Takeuchi, Toei, or Turnout?

Takeuchi, Toei, or Turnout?

It’s time to play everyone’s no one’s favorite game show: Takeuchi, Toei, or Turnout?

Don’t worry; you don’t need to be Ami to play.

Ami Study

Don’t listen to her by the way. Read more manga!

Welcome, players, to the simplest game show ever.

Let me explain the rules to the audience… and the players.

Way back when Sailor Moon Crystal Season 3 was wrapping up, the final episode ended with this teaser:

Sailor Moon Crystal Episode 39

Sure enough, shortly afterward, a sequel was confirmed.

News has been scarce until about a week ago. Crystal isn’t getting a fourth season; it’s getting two movies instead.

That means Crystal is now on its third incarnation. So why do we have yet another change for this reboot of a 25 year old manga? Contestants, let’s play Takeuchi, Toei, or Turnout!

Buzz Quiz WorldPlease choose from the following answers.

Option #1: Takeuchi

Takeuchi reportedly is quite protective of Sailor Moon, and she exercises a large amount of control over the series. Why not push for a TV series if she liked the new staff enough to agree to another animated project? Does she imagine something more like the musicals? Is she afraid of a SuperS-like season? Did she put certain demands on how the Dream arc had to be presented?

Option #2: Toei

Is Toei just being cheap again? Sure, a lot of anime adaptations get a film adaptation instead of another season, and quite a few do well at the box office. But the same studio that helped produced three different versions of the opening song and three completely different ending animations for a 13 episode series suddenly can’t get enough money for a TV broadcast? Why jump from the web to TV to the silver screen? Was it a film or nothing?

Option #3: Turnout

In Japan, the first two season of Sailor Moon Crystal suffered enormous decline on Niconico. The first episode has been viewed over 1.1 million times, the halfway point had about 150,000 views, and Act 26 was down to under 82,000 views. If by judging by Amazon reviews (not the greatest measure, I know), Season 3 was far more successful. Most of those discs scored a minimum of three stars; the first two seasons, by contrast, were lucky to score three stars. Was the jump to television still too little, too late?

Now, players, please submit your answer in the allotted time period.

Hopefully, you’ll score better than Usagi did.

Time’s up.

The answer after this word from our sponsor.

Commercial Break

… I have just been notified we have no sponsor, so I will fill in the time myself.

About two months ago, I got the sense something was up. It was the same feeling when news of the reboot was mostly MIA and when it was delayed — twice. Considering they had a voice cast and a production studio (plus a completed manga), even if they were hiring a new staff (which was very unlikely), there was little reason for the continuation not to have information released right away.

My first reaction upon hearing the news?

“Oh, no, Crystal HAS to be a 1:1 adaptation! No other way!! Well, okay, the first Act of Infinity was broken up, but still! 1:1!!! No other format!!”

All that craziness about keeping each Act name, then the later insanity about episode numbers and Act numbers not matching up… wasted. Eleven Acts, two movies. Even if you go by the original Acts, that’s 9 Acts for two movies. Either way, of course, this excludes the three Exam Battles. I was hoping for another version of “Ami-chan’s First Love”. (Although I don’t think Kanemoto could match Hisakawa’s performance.)

Anyway, if you do the math, it’s certainly possible to cover everything: If going on the high end (2 hours), that’s about 21 minutes per chapter, about the same as an anime episode. But with Dream Acts being pretty episodic, I think it’s going to be pretty odd to sit through 20 minutes about Mercury, then Mars, etc. while both the Outer Planet Guardians and the Princess’ Guardians long to reunite and Mamoru gets sick.

Oh, look, rant commercial break is over.

The answer is…

via GIPHY

Jeopardy Little Man

He’s right. The answer is obviously the person in that “fine portrait there”.

So if you said the person who is pictured above, you win.

But since Crystal is not getting a televised fourth season, we all lose.

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4 Comments

  1. Takuto's Anime Cafe

    What a funny idea—all of these routes seemed so plausible in their own way! My guess is that the director of the third season, since he’s coming back to do the fourth, looked at the material and felt it’d flow better with just two films. Maybe there’s some big plot twist midway that would make for a good first film finale, I’m not really sure. Either way, it was fun speculating with you—hopefully we get more details on the seri–EHERM films soon~!

    Reply
    1. Krystallina (Post author)

      Glad you enjoyed the post! 🙂
      A fun fact: the director is female, a rarity in the field. And I don’t think she has any other projects currently announced right now, so I would be curious to why she would prefer films.

      Reply
  2. Kapodaco

    You seem like you had a lot of fun with this.

    Reply
    1. Krystallina (Post author)

      I wanted to use screens from the Sailor Moon quiz game for full effect, but alas, I have no Photoshop skills.

      Reply

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