Things the original Dub got right

[NeoJupiter]

With the Viz dub finally being released, I thought it would be a perfect time to talk about everyones favorite subject, the original dub. While we all know the dub got plenty wrong with it's editing/translations, it also got plenty right imo. So what did you think it got right and if you want to compare/contrast DIC/Cloverway dub to the Viz dub, here is a great site that has some comparisons.

http://vimeo.com/user34365792/videos

[lastchanceforaslowdance]

Alot of people swear by the music , but I think it all depends on some ones taste and what genres they prefer .

[NJ]

Perhaps use a completely new song for the battle with Queen Beryl?

Though wasn't there a fear at one point of the show getting canceled in Japan? That would explain why they used Moonlight Densetsu for that fight which would have fit well had it actually happened.

_________________

[Sailor Pooh]

"Crystal Clear Destiny" the music, the dialogue. Thought that episode was perfect as far as the original goes. I love the subs but that song they use doesn't hit me emotionally like the dub's does.

[SnowWolf]

Sailor Moon's transformation music. So magical.

[StarHealerTornado]

The dub got a lot right in my opinion:

1. The music
2. The localization of character names. (Yes, it would have been nice if they kept the original names, but look at the Viz dub and how they're mangling them. I'd rather have new names then listen to the originals get mispronounced, and at least DiC picked names that were similar to the originals for the most part, unlike other dubs that came up with completely unrelated replacement names. Also, Rini and Sailor Mini Moon were excellent translations/adaptations of Chibiusa and Sailor Chibi Moon. The dub retaining random Japanese words would have been odd.)
3. The airbrushing. (People complain about the censorship in the dub, but I'm happy they removed body lines, etc. There's no reason for there to be that much nudity/sexual content in a show about and targeted to young girls.)
4. "You were all princesses of your respective planets."
5. "Moon Tiara Magic"
6. "Crescent Moon Wand"
7. "Moon Scepter"
8. "I still pity you."
9. The voices. Sure, some of the actors (especially during S and SuperS) weren't all that great, and some of the voice choices were a bit bizarre. But even so, British Luna and Yonkers Molly worked somehow. Perhaps it was the 90s-ness of the show, I don't know. But a few oddities aside, the voices were excellent and the actors put in so much energy into their roles.
10. The cheesiness. (Look, if I want to see a serious, proper Sailor Moon, I'll watch the anime in Japanese with subtitles. One of the joys in a dub existing is to have another version of the show to enjoy, and the dub has so many wonderfully corny lines to quote like Mercury's iconic, "Go bleach your roots, creep!")

[Uncanny]

Dic music for the first two seasons was AWESOME! One of the first things that got me to like Sailor Moon. The Negaverse evil theme was pure gold! I would love it if Viz could have put both tracks on the USA Blu-ray like Dragon Ball Z did.
Emerald/Esmeraude. The lady who did her voice was great.

[NeoJupiter]

The music was GOLD imo. They did also did a good job at giving us all those new original songs since they didn't want to use japan songs.

Serenity vs. Beryl in the final, that song added so much to the scene I feel like.

And one thing that really stands out to me while watching the new dub, is just the music and sound effects the original dub used for transformations and attacks. It added a real sense of urgency.

[otakumom]

SOME of the music:

-BGM=bad. The original BGM is music played by an orchestra, while the Dic version featured computer made music.
-Battle songs ("Carry On", "Power of Love", etc)= good.

Other than the battle music, the Dic dub is pretty bad. I stick to the LAS dub.

[SoldierOfTheSun]

1. The sound mixing from the DiC seasons was vastly superior to the Viz dub and Cloverway dubs. The Viz dub sounds monotone and low-quality and the CWi dub sounds worse than most fandubs. Odd that DiC and Cloverway both outsourced to the same company.

2. Sailor Moon's transformation music was vastly superior to all 5 of the Japanese transformation songs

[SoldierOfTheSun]

I echo StarHealerTornado's points. The VIZ dub has really made me appreciate the original. For the most part, I much prefer the voice actors from the DIC era to the current ones. Tracey Moore, Karen Bernstein, Katie Griffin, Emilie Barlow (as Minako), Susan Roman, Naz Edwards, and Kristen Bishop all had such distinctive voices and really committed to their roles. I would even rate Jill Frappier's age-inappropriate but pleasant-sounding and entertaining performance over Michelle Ruff's.

[Starpower67]

As someone who enjoyed the Dic music in the first 2 seasons, I couldn't believe how badly it was applied in the movies. The music when the outers transform in the S movie was just atrocious. That being said I do enjoy the Japanese music more even in the first 2 seasons.

[MariaTenebre]

I don't see what the issue of the scenes showing body lines. The human body is nothing to be ashamed of or be censored and honestly nothing is on Sailor Moon that wouldn't be seen if you took Barbie's clothes off.

However for me I loved the DIC music. I think My Only Love fits the scene where Usagi and Mamoru recover their identities better then Maboroshi no Ginzuishou.

[StarHealerTornado]

My issue is that 1) Usagi didn't have body lines in her transformations, so why should the others? It's a stylistic inconsistency. And 2) Do we really need to see these FOURTEEN YEAR OLD GIRLS' buttcracks and cleavage while they transform? No. It's unnecessary fan service. It has nothing to do with shame~ or whatever; it has to do with sexualizing girls for the sake of sexualizing girls, and I don't think that's okay. Note how Crystal has completely avoided such things.

[MariaTenebre]

I honestly don't see what the issue is StarHealerTornado if we can see teenagers in bikinis and skimpy clothes then this should be no problem. Besides 14 years old is legal in Japan in a certain degree. There is nothing wrong with showing the characters in a sexy light and besides you don't get to see anything on them that you wouldn't see on a Barbie doll.

