever Naru.

That high-pitched, early 90′s, “dungeon-level-from-a-SNES-RPG” music is playing to signify the scene switch to the Dark Kingdom, and I’m honestly terrified of what Beryl is going to sound like.

Queen Beryl asks if anyone has found the Silver Crystal yet and I’m relieved to say that her voice is actually pretty decent! On the other hand, the group of monsters responding “No!” is hilarious and awful.

Jadeite shows up and just sounds absolutely aroused at the very thought of being an evil villain. His voice is dripping with uncontrollable lust as he explains that his monster, Morga, is busy collecting human energy, which is a thing evil villains do, because of reasons.

Suddenly the scene changes to Naru’s mother’s jewelry store, which is packed full of people taking advantage of their big sale. I bet I can guess where the human energy is gonna come from!

Enter Usagi and Naru, who are both a little weirded out that Naru’s mom is way too into selling off all this jewelry. Naru’s voice is starting to feel a little too mature for her character in my opinion, though at least she’s actually attempting to voice act, unlike Usagi, who sounds like she is just now reading her script for the first time. You remember in school when you had to read in front of the class and whenever you had to read a character’s dialogue you would put the tiniest bit of effort into sounding like a person emoting, but not too much, and still ultimately sounded like someone who’s just reading text out loud? That’s what Usagi sounds like through this whole episode.

Predictably, Naru’s mom is revealed to the audience as Morga pretty much immediately.

And then she says it. She actually says it. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing, but these words really come out of her mouth, straight out of a 12-year-old’s fanfic:

“Foolish humans.”

She really says that! And then she mentions a “great ruler”, which I assume is supposed to be Metalia, but the way she says it sounds like she’s in a cult or lives under a dictatorship or something, and it just sounds really awkward.

The jewelry starts sucking all the energy out of the women in the jewelry store, and I have to wonder, if the Dark Kingdom really wanted all this energy from all these people, why wouldn’t they just have Morga give the jewelry away for free? It seems like it’d be more effective, because I’m sure not every visit to this store results in a sale. This leads me to believe that Morga’s actually in it for the financial gain. Morga knows she could just give it all away, but she also knows that she can still make a hefty financial profit from marking down prices due to the larger influx of customers than usual, and with the extra money they’re making from the sale, the Dark Kingdom can start investing in stocks and bonds, and maybe someday they’ll be able to afford to not live in a cave, or at least have some plush carpet put down to brighten up the room, or something.

Naru gets her mom’s attention and suddenly Morga remembers that she should probably stop smirking and saying “foolish humans” in public, and she puts the “normal human woman” act back on. She offers Usagi a big discount on a diamond ring since she’s Naru’s friend, and then Usagi is promptly flattened by a stampede of sale-obsessed shoppers who are continuing to handle and try on expensive jewelry completely unsupervised in a very large store that has no visible security guards, metal detectors, or other employees. See, this is why jewelry stores get robbed in this town! Where’s Sailor V when you need her?

Usagi laments that although she’s pretty spoiled, she’s not that spoiled, and her dad, Big Money Kenji, will never agree to buy her expensive jewelry after the bad grade she got on her test. That’s okay, maybe he’ll buy you an iPad, or a better voice actress. Frustrated, she leaves the store and chucks her balled-up test at a random passerby’s head.

The passerby is understandably annoyed at having garbage pelted at him and calls Usagi “bun-head” in a way that for some reason sounds like he’s implying her head looks like a butt. Well, I mean, it kinda does, from the back. If that wasn’t brutal enough, he un-balls her test and immediately starts making fun of her shitty score and comes dangerously close to blatantly calling her a dumb-ass.

Usagi takes her test back and tells the guy he needs to mind his own business, which, quite frankly, I agree with. What kind of 35-year-old man ridicules a preteen for their test scores? Usagi proceeds to stomp away and says, verbatim, “stupid jerk and his purple pleated pants”, which is the funniest thing I’ve heard all night. She almost sounds offended that he’s wearing purple pleated pants, as if that’s the most problematic aspect of her interaction with him just now.

