2014's New Sailor Moon Crystal Anime's 1st Image,
posted on 2014-03-13 22:00 EDT

Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon Crystal to stream worldwide on Niconico this July

Toei Animation uploaded an unlinked image to its official website for the upcoming Sailor Moon anime, and the image reveals the first key image, the title, and the synopsis for the new series. The image notes that Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon Crystal will premiere in July and will stream simultaneously worldwide on the Niconico website.



The image also lists the previously revealed main staff, and reveals a synopsis:

Usagi Tsukino is a second-year middle school girl who is a little clumsy and a crybaby, but she is full of energy. One day, she meets Luna, a black cat with a crescent moon on her forehead, and she transforms into Sailor Moon, a sailor-uniformed pretty guardian of love and justice! As a chosen guardian of justice, Usagi seems to have a mission to find the Illusionary Silver Crystal with the other guardians and to protect the princess.

Meanwhile, the queen of the Dark Kingdom, Queen Beryl, also sends minions to the town where Usagi lives to obtain the Illusionary Silver Crystal, which has immense power. This causes strange events to unfold….

Can Sailor Moon really find the Illusionary Silver Crystal with the other Sailor guardians, and protect the princess…!?

The official website launched a countdown page earlier on Thursday with the words "eight days left... coming soon" with a waxing moon. The countdown does not begin until Friday.

The new Sailor Moon anime will begin streaming worldwide on the Niconico service in July. Producer Atsutoshi Umezawa (Precure franchise) said that it "is not remaking the previous anime, but adapting the original manga and starting from scratch again."

Munehisa Sakai (One Piece, One Piece: Strong World, Suite Precure) is directing this new adaptation of Naoko Takeuchi's original manga at Toei Animation, the studio behind the first anime. Yūji Kobayashi (scripts on Saint Seiya Omega, Smile Precure!) is in charge of the series scripts, and Momoiro Clover Z is performing the theme song.

Yukie Sako (chief animation director on Majestic Prince, Nyan Koi!) is designing the characters, and Yasuharu Takanashi (Naruto Shippūden, Fairy Tail, Precure franchise) is composing. The art directors will be Takashi Kurahashi (Mononoke, Gatchaman Crowds, Hakaba Kitarō) and Yumi Hosaka (Mononoke, Gatchaman Crowds). King Records is producing the soundtrack.

Takeuchi launched the original magical girl team manga series in the shōjo monthly manga magazine Nakayoshi in 1992. It soon spawned anime, a live-action television project, musicals, and other adaptations, and it also sparked a worldwide boom. The 20th anniversary project began in 2012, and featured the first musical in eight years at the AiiA Theater Tokyo last September. Kodansha has been republishing the original manga in a complete edition since last November, and Kodansha USA Publishing's Kodansha Comics imprint has been publishing the manga in North America.

Ask John: What Are the Defining Moé Anime?

Question:
What would you say are some essential moe shows? What shows would you recommend for someone who’s curious about what moe anime is like?


Answer:
Although the term “moé” arose in Japanese fandom in the 1990s, it immigrated to America in the early 2000s. Conceptually moé originally referred to a passionate but asexual fascination with emerging adolescence. Moé originally referred to a feeling of affection and almost parental protectiveness over characters who were innocent, cute, and just on the verge of maturing of childhood. In other words, the moé character is the anime equivalent of the literary ingénue. Cuteness and emerging maturity rather than age were defining characteristics of moé status, allowing for characters like Steel Angel Kurumi to still be moé even though she wasn’t ostensibly a child. Kurumi had the fully-developed body of a young adult woman, but her consciousness and personality were still that of an ingénue, which evoked viewers’ desire to embrace and protect her from, essentially, the corruption of adulthood.

The anime exploitation of pure, original moé seems to have peaked around 2005. Kage Kara Mamoru! & Mamoru-kun ni Megami no Shukufuku wo! are shows that don’t explicitly have the visual appearance of stereotypical moé anime but are prime examples of the concept of moé. Kage Kara Mamoru! revolved around a teen girl who is completely oblivious to greed, jealousy, desire, lust, and other adult vices. Moreover, she literally has to be secretly watched over and protected by a friend who serves as the vicarious stand-in for the audience. Mamoru-kun likewise depicts an adorably small, rosy-cheeked boy who’s doted on and adored by a bigger, more mature girl. Mamoru-kun is the epitome of a male moé character.

Kamichu! revolved around a pouty, kind-hearted innocent who evoked paternal instincts in her friends, the supernatural beings that surrounded her, and the viewing audience. Petopeto-san likewise achieved the same impact but wasn’t as widely watched or recognized as Kamichu! The girls of Ichigo Mashimaro are adorable because they’re literally right on the edge of growing out of moé. They exhibit the first signs of adult cynicism yet are still childlike. Fushigi Hoshi no Futago Hime injected moé into shoujo anime, depicting a pair of precocious sisters whose childlike enthusiasm and idealism kept getting them into hair-raising dangers. The UG Ultimate Girls TV series and Koharu Biyori OVA series may be among the first anime to foreshadow the sexualization and fetishization of moé. While these two anime are certainly suggestive, they both have a playful, lighthearted tone of exploitation about them, unlike later anime that made its sexualization far more pointed.

The Binchotan TV series provided moé for an older viewing audience. Binchoutan had no hint of sex, nor did it even include any of the bishoujo characters now central to the moé phenomena. Binchoutan depicted adorably cute Smurf-sized girls who lived simple pastoral lifestyles. Their heartwarming simplicity evoked a strong sense of calm, peacefulness, and serene observation – in a word, moé. The adorable yet clumsy animals of Damekko Doubutsu evoked simultaneous affection and pity. Like Hello Kitty with cancer, the useless animals created a wellspring of asexual love and desire to cuddle and coddle.

As the first decade of the 2000s unfolded, moé became increasing popular and recognized, invoking a commercial interest in manufacturing and exploiting moé. As this process occurred, moé evolved from being a non-sexual desire to hug, love, and protect to being a sexually sublimated fascination with cuteness. Moé shifted entirely from a two-way interchange between character and viewer to becoming distinctly a characteristic of particular characters or a focused fetish of viewers. Particularly anime including K-On, Lucky Star, and Moetan deliberately revolved around adorable, whimsical, clumsy, early-adolescent girl characters in order to evoke, enflame, and manipulate the interests and affections of viewers. These characters no longer evoked moé feelings; they were literally moé characters – not characters that naturally and unconsciously evoked a paternal reaction from viewers, but rather characters that were the physical manifestation of the defining characteristics of the moé movement. These girl characters were adorably cute, just a bit sexually appealing, and self-conscious but not yet cynical. They demanded notice and adoration from viewers rather than passively earning adoration and protective feelings.

At the same time moé was hitting its peak and beginning to evolve, it branched off into a parallel variety of moé, the pandering to particular niche fetishes. At least as early as 2002, the G-On Riders television series had consciously featured girls who wore glasses, to appeal to the “meganekko” fans, but the trend became more pronounced beginning in 2005 with anime that focused on satisfying one particular viewer obsession, for example: Kore ga Watashi no Goshujin-sama (moé for French maid outfits), Strike Witches (military moé), Higurashi no Naku Koro ni (yandere moé), Mayoi Neko Overrun (waitress uniform moé), Macademy Washoi & Asobi ni Ikuyo (nekomimi moé), and Upotte! (assault rifle moé).

http://www.animenation.net/blog/2012...ing-moe-anime/