Tell me about it! I wanna know! I’ve always been really curious about the international dubs of Sailor Moon but it’s not always easy to find information that isn’t about the English or Japanese language versions. So what’s better than the experience of those who saw them first-hand? Sailor Moon has been dubbed into an impressive number of languages and if you grew up with one I wanna hear all you know about it. What were your impressions of it? How was it different, what were the biggest changes? How were the localisations (name changes, etc.)? How were the voice actors? Were characters or plot lines different? How do you think it compares to the DiC/Cloverway dub? How was the overall quality? Was it popular where you lived when it aired? And so on and so on… anything you can think of, really. Reblog this, send me an ask, submit me a long-ass post, use the fanmail feature, whatever! I’m a sponge for your non-English-dub information!!
I grew up with the german dub, which was okay and I still watch it to this day ;) They didn’t change anything storywise like the DiC dub. But there were changes. For example Zoicite and Fisheye were both turned into females (which still confuses me when I read FKH. I always hear Zoicites female voice), but the episode in which Fisheye is shown half naked is still in there. Or in the Stars arc when Minako asks Taiki out on a date they cut that it was an adult movie. And the episode in which the girls argue who should play Snow White left out any mention of tits. And there was one mention of kissing cousins, but I personally never saw that episode.
When it comes to voice actors they were decent in my opinion. They usually did a fairly good job, but some episodes are really badly voiced. You can hear that they just read of the script. Or that they confused which line should be voiced by whom. A kinda sad fact is that most of the voice actresses feel ashamed for working on Sailor Moon. Two voice actors changed after season 1. Usagis and Mamorus. It wasn’t bad, just different.
Nearly all of the names stayed the same except for the main character! Usagi was changed to Bunny. Probably because otherwise we wouldn’t get that her name means rabbit/bunny. But during season 1 Umino sometimes called her Usagi-san. And it confused everybody. But to be honest i still call her mostly Bunny than Usagi.
Sailor Moon was really freakin’ popular in germany, but as soon as the boys and girls reached a certain age (Puberty!) it was “uncool" to watch such a “silly" show. I always stood to my Sailor Moon love.
All of the movies were shown once on TV. One saturday afternoon with all three Sailor Moon movies in a row. We recorded it. Still have that tape. Ami’s first love was never shown on german TV. Neither was the Chibi-Usa special with the vampires.
And a big bad thing when it comes to the german releases, they never gave you a chance to get the full show on VHS/DVD. There were episodes on VHS but the episodes were randomly chosen. For example the episode with Usagis birthday was a two parter. We got the first episode on VHS but not the second one. And that happened quite often. Same with the CDs. The show was never released on DVDs because the rights are with nobody. But you can find all of the german episodes online. So no biggie.
Unfortunatley we had our own Opening which used the footage of the very first opening but a completley different song. 90s techno. Oh boy. Also it never changed the footage. Stars arc still used it with some footage of the other senshi badly put in. And once the music changed. More 90s techno. I found the first intro on YouTube so here you go:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NCC_-1gVE5Q
One major difference were the transformations and attacks. Everything was “translated" into german. At least they tried to translate it somehow. But yeah try to translate Honeymoon Therapy Kiss" into something that makes sense. -.-
So that all I could think of at the moment when it comes to the german dub. It’s okay and I still like and watch it. Hope that was interesting.
Oh and one fun fact: The woman who voiced Usagi in season one also voices Lisa Simpson.
Fascinating! I always liked the German Sailor Moon theme, cheesy 90’s techno and all. XD When I went to Germany on vacation in early 1999, I didn’t really know a whole lot about Sailor Moon, other than it was a “Japanimation” and I loved it. It had only been airing on Cartoon Network for less than a year, if I remember correctly.
I came across some German SM merchandise that had some characters I didn’t quite recognize, which I know now were the Starlights, and I think STARS had recently aired at the time. I also remember the cover of a VHS tape with Super Moon and Super Chibimoon, which blew my mind when I went back to the States and discovered that there were more episodes than we were going to see in the US. Sadly, I didn’t buy any of this German merchandise, partially due to the embarrassment factor since my family was a little bemused by my Sailor Moon obsession. ^_^;;
Later that year were my first real interactions with The Internet, at the library and my dad’s office, where I ate up any information about the series I could. AHH GOOD TIMES.
