American live-action adaptation of ‘Sailor Moon’ uncovered by YouTuber

August 23, 2022

The full pilot for an American live-action “Sailor Moon” TV series has finally become available for public viewing decades after being scrapped in the 1990s.

YouTuber Ray Mona uploaded the pilot to her channel as part of her two-part documentary chronicling the decades-long search for it. She obtained the footage from The Library of Congress and was given permission to upload it to her channel from Bandai America former President Frank Ward.

Prior to the release of the documentary over the weekend, the pilot had only ever aired — though only in part — during an anime convention years ago. Snippets of the pilot were stitched together for a promotional music video and shown to fans at the convention, where an audience member taped the private viewing and leaked it online. Fans have been on the lookout for the full pilot ever since.

The show has been colloquially named “Saban Moon” online after Haim Saban, the same producer that brought “Power Rangers” to screens in North America. “Power Rangers” producers Renaissance Atlantic joined forces with the animation studio Toon Makers for the half-live-action, half-animated program, which was originally scheduled to premiere on FOX in 1994. The show would have brought a variety of new characters and settings to the franchise, deviating from the original, but it was scrapped in 1995 in favor of an English-dubbed version of the original Japanese animation.

The pilot is shown at around the 1:43 mark of Part 2 of the documentary and has also been uploaded as its own separate video. Check out the videos below:

Featured Image via Ray Mona

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