Reading The Tea Leaves For Naoko & Toei For the first time since the heyday of the series, Sailor Moon fans will have to make do without an anime calendar. In the United States, DiC did not (or could not) convince a publisher to handle one. DiC claims that they didn't pursue one since their rights expire in March 2004 but some of us here suspect that it might have been due to the last calendar not selling so well. Meanwhile, back in Japan, Toei did not publish an anime version and instead put one out with the cast from their new live action series. Although they could have made more money publishing both, Toei and perhaps the series creator, Naoko Takeuchi, signaled an attempt to force public interest on the new version. If true, it would have made the dubbing of SailorStars (the final season of the anime) that much harder to secure. The silver lining is that the new live action version does not seem to have been all that successful and now may make it easier (and cheaper) to dub SailorStars. |