I’m one of the few people who happened to be watching TV when Sailor Moon made its United States television broadcast debut, way back in September of 1995. My introduction to the franchise was the original English-language dub, distributed by DiC Entertainment.
This particular dub has become pretty infamous for the edits made to the show. Edits, I might add, that make the show appropriate for American television broadcast. Without many of those changes, the show probably wouldn’t have been able to be shown on US TV, and Sailor Moon probably wouldn’t have reached the heights of popularity that it did, when it did.
All that said, because this is how I was introduced to SM, it’s my preferred version. But I’m not just some dumb American fan; I also own the whole manga series, as well as both Sailor Moon and its second series, Sailor Moon R, on original Japanese-with-English-subtitles DVDs.
But the silly 90s dub with all the valley girl-isms and the Americanized names will always be the version I remember best. And that’s why I went and bought the ADV-released DVDs of that version. And I’m super glad to own them. But the box art isn’t what I wanted.
After making my TMNT slim DVD case inserts, I figured, sure, let’s do more of these. There were 14 discs of episodes, so that divided up nicely into seven double-disc cases; each case could highlight one of the Inner Scouts Senshi, plus there would be one for Tuxedo Mask and one for Sailor Chibi Moon. And, since SM is hugely popular, finding official artwork of each of the characters was very easy, as was a fairly hi-res version of the old American logo.
I found https://sailormoonscenery.tumblr.com, which had fantastic screen caps of backgrounds from the show, so I used those; evening cityscapes for the front, and more atmospheric images that featured the cover character in some way for the back. Add in the episode titles and spine designs, and it was good to go.
Click any of the images to open up a version that you can download for yourself!
Unfortunately, these particular DVDs aren’t readily available for purchase anymore. You basically have to find them used. The North American rights to Sailor Moon have been held for years by Viz Media, who have re-dubbed the entire show with a brand-new voice cast using more accurately-translated scripts, and without any of the US broadcast edits. Viz Media’s Sailor Moon product is effectively a more “correct” English-language version. If you’re new to the franchise, you should absolutely just go with that.
But the DiC dub was my first anime series, so it will always hold a special place with me.
Sailor Moon and all related characters were created by Naoko Takeuchi.