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PLEASE NOTE: Michael D's is currently in READ ONLY MODE. Anything submitted will simply not be written to the database.
Lots of stuff is still broken, but at least reviews can now be looked up and read.
Sailor Moon-Volume 14: Love Conquers All (1992)

Sailor Moon-Volume 14: Love Conquers All (1992)

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Released 2-Jul-2003

Cover Art

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Details At A Glance

General Extras
Category Childrens Main Menu Audio & Animation
DVD Credits
Rating Rated G
Year Of Production 1992
Running Time 108:39 (Case: 110)
RSDL / Flipper RSDL (65:12) Cast & Crew
Start Up Menu
Region Coding 4 Directed By Junichi Sato
Studio
Distributor
Toei Animation
Madman Entertainment
Starring None Given
Case Amaray-Transparent-Secure Clip
RPI $24.95 Music Bob Summers
Angelo Oddi


Video Audio
Pan & Scan/Full Frame Full Frame English Dolby Digital 2.0 mono (224Kb/s)
Widescreen Aspect Ratio None
16x9 Enhancement No
Video Format 576i (PAL)
Original Aspect Ratio 1.33:1 Miscellaneous
Jacket Pictures Yes
Subtitles None Smoking No
Annoying Product Placement No
Action In or After Credits No

NOTE: The Profanity Filter is ON. Turn it off here.

Plot Synopsis

    The fourteenth, and final, volume of Sailor Moon. If you haven't read any Sailor Moon reviews before, I suggest you start with my review of Sailor Moon Volume 1: a Heroine is Chosen.

    This is like volume 13, in that it only has 5 episodes on it — that's understandable, because the total of 82 episodes wasn't divisible by 6; they were two episodes short, so they took one off each of the last two volumes. The episodes on this disc are:

  1. Birth of Wicked Lady - the Nemesis Moon's Wise Man uses the power of the Dark Crystal to corrupt Rini
  2. Brotherly Love - Prince Diamond's brother Sapphire tries to warn him after he discovers what is really going on
  3. Diamond in the Rough - Prince Diamond tries to hypnotise Sailor Moon into becoming his, but at the last moment he shows his true colours
  4. The Final Battle - the Scouts are taxed to their limits when they confront the power behind the attacks on Crystal Tokyo
  5. Follow the Leader - an episode full of teasers for the future and rehashing the past

    This volume is Love Conquers All, which is no surprise to anyone who has made it this far. We know that Sailor Moon doesn't stand for truth, justice and the American way (that's a different person with a name along the lines of S....M.n) — she stands for love and triumphing over evil, when she's not late for school.

    The threatening new power, Wicked Lady, is an interesting development, as is the revelation of the real power behind the attack of the denizens of the Nemesis Moon / Negamoon. I liked seeing the four weird sisters again, too, but the quality of plotting and dialogue is not really up to the standard of the earlier episodes — you'll want to watch these episodes to get closure on the plot arc, but you wouldn't want these episodes for themselves. The quality of drawing has fallen off a little, too; I wonder if the best artists were taken away from these episodes to work on the Sailor Moon R Movie, or something like that?

    The front cover and menu of this disc show Neo Queen Serenity and Rini in her Sailor Mini-Moon outfit. There's just one problem with that — Sailor Mini-Moon hasn't appeared yet, and doesn't appear in any of these episodes — that's a serious slip-up in the art department.

    I really hated the last episode. It's basically a 22 minute piece of filler that's intended to tempt you into watching the next series. The visuals have been assembled from a hodge-podge of pieces from all the previous episodes (lots of film artefacts on these snippets), combined with two or three visuals that hint at what's to come (which get shown repeatedly). One of the visuals shows a couple of figures who look a lot like Sailor Scouts, but not the ones we know...

    The moral on each one of these episodes is a repeat of one we've seen earlier in the series. It feels like they were too lazy to make new ones for these last few episodes — I really don't like that.

