Copyright © 2000 Takeuchi Naoko / Kodansha, Toei Animation

Third of the three SAILOR MOON movies being released by Pioneer in North America, SAILOR MOON SUPER S THE MOVIE makes quite an impression from its bright yellow cover to its DVD contents. Is the impression merely flash? It turns out that despite how one may feel about the SAILOR MOON series, one can't deny the overall quality of this DVD.
All over the world, children are disappearing during the night. Under the cover of darkness, a tune lures out sleepwalking kids, summoning them aboard a ship that flies off into the sky. Who are the fiends behind this dastardly deed? The Sailor Scouts become involved when their very own Sailor Mini Moon is abducted by Badiyanu and her fairies. Aided by Peruru, a young fairy befriended by Mini Moon, Sailor Moon and the Sailor Scouts storm Badiyanu's castle to free the children. Once they arrive, they discover the plans that Badiyanu has for the children, especially Mini Moon...
The plot can't be described further without giving too much of the ending away, but it's a rather simple one; considering the intended target audience, it's quite appropriate. The SAILOR MOON movies are a lot like the STAR TREK movies—the movies are self-contained stories that are separate from the series' continuity, but most of them feel like extended filler episodes. SAILOR MOON SUPER S THE MOVIE is one such example. The character designs and the animation quality aren't different from the TV series.
This is a nicely packaged DVD, but the movie itself is not quite top-notch quality. The picture quality is okay; there aren't any visual DVD artifacts noticeable to the casual viewer, but the film to video transfer looks slightly out of focus. The bluriness is noticeable in contrast to the optional subtitles that use yellow and green fonts. The viewer also has a choice of listening to the English soundtrack in stereo, or the original Japanese soundtrack in mono. The Japanese track is at a lower volume level than the English track, so you'll have to adjust the audio level if you switch between the two. The voice acting on both tracks are pretty good, but the English Sailor Neptune and Sailor Pluto seem to have been miscast—Neptune sounds too old, and Pluto sounds much too young. The music is rather unremarkable with the exception of the songs: the opening theme and the children's sleepwalking song.
The menus are some of the nice touches on this DVD. The artists at Nightjar, LLC, really did their research because the Art Nouveau influences in their menu designs reflect the same influences seen in other SAILOR MOON merchandise. Using a light shade of blue to indicate the current selection probably isn't the best choice, since it can be difficult for most people to distinguish between shades of blue than between shades of other colors. Other than that, these are some of the best DVD menus seen on domestic discs so far (including the live action ones).
With only an hour's worth of movie content, there's plenty of leftover space on the DVD, so Pioneer saw fit to include a lot of extras. There's an image gallery of scenes from the movie. There's a character information section that provides background history for each of the main characters along with a clip or two of their special attacks as shown in the movie. There's also a transformations section where clips of Sailor Scouts' movie transformations can be accessed. Since this is the uncut special edition DVD of the movie, the edited opening used in the VHS release is included as an extra. Also included is Pioneer's standard video catalog.
Pioneer really knows how to put together a nice DVD, and it shows. The DVD is not perfect because of the poor video transfer, but the intended young audience may not care much about such detail. The movie itself is light entertainment and comes with quite a bit of extras. As such, the SAILOR MOON SUPER S THE MOVIE DVD makes a nice addition to anybody's SAILOR MOON collection. Pioneer's been doing a fantastic job of producing DVDs lately; let's hope that they keep up the good job.

Released in North America by Pioneer Entertainment (USA) LP
Bilingual DVD (Region 1), 60 mins.
English dubbed / Japanese with English subtitles, PISA-0003V
$29.98
Available now in the USA
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