Naoko Takeuchi's art

Welp. As many of you know by now, the mobile game Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon Drops is going to be closed permanently on the 28th of March, after three years and a half of activity. Of course I am sad at the news, but actually my main mood about this stuff is more like being royally pissed off… I mean, both Kodansha, Toei Doga and Bandai are currently treating Sailor Moon fandom like shit, and I’m more than a bit annoyed by that.

To further elaborate on this point, let’s see how every incarnation of Sailor Moon is going as of now in terms of announcements and new releases in general. The live-action series is obviously excluded, since it ended in 2004 and no one expects it to be revived. Here’s how I would rank the current Sailor Moon media from least to most active during the last few years, or at least that’s how I would have done it until yesterday:

5) The manga: Of course this must be the least active medium because it ended in 1997, add to that the fact that we’ve just had a deluxe re-release (the kanzenban was published in 2013/2014), but what irks me is another thing. It’s that an updated re-release for the first three artbooks was officially announced to be delivered during the year of the series’ 25th anniversary. For those who haven’t noticed, 2017 ended and no other news about the book have been dropped. Oh, and I know this is probably of close to no interest to many of you, but I’m also quite annoyed because the kanzenban edition was announced by the manga’s Italian publisher two years ago, and guess who still has to see any further news about this?

4) Crystal: This medium is more or less in stasis currently, with the fact that the Season IV films were announced in Summer 2017... now, I’m not complaining about the fact that they haven’t been released yet, since I know how much long it takes to complete a feature animation film, what I really cannot stand is the fact that we haven’t been given anything in the meantime. Nothing: not a main visual, not a teaser trailer, not a planned release date. That’s just disrespectful towards the fans.

3) The old anime: ...Absurd as it is, this is actually more active than the new anime. Obviously not in terms of actual new material, but it should be noted that 1) at this point, the amount of new merch that’s being released for this series is almost unbelievable, especially for one that ended in 1997 and 2) may I remind you of the two different times in the last two years that songs from this anime spun an actual classical concert complete with world tour and merchandise? Just to add to this, I know it seems incredible but the official site has just shared an announcement about the upcoming release of the SuperS season in Blue-Ray Disc... while the DVD boxes of the whole series are still available. Who are they trying to toy with? Who fucking needs Blue-Rays anyway? And why would one ever think of releasing an HD remaster of a show so ugly-looking that it’s just going to do more bad than good to itself?

2) Sera Myu: This one has been going steadily since its revival in 2013, with a new musical a year and each of them subsequently released on DVD; it may be a bit underwhelming for older fans who were used to having two or even three new musicals each year during the 1993-2005 era, but I’m surely not one to complain. We shoul also consider that the last two musicals also featured different teams of main actresses (two for NoghiMyu and even three for the Super Live!), which means that it’s almost like we had two or three full musicals to watch, lol. In short, definitely not complaining about this one, especially if it keeps the writing quality of the Noghizaka46 myu (I still have to watch the latest one, though, since I’m waiting for the subs).

1) Videogames: As I said, this is were I’d have ranked the medium until yesterday, but I think it’s still fair to keep Drops in this position until when it’s really shut down, which means that we’ve got two full months of time to see where this is going. Actually, as we know, there’s currently only one Sailor Moon game available, and it’s not even a real videogame, as much as a free-to-play mobile phone app with optional purchases, but what can I say? It’s not only incredibly fun and full of characters to collect, but its artstyle is just so freaking cute and adorable that it’s difficult not to love this game even knowing that it is little more than Candy Crush in space! with Sailor Warriors! The reason why I rank it first in terms of activity is because, up until now, there have almost always been two new playable characters a month (which means that each months there were two full special events to play, not counting the monthly rerun of past events!), along with less frequent but still regular updates to the main story maps - which, may I recall, also feature a sixth, completely new tale set in the Silver Millennium after the five story arcs from the anime. I don’t know if they’re going to add some last few characters during the next two months, but I’m afraid not. In any case, it’s simply terrifying that A) this freaking mobile game is, or at least was since yesterday, the most active Sailor Moon medium, and that B) with all the potential of the manga’s story, no one has still thought of adapting it into an RPG for the 3DS.

Aaand that’s all to justify my royal rage towards the powers that be! But before going to bed, I feel the need to bring up another point. You know Dragon Ball? It’s a pretty famous series, you must at least heard of it. It’s owned by Shuesha (the manga), Toei Doga (the anime) and Bandai (the videogames) - notice some familiar names? Well, always remember that, in January 2018, a new Dragon Ball film was announced of which no one had ever heard anything before. In December 2018, that film hit Japanese cinemas. Never forget.