Usagi looks back at Purple Pleated Pants guy, or PPP, and sees that he’s checking out the jewelry store. I also can’t help but notice that suddenly the entire 50-person crowd that was outside the store 2 minutes ago has vanished. I also can’t help but notice that under any other circumstances, a guy wearing dark sunglasses and scouting a jewelry store in a town that is known for jewelry store robberies would be suspicious, but this guy didn’t smirk and say “foolish humans” to himself while menacing music played in the background, so I guess he can’t be all bad.

Usagi passes Game Center Crown, the local arcade, and notices this poster in the window, which I absolutely love. I wish there was a real-life reproduction of this poster for sale somewhere. I would buy it in a heartbeat. Just look at it! It’s got everything: an anime schoolgirl superhero, random mobsters with laser guns, Space Invaders aliens exploding out of the corner, and a minty green backdrop that just screams “early 90′s bathroom”. I’m a little uncomfortable with the guy inside the arcade, though. Not the guy playing the game, but the guy behind the counter. Who the hell is that?

Seriously, am I the only one creeped out by this dude?! He reminds me of the bartender from The Shining.

After whining about how jealous she is that she doesn’t get to live the high-activity, high-responsibility lifestyle that comes with being a crime fighter, Usagi heads home, but not before she’s spotted by that cat from earlier who apparently has the ability to speak, although not well enough to pronounce “Tsukino” correctly. This cat is relieved to see Usagi, which makes her the only character so far who views Usagi with any emotion besides contempt.

Commercial break!

I wonder if they’ll keep the--no, they dubbed over it. And boy, does it sound awful.

Over at Usagi’s house, which for some reason looks like a Renoir painting (check out Based Kenji’s purple pimpmobile!), Ikuko Frappuccino greets Usagi at the door and asks what grade she got on her test as if she expects anything other than an F. Ikuko seems legitimately surprised and angry that Usagi got a 30, but I mean, surely this can’t be the first time Usagi brought home a low test score. She’s also chronically late for school, forgets her lunch, and easily distracted. Instead of having Usagi tested for potential ADHD, Ikuko makes the rational decision of kicking her middle school-aged daughter out of the house. Usagi cries and bangs on the door to be let back inside, but then Shingo just walks right up to the door and opens it, so the problem isn’t that Ikuko locked the door, the problem is that Usagi is too stupid to use the doorknob and Ikuko knows this. Usagi decides to roundhouse kick the door like a caveman and instantly shatters her kneecap.

And man, Shingo has a shockingly deep voice! His voice is deeper than Jadeite’s, even! And he talks like a TOTALLY COOL DUDE while mocking Usagi and almost sounds like Sonic the Hedgehog while doing it. What the hell kind of 10 year old boy sounds like that?!

Back at the jewelry store, the shoppers continue to have their energy drained away by the jewelry they’re wearing, and...hey, that fat woman was there earlier, too! Damn, lady! You’ve been there all day! Don’t you have other places to be?

Bargain hunters start dropping left and right, and if the spooky purple tint over the store isn’t indication enough that something nefarious is going down, Naru’s mom finally reveals herself to Naru as a monster! Her “evil” laugh is really bad.

Logically, it seems like Sailor V should be around for this sort of thing, but she’s nowhere to be seen. Where is she? She was apparently on the scene recently for that other jewelry store robbery, but today when an actual monster appears, she’s just completely AWOL. Is “actual monster” just where Sailor V draws the line? Honestly, I can’t say I blame her. The monster even has its own Psycho violin screech!

Back at Usagi’s place, Usagi flops around on her bed while talking to herself about how exhausting it is to be bratty and spoiled. I guess the cops finally showed up and made Ikuko Rigatoni bring her pet howler monkey inside. Predictably, Usagi decides against doing her homework and takes a nap instead.

But then the window opens!

I dunno, man...With all these jewelry store heists and robberies going on in this town lately, I’d keep my doors and windows locked at all times.

But as it turns out, the intruder is even worse than a robber. It’s a cat. And it talks.

