03/24/05: In late 2003, ADV released the entire first season of Sailormoon into one boxset, subtitled and uncut for the first time in Region 1 DVD. While it should have been a cause for celebration, the poor video and audio quality of this set, left many fans downhearted that they had gotten such a rushed together set. They were not pleased when Sailormoon R (released as "Season 2") was not only missing Episode 67 (reportedly due to the licensor, Toei, removing it themselves), but one of the episodes featured a mix of dub audio with Japanese audio (ADV allowed a recall) and several terms from the dub worked their way into the subtitles. While the sets weren't utter trash (and the majority of the translation just fine), they were well under expectations. Then the other shoe dropped in early 2004 - ADV's license to the first two series expired April 1st. They were non-renewable. The answer became clear - ADV had to rush the sets out just to get back the cost of the project before their license expired. While this meant the remainder of the boxsets were going at insane discounts at many retailers online, the fact remained that subtitled Sailormoon had just lost it's greatest victory in only a matter of months.

Of course, this left the question of the license for the rest of Sailormoon up in the air. Geneon (formerly Pioneer) held the license for both the dub and subtitled release of all three movies as well as S and SuperS. When they announced reduced-price editions, many speculated that this meant Geneon's license would also be ending soon.

The answer finally came at Anime Boston 2004 during Geneon's panel. As Anime On DVD reported, Geneon was asked about the state of their Sailor Moon license. They confirmed that their license was indeed ending, with the movies set to expire by the end of the year and the TV series sometime afterwards. As with ADV, TOei did not give the option to renew. Since then, the movies have indeed gone out of print, with the S and SuperS series rumored to go out of print at the end of 2005.

While this news may sound grim, there is a small sliver of hope - Geneon stated that there were a number of issues going on with not only the license for Sailor Moon, but the licensor themselves. Toei has been pulling licenses for other series as well, which may mean that they are simply reorganizing and reappraising the titles they have. This could lead to the Sailor Moon license being availible again in the future, but this is merely speculation. Toei has finally continued their stalled release of the original anime to DVD, which leads to further speculation that they were attempting to prevent cheaper American DVDs from cutting into their brand-new R2 releases. This site will continue to keep you updated on the state of the license, since nothing spawns urban legends like a licensing battle (boring as they usually are.)