What We Learned From The Failed American Version Of 'Sailor Moon'

Lost media—footage that no longer exists, is missing, or is otherwise unavailable to the public—is having a moment in 2022. Just this June, the fabled "banned episode" of Sesame Street featuring Margaret Hamilton reprising her Wicked Witch character from The Wizard of Oz, deemed too scary for children, resurfaced online. Now, another piece of footage long thought lost to time has been uncovered: The proposed American remake of Sailor Moon, an animated/live-action hybrid. And boy, is it a doozy.

The Sailor Moon known and loved the world over began as a manga in 1991, written and illustrated by Naoko Takeuchi. It proved so immensely popular that it was soon adapted into an anime series produced by Toei Animation and distributed worldwide, including by DiC in the United States. The story follows Usagi Tsukino, a seemingly normal schoolgirl in Japan who learns she is in fact Sailor Moon, a legendary warrior meant to defend Earth from the forces of evil. Alongside her fellow Sailor Scouts and her boyfriend Mamoru, she fights enemies in the hope of maintaining peace throughout the galaxy. Since its debut, Sailor Moon has inspired countless video games, collectibles, and imitators; in 2014, a rebooted version of the series, Sailor Moon Crystal, began airing—the final two feature-length installments are set to debut in summer of 2023.

Back to the 1990s: Before deciding to simply dub the existing anime, Saban Entertainment wanted to try something a bit different. Seeing just how big a success Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers had become, the company smelled another potential hit on their hands and moved to similarly adapt Sailor Moon. Saban tasked two studios, Renaissance-Atlantic and ToonMakers, Inc. to film a pilot presentation. With a limited budget and pressure to get it right, the studios set about seeking talent. They were able to enlist Adrienne Barbeau (Maude, Batman: The Animated Series) and Melendy Britt (She-Ra: Princess of Power) as voiceover talent, and cast actresses including Stephanie Dicker (General Hospital) and Tami Adrian-George (Starship Troopers) to play Sailor Moon and Sailor Jupiter, respectively, for the live-action scenes. After filming was complete, ToonMakers took a sizzle reel to the 1995 Anime Expo to debut; it was met with laughter and derision, becoming infamous among both Sailor Moon fans and the general anime-watching audience. For decades, that's where the story of this failed adaptation ended, though curiosity remained high. There simply had to be more, right?

Image via Saban Entertainment

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Cut to 2022 and YouTuber/documentarian Ray Mona, who released a video in March tracing both Sailor Moon's debut and initial struggles in the North American market, as well as a deep dive into the failed Saban-produced remake that posed more questions than it answered. However, no one could know that this was simply the precursor to the reveal of the completed pilot. On August 22, Mona debuted a second video detailing not only conversations she'd had with producers, cast, and crew involved with the pilot presentation (dubbed "Saban Moon"), but revealing that through an exhaustive search, a copy of the complete pilot had been found at the Library of Congress and was being made public. To say the footage is... unique is an understatement.

The story has the same broad strokes as the original series—a young girl is in actuality a warrior princess named Sailor Moon who fights evil alongside her friends the Sailor Scouts. However, this version is flush with awkwardness. The acting in the live-action portion is stilted and wooden, filled with enough sickeningly sweet vibes to give even Mary Lou Retton a splitting headache, and featuring a horrendous attempt at "hip" dancing. The animated portion doesn't fare much better—it's choppy and cheap-looking, and aside from Barbeau and Britt, the voice-overs are blasé and lifeless. Plus, it's not clear—are the girls entering a different dimension when they transform into their animated counterparts? Are they time-traveling? What does any of this mean?

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Luckily this version never went into production. The original Japanese show was dubbed for North American audiences and aired on Fox Kids and Cartoon Network, leaving the brand's legacy intact and capturing the attention of multiple generations of audiences the world over. However, "Saban Moon" serves as an interesting peek into a world of what could have been. Check it out—just make sure to queue up an episode of the original series to remind yourself of what made Sailor Moon so special in the first place.