New Sailor Moon character profiles

This is so exciting! It has been announced that the new Sailor Moon anime will premier July 5, and will air a new episode every other Saturday. In addition, character profiles are now on the official website. And they are fabulous. You can tell they've been updated a little but are still very true to the style from the original show. In fact, I'm not completely sure, but I think it may actually be a little more similar to the manga style? I'm interested to see how it will look animated.

The Japanese voice cast has been confirmed, as well. Mitsuishi Kotono will be reprising her role as Sailor Moon. The rest of the cast of sailor soldiers includes Kanemoto Hisako, Sato Rina, Koshimizu Ami, and Ito Shizuka.

Please check out all the profiles on the website.

Have I mentioned I'm excited? I can finally start to call myself a Sailor Moon fan once this premiers! I won't be the weird magical girl fan-blogger who has never seen the most popular magical girl series ever. XD

I just noticed from looking at the profiles that all their last names end with "no", with the first kanji representing their "power" (moon, water, fire, tree, love). You see how much of a newb I am?

Are there any other new fans like me who plan to watch this series? As for the older fans, what are your thoughts so far on the new info?

Magica Wars debut episode

Somehow I forgot about this... on April 8, a new magical girl show debuted: Magica Wars, a.k.a., Mahou Shoujo Taisen. It's a short program, being only four minutes long; and that's including the opening theme, so it's really more like three minutes. The series is part of a media franchise which as of now also consists of three video games: Magica Wars Lock-On, Magica Wars Tactics, and Magica Wars Zanbatsu.

This gag series centers around 47 different magical girls. Each character represents a certain prefecture of Japan, in both their style and their voice (each voice actress is from the same prefecture as her character). This is a 26-episode series so I'm not sure if we will get to see all the characters or not.

This episode introduces just one magical girl, Aoba Naruko, as well what I assume is her mascot, Takesuzume, who basically looks like he came straight out of Angry Birds.

As Naruko chases a group of little monsters called Magatsuhi, she jumps over an intersection while the crosswalk light is still red. After being scolded by a police officer, Takesuzume proceeds to yell at Naruko for slacking off on her mission.

So despite being tired, Naruko gets up and continues chasing the monsters (and getting yelled at by her mascot), only succeeding in hitting one right before it attacks a little girl. As she goes after the remaining monsters, she once again has to cross the road and is told by the officer to wait. Naruko and Takesuzume argue about whether she should listen to him or not. Takesuzume, who apparently cannot be seen by ordinary humans (I think?), calls the officer a "blockhead", which Naruko repeats, and angers the officer. Long story short, Naruko gets arrested for looking suspicious, and the episode ends.

Her weapon kinda reminds me of Dear Baby's rattle

... if this is really supposed to be a gag series, I'm not finding the humor. Watching that annoying angry bird scream for the entire episode is not my idea of funny.

The art in this is good; it's very cartoony, which I like, and I love Naruko's character design, particularly the ribbon crown thing on her head that resembles the flag of Miyagi.

I like short gag series, I really do, but this show just isn't cutting it. They took a very, very basic plot that could be from any other MG series, tried to make it funny, and failed completely. The character designs are fabulous, but design alone cannot carry a series. Episode 2 airs next Tuesday, and I will be watching and praying that the next episode will be better than the first.