Sailor Moon original dub half hearted localization

One thing I found weird about the original dub was it's half hearted localization. It gave quite a few characters American names, renamed Juuban Crossroads etc and yet still kept the show setting in Japan a la Crystal Tokyo etc. I mean you don't find alot of people in Japan named Serena, Lita, Darien, Amara, Michelle, etc lest they are Gaijin. If they were going to localize it then they should have just had the show take place in America as opposed to their weird Americanized Japan etc Either dot a more faithful dub with Japanese names and the setting in Japan or an localized dub with American names and setting either one would be ok but the weird mix they did was just do odd.

if their goal was to confuse people then bravo dic

They renamed Juban Junior High "Crossroads Junior High," but I don't think they ever called Juban itself Crossroads; the district/neighborhood was left unnamed. And it's not so unusual for native Japanese people to have Western names, though certainly not to the extent shown in the dub.

Yeah but everyone had Western names and some people had Western given names and surnames which I don't think is too common in Japan unless you are a Gaijin. Either way it was very confusing I just wish there was some consistency if they were going to attempts localization.

The English dub was consistently inconsistent.

Why else would Cloverway rename Haruka, Michiru, and Setsuna "Amara," "Michelle," and "Trista," but retain Hotaru's name?

Well, Amara, Michelle, and Trista were the names established in the movies, which were commissioned by Pioneer before Cloverway commissioned the dubs for the series. If you’ll notice, none of the villains had any name changes during the run of the S and SS seasons.

Also, if I remember correctly, didn’t DiC heavily tone down the censorship and Americanization after they went back and finished the “lost episodes”?

Half hearted?

Hmm I wonder what would have been Hotaru's name then if Pioneer or DiC did her name. I know that in some early dolls released back in the day that Haruka was called Corine, Michiru Nerissa and Setsuna Celia.

Which I have sad before I didn't mind the Americanized named for Michiru and Setsuna in the Cloverway dub but I didn't like Haruka's dub name Amara. She needed a unisex name so in the beginning Usagi and Minako wouldn't know she was a girl. I always thought the name Alex which was suggested by some dub fans back in the day was better.

The Outers' civilian names weren't given in the movie dubs, so we don't know when those names were established.

There was still some Americanization in the lost episodes; I don't know if it was necessarily "toned down" compared to the rest of the DIC run. They made less plot and dialog changes, and started using "Sailor Soldiers" and "Luna-P," but the girls also talked about eating cheesecake and Amy's cram school was called the Albert Einstein School for the Gifted, Juuban Elementary became Harbor Elementary, and Juuban Park became Mayfair Park.

"Amara" actually is a unisex name. The character Amara in the anime Captain Earth, for example, is male. As a Japanese boy's name, it's even written with the kanji for heaven, as used in the Japanese word for "Uranus" and Haruka's last name.

Thanks for the info about the name Amara MementoNepenthe I was just told it was a girl's name only. However hearing your argument it does sound like a good alternate name for Haruka and plus it is a Japanese name too.

DiC had to go through Kodansha for any change and alteration to be approved. It’s possible Kodansha wouldn’t allow them to change the setting from Japan. It took 27 episodes to even get a reference to the location and it was strictly in the pre-episode narration only.

A similar thing happened in Digimon. The kids made far too many American culture references to be Japanese plus American first names and for a good half of the season the location wasn’t mentioned (not that it mattered since they were in another dimension) until a good 30ish episode when they finally mentioned being in Japan. Apparently they were going to make the location America but Bandai put the kibosh on it.

The Irwin toy line of course gave them the names Celia, Nerissa, and Corinne. And Mixx tried to call Haruka and Hotaru “Alex and Jenny” I would be very surprised if the names weren’t decided by Cloverway/Optimum while S was being dubbed.


It would be interesting though to see the English scripts for Hearts in Ice and see what they’re referred to by in civilian mode.

The original English dub does take place in Japan. That was established as far back as “Kitty Chaos”. They only mention Japan once though, and that was in the Sailor Moon S movie.

I was gonna sat didn't the lost episodes kinda scrap the idea of it being in America.

No, the idea of it being in America was scrapped in the pre-narration for Kitty Chaos less we were suppose to be believe “Tokyo” was a city in some American state. They mention Tokyo by name left and right during the Rini episodes of the syndicated dub.

The “Lost” episodes were just as Americanized as the syndicated episodes.


The Cloverway era was really the point the dub started dropping the overt Americanizations and even then it was still prevalent it just was toned down to the point Japanese writing was showing up way more often and you would start hearing Japanese names for characters of the day being used.

Even as a kid watching it felt kinda like this comic. Phoenix Wright has similar localization issues.

Omg you’re totally right, they never said their names in the movies. I remember now, I was taken aback when I first heard them call Uranus Amara in the series. Interesting as to why only Pluto, Uranus, and Neptune were the only ones with name changes then.

Honestly I just wish people would stop with the localization it just makes things weird. Phoenix Wright is a big one with how it makes the game just silly. Sailor Moon they could have probably gotten away with more as with careful editing some things could be explained away. Like if it was set in America Rei's Temple could be an American Shinto Temple and Rei could be Japanese American but again there are still some Japanese landmarks on the show but that could just be handwaved. Plus the characters have all kinds of different hair colors that could pass as European. One game where the localization was just silly was Clock Tower Ghosthead or as it is known in America Clock Tower 2 The Struggle Within. Not only do all of the characters look visibly Japanes no wild hair and eye colors but even the first setting is in a Japanese style house with a Samurai statue and the main villain is an evil doctor wearing a Hannya mask.

The Lost Episodes did use the original Japanese sound effects at least, but even the original DiC era had faithfully adapted episodes sometimes, such as the one where Nephrite dies.

The Lost episodes kept the Japanese sfx and generally stuck closer to the script but it was still just as Americanized as the first 65 episodes as far as character names and names of locations and what not.