Usagi seems surprised that “the cat with the bald spot” is in her room, and her voice actress really over-acts while attempting to sound...I dunno...dismayed? Shocked? Upset? Hungry?

The cat is quick to correct Usagi in that it’s not a bald spot, which sounds like something someone with a bald spot would say. She introduces herself as Luna and thanks Usagi for removing the Band-Aid earlier, but Usagi’s not having it and goes back to sleep. Like any spoiled brat, Usagi remains unresponsive until Luna appeases her with material goods. Luna literally backflips into the air and farts out a shiny piece of jewelry, and somehow this is enough to make Usagi suddenly trust this talking cat entirely.

You know who else is very forthcoming with enchanted jewelry? The Dark Kingdom.

Luna tries to explain to Usagi that some bad shit is going down in Tokyo lately, but Usagi just ignores her and admires herself and her new shiny trinket in the mirror. Then Luna calls her a “guardian” and I just...Ugh. “Guardian” is such an awkward translation and I hate it. When did everyone decide to start using it instead of “soldier”? I even would have taken an untranslated “senshi” instead of “guardian”. Maybe I’m just picky. Anyway, Luna explains to Usagi that she needs to find the other “guardians” and also their princess, and Usagi is surprisingly accepting of this new information compared to how accepting she was of a talking cat 30 seconds ago, which was “not very”.

Luna continues to lecture Usagi and then...Wait a minute! There’s a Sailor V book right on Usagi’s dresser!

Look, see? It’s right there! I knew Usagi was full of shit! She’s known about Sailor V this entire time!

Anyway, Luna tells Usagi to say “Moon Prism Power, Make Up”, which she does, triggering the first of many, many, many transformation sequences throughout this show. Sailor Moon immediately freaks out about having transformed, even though she seemed super stoked about it before she did it. What is there to even be upset about? You even got your own theme music, which is more than you can say about any of the other Sailor Senshi this season. Her voice actress rather unconvincingly yells and whines during a scene where her character is meant to sound confused and upset.

Sailor Moon’s Stranger Danger™ hair bun shields start flashing and she can hear Naru crying out for help, and I just realized that she never, ever seems to have this ability ever again for the rest of the show. Were they just one-use-only, or what? Is that why Luna ends up giving her a communicator device later on? Sailor Moon seems strangely calm about the fact that Naru sounds like she’s in grave danger, and Luna tells her that it’s her duty to go save her friend. Wouldn’t it normally be Sailor V’s duty to fight bad guys, or has Luna just given up on Sailor V doing her damn job?

Across town, Naru is actively being strangled by her mom, because we all know best friends like to get competitive, and Naru is trying to one-up Usagi on who has the worse mom.

Except it’s not really her mom, it’s a monster! A monster with incredible business sense!

Morga’s exact words after this are “I’ve locked your mother up in the basement, and after I’m done killing you...I’m gonna kill her too? And then send the both of you! To the world of the dead!” and it’s delivered so poorly I had to pause the video until I could stop laughing.

But just when all seems lost for Naru, Sailor Moon arrives on the scene!

Sailor Moon introduces herself as a “pretty guardian”, showing unwarranted confidence for someone who makes bad grades and has a head that looks like a butt. Morga responds with, “Are those stupid catchphrases supposed to scare me?” which is something I’ve always wanted a monster in this show to say, but the fact that it’s a dubbed-in line and not part of the original dialogue somehow makes it a little less satisfying.

Morga awakens the zombified customers and they all start attacking Sailor Moon, including Big Mama who is still rocking those emerald earrings. Sailor Moon suddenly realizes that being a crime fighter involves fighting, and she starts to panic, knowing that the only thing she’s ever destroyed was an entire cheesecake in one sitting. Then this one lady comes at her with a broken bottle, like it’s a bar fight! Holy shit!

Luna expresses dismay that Sailor Moon isn’t fighting back, but it’s not like you bothered to teach Sailor Moon any of her attacks, so this is partially your fault too, Luna. Sailor Moon starts crying, sorta, though she mostly just sounds tired.

