NoScans: The remarketing of Sailor Moon
Jul. 2nd, 2020 11:54 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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scans_dailyThe fictional heroine of Sailor Moon had her birthday a few days ago, so let's talk about the series.
Sailor Moon gets readapted from time to time. While the original anime and the early 00s live action versions were aimed at primary school aged girls, when making the 25th anniversary not-reboot animated series, the creators took another inspiration – YA genre. The premise of the 2014 series was a closer to text adaptation, and indeed, the manga of Sailor Moon was dedicated mostly to romance, but there was a problem – the series popularity came mostly from the adventure-focused anime adaptation, with the original fans being in the thirties and not interested in middle school romance, while current middle schoolers themselves saw little interest in the somewhat dated and not that well written source material.
Fujoshi, a large part of the fandom, were particularly put off by the creators deciding not to include a popular male-male couple (instead pairing them with girls) and a male character long speculated to be in love with the heroine’s love interest while postponing the introduction of cult following lesbian antiheroines. Popular monster of the week characters were also dropped, and the characters other than the main heroine and hero (and later their daughter) were not developed at all and exchangeable with each other. The 26 episode long initial run covered the same material as first 100 episodes of the 90s anime, but in terms of characterization it covered less than a single episode of the original could.
Therefore, the creators decided to take a radical step and completely rebrand their series, instead marketing it to the original fans. It can be seen even in the stylistics of the series – the promotional music video for first two seasons of Sailor Moon Crystal is dramatic and focuses on the heroine’s romance, as does the closing animation. Meanwhile, the third season highlights the fan favorite couple of Haruka and Michiru (who even get to star in the closing sequence), canonizes a long-speculated popular couple, and adds a lot of fanservice centered around the main male character.
I find it particularly interesting what brands does Sailor Moon cooperate with for its planned 30th anniversary. There’s nothing dedicated to children, instead there being various cosmetics, make up sets, fashion items, clothes, even marriage papers. Furthermore, the controversial 3d elements from opening and transformation sequences were dropped, and the sequences closely resemble those of the 90s anime.
Also notably, the birthday video features some colored pages from the original manga.
Sailor Moon gets readapted from time to time. While the original anime and the early 00s live action versions were aimed at primary school aged girls, when making the 25th anniversary not-reboot animated series, the creators took another inspiration – YA genre. The premise of the 2014 series was a closer to text adaptation, and indeed, the manga of Sailor Moon was dedicated mostly to romance, but there was a problem – the series popularity came mostly from the adventure-focused anime adaptation, with the original fans being in the thirties and not interested in middle school romance, while current middle schoolers themselves saw little interest in the somewhat dated and not that well written source material.
Fujoshi, a large part of the fandom, were particularly put off by the creators deciding not to include a popular male-male couple (instead pairing them with girls) and a male character long speculated to be in love with the heroine’s love interest while postponing the introduction of cult following lesbian antiheroines. Popular monster of the week characters were also dropped, and the characters other than the main heroine and hero (and later their daughter) were not developed at all and exchangeable with each other. The 26 episode long initial run covered the same material as first 100 episodes of the 90s anime, but in terms of characterization it covered less than a single episode of the original could.
Therefore, the creators decided to take a radical step and completely rebrand their series, instead marketing it to the original fans. It can be seen even in the stylistics of the series – the promotional music video for first two seasons of Sailor Moon Crystal is dramatic and focuses on the heroine’s romance, as does the closing animation. Meanwhile, the third season highlights the fan favorite couple of Haruka and Michiru (who even get to star in the closing sequence), canonizes a long-speculated popular couple, and adds a lot of fanservice centered around the main male character.
I find it particularly interesting what brands does Sailor Moon cooperate with for its planned 30th anniversary. There’s nothing dedicated to children, instead there being various cosmetics, make up sets, fashion items, clothes, even marriage papers. Furthermore, the controversial 3d elements from opening and transformation sequences were dropped, and the sequences closely resemble those of the 90s anime.
