From: Brad Lascelle Newsgroups: rec.arts.anime.info Subject: [SAILOR MOON] SOS Media Exposure Report {May 15th} Date: 17 May 1996 05:30:38 -0400 SOURCE: The Boston Globe DATE: May 15th, 1996. PAGE: 35 TITLE: How do you get a teen out of bed: Show `Sailor Moon,' the Japanese animation sensation, at 5:30 a.m. AUTHOR: Nathan Cobb, Globe Staff To send feedback to the Boston Globe regarding this article, feel free to head to http://www.boston.com/globe/glofeed.htm on the WWW. * * * For Leigh Alexander, life itself begins each weekday morning promptly at 5:30. That's when the Medway ninth grader and Internet surfer religiously hunkers down in front of her television set to watch what looks like no more than another episode of a cute little animated import from Japan. But this is "Sailor Moon" we're talking about, and to aficionados like Alexander it is more than a mere cartoon. "There's just so much to it," she effuses. "There's love, war, magical fighting, stories of people traveling through time. It's moving, it's intense, it's beautiful, it's deep, it's real, it's my favorite TV show and I love it." Meet the "Sailor Moon" cult: the kids, teenagers, college students and twentysomethings who assiduously watch and/or tape the half-hour show during whichever decidedly non-primetime slot it's aired in their neighborhood. (This means 7:30 a.m. weekdays on WLVI-Channel 56 in Boston, 5:30 a.m. on WNAC-Channel 64 in Providence). They're the ones who've created dozens of sites on the Internet for like-minded fans of a vacant 14-year-old dweeb who transforms herself into a way cool superhero in order to battle evil Queen Beryl and the forces of the Negaverse. And they're the ones who complain loudly whenever they feel that the editing and dubbing of the US version of "Sailor Moon" has infringed upon the sacredness of the Japanese original. "There's no pleasing these people," laments Janice Sonski, executive director for creative affairs at DIC Entertainment in Burbank, Calif., which has been producing "Sailor Moon" in national syndication since September. What pleased these people least were Internet rumors - since squelched when Atlanta-based TBS picked up the show for airing next September - that "Sailor Moon" was destined to disappear from the US television horizon at the end of the current season. As a result, Sonski received several petitions, some 4,000 signatures in all, calling for a reversal of "SM's" rumored fortune. "In terms of fanaticism," she says, "I've never seen anything like this." Bill Alexander, Leigh's father, sounds a tad puzzled, too. "It's God-awful and I don't understand why it's popular" is his critical take on "Sailor Moon." "But anything that gets a teenager up at 5:30 in the morning to watch TV has got to have some cultural zip to it." Still, anyone stumbling across "Sailor Moon" for the first time might be forgiven for wondering what all the fuss is about. Is this really the serialized show that has been a monster hit in Japan since 1992, has swept Europe and Canada, generating $2.5 billion in worldwide sales of licensed merchandise? (Some 200 products are churned out by 90 manufacturers in the United States.) Based on a Japanese comic book series, the show seems merely to combine your basic good vs. evil cartoon storyline with simple, pastel-laden artwork. Even hard-core fans admit to having been underwhelmed upon their initial encounter with the slim-waisted and short-skirted Serena, aka Sailor Moon, and her four teenage cronies, aka the Sailor Scouts. "The first time you see it, you say, `Well, the characters are silly and the animations aren't spectacular,'" says Jennifer Wand of Newton, a 17-year-old high school senior who admits to being so addicted to the show that she has taped all 65 episodes aired in the United States so far. "So you laugh at it for a while, and then you hit a landmark episode where someone dies or something and you find yourself crying." "It's a phenomenon," Wand adds. "It's an enigma." "Oh, man, I just can't explain it." Who can? Let's try Ken Arromdee, who recently earned a doctorate in computer science from Johns Hopkins University. Arromdee has created one of the Internet sites that tells you more than you could possibly want to know about "Sailor Moon." (Forty percent of the show's viewers are male, according to DIC.) "I think the show has a lot of things that you don't find in American cartoons," says Arromdee, who, like Wand, has a 65-volume videotape library of "SM" episodes. "It has more of a continuing storyline, characters who are allowed to die, lots of cultural references. There hasn't been anything like this on [US] TV for a long time." Like many older "Sailor Moon" fans, Arromdee is a devotee of Japanese cartoons, a genre known as anime (pronounced ANN-i-may). Many of these fans are college students or graduates who are members of college anime clubs. MIT, Harvard and Boston University all have such clusters of fans for whom "Sailor Moon," despite its featherbrained heroine, represents the biggest US TV news since the Japanese export of "Robotech" during the mid-1980s. "It's lightweight, but it's fun," says Dan Eyer, a 30-year-old Cambridge computer programmer and Yale graduate, who has watched his fair share of "Sailor Moon" episodes. "I don't consider it the best thing I've ever seen, but it's far from being the worst." Richard Chang, a Harvard sophomore, says he stumbled across "Sailor Moon" last fall and has since tuned in more than 100 times in his Quincy House room. Among other things, Chang likes the fact that Serena has the personality of an honest-to-God teenager. "Granted, no human being could have those body proportions," he concedes. "And the romance gets a little cheesy. But there are nuggets of wisdom in there. And Serena is not graceful, not a good student. She's just a typical person. Of course," Chang adds quickly, "she also happens to have been sent from a moon kingdom thousands of years ago. But we can overlook that." * * * That's the article, folks... Just to straighten out a couple misstatements in the above report. First of all, the on-line SOS petition originated by Chi Ming Hung has already reached a total of 10,026 at last count earlier this afternoon. Secondly, the aforementioned possibility of SM's disappearance off of North American airwaves was not just a bout of Internet rumours. DIC Entertainment president Andy Heyward acknowledged in an April 8th phone interview (available at http://looney.physics.sunysb.edu/~daffy/sos) that this was entirely likely, and tried to sway the tide of support towards forcing Bandai to cave in to DIC's financial demands so that the show could be saved. DIC's actions furthered the rumours and hysteria rather than snubbed them. Thirdly, the security of the show is somewhat overstated... yes, the show will air on Turner stations in the United States, and YTV in Canada. However, no new episodes are in progress, and the TBS timeslot was conspicuously absent from the article. But, hey, if you're just ducky about seeing rerun cycles over and over again then there's absolutely nothing to be worried about! :) Ken Arromdee, maintainer of the official SM FAQ, can be reached via E-Mail at karromde@nyx.cs.du.edu. -- -* Brad Lascelle *- -- ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Edited by Steve Pearl- Moderator, rec.arts.anime.info Email submissions to anime-info@cybercomm.net and questions about the newsgroup to anime-info-request@cybercomm.net