So what age group should Sailor Moon be aimed at?

Ever since Toonmakers first attempted to “Saban” Sailor Moon, English speaking Moonies have been debating about what age group the series should be aimed at.

When Moon Sisters first opened on February 18th 2005, I first posted that Sailor Moon is a mature, adult series. A lot of fans have since mistaken the word “adult” for Hentai, the Japanese term used to define anime and manga porn.

For the record, ADULT does NOT mean “porn” although you may not know that if you see the whole series.

Still, I’ve received hundreds of emails and notes posted to my YouTube, swearing that Sailor Moon should always be aimed at 3-6 year olds. These people also believe that anything above TVY7 should be burned and we should all act like Teletubbies minus Tinky Winky.

Bullshit. And I have the proof.

So to settle the debate once and for all (I hope), here's what happened.

Sailor Moon creator Naoko Takeuchi said that initially she aimed the manga at a mature audience, specifically teen and adult men. Hence where the Sailor Guardians appear nude 62% of the time. Below is an excerpt from the Tokyopop/Mixx printing of Sailor Moon Graphic Novel #1:

Now a handful of you old enough to remember (and hopefully own) a few Mixx Manga books may question the fact that a lot of the original segments with Naoko had the words “Mixx” and “Mixxers” thrown in, years after the original interviews took place. You would be right in your questioning, but at the very least Mixx still did NOT edit out the sentiment of said interviews.

So now let’s take a look at some scans from the actual manga. Keep in mind NONE of the following come from ANY transformations, and also keep in mind that this isn’t even a full list of shots:

The original target audience also explains the amount of lingerie images in Sailormoon:

There’s also a ton of violence to contend with:

And let’s not forget Usagi and Mamoru’s relationship:

At first, Toei Animation kept up with this target audience, allowing writers and animators to place all kinds of lewd humor into practically each episode:

And of course Toei kept up with the violence and nudity, much to the point of adding in even more death and destruction than the original manga!

But somewhere during the completion of season one, a Toei exec decided that the series could make TONS more money, if they added a few more toy lines aimed at the children of the show's initial audience. Kodansha was right behind them, making commercials and send-away products, aimed at tween girls.

Now is where everything gets tricky. The content of the show remained mostly unchanged, save but for a few episodes of Sailor Moon SuperS. The show still dealt openly with sexual themes, violence and death, but the toy line was aimed at a younger and younger demographic. At one point, a slue of toy ads ran during episode 164, which had the following themes:

SuperS received the lowest ratings of any season of Sailor Moon, despite the amazing artwork, fun humor, a stellar toy line (which even included motion sensitive dolls, intelligent enough to follow the episodes with you) and a kinda deep storyline. Seriously, this season is still getting a weird amount of hate online, but it's one of the more aesthetically pleasing seasons.

Part of the blame was placed upon the fact that the season dealt mostly with the life of a growing Chibiusa, while another part of the blame went to the fact that Toei failed to keep up with the manga (valid complaint), and thus the Outer Sailor Guardians were mostly omitted (minus the movie and one special), the Amazoness Quartet were depowered and removed from Guardians status (Aw c’mon Toei really??), Super Sailor Chibi Moon had more than half of her powers removed until the SuperS movie and the end of the season, Eternal Sailor Moon was pushed ahead into Sailor StarS (I will get to that) and NONE of the other Guardians received their full power ups at the end. And I’m not even counting the depowering of Diana and Artemis.

Then came Sailor Moon Sailor StarS, where all hell broke loose.

Naoko Takeuchi had not yet finished writing the end of the manga, and had been in several heated arguments with different Toei writers. Toei animation wanted the series to keep going, with several executives wanting to take the series not only into a separate story altogether, but they wanted to aim for an even younger demographic, while Naoko wanted the series to stay true to her initial audience.

The solution? End the series at Sailor StarS.

While both the anime and manga took on even MORE adult themes, the endings vary. The anime ended in February of 1997, while the manga lasted until the following March. Naoko and Toei bickered, until finally agreeing upon the final designs for Taiki, Seiya and Yaten (Toei opted for rattails, so that Bandai could make the dolls with brush-able hair. Naoko wanted their hair to remain short like Mamoru and Haruka. Go figure.) Toei eventually did drop most of the “kid-friendly” themes that were originally in place, though a toy line was aimed at girls ages 3-11. (What?)