[MattEmily]

The dub got a lot right in my opinion:

1. The music
2. The localization of character names. (Yes, it would have been nice if they kept the original names, but look at the Viz dub and how they're mangling them. I'd rather have new names then listen to the originals get mispronounced, and at least DiC picked names that were similar to the originals for the most part, unlike other dubs that came up with completely unrelated replacement names. Also, Rini and Sailor Mini Moon were excellent translations/adaptations of Chibiusa and Sailor Chibi Moon. The dub retaining random Japanese words would have been odd.)
3. The airbrushing. (People complain about the censorship in the dub, but I'm happy they removed body lines, etc. There's no reason for there to be that much nudity/sexual content in a show about and targeted to young girls.)
4. "You were all princesses of your respective planets."
5. "Moon Tiara Magic"
6. "Crescent Moon Wand"
7. "Moon Scepter"
8. "I still pity you."
9. The voices. Sure, some of the actors (especially during S and SuperS) weren't all that great, and some of the voice choices were a bit bizarre. But even so, British Luna and Yonkers Molly worked somehow. Perhaps it was the 90s-ness of the show, I don't know. But a few oddities aside, the voices were excellent and the actors put in so much energy into their roles.
10. The cheesiness. (Look, if I want to see a serious, proper Sailor Moon, I'll watch the anime in Japanese with subtitles. One of the joys in a dub existing is to have another version of the show to enjoy, and the dub has so many wonderfully corny lines to quote like Mercury's iconic, "Go bleach your roots, creep!")
I agree with the music in some cases.
No doubt in the case of the names, them keeping names isn't a big deal to me like it is to some.
I agree with you in regards to the body lines.
Moon Tiara Magic and Crescent Moon Wand were perfect name translations or adaptations.
Didn't like the name of Moon Scepter/Sceptre though.
I enjoyed all of the voice cast.

1. The sound mixing from the DiC seasons was vastly superior to the Viz dub and Cloverway dubs. The Viz dub sounds monotone and low-quality and the CWi dub sounds worse than most fandubs. Odd that DiC and Cloverway both outsourced to the same company.

2. Sailor Moon's transformation music was vastly superior to all 5 of the Japanese transformation songs
Sound mixing? What sound mixing did Cloverway even do? They kept the Japanese music pretty much untouched.

I echo StarHealerTornado's points. The VIZ dub has really made me appreciate the original. For the most part, I much prefer the voice actors from the DIC era to the current ones. Tracey Moore, Karen Bernstein, Katie Griffin, Emilie Barlow (as Minako), Susan Roman, Naz Edwards, and Kristen Bishop all had such distinctive voices and really committed to their roles. I would even rate Jill Frappier's age-inappropriate but pleasant-sounding and entertaining performance over Michelle Ruff's.
I definitely do agree with you that I also felt that the original cast did feel really committed to their role but Tracey was only there for about 11 or so episodes so it wasn't really enough to judge her at all.

I don't see what the issue of the scenes showing body lines. The human body is nothing to be ashamed of or be censored and honestly nothing is on Sailor Moon that wouldn't be seen if you took Barbie's clothes off.

However for me I loved the DIC music. I think My Only Love fits the scene where Usagi and Mamoru recover their identities better then Maboroshi no Ginzuishou.
True the human body is nothing to be ashamed of but keep in mind that while they are just fictional characters there are censorship restrictions that do prohibit such nudity in kids shows.

My issue is that 1) Usagi didn't have body lines in her transformations, so why should the others? It's a stylistic inconsistency. And 2) Do we really need to see these FOURTEEN YEAR OLD GIRLS' buttcracks and cleavage while they transform? No. It's unnecessary fan service. It has nothing to do with shame~ or whatever; it has to do with sexualizing girls for the sake of sexualizing girls, and I don't think that's okay. Note how Crystal has completely avoided such things.
Exactly, Serena's body lines weren't ever there so the others' Inner Soldiers' sequences shouldn't have had them either since they were all part of her team. It's a different case with the Outer Soldiers but even their body lines were removed.

I honestly don't see what the issue is StarHealerTornado if we can see teenagers in bikinis and skimpy clothes then this should be no problem. Besides 14 years old is legal in Japan in a certain degree. There is nothing wrong with showing the characters in a sexy light and besides you don't get to see anything on them that you wouldn't see on a Barbie doll.

Showing people in bikinis and skimpy clothes is one thing but that's real life and nothing is really revealing about anything like that and while a 14 year old may be legal in some degrees in Japan in some countries it's not legal. The legal age in the U.S. is in most ages 18.

[PRangerX]

Japan is a different culture. They dont censor their kids shows the same way. But the nudity wasnt put in their for perverted reasons. Dont blame the dub for censoring that though. Would never work on our kid vid. And really doesnt make or break the show.

I will always have a soft spot for the DIC dub. I loved the battle songs and the background music. The VAs were great and will be tough for Viz to top. I do like the Japanese Music cues too. Especially the individual transformation and the attacks.

[The Moon Princess]

All of this. Though the Japanese score is technically rather magnificent and impressive, won every major Japanese award that it could win, and stands up quite well on its own, the DiC songs and score really gave the imagery in the series more power, emotional resonance, and just generally had a better flow. Especially during the Dark Moon Clan/Family arc.

That being said I could never imagine Sailor Moon S or SuperS with the DiC score. Nor do I think it worked as well when applied to the films on their VHS edits.

It would be glorious if Viz kept the "I still pity you" line though.


p.s. Katie Griffin IS Sailor Mars.

[PRangerX]

I like the end of the weight loss episode in the dic dub. Instead of defeating the villains to lose wait she does it to save Miss Huruna. Which makes it mean something to the overall arch of Usagi becoming a true hero. Showing us the selflessness she was eventually demonstrate in all the big battles.