Saban Moon ~ Heinous error or terrible mistake?

Sailor Moon is one of the most influential animations of all time. It was only natural that eventually it make its way world wide, beginning in the 1990's with its distribution to North America. Toei put the series up for sale in a bidding process, part of which involved the bidders displaying when they intended to do with the rights to such a franchise. The two main bidders were DiC and Renaissance- Atlantic in conjuction with Toon Makers.

There is a misapprehension that the other competitor was Saban. Saban has been responsible for such Japanese cross-overs as "Power Rangers", "Digimon", "Super Mario Bros." and "Dragon Ball Z" and Saban's history with DiC has been fraught, with a few legal cases between the two and a large amount of competition in the children's programme and dubbing market. Also, Saban was for a time attached to Renaissance- Atlantic, so Sailor Moon fans began to dub the bidding project, "Saban Moon". This however is not the case as Saban actually had nothing whatsoever to do with the bid for the franchise.

DiC approached Toei with its own dub of the series. This dub isn't particularly fantastic and there was alot of tweaking with footage and episode structure in order to westernise the story. However, Renaissance-Atlantic went forth with an entirely new concept of Sailor Moon; the first episode of which being written, directed and produced by Toon Makers founder and president, Rocky Solotoff.

Toon Makers created the 17 minute promo video as well as the 2 minute music video seen on many video streaming sites such as Youtube. Soon after however, this version became known as Sailor Moon's "Worst Case scenario". The pilot episode has so-far never seen the light of day and perhaps this is a good thing as there are still Sailor Moon fans baying for Saban's blood; even though Saban is an innocent by-stander in this escapade.

Toei handed Sailor Moon to DiC who set about murdering the series in their own way, however the legend of "Saban Moon" refuses to die. It is my feeling that this is simply because it is so painful!

• The animation is americanised. This would not be a problem except that the series was already animated in Japan.
• The character design is altered pretty radically.
• Any references whatsoever to Japanese culture are cut and the series looks like an episode of "Beverly Hills 90210".
• It is quite simply NOT Sailor Moon anymore.

Rocky Solotoff still insists that this new version of Sailor Moon would have been an improvment upon the original and that eventually it would have proven more popular. However, Moon fans everywhere say "keep dreaming!"