It's That Time Of Year Again! DiC's 2003 Calendar You'd Better Like Mini Moon DiC's Sailor Moon calendar for 2003 has arrived and should soon be available via the usual locations. Check your local mall calendar store, Suncoast store, Virgin Megastore or online at Calendars.com. If you should not find it, please try ordering one via its ISBN number (that's the international system for numbering all publications). The Sailor Moon 2003 Calendar is ISBN 158774107-5. The suggested retail price is US $12.99 and Canadian $18.99. As with last year, the calendar was designed by SL Digital, Inc., published by Entertainment Calendars, L.L.C. and licensed by DiC Entertainment, L.P. Curiously, the 2003 calendar continues to identify Naoko Takeuchi & Kodansha as two of the copyright holders. Kodansha's publishing rights expired in 2002. A big surprise (for those of us who follow such things) is that "The Incredible World of DiC" logo is missing. Normally the company religiously insists that their logo appears on everything they have any association with and even on things they had nothing to do with! (Watch for someone to get a thrashing over this.) The 2003 calendar may come as a let down to some fans (when compared to the 2002 edition) but it is still better than what DiC has licensed in the past. Missing this year is the listing of what seemed like every major holiday in every major country; only the U.S. holidays remain. Thankfully, the very appropriate moon positions continue to be included. Unfortunately, at the bottom of every month, are the words "2003 Calendar"--in case you didn't know that this is a calendar or what year it was. (The year "2003" is already identified twice on each month.) But the real disappointment is the choice of images. Most are from publicity or merchandising stills and stock shots from the series (transformations, etc). Only a few images are actually from scenes and (as usual) represent some pretty weird picks. Not too subtle are the number of Mini Moon images. She's almost on every page--including the covers! (Perhaps too many little girls have been sending in fan letters to DiC.) And, there is not a single image of any of the outer scouts. But DiC has gone out of its way to use only images associated from the later series. DiC seems to acknowledge (and wants to raise) interest in Sailor Stars (without infringing upon characters which have not yet appeared in previously dubbed features or series). Despite some of the problems, we nevertheless encourage fans to buy the DiC calendar as sales will encourage more merchandise, dubbing and subtitling. Fans who would like to have some say over what will probably be DiC's final Sailor Moon calendar (for 2004) could write to them at: Ms. Melissa Bomes DiC Entertainment 303 North Glenoaks Boulevard Burbank, California 90012 Do not, under any circumstances, telephone, email or fax DiC. Keep your letters short and to the point (and please save your energy for our Sailor Stars campaign).

Available To ALL Countries??? Toei's Spectacular 2003 Calendar! Hard to find? Not! Toei Animation's 2003 Sailormoon Calendar was super dynamic this year (and a marked improvement from their hum-drum 2002 design). Perhaps too dynamic as none of our members was able to find one through normal sources. One member looked up and down the West coast of the United States and couldn't find a copy. It seemed as if the calendars were immediately purchased upon hitting foreign shores. We couldn't understand why--until we saw a copy. It's beautiful! Much better than DiC's this year. But unfortunately, the only way to get one was to: a. Move to Japan. b. Get a mailing address. c. Order a copy through Toei's online site. Of course, there's always ebay (and pay too much) or fujisan.com (but they've stopped selling Sailormoon calendars)! But then one of our members found a stash of them (and what might be a HUGE stash of them) over at CDJapan! They're selling them for ¥1600 (approximately U.S. $13.31). Very reasonable! And here's a first for some of you, CDJapan seems to be able to sell and ship all of its merchandise to anywhere in the world! So finally our friends in Afghanistan will be able to buy one! (You'll see what we mean when you use CDJapan's friendly pull-down country menu.) Sailormoon World 2003 Calendar The one drawback is that if you try to pay with anything BUT a credit card, the calendar could sell out by the time a money order or a registered letter arrives. But you don't specifically need a U.S. or Japanese credit card however as your credit card company will pay CDJapan in Japanese Yen and then charge you for the transfer exchange in your local currency. Here's how to order! (If you're a kid, you should get your parents or guardian to do the following:) Go directly to the "Sailor Moon World Calendar" page (to make sure they're not sold out) Click-on the "Add to cart" button On the next page click-on the "Customer Registration" button Fill out the Customer Registration page Click-on the "Registration" button If you've done everything right (and your credit card is good) you'll next be asked if you want to be on CDJapan's mailing list. After that the sale will be complete and they'll ship the calendar(s) to you. We haven't heard any complaints about CDJapan which seems to be a favorite among the Seramyu crowd (who regularly get their soundtracks from this site). For those of you keeping track of such things (and we know you're out there!) close examination of the Toei calendar reveals a surprising coincidence(?) to the DiC version. Chibi-usa appears in 5 of the 7 images for a total of 71% (the same as Usagi herself) and which is more than any other character. (DiC has the pink terror on 8 of the 13 unique images for a total of 62%.) But in Toei's defense, they are repeating the SuperS TV series in Japan right now so it is appropriate.