But then out of nowhere, someone throws a rose at the ground like a dart! I guess this is enough to placate the monster, because it stops trying to kill Sailor Moon.

The source of the rose dart introduces himself as Tuxedo Mask and, in the same breath, tells Sailor Moon that crying isn’t going to solve any of her problems. This immediately turns out to be false, because Sailor Moon starts to cry even more and somehow her Stranger Danger™ hair bun shields amplify her bad voice acting into 100% WEAPONIZED WHINING.

Somehow this causes the army of bargain-hunting zombies to faint, and I guess the one-use-only rule applies to this hair bun power as well, because this is the only time I remember it happening.

Luna finally tells Sailor Moon to throw her tiara and say “Moon Tiara Action”, and sounds surprisingly pissed while doing so! Damn, Luna, what’s gotten into you? The animation sequence for Moon Tiara Action starts and...am I crazy, or is the background for this sequence not usually green? Usagi Fettuccine throws her tiara like a hot pizza pie (a joke that is going to come back and bite me when she actually does throw a pizza in Stars) and hits Morga with it, turning her into dust.

Can I just comment on how huge Naru’s mom’s jewelry store is? Naru’s family must be loaded! Jadeite, who I assume is supposed to be hanging out in the Dark Kingdom instead of actually helping Morga, curses the Youma of Wall Street for failing him. To be fair, she was doing a pretty good job of collecting energy (and money!) until Sailor Moon showed up, and this is literally the first time Sailor Moon has ever appeared anywhere, so how could Morga have predicted that would even happen? Morga’s not really to blame here. If you were so worried about her safety and success, why didn’t you send a couple more monsters to act as backup? I blame Jadeite for this one.

Tuxedo Mask congratulates Sailor Moon on a job well done and tells her he won’t forget what happened here tonight in a tone of voice that sounds really creepy. Instead of immediately calling the police, Sailor Moon decides she’s in love with him, and hearts fly out of her eyes. Wait, what’s the appeal here? You could barely see his face, and he didn’t even do anything aside from throw a rose at the ground. He didn’t even participate in fighting the monster. He literally just showed up in his Abraham Lincoln hat, gave some bad advice, and then jumped out a window. Whatever floats your boat, Usagi.

The next day at school, Naru (who suddenly sounds 20 years older) gushes about the cool dream she had last night: a superhero named Sailor Moon showed up and saved her from a monster! Two other nameless girls apparently had the exact same dream, but I have to wonder...If all of these girls were at the jewelry store last night when Sailor Moon fought the monster, wouldn’t they have been passed out by then? Did they somehow retain some level of consciousness while physically comatose? Not gonna lie, that’s pretty horrifying. Naru tries to get Usagi’s attention, but she’s just so incredibly tired! “Nighty night.” Ah, classic Usagi. Roll credits!

I don’t know, you guys. I was hoping this new dub would be really bad, and it was, but aside from a couple moments here and there, it wasn’t bad enough to be funny. It was just kind of boring. Somehow the stilted voice acting of the protagonist and the strangely-casted voices of a couple major characters just made the entire episode feel really plastic and hollow. All of the charm of the original was lost behind a constant need to talk really slowly/loudly or just howl uncontrollably, and half of the characters just sounded like they were reading off of cue cards. I mean, from an objective standpoint, it’s a better dub than the DiC adaptation from the 90′s, but it’s also a lot less entertaining. I think Queen Beryl’s voice was the only one I actually liked immediately.

So, there you have it! That’s Episode 1 of Sailor Moon with the Viz-dubbed English audio enabled. As bland as the first episode was, I still have high expectations for later episodes when the show has more characters. Hopefully the other Sailor Senshi will sound at least half competent and will drown out the sound of Usagi enough that it’ll actually be a watchable dub. Or maybe it’ll just sound even worse, and it’ll be awful enough that I’ll find it funny. Who knows? Either way, here’s hoping Episode 2 has more to talk about.

Until next time, pasta fans.