    This is the end of the Sailor Moon series, but that's OK. There's plenty more to come: there's the Sailor Moon R Movie, which fits in with the last part of this series, then the Sailor Moon S series (and accompanying movie), followed by Sailor Moon Super S, and a lot more... I do hope Madman has plans to bring out lots more Sailor Moon discs.

    This disc does wrap up the series, but the last episode leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

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Transfer Quality

Video

    The DVD is presented in an aspect ratio of 1.33:1, and is not 16x9 enhanced. That's the original aspect ratio, as is appropriate for a TV series that was made in Japan in 1992 (the 1995 copyright is for the English adaptation).

    This disc plays all the episodes in sequence, starting at whatever point you select — the main menu simply allows you to select a starting episode.

    The picture is soft, a touch softer than the previous episodes, and seems to be somewhat low in resolution — I wonder if a VHS master was used as the source? There's no significant low-level noise or film grain.

    Colour is not intense. There are some nice strong colours, but they lack full saturation. There's no colour bleed or over-saturation (more the contrary).

    There are plenty of small film artefacts (mostly spots and flecks), but nothing large or disturbing.

    The real pain about this disc comes in the form of heaps of aliasing and dot-crawl — there are plenty of slow pans, both horizontally and vertically, and these really show aliasing and dot crawl on the black lines around the characters and objects. There's some pixelization at times. There's more than a bit of shimmer on backgrounds, too. There's no real moiré, or MPEG artefacts, though.

    There are no subtitles — I'd really have preferred to have some.

    The disc is single sided, RSDL; the layer change is at 65:12, in between episodes 80 and 81 — it's not visible.

Video Ratings Summary
Sharpness
Shadow Detail
Colour
Grain/Pixelization
Film-To-Video Artefacts
Film Artefacts
Overall

Audio

    There is only one soundtrack, in English Dolby Digital 2.0, not surround encoded, mono.

    The dialogue is clear and understandable. It doesn't match the animation perfectly, but the slips are small, and you really have to watch hard to spot them.

    The English title music, and additional music, are credited to Bob Summers and Angelo Oddi. There are two songs in these episodes, but unfortunately they aren't credited this time. One is The Power of Love, as you might expect.

    This mono soundtrack provides nothing for your surrounds and subwoofer. Your centre channel speaker will be the only one at work with this soundtrack.

Audio Ratings Summary
Dialogue
Audio Sync
Clicks/Pops/Dropouts
Surround Channel Use
Subwoofer
Overall

Extras

Menu

    The menu is animated with a slowly moving background and underscored with music. All it offers is a choice of which episode to start at. There is an Easter egg which leads to the DVD Credits page, but this is also shown when you've watched the last episode.

DVD Credits

    A single static page crediting the people at Madman who worked on this disc.

R4 vs R1

NOTE: To view non-R4 releases, your equipment needs to be multi-zone compatible and usually also NTSC compatible.

    The R1 and R4 versions of this disc offer the same features. Nothing to pick between them, really, except that ours is PAL, and theirs is NTSC. Even the package artwork is the same.

Summary

    The final disc in this series contains the last five episodes on not a very good DVD.

    The video quality is somewhat disappointing.

    The audio quality is adequate, but nothing more.

    There are no extras on this disc.

Ratings (out of 5)

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall

© Tony Rogers (bio-degrading: making a fool of oneself in a bio...)
Wednesday, July 02, 2003
Review Equipment
DVDPioneer DV-S733A, using Component output
DisplaySony VPH-G70 CRT Projector, QuadScan Elite scaler (Tripler), ScreenTechnics 110. Calibrated with Video Essentials. This display device is 16x9 capable.
Audio DecoderBuilt in to amplifier/receiver. Calibrated with Video Essentials.
AmplificationDenon AVC-A1SE
SpeakersFront Left, Centre, Right: Krix Euphonix; Rears: Krix KDX-M; Subwoofer: Krix Seismix 5

Other Reviews NONE