Toon Makers Sailor Moon
Many fans of Sailor Moon are unfond of the Cut and Paste Translation that Optimum Releasing gave the show under the direction of DiC and later Cloverway.
However there was another pitch being considered when TOEI was looking to different companies to handle the rights in North America. This pitch was made by a company called "Toon Makers" -- a branch of Renaissance Atlantic, the same people who handled the adaptations of Super Sentai into Power Rangers for Saban Entertainment. Due to this, it's often mistakenly called "Saban Moon" and... well, it's even less faithful than what became of Sailor Moon's much maligned dub.
Toon Makers' version would have had the civilian lives of the very Western Sailor Soldiers filmed in live action, featuring a ethnically and disability diverse cast wherein Sailor Jupiter is black, and Sailor Mercury is in a wheelchair. When they transformed, however, the girls would have become animated heroines, in a style unintentionally reminiscent of Filmation's She-Ra: Princess of Power. Having gained the ability to breathe in space, they would have fought Queen Beryl's space battleship, a literal ship in space, using solar "windsurfers". Also there is no visible Artemis, only Luna and she is a white cat, who wears eyeshadow when animated.
For many years, what little was known about this production came from a two-minute music video (easily found online) filmed at a panel at an Anime Convention only a low quality shaky camera version existed where the screen is somewhat off kilter with the camcorder and you can hear the reactions of the rest of the audience. A version with the perspective corrected exists, as does a slightly longer version which contains some of the preamble from the panel host Allen Hasting. Hasting, the author of the computer graphics software package Lightwave 3D, claimed to have designed the vehicles, which leads to even more confusion as according Rocky Solotoff Lightwave wasn't used at all and a completely different person designed the vehicles.
According to an interview with the man who produced, created, and directed it, Rocky Solotoff, it was actually cut down from a 17-minute Pilot episode/concept video that has yet to see the light of day. However, in 2022 a ten-minute edit of the 17-minute pilot was found and posted on YouTube, so now even more of it can be seen.
Not to be confused with Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon, the live action adaptation made in Japan.
- Adaptational Personality Adjustment: Featured in spades. Rather than Usagi an ordinary, ditzy teenage girl who happens to be the reincarnation of a Sailor Guardian, "Vicky" is the cover for Princess Sailor Moon after she and her friends escape from Beryl when they flee the Moon Kingdom, on Sailor Moon's wedding day no less. She hides sadness about leaving her home, her fiancé Earth Prince Darien and her mother behind a smiling exterior and a desire for normal teenage girl things like dances and cosmetics. The other Senshi follow suit: Sailor Mars is a lot mellower than her original counterpart, asking her friends for fashion advice; Sailor Mercury loses the computer and her genius; Sailor Jupiter is more motherly; and Sailor Venus is less of a ditz, showing that she is a serious warrior in battle and a Handicapped Badass to boot.
- Eighties Hair: Well technically early '90s hair, and fashion, but it's similar to the hair of the latter part of the '80s. Some people have said the live action footage looks a fair bit like it came from Blossom.
- Expository Theme Tune
- Five-Token Band: Sailor Jupiter is black. Sailor Mercury is in a wheelchair and has long red hair. Ironically, perhaps, only one of the Sailor Soldiers -- who appears to be Sailor Mars -- is Asian.
- Handicapped Badass: Presumably what they were going for by making one of the Sailor Soldiers a wheelchair user, whether this would have borne out will never be know with what little footage exists and given that she appears to be the more defense focused Sailor Mercury -- she's wearing blue. They did give her a wheelchair enabled sailboard which fired lasers of some sort.
- Merchandise-Driven: The Solar Sailboard "windsurfers" were parent company Renaissance Atlantic's idea in the hope of making some toy tie ins, which isn't that unlike the original show's plethora of Toyetic Transformation Trinkets, pretty pink Magic Wands, and Magic Staffs but still a bit strange when you are familiar with the original where the only vehicles are the actual cars and motorbikes of Sailor Uranus and Tuxedo Mask.
- Multinational Team: The Sailor Soldiers would have been composed of girls from several nations according to Rocky Solotoff.
- Old Shame: Not the whole production, on which director/producer/writer Rocky Solotoff still looked back in fondness when Anime Fringe interviewed him, but he admitted the production staff were never happy with the animation.
- Race Lift: As per typical '90s kids shows, the cast would have been more diverse than the all Japanese Sailor Senshi or the implied all white Sailor Scouts in the dub. Also Luna gets a "Cat Breed Lift" going from a black shorthair to a white longhair.
- Space Sailing: They took the title 'Sailor Moon' rather... literally, probably due to the fact there would be no cultural connection to the common Sailor Fuku school uniform in the west, still kept the outfits as their heroine forms though sans the bows.
- Toon Transformation: The girls are live action when civilian, animated when they transform into Sailor Soldiers.
- Transformation Sequence: Actually both to and from being Sailor Moon if the music video is anything to go by.
- Tertiary Sexual Characteristics: Luna's eyeshadow
- What Could Have Been: Though fans are all the more grateful for it not happening.