When I saw The Last Unicorn recently in theater, I was thrilled to hear that the version we were watching was actually superior to the version originally show in 1982, as the video footage came from the German remaster, and as everyone knows, Germany takes Das letzte Einhorn very seriously.
As great as the past DVD and Blu-Ray versions have been, I still have yet to re-purchase The Last Unicorn on Blu-Ray, as I’m holding out for the version I saw in theater. Why do I make it a point to bring this up, or even talk about The Last Unicorn in a post that is about to go very in depth about Sailor Moon Crystal?
Sailor Moon Crystal’s Blu-Ray version has re-animated frames in it that fix a lot of things from the version being currently shown on Japanese television, as well as streaming sources such as Hulu and Crunchy Roll. Now, some people have argued that they will hold off on watching the Sailor Moon re-make until an english, or whatever other language, blu-ray becomes available because of this. One of the excuses used is because their time is very important to them.
Now, if their argument was that instead of watching ads to support the show, they wanted to purchase the official releases and watch them then, I’d buy the ‘time is important’ argument. The fallacy I’d like to point out though is that, like The Last Unicorn, Sailor Moon is something you are probably going to watch over and over again. Unlike currently available versions of Peter S. Beagle’s The Last Unicorn movie, Sailor Moon Crystal is flat out free for everyone who has a computer, so who cares if there are slightly awkward facial animations from time to time?
As of right now, watching Sailor Moon Crystal streaming is the only way to get a free legal version of Naoko Takeuchi’s original Sailor Moon story. Websites like Crunchy Roll show you the anime ASAP via paying the creators of said anime with their ads, so why not help Sailor Moon get made as it is being animated? Would these mistakes even been fixed if not for the immense popularity and ad revenue from the streams? I don’t think they would have…
For more side by side comparisons, you can visit the website Crystal Comparisons which was created by Fred Francis.
NetSenshi Productions 