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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 6: Adventure Girls (1995)

Sailor Moon-Volume 6: Adventure Girls (1995)

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Released 26-Nov-2002

Cover Art

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Details At A Glance

General Extras
Category Anime None
Rating Rated G
Year Of Production 1995
Running Time 130:48 (Case: 135)
RSDL / Flipper RSDL (65:24) Cast & Crew
Start Up Menu
Region Coding 4 Directed By Junichi Sato
Studio
Distributor
Toei Animation
Madman Entertainment
Starring None Given
Case Click
RPI $24.95 Music Bob Summers


Video Audio
Pan & Scan/Full Frame Full Frame English Dolby Digital 2.0 (224Kb/s)
Widescreen Aspect Ratio None
16x9 Enhancement No
Video Format 576i (PAL)
Original Aspect Ratio 1.33:1 Miscellaneous
Jacket Pictures No
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

    This is the sixth volume of the first series of Sailor Moon. If you are not familiar with the Sailor Moon series then I strongly recommend you start with my review of Sailor Moon Volume 1: A Heroine is Chosen.

    If you haven't seen Volumes 1 to 5, then I recommend not reading further - skip to the discussion of the transfer.

    The episodes on this disc are:

  1. A Reluctant Princess - Serena doesn't want to be a princess
  2. Bad Hair Day - all your hairdresser nightmares come true
  3. Little Miss Manners - Serena has dreams of learning how to act like a princess
  4. Ski Bunny Blues - Serena and Rei compete for a ski bunny title
  5. Ice Princess - the Scouts go skating, and we discover Lita is a brilliant skater
  6. Last Resort - Serena's family visit a health resort, unfortunately one with a brooding evil...

    This volume is Adventure Girls, which is a fairly generic title — it could be applied to any volume.

    Sailor Moon Volume 5: Introducing Sailor Venus left us with a cliff-hanger: (SPOILER ALERT: highlight with mouse to read) Darien and Serena had been enticed into the Starlight Tower by Zoicyte, and both had been forced to transform in front of one another, so Darien now knows that Serena is Sailor Moon, and Serena knows Darien is Tuxedo Mask. Tuxedo Mask was injured badly by Zoicyte's treacherous blow from behind. Malachite was shocked to see the rainbow crystals disappear, racing towards Serena's tears, where they united and formed the Imperium Silver Crystal, which then attached itself to Sailor Moon's Crescent Wand. This caused Sailor Moon to transform, just as the other Sailor Scouts and Luna and Artemis arrived, into the long-lost Moon Princess. (Cool song over this — My Only Love.) The disc ended with Moon Princess Serena cradling Tuxedo Mask's head in her lap, and all of the Sailor Scouts under imminent danger of attack from the minions of the Negaverse. Now read on...

    It's interesting to note that Moon Princess Serena speaks more formally, and more gently, than the Serena we know. Serena is like the "before" of The Princess Diaries, with the Moon Princess the "after"; Little Miss Manners is reminiscent of this film, too.

    In the first episode we hear a lot of the history behind the Sailor Scouts, including the Silver Millennium, Queen Serenity, Princess Serena, and Prince Darien of Earth. We discover that every Sailor Scout was a princess, each of the planet for which they are named.

    In the moment of victory when the Sailor Scouts regain the Imperium Silver Crystal they suffer a major blow, in that Tuxedo Mask is captured and brainwashed by the forces of the Negaforce. You can tell the brainwashed Tuxedo Mask from the good one, because the good one uses red roses, but the brainwashed one's roses are black.

    Even the forces of evil, like Zoicyte and Malachite, can know love — there's a touching moment when Malachite bids Zoicyte farewell. We also start to see some combined attacks on this disc — Jupiter and Venus together, for example, with overlap of their attack sequences.

    There is a serious moral at the end of every episode, but they are presently nicely.

    Sailor Moon is good fun, and something parents can enjoy with their children. Recommended.

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Transfer Quality

Video

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, which is handy if you want them in sequence (or you want to plonk the kids in front of them). You can select an episode from the menu, but it will play from there to the end of the disc. All the timestamps mentioned in this section are cumulative from the start.

    The picture is fairly sharp and about as clear as this style of animation can get. Shadow detail is irrelevant to anime. There's no low level noise. There's no significant grain.

    Colour is strong — there are plenty bright primary colours, but there are some more subtle colours, too (for example, note that Serena's hair is bright yellow, but Mina's is slightly paler). There's no colour bleed or over-saturation.

    There are lots of microscopic film artefacts, but they are not distracting. There are some larger ones: like the watermark and scrape across the top of frame at 8:15, the shadowy blob at 40:23, the spills at 112:01, and the hairs at 85:13. There's occasional telecine wobble, which is unfortunate. There's some aliasing, which is unfortunate — this style of animation encourages aliasing — the worst example is at 26:29 on the exterior of Serena's house. All up, these artefacts are not too bad, but discs 4 and 5 were a little cleaner.

    There are no subtitles.

    The disc is single sided and RSDL formatted. The layer change is at 65:24, between Episodes 33 and 34 — perfect placement and barely noticeable.

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

Audio

    There is only one soundtrack; English Dolby Digital 2.0, not surround encoded. It sounds mono. There are no audio artefacts on this disc.

    The dialogue is clear and comprehensible. There are no obvious mismatches between dialogue and mouth motion. There's one moment in the first episode when Malachite's voice sounds wrong — almost as if they used the wrong voice actor.

    The English title music is credited to Bob Summers.

    You'll get nothing from your surrounds or subwoofer with this soundtrack.

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

Extras

Menu

    The menu is lightly animated (a moving background) with music. It offers a choice of which episode to start at, but when you select an episode it starts playing there, but it continues through the remaining episodes.

Censorship

    There is censorship information available for this title. Click here to read it (a new window will open). WARNING: Often these entries contain MAJOR plot spoilers.

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

    An interesting sequence of six more episodes, without a lot of plot development (wait until the next volume!). Not a fabulous DVD.

    The video quality is flawed, but adequate.

    The audio quality is fine.

    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...)
Monday, December 02, 2002
Review Equipment
DVDSony DVP-NS905V, 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

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