Sailor Moon. (Season 1, in english)

KO so the first "Season" Or Series of sailor moon is simply titled sailor moon in English and Pretty Soldier Sailor Moon if translated from Japanese into English.

So the first season has has 40 English and 46 Japanese episodes which is about twice the number of a American seasons for a show.

The creation of the show started when corperate excecutives at Toei Animation asked Naoko Takeuchi to help with the creation of a "Power Rangers like" TV show targeted at young girls.
So Naoko simply took a Manga. (Japanese Graphic Novel) Series she had already made about a magic powered super heroin and made it a group of super powered heroin's wile adding more of a story line.

The difference in Japanese and English episode numbers came along because of standards and practices in Canada (The first English County to air the show) DiC a company owned by Disney re-worked a number of plot elements and simply cut some of the episodes, ether because there wasn't enough of the episode left after editing, Or because the episode simply didn't translate over well if you didn't understand Japanese culture.


The biggest difference in the Japanese and English versions is by now Famous in the Anime Community. The "Bad guys" in the first seaons are a Evil queen and her four generals. In the English version the genereals are three men and one women, the last two of the generals clearly in a relationship.
This is pretty much the same in a Japanese Version with the exception of the fact that all the Generals are Male in the Japanese Version... So yes that means there is one Homosexual Couple.

Now don't get me wrong i could care less, and on top of that i could care less that they are a Homosexual Couple in a kids show, unless you were older then 12ish, you wouldn't pick up on it anyways. But that being said i see the point in the edit.
First off it would have never made it past Standards and Practices in the early 1990's and would have a very hard time now in 2010.
Second, even if it did, it would put a HUGE dent in the amount of money that could be made by the show. (The true reason to make almost any show)

There are also some subtile. (Again you wouldn't get them unless you were older) Lesbian Jokes or at least lesbian or homosexual nods in the show as well.
Which is the way Japanese shows work, even if they are made for kids, they don't ignore the rest of the Culture they were made in. And allot of shows have Inside jokes or Subtle jokes in them regardless of age target.

Also because of Culture they cut out allot of the "Hard Core" Element of the Japanese version, implying in the English version that they intent to do harm to the main character of the show. In the Japanese Version they Acutely Demand her Decapitated head. But again Decapitation is really.. well kind of part of Japanese Culture, its hard to even teach Japanese History without using the word.

And i often frown at the sterilization of American History, we teach kids about Columbus and thanks giving, but not about the darker side of American history until much later, if at all.

But the point being that the English Version is sanitized in comparison.

It's also important to note that there was no standard writing team for the English Version. So most of the writers had NO idle what was going on in the show, and it shows in the English Version, its very inconsistent, and some times the lines simply do not make any sense.