Comparson between the heavily censored US TV Version and the German TV Version.

German Version:	US Version:

The anime series Sailor Moon should ring a bell. The 200 episodes-series about a group of girls, who can perform magic tricks, fighting Evil is a classic which left a mark in the awareness of Japanese Productions (in both directions). No doubt about that. The series was a major success worldwide. But the German Version is quitr a surprise. In comparison to Saber Rider for instance, the German Version are based on the original Japanese master and the effort to keep it as close as possible to the Original was being made. Besides a few modification (please see below), the German Version is equal to the uncensored original Japanese Version.

Unlike the US North American Version.

The company DiC was calling the shots for the adaption of the first two seasons and Cloverway for the following two seasons. The final season 5 has never been released in the US, probably because of the controversial "Sailor Starlights", which also change the gender during their transformations. The realization is legen.... wait for it.... [sorry, wrong franchise -:)] The realization is legendary but it's also a perfect example for heavy censorship in animes these days. Especially season 1, produced by DiC, has a very dreadful rep and is the one with the most censorships being made. "Highlights" are the last two episodes of the first season. The remains of these episodes were put together to one single episode. Really preposterous.

The Modifications / Censorship

The

removal of scenes is the most common censorship. The length of the removed scenes is purely and simply impressive. Looks like the episodes were censored randomly. Besides the violence cuts, which could be expected, plot scenes, some gags and anything that could cause trouble with the FCC, was precautionally removed.

The meaning of scenes was changed very often, too. In most cases, the lines in the dub are softer but modifications of the footage were also being made. As a result of that, a scene might have an entirely different meaning than the exact same scene in the Original.

Americanization describes the pathetic attempt to make the series less Japanese. Not only the character names are different (please see below for details) but the Japanese ideographs (Kanji, Katakana, Hiragana) are wiped out as well. Further differences are renamed foot (but it still looks the same which is quite hilarious). But the best thing is: anything takes place in the US, Tokyo isn't being mentioned for once. These modifications aren't going to be mentioned anymore because it happens too often. Exeptions are extraordinary examples for that.
Examples:

German Version:	US Version:

Images were censored, especially when it became to revealing. This also and particularly concerns the transitions (except Sailor Moon's) where curves were removed like there were no tomorrow.
Examples:

German Version:	US Version:

CGI was added to a lot of scenes which doesn't contain any CGI in the Original Version. Listing all the CGI of any episode would break the mold but I can assure you: if there's a conspicuous CG shot, it wasn't in the Original Version.
Examples:

German Version:	US Version:

Transitions were added digitally as well. Recognizing them is a piece of cake because they're obviously a break of style and they're supposed to cover up the cuts. And here also counts: listing any transition would break the mold, so I'm not going to do that.
Examples:

Unfortunately there are some

removed episodes, too. From 46 Original episodes of season 1, only 40 were left over. The removed episodes Nr. 2, 5, 6, 20, 42 and the episodes 44 and 45 were so heavily cut that it was one single episode in the end.
In the second season, episode 67 was being removed. (Note: The German Vesion lacks episode 89 but it only consists of stock footage and is hated by the fanbase, so it's not a big loss at all.)

Gender change is a popular method to hide homosexuality. In this case, two characters are being affected: Zoicite (in Germany Zoisite) in season 1 is actually a man. But to avoid his homosexual relationship with Kunzite, he's a woman now. The second character is Fish Eye in season 4. Though he acts very feminine, he's actually a male (and he's also gay). A further victim of a gender change is Zirconia in season 4 for instance. And if such a censorship wasn't possible, the status of their relationship was being changed. The lovers Uranus and Neptun e.g. are cousins now.
The

modification of the audio track is no censorship in the proper sense but a lot of atmosphere gets lost. The reason for that is pretty simple: the US Version takes a pass on the original music and noises - a new audio track was being made. It works for the noises but it doesn't for the music. The original music is way better.

"Sailor Says" is a segment which exists exclusively in the US Version. If you know Filmation's "Masters Of The Universe" (good old times), the last scene should be look very familiar because it also with a scene where the kids were supposed to learn a lesson. This could be realized with stock footage.

Different names for the attacks and transformations were used, despite the fact that the names in the Original Version are English as well. But I must say that someof the German names were just made up, too. Here some examples of attacks, an entire list would be too long.

Original Version:	US Version:	German Version:
Moon Tiara Action	Moon Tiara Magic	Mondstein, flieg und sieg
Shabon Spray	Mercury Bubbles Blast	Seifenblasen, fliegt
Fire Soul	Mars Fire Ignite	Feuerball, flieg
Supreme Thunder	Supreme Thunder Crash	Donnerschlag, flieg
Cresent Beam	Venus Cresent Beam Smash	Halbmondstrahl, flieg

Change of names affects all characters. Here's a list of characters with more than one appearance in season 1. Find the original name in brackets if the German name is different.

German Version:	US Version:
Bunny(Usagi) Tsukino	Serena Tsukino
Mamoru Chiba/Tuxedo Mask	Darien Shields/Tuxedo Mask
Ami Mizuno	Amy Anderson
Rei Hino	Reye Hino
Makoto Kino	Lita Kino
Minako Aino	Mina Aino
Luna	Luna
Artemis	Artemis
Königin Perillia(Beryl)	Queen Beryl
Königin Metallia	Negaforce
Jedite (Jadeite)	Jadeite
Neflite(Nephrite)	Neflyte
Zoisite(Zoicite)	Zoycite
Kunzite	Malachite
Naru Osaka	Molly Baker
Motoki Furuhata	Andrew
Umino Gurio	Melvin
Shingo Tsukino	Sammy Tsukino
Ikkuko Tsukino	Mom
Kenji Tsukino	Dad
Mika Kayama	Mika Cassidy
Haruna Sakurada	Patricia Haruna
Reika	Rita
Yuuichirou Kumada	Chad

It's also worth being mentioned that the German was being modified here and there, too. Zoisite e.g. is a woman as well (I guess the channel changed that) and attempts to avoid words like "kill", "die" etc. were being made, which causes an odd result in some scenes. But still: these modifications are pretty harmless in comparison to the DiC Version. Comparisons of the dialogs with subtitled Japanese episodes proof how close to the Original the German dialogs are.

