Sailor Moon Gets A New Adaptation

Fans of a classic anime are getting their fandom rewarded. Sailor Moon (compare prices), the 1990s anime title that is widely credited for introducing anime to a whole generation of viewers worldwide, is being re-adapted from its source -- Naoko Takeuchi's manga, also recently re-released in English after being out of print for a time.

Word of the new adaptation of Sailor Moon was carried by Anime News Network, among others. Takeuchi and her publisher Kodansha announced last Friday that a new anime of Sailor Moon would be out in the summer of 2013, with the idol group Momoiro Clover Z providing theme music. Word has it that the series will be released worldwide simultaneously -- possibly in the form of licensed simulcasts via outlets like Crunchyroll or the Anime Network, or via branded portals like FUNimation.

The impact of the original Sailor Moon is a little hard to overestimate. Aside from being a staple "magical-girl" show in Japan, where it influenced any number of other successors in the same vein, it also worked as one of the biggest anime success stories in the English-speaking afternoon TV world. Despite being shown only in an English-dubbed edition, and one which suffered from some fairly glaring censorship here and there, the show helped to inspire greater curiosity about anime and encourage more of it (and more current anime shows, instead of back-catalog titles) to be licensed for broadcast.

The original TV series has not been made available for English-speaking audiences since the previous editions (via ADV) went off the market. Back in 2010, according to ICV2, the original Sailor Moon -- all 243 episodes of it! -- were offered for licensing, but it's not clear if a deal was struck for any English-speaking territories from that solicitation.

Image: Sailor Moon, courtesy Pricegrabber.