Also notably, the birthday video features some colored pages from the original manga.
no subject
Date: 2020-07-02 11:43 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-07-02 01:11 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-07-02 01:08 pm (UTC)Does Naoko Takeuchi own her creations outright? I guess if I were an individual person who is presumably still very rich from 90s SM merch I'd be less worried about an aging fanbase than an immortal corporation like Disney and Warner Bros.
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Date: 2020-07-02 01:59 pm (UTC)Alternatively, It might just be that Precure has more or less taken the spot that used to belong to SM and Toei did not want some competition between the two.
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Date: 2020-07-02 01:56 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-07-02 02:24 pm (UTC)Ten years ago they did Saint Seiya Omega, a sequel twnty years after the original, with some guest appearances, but focussing on the next generation of Saints.
And last year we got Saintia Sho, with a female lead, but whose story is set within the originals timeframe (Which, not featuring a lot of technology, can be left more or less as is)
Another comparison might be Power Rangers, where recent seasons have focussed more heavily on the concept of "Legacy" than ever before and with many and frequent appearances by cast members from previous seasons, most of whom the target audience, kids, will have NO idea about.
Older viewers might go "Oh look! A Morpher from PR: Mystic Force" or "Holy crap! Is that the guy who played Jason in MMPR (Except now in his mid 40's)?" but kids probably won't.
I think a part of it is, kids don't care about it any more, so let's try and appeal to a more niche market, but one with more disposable income.
no subject
Date: 2020-07-02 04:24 pm (UTC)It's one of the reasons why the Disney Remakes exist in the first place. Or Jurassic World: Parents will take their kids to experience the same stuff they did and maybe enjoy them themselves.
There is the added benefit of older fans also being more willing to spend, but that's more like a bonus than being the main demographic.
To me, a better example would be The Hobbit movies. which pretty much ignored the book's intended demographic (kids) in favor of trying to appeal to the TLOTR fandom to... not very awesome effects.
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Date: 2020-07-03 05:59 pm (UTC)I thought the Disney remakes as more of a copyright thing, and a desire to keep people going to the cinema, since home media meant they'd long since lost their usual pattern of re-releasing their old movies to the cinema's every ten years or so.
I confess I did wonder why they did Lord of the Rings first, since I'd have thought The Hobbit a better starting point.
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Date: 2020-07-03 06:23 pm (UTC)https://prokopetz.tumblr.com/post/184528269467/szhmidty-prokopetz-okay-there-are-a-whole
The confusion I think comes from instances in which studios DO make a certain movie simply because they don't want to give up the rights back to the owners, most noteworthy being Sony with Spider-man.
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Date: 2020-07-02 02:47 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-07-02 04:06 pm (UTC)From what I recall in the comments when Season 1 came out, the only real additions for that adaptation was the fact that it implied more strongly than the manga that Mamoru's four generals were involved with Usagi's four guardians.
Also, I don't think they really delayed introducing Uranus & Neptune... they always showed up in the third story arc, in the manga and the original anime. Pluto was the first outer to appear in, during Chibi-Usa's story arc.
I don't mean to be argumentative, I'm just a bit confused and I'm wondering if my understanding is lacking some context somewhere. I do know that they made changes to the art you mentioned in response to criticisms of the first season when they came back for the third arc, did they stop being as strict a manga adaptation at that point as well?
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Date: 2020-07-02 04:28 pm (UTC)The most noteworthy change was that they dropped the artstyle (which was trying to be more loyal to Takenuchi's art style) in favor of an art style closer to Precure.
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Date: 2020-07-02 09:52 pm (UTC)So compared to the previous anime, where it took about 90 episodes before they were introduced and Crystal (where by following the manga storyline more closely and with significantly less filler) they were introduced in episode 27 (which corresponds to getting introduced in chapter 27 of the manga)
I don't think that deciding to introduce them when they did was "postponing" their introduction.
Especially when you remember the live action show where none of the Outers were featured at all because they didn't go beyond the first story arc.
no subject
Date: 2020-07-05 10:07 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-07-03 09:25 am (UTC)Ikuhara has his revenge at long last.