Now, I know what you’re thinking. “But Earthy!! Japan had different standards for children’s programming in the mid 1990’s. Shouldn’t everything be edited anyway?”

*SMACK* No dear. Don’t think stupid. J

Now I know Japan in the 90’s was not nearly as screwed up as the United States when it came to censorship, but please use your brain here. Do you REALLY want your toddlers watching this:

Now about the continuation of the kiddy nonsense.

Back in 1994, Toei began licensing out Sailor Moon to other countries. While the show ran uncensored for most countries, in some, big ugly changes were made.

Mexico for example would go on to alter a few key plots. While Uranus and Neptune's relationship was left to the imagination of the viewers, Fish-eye and Zoicite were made female. In Italy, the Sailor Starlights became three sets of twins, one male pop singer set and one female superhero set. South Korea would repaint the Starlights' costumes and give Usagi a Variation of Queen Serenity's dress in episode 200. Select countries replaces Usagi's body with a bright light, which would be referenced near the end of Sailor Moon Cosmos Part 2 when Usagi dove into The Cauldron with Chaos.

Aside from these changes though, the series was left pretty much intact in most regions of the world.

Americans would not be so lucky, however.

1994 saw Toonmakers produce a Saban like music video for a cancelled live action product.
Any similarity between this and ANTHING Sailor Moon related is purely coincidental.

Once Toei Animation had seen the above reel, they pitched a fit and began shopping the series around for another few months, until they struck a deal with DiC, via their long standing relationship with DiC’s parent company. So DiC picked up the series, and between December of 1994 and April of 1995, the series bounced from local station to local station, edited to SHREDS.

DiC (a subsidiary of Disney at the time) had ZERO intention of producing an anime above TVY7. In fact I'm not entirely convinced they even read the script for ANY episode before cutting and dubbing. So while a basic toy line was produced, the show was aimed at 2-11 year old girls.

However by making the decision early on to aim the show at such a young demographic, DiC wound up running into some major snafus involving content. One such incident came with the infamous “Day of Destiny” fiasco, in which episodes 45 and 46 were spliced together as one 24 minute episode, but some episodes just could not be censored without leaving open great big plot holes. As a result, DiC dropped a total of 6 episodes. Episode 67 (though dubbed) was dropped due to the fact that it was the lowest rated episode in the entire series. The only questionable scene involves a baby plesiosaur with a wound, but other than that it was a harmless episode. But take a gander at the other 5!

WOW you dubbies missed a TON of stuff!!

The first few series of toys from BanDai America and Irwin only existed in small quantities, relegated to either the tiniest isles of the local SUPER toy store, comic book shops or rare specialty stores. The initial book lines were even more scarce, and for the first two years Sailormoon only existed in syndication on select local channels in the US. The USA Network briefly aired the first 65 DiC edited episodes, but dropped the series after only a few months.

Finally in June of 1997, Cartoon Network acquired Sailor Moon for it’s Toonami block, airing the show at the start of said block every day at 4 p.m. cst/5 p.m. est. Mixx began releasing the manga in English in 1998 and soon the PC game
“The 3D Adventures of Sailor Moon” was released in some US markets. Canada saw most of the Sailor Moon merchandise, due to the series's popular run on YTV, but Americans were still starving for more.

DiC (then facing financial crisis with Sailor Moon being it’s only profitable series still on the air) was only able to acquire the remaining 18 episodes of Sailor Moon R, via a generous assistance from The Program Exchange, which by then had been distributing The Rocky and Bullwinkle Show to Cartoon Network. But during the early stages of production, internal bickering over funds led to the quitting of the first voice actress for Sailor Mars, and the second voice actor for Tuxedo Mask.

Around this time Disney had threatened to produce a live action movie, with Gina Davis set to play Queen Beryl, but the movie never got the green light from Toei. Part of the reason was that the script would have cheapened the quality of the main storyline.

