Sailor Moon: Sub, the 1990s Dub or Viz's Redub?
The original anime has two English dubs: the cut 1990s television version and Viz Media's uncut redub. What each track is, who voices it, and what ANN's reviewers said about sub and dub.
Sailor Moon’s sub-or-dub question has three answers, because the original 1992–1997 anime has had two very different English dubs. The first, made for North American television from the mid-1990s, renamed the cast, cut episodes and rewrote relationships. The second is Viz