Just as in the first season, the second season also offers a different opening, different credits, different episode titles, as well as the "Sailor Says". These things will only be mentioned in the report of the first episode of the second season. Any of these differences will be ignored for the overall difference in time for each episode, which means that only the "real" content of the episode matters for these statistics. Therefore, the reports will basically concentrate on cuts as well as alterations (some of the scenes actually offer both things at the same time). The time designations always refer to the German version.

Episode 59: Treed

The Sailor warriors reach the inside of the building, despite all warnings from the tree of the dark force. Meanwhile in the inside, both Ail and Anne are in cold fury when they realize Bunny and Mamoru don't reciprocate their courtesy and only care about each other. Conducted by hatred, they have so much energy that all Sailor warriors can be defeated easily and Mamoru gets heavily wounded in the attempt to protect Sailor Moon. The knight of the moonlight that came along gets wounded as well. Suddenly the tree goes totally berserk and attacks Ail and Anne. Anne receives a lethal injury and now, with Anne dying in his arms, they do understand what true love is. That stops the tree and he finally tells them he never wanted to get their energy but just being loved by his kids. Ail and Anne never understood - until now. At his own request, the tree gets freed from all the energy and heals Anne. The knight of the moonlight reveals his true identity now. He's a part of Mamoru's spirit that was supposed to protect Bunny. He unites with him to give Mamoru his memories back while Ail and Anne are leaving earth with the recovered tree. Everything's fine again.

Running time German episode: 19:00
Running time US episode: 18:20

That means: minus the non-existent scenes in the Original Version, the US Version lacks 40 seconds.

This is the second part of the two-part-comparison which ends the plot about Ail and Anne. Unfortunately the two-part-episode needed to suffer a lot and lost a lot of its original strength (even though the differences in part 1 are worse).

[00:06]-[00:16]
[-10 sec]
Shortened scene
Sailor Venus wants to destroy the blockade with her halfmoon ray but Mars can stop her by saying she felt sth. weird was going on.

[02:37]-[03:04]
Modified scene
Different content.

In the Original Version, Ail spits at Mamoru to leave Bunny alone because she was HIS. That upsets Anne because she doesn't like Ail's advances for Bunny. She accidentally spills the beans and admits to being in love with Mamoru. Ail blames her and spits back they were sitting in the same boat. Jealousy bubbles up inside her.

In the US Version, he grunts at Mamoru he was out of Bunny's league. Anne protests not to talk about him like that which makes Ail conclude that Anne has the hots for Mamoru as well. Anne counters that, with regard to his drooling when he sees Bunny, she was right.

[03:58]-[04:00]
[-2 sec]
Shortened scene
The beginning of Mars' attack has been removed, presumably because og the Kanji.

[04:03]
[-1 sec]
Shortened scene
Missing shot of the fireball combining with the sheet.

[05:32]-[05:38]
[-6 sec]
Shortened scene
Extended shot of Sailor Moon attacking Ail and Anne verbally.

[07:28]-[07:34]
[-6 sec]
Shortened scene
The warriors realize they better attack as long as Ail and Anne are still busy with the tree.

[11:30]-[11:41]
[-11 sec]
Shortened scene
Anne gets penetrated by the tree root. Ail witnesses it with horror.

[13:45]-[14:15]
Modified scene
The story of the tree of the dark force has been substantially altered.

In the Original Version, the tree explains his kids gave in to the temptation of greed and self-seeking, so they started fighting for his energy. He hoped they came to their senses but it got worse and the fights got more violent until a nuclear war finally caused the detonation of the entire planet.

In the US Version, his kids got influenced by a dark force from the inside and their love became hatred. The tree says they wouldn't listen to him any more because the dark force was stronger and told them what to do. Actually the dark side was so strong that it finally caused the destruction of the entire world.

Due to this modification, the significance of the message (the planet gets destroyed by unknown forces now) is being reduced.

[15:59]-[16:02]
Modified scene
For some reason, an animated golden crescent moon has been added here.

German Version	US Version

[17:19]-[17:21]
[-2 sec]
Shortened scene
Due to the CG transition, the original one got lost in the process of editing.

[18:17]-[18:19]
[-2 sec]
Shortened scene
Ditto.

Background facts

Reading this might be a surprise but it's incredibly weird that a big series like this hasn't been released on DVD so far, except for Japan of course. In Japan are all seasons available on DVD.

In the US, the seasons 1 and 2 are available but only in the thanks to DiC destryoed versions. The seasons 3 and 4 only contain the English audioi track as well but at least the modifications have been changed back. Sailor Stars has never been released. Toei refused to release the Original Version with subs for a long time. When they finally did it, they didn't give permission for the remastered tapes but only for the cheap ones.

In other countries, e.g. Germany, Toei refuses to release the series as well. The reasons for that decision are unknown so that one can only make assumptions about the motive.

The difference of the image quality has been mentioned before. Here some examples how much better the images look on DVD. It's pretty conspicuous that the images of season 2 look "overcolored". This has been corrected for season 3 at least.

TV Version	DVD