As I have been shouting from the rooftops, the live-action extravaganza Sailor Moon The Super Live is on tour. I have seen any number of live stage performances of Sailor Moon, including my very first trip to Japan! I saw Sailor Moon The Super Live in NYC in 2022 and enjoyed it immensely and have plans for seeing it next month when it comes NJPAC – why not join me and say hi! ^_^ The tour is adding a few dates now – they just added a *4th* date in Seattle, wow, so definitely see if you can be part of this. It’s really quite wonderful.

And, now, Okazu friends in London have experienced the show for the very first time! Rue Bell was kind enough to write up this report for us. Thank you Rue, I’ll turn it over to you….

I attended Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon The Super Live (henceforth Super Live) in London with some friends and members of the Okazu Discord Server. Like may geeky events in London, the experience started on the London Underground before we even got to the theatre, with more and more passengers wearing Sailor Moon themed clothes, bags and hair buns as we drew closer to the Camden venue. Seated tickets were available for a premium, but most of us opted for the basic standing ticket. There was a merchandise stall that included photos of the cast and Sailor Moon branded light sticks.

Super Live is a musical adaptation of the first season of the anime, which is the part of Sailor Moon that I have the most familiarity with and nostalgia for, having watched selected episodes on VHS as a child. The plot introduces Sailor Moon and the four Inner Senshi, then they battle against Queen Beryl and her six monster for possession of the Silver Crystal. Tuxedo Mask is in every fight as a love interest and ambiguous friend-or-foe figure.

Super Live is performed entirely in Japanese, with translations projected onto a large screen. The musical numbers were translated with animated typography, and standard subtitles were used for the spoken dialogue in-between. I thought this worked well, however in this
particular venue overhanging balcony seats meant the dialogue subtitles were not visible from about half of the standing area, which is likely to have created a poor experience for audience members in those areas.

I enjoyed the shimmer, sparkle and spectacle of Sailor Moon when I was a child, and I think Super Live’s impressive production lived up to it. The dancing was, to my eyes, impeccably synchronised and choreographed, and it was backed up by a huge screen at the back of the
stage, and an LED-covered set and props that all pulsated and changed colour in time with the music and dancers.

As an adult, the interactions between the Sailor Senshi are my favourite part of the Sailor Moon anime. These unsurprisingly weren’t the focus in this musical with a highly compressed plot. However, one person I went with did notice that the Senshi actors still conveyed these dynamics using small interactions, so the observant fans will enjoy those. There were also two musical numbers focussed on the diverse personalities and skills of the Senshi. The message that there are all sorts of ways to be a girl or a woman is quite important to me, so I appreciated these performances being there, and got quite emotional about them in the finale.

I think the Tuxedo Mask performance deserves a particular shout-out. He was played by the female actor Sufa, and she nailed his cool, confident presence in every scene. The performance reminded me of an otokoyaku – a woman playing a man’s role – in the Takarazuka Revue. I don’t think that this is intended to be seen as queer, but I expect that yuri fans will nonetheless enjoy watching an actor playing with gender roles.

I would definitely recommend Super Live to any Sailor Moon fan, it adapts many of the things that drew me to the original series. The run in London ended on March 19th 2025, but at the time of publication a North American tour is planned for March and April 2025.