It should be noted that rumors had spread that a live action or otherwise re-animated series was planned, with Sailor Mercury having black hair instead of blue, and with Rini/Chibiusa being ret conned as Serena/Usagi’s baby sister instead of future daughter. But by now Cartoon Network had already aired the final 18 episodes, so the concept of Rini being anyone BUT Sailor Moon and Tuxedo Mask’s first born child was thrown out the window. Where the rumors came from is up for debate, but the first few Sailor Mercury dolls for the North American market from BanDai and Irwin had jet black hair, so take that where you will.

DiC through Optimum Productions would dub the three Sailor Moon movies, but during production Toei had once again began shopping the series around to another distributor. They chose Cloverway, a distant subsidiary of theirs, and shortly thereafter ended a five year odyssey with DiC. The specials that aired before each movie (Sailor Moon Makeup special and Ami’s First Love) were never dubbed by DiC/Optimum.

1999 saw Cloverway pick up S and SuperS once DiC had lost the rights to the series. Only a few of the DiC voice actors chose to stay on for the next two seasons, as many of the actors had chosen other paths. The second voice for Sailor Mars returned after her sabbatical from DiC, and the voices for Sailor Jupiter, Artemis, Luna, Ikuko, Shingo/Sammy and the movie voice for Sailor Uranus were all lined up, but the second voice for Sailor Moon had to leave soon after the movies were released in order to have her twins. The other voice actors either quit or were fired for various reasons, and soon Cloverway had begun hiring replacements.

The people at Cloverway were a little smarter than the people at DiC, and quickly ascertained that the series should be aimed at an older audience. So the call was made to reduce much of the editing. It started with the retention of the original sound effects and music (which was also a cost-cutting trick) and it soon spread to half of the dialogue (though some episodes would retain less than half of the original script.)

Some controversial changes were made, starting with the changing of Uranus and Neptune’s relationship from an age-appropriate Lesbian couple to "cousins" that still hold hands and get lovey-dovey, (WTF??) and continuing to the unnecessary gender changes of Fish-eye due to his homosexuality and gender-fluid status, and weirdly, Zirconia was turned from female to male – despite her never having so much as a crush on anyone, being called "Granny" by Jun Jun and wearing pink lipstick all the time. (No really, WTF??) However the themes of death were restored, and some sexual innuendo was also left alone.

So seasons three and four were dubbed, staying a little closer to the original. They aired on Cartoon Network's Toonami block a half hour later, and the show was now marketed to 11-15 year olds with no care what so ever made to gender.

Too bad Irwin toys missed the memo.

Two commercials aired for the new toy line, but they were aimed at the old 2-11 year old crowd. One ad featured five little girls playing with the 11.5 inch dolls while another spot aired with a tiny tot sleeping with a Sailor Moon plush.

After the ratings came in however, Irwin nixed the commercials, and at the conventions, the company aimed the new Sailor Moon toys at mature collectors. (Hence the rare & expensive Sailor Saturn doll)

Cloverway released the episodes onto censored dub, uncensored dub and subtitled VHS's, and later released the uncensored subtitled DVDs. The censored tapes were aimed at pre-teens, while the other sets were aimed at teens and adults, with the familiar "13 and UP" sticker.

By the middle of 2001, SuperS was wrapping up on Toonami and things appeared to be great for Sailor Moon in America. The Tokyopop/Mixx manga was just ending, and was well received even by non-Moonies everywhere (despite skipping Codename Sailor V and not getting a pre-reprint Parallel Sailor Moon).

And then everything went straight to Hell in a hand basket.

Cloverway attempted to bring over Sailor StarS, but Toei Animation executives were unhappy about the way all four seasons had been dubbed in America. The general feeling was that the series should have been aimed at the same demographic that it had been, BUT uncensored.

Since the anime ended in 1997, Sailor Moon has re-run on Japanese stations several times uncensored. The idea was that it should run just as much everywhere else, but Cartoon Network disagreed. The execs did NOT want Sailor StarS, due to the un-censorable adult theme of the show.

While Gundam Wing and Outlaw Star would enjoy runs both on Toonami and on “The Midnight Run”
(Later changed to Adult Swim), Cartoon Network executives did not want to test out an adult block version of Sailor Moon.

