DiC, DiC DiC...(New Guidelines)

By: CereCere

At the risk of making us sound like "Dub-bashers" this Rant and Rave is about all the additional dubbing of Sailor Moon done by Dic over the last few months. Many of you know Dic released the 17 final episodes to the "Sailor Moon R" series this fall in Canada. They also have just released through Irwin Toys the Uranus, Neptune and Pluto toy dolls.

Here is what we will now accept on pages because of the changes:

• Neptune, Uranus and Pluto: Like the other dolls, the new ones for Neptune, Uranus and Pluto all come with a short biography on the back of the box. These bios finally tell us the one and only official names Dic has picked to use for these characters in any future dubbing. The names are, for Uranus, Corrine; for Neptune, Nerissa; and finally for Pluto, Celia. Those of you that have been guessing names or using fandub names may notice that these names are no where near more popular choices that have been used. This one of the reasons why we suggested to pages you shouldn't fandub. They are now also "Sailor Scouts." So change your pages accordingly.

Now for the 17 new eps, this is going to be fun to try and straighten out. The biggest problem with the new eps is Dic changed some of the things that it had dubbed before in the first 65 eps to something else in the newer eps. Things like attacks, objects, etc. Seeing both sets of names exsists we will accept them both. Lets go through the changes, however, one by one.

• Attacks: The biggest change was with Mercury. The attack formally known as "Mercury Ice Storm Freeze" which was used in the first half of the "Black Moon Family" Story was replaced with "Shin Aqua Illusion" in the 17 new episodes. This newer name is very similar to the name used for this attack in the Japanese episodes. However, why Dic changed it remains a mystery, because they already made up a new name and they didn't change any of the other attacks to be closer to the original names. They also changed Sailor Moon's "Moon Scepter Elimination" to "Moon Scepter Activation." Why this change was made also remains a mystery to us.

• Rini: Rini (or Reeny, however you want to spell it) was also given the name Small Lady in the 17 new eps. That nickname is actually a translation of the nickname everyone calls her in the original version. Her real name in the original is actually Usagi, like her mom's. A minor point, but Dic makes Small Lady her real name and Rini some made-up name to hide her cover. Confused yet? Well the new NA doll has Rini in a Sailor Fuku, but instead of calling her "Sailor _____"(fill-in blank) they just call her Rini.

• Luna-P: The Luna-ball from the first sets of eps becomes Luna-P in the second set. Luna-P is the named used for it in the Japanese original version. The "P" stands for Pluto who you find out is the one talking to Reeny through the ball. Therefore, this change makes sense, but "Luna-ball" was still used at one time, so unfortunately we accept both.

• Nega-Moon, Black Moon: In at least one episode the enemies are referred to as the "Black Moon Family" which was their name in the Japanese version, but they are still referred to as the "Nega-Moon Family" sometimes. At least they stopped the mistake of calling them part of the Negaverse and saying they come from Nemsis instead.

• New things and characters: All dubbed names for the new characters in the 17 new eps we of course will accept, these include "Diamond," "Emerald," "Safire," etc.

Finally a special note. There is still no Saturn doll out, and no episode including her as of yet. Therefore "fandubbing" of her name, and calling her a "Scout" is still off limits. The same goes for the use of Sailor Chibi-moon. It is yet to be shown that Reeny becomes her, plus we doubt Dic will call her "Chibi-moon." (You have been warned! ^_^)

Feb. 8th, 1998

As usual any comment made on this page is that of "The Amazoness Quartet" or one of its members. Tripod has nothing to do with our opinions, etc, lalala...