Sailor Moon R Complete Series Review

Hot off the heels of our Sailor Moon R The Movie Review here is our Sailor Moon R Complete Series review covering the home release Blu-Ray set that contains both part 1 and part 2 sets of Sailor Moon R together and on Blu-Ray for the very first time here in Australia.

Sailor Moon R is set 2 months after the events of the first series. The Sailor Scouts along with Mamoru are back to living regular lives and have no memories of what took place over the course of the first 46 episodes.

The R series is broken up into 2 core arcs. The Makai Tree arc makes up the first 13 episodes of the set while the Black Moon Clan arc make up the remainder of the episodes.

I found the episodes in this set to be more entertaining overall compared to the episodes featured in the first season. While the first is packed full of nostalgia this season gets going much faster, likely because it didn’t have to gradually introduce all the characters throughout the opening arc. Assuming that fans have watched the first season and know the characters, their quirks and backstories and focusing on more engaged story lines. That’s not to say there aren’t any new characters at all obviously. This set contains the introduction of one of the best characters of the series, Chibiusa.

Even after being a fan of the series for many years and only having access to the original DiC dub which we all know was heavily edited, it was great to see this set completely uncut and witness for the first time scenes and even whole episodes that DiC decided to remove for various reasons.

After watching the original series so much growing up it was hard getting used to the new voices as I’d mentioned in my review of season one. As when ViZ re-licensed the series they decided to completely re-dub it too. Which overall was the best decision they could have made. After watching all of the first set I was used to the new voices and by the end really appreciated ViZ invested so much time redoing it all to make it a much more faithful adaptation with a higher quality writing than we received in the original English Dub.

For those purists out there, the set also includes the original Japanese track and English subtitles.

It comes packages in a sturdy hardcover box containing the Blu-Ray volumes for part 1 and part 2 of the season across 5 discs. Each disc features artwork of the various characters and just like the season 1 set this one also comes with an artwork booklet. This booklet contains character profiles and art prints and look really nice printed on it’s glossy paper pages.

The set is a little light on special features compared to other complete sets, containing only textless versions of the opening and closing themes. While I would have loved some episode commentaries or another behind the scenes feature of the new English dub that was on the season 1 set it’s definitely not a deal breaker for the set nor does it diminish the amount of value already included.

This Blu-Ray set contains every episode of Sailor Moon R completely remastered, re-dubbed and uncut. For those keeping up with the episode listing of the whole series it contains episodes 47-89.

Final Thoughts

If you’re a fan of Sailor Moon you obviously need to pick this up to continue building your collection. If you’re new to the series, Sailor Moon R is not a good jumping on point as it relies heavily on characters and events that occurred in season 1. Go and pick that up first and enjoy it.
At it’s core it is still Sailor Moon goodness many of us love, but also includes the same things we will continually find frustrating. I’m looking at you lengthy transformation and attack sequences.
The series has never looked better now that it’s on Blu-Ray, and with it’s great looking hardcover box, it’s a welcome addition to any anime collection.

A Blu-Ray review copy was provided by Madman Entertainment for the purpose of this review.

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