In Sailor Moon SuperS, Part 2, Disk 2, we finish up the Inner Senshi’s power up episodes with a shared episode between Makoto and Minako. It’s a fine lover’s quarrel, with some bold fashion choices by Minako, who favors “space idol, Jetson style” and Jun-Jun, who goes in hard for “Pat Benatar Music video couture.” (And if you miss either one or both these references, even after Googling, then just ignore them. They aren’t worth the effort to explain. Just acknowledge the cultural or age gap and move on.)

We then turn our eyes to Chibi-Usa with our full attention.

Have I ever told you how much Araki Kae’s voice grates on me? Well, let me tell you. We were introduced to her as Chibi-Usa, and of course she is meant to be grating, as Usagi is meant to be shrill. This was back in the days when there were Video rental stores and one of our local stores had an extraordinarily decent anime section.* So we were renting nearly everything they had.** One of the anime was Fushigi Yugi, which they had in full, in both dub and some sub. The first volume we watched in dub, but Ruby Marlowe’s voice made us irritated, so we switched to the sub…only to find that Miaka was played by Araki Kae. Clearly Miaka was a whiny grating character and there was nowhere to turn. So, though it’s not her fault, Araki Kae’s voice rubs me raw.

Midway through this disk, I decided this would be an excellent time to listen to the dub. Since I didn’t care what was going to happen, plotwise, I could just put it on and see how it went. I don’t usually choose dubs when I watch home video, not at this point for any reason other than I’m a seiyuu otaku. I’ve got no problem watching them, I sometimes put on Cartoon Network or something and let the dub of a cartoon I don’t care about it run. In fact, I’ve only ever see episodes of Naruto in dub. Dubs are perfectly fine.

This dub was honestly excellent. It took me a while to get the hang of everyone’s voices, but by the last episode of the disk I was able to just appreciate their work. Amusingly I had left subtitles on, so I could see where dialogue was changed. In general the changes worked well and in one or two moments, I actually preferred the English script over the somewhat dated and – if we are to be honest –  sexist, dialogue.

And then, Stephanie Sheh blew me away. There was a scene, possibly all of the Inners and Mamoru, sitting around talking about Chibi-Usa maybe being in love and Sheh said something and I literally stopped what I was doing and stared at the TV. She wasn’t dubbing a cartoon…she was Usagi. At no point did I feel like I was watching a dub…I was just watching Usagi. That was amazing.

I’m actually looking forward to watching some of Stars in dub now. So kudos to the VAs, because that was some damn fine work.

Ratings:

Art – 7 It seems to have settled down again
Story – 3 I just don’t care about Chibi-Usa or Helios
Characters – 5
Service – Makoto and Minako 4ever
Yuri – 0

Overall – 5

*Those were halcyon days as the *two* video rental places in town actually competed to have better anime sections. Then the places outside my town joined in and soon, we could rent a massive amount of anime from the 5 closest rental stores.

**Except – and I remember this clearly – we could never bring ourselves to rent Ping-Pong Club, which looked abysmal, even compared with all the outright anime porn we watched. I mean, when the story looks shitty as compared with Demon City Shinjuku, it is not good.