One reason is that these idiots believed the myth that this was always a “girls” show, and that girls and women "don’t" like adult-themed shows or action, hence why the planned girls block of programming, centered on action-girl shows like Sailor Moon, Cardcaptor Sakura and Powerpuff Girls was cancelled in development, and the shows would air sandwiched between “boys” programming. (Yes, there is a place in Hell for these peeps.)

Another reason was longevity. While Gundam Wing and Outlaw Star had only been on the network for a short amount of time, Sailor Moon and Dragonball Z had been on Cartoon Network since 1997. Execs worried that if you were to suddenly repackage either show for an adult block, that you would lose the pre-teens and kids watching, and that the adults and teens the new block was aimed at, would mistake said adult block for yet another kiddy fair. They seemed to forget that the tweens originally watching were now GROWING UP, so putting an uncensored version of their favorite shows on at an adult's hour would have made them this thing called MONEY, especially since the VHS tapes and DVDs WERE selling, but then this was a post AOL-Time Warner merger Cartoon Network, run by a uniquely STUPID group of assholes, (for reference, please look for episode 4 of Who Killed WCW from Vice) so maybe we're expecting too many brains out of the terminally dumb here.

Cloverway and Irwin respectively tried in vain to get plans for a censored Sailor StarS off the ground. But despite the fact that the anime was vastly changed from the manga, there was no feasible way Sailor StarS could be edited without decimating the entire series.

For starters, Taiki, Yaten and Seiya are girls who dress up as guys who dress up as girls. It’s made very clear that even at their best transformed state, they still have FEMALE parts. An earlier Sailor Moon S character named Tamasaburou had been changed into a girl, just so that Cloverway wouldn’t have to explain that some boys do like to wear dresses. If this is how a one-shot character is shown, how would a trio of girls who swap gender via magic be introduced to 2-15 year olds back in 2001?

Did I mention yet how DISGUSTINGLY transphobic and homophobic America was back then? Seriously, I look back on a lot of 90's and Y2K era television that admittedly, I did watch as a tween and teen, and I just feel gross by how much disturbing language was deemed "perfectly fine" by our parents and grandparents. Homophobic slurs were passed around MTV like candy. Even my favorite wrestling shows (*AHEM* Monday Night Raw) did some horrifying stuff against the LGBTQIA+ and how this relates to Sailor Moon is that looking back, the old dubs couldn't wait to censor and demean those characters.

Although weirdly, Cloverway kept Chibiusa's crush on Tamasaburou after they made him a girl, so it's like they wanted her to have a girlfriend, but not Uranus or Neptune? WTF? And wait, wait, Chibiusa looks like a kid, but she's over 900 years old. Tamasaburou is what, eight? Oh God, Toei? Cloverway? WHAT THE FUCK WERE YOU TURNING OUR PRINCESS INTO??

Okay, back to Sailor StarS. There's Seiya. She’s madly in love with Usagi, even though Usagi has made it clear that she’s waiting for Mamoru to return. There is NO way you can make Seiya another "cousin" at this point, but what's worse is Seiya's refusal to accept Usagi's boundaries. She spends a whole ass season telling Seiya "NO" and "I HAVE SOMEONE" and "I AM NOT YOUR GIRLFRIEND" and "I like you as a friend" and Seiya takes that to mean "stalk her" and "impose on her mama, Chibi Chibi and her friends" and you really can't have a "hero" being a blatant predator. And now that I think about it, Seiya leans into those gross old stereotypes about "those people" being deviants and now I'm really upset.

And oh the death toll is staggering. In a nutshell, Seiya, Yaten, Taiki, and Galaxia are the only people who do NOT die in the anime. In the manga, yes. Cosmos? Absolutely. But in the 90s anime, these are the four who will remain death-free between episodes 173-200.

The costumes for the villains and new Guardians are all based on dominatrix gear. Even the baddies of the day get a less-than-PG-costume, and there was plenty left over for fan service. That's really horrible considering that The Starlights are 16-too-damned-years-too-young to be dressing like that.

Again, to cut ANY of this out, means that you would have to delete the whole season. The following are a few other points on why Sailor StarS is un-censorable:



← And this is from the final episode #200. The episode begins with Usagi being naked and dead, Chibi Chibi resurrects her, becomes a sword, Galaxia crushes it, killing Chibi Chibi, then Usagi decides to fight naked for the next 11 minutes. She finally heals Galaxia, killing Sailor Chaos from inside of Galaxia’s own body and they spend some time being good and naked, while the Starseeds of all the dead people of Earth encircle them. Then Chibi Chibi rises from the dead, along with Mamoru (as Prince Endymion) and the Sailor Guardians. Chibi Chibi turns into a butterfly and vanishes, while Galaxia (still naked) returns the seeds of everyone she murdered across the universe. That’s at least 25 minutes of un-censorable footage right there!!

When Viz finally got around to this episode decades later, they kept it uncensored, but Hulu had it set to TV-MA for 72 hours. You still have to log in and prove you're an adult to watch it on Hulu or Disney+.

Fed up with trying to find a suitable distributor, and a network that would host Sailor Moon totally uncensored, Toei Animation pulled the plug on everything related to the anime, and locked down the rights to anything remotely close to the anime by 2004.

A brief reprieve came with Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon in Japan, a live action series that after episode 5 bares almost NO resemblance to the anime or manga at all, despite inspired costumes by Naoko Takeuchi. (Look, unless this is how you explain why 30^th Century is so messed up, I’m ignoring this mess.)

The rights to the Sailor Moon anime were on lockdown until March of 2010, when Toei to began re-airing an HD version of the original anime at the Cannes film festival.

In 2011, Kodansha began releasing the updated manga in English in the United States. Each book from Codename Sailor V through Parallel Sailor Moon has the appropriate age warning: Ages 13+. Since then, multiple reprints have had the same warning label, and the books are often sold on high shelves, out of reach for kid hands and next to other adult titles, such as Attack On Titan.

GE Animation, Bandai, Tamashii, Peach John and Leg Avenue have been steadily releasing new merchandise worldwide, aimed at a teen and adult audience since 2011, with America and Japan in a tie for most adults-only goods.

Finally, in 2014, Viz Media got the rights to the entire series UNCENSORED. This included the specials. From 2014 to 2016, the uncensored sub ran on Hulu with a new dub following with an all-new cast – some are former Mighty Morphin Power Rangers actors, which is a full circle moment, since Naoko Takeuchi was inspired by Super Sentai (the series that launched Power Rangers) when she turned Codename Sailor V into a set of five heroes, creating Sailor Moon in the process. Check the main page of Moon Sisters for the current list of places where you can watch this uncensored sub and dub LEGALLY right now.

On March 31^st, 2024, Cartoon Network FINALLY put the UNCENSORED Viz dub back on a now-Adult Swim Toonami. The show would air Fridays at 4 p.m. cst/5 p.m. est, just like when it first ran June 4, 1997.

A manga-accurate reboot anime titled Sailor Moon Crystal began airing off and on from 2014 to 2016, with four follow-up films under the Sailor Moon Eternal and Sailor Moon Cosmos brands dropping in the 2020s. Crystal would run at later and later times in Japan, essentially lining up with their own "Adult Swim" programming blocks. In America, chunks of the series was branded TV-14 with only select episodes getting a balmy TV-PG but being suggested on apps with other adult shows, such as Family Guy.

Netflix set Sailor Moon Cosmos to TV-MA, permanently ending the debate on whether or not this series should be for adults.

But between 2001 and today, many fans who only remember snippets of Sailor Moon still swear that the show "should" be censored for the sake of the children who watched back in the day.

These people forget that the youngest children watching Sailor Moon back when Cartoon Network last aired the show in 2004 are ALL ADULTS NOW, and some really don’t remember it well. And the most tech savvy of these so-called “children” have been watching the show uncensored FOR YEARS, and probably wouldn’t want to see the series cut up like so much deli meat.

So there you have it. Now you know all about the myth of the age group for Sailor Moon, and how it all got messed up.

For more on why this show needs to be STAY uncensored and at it’s original teen-to-adult crowd, please visit my ever growing pictorials:

Quirkalicious

Disturbing facts about the Moon Sisters...

Why Was Sailor Moon episode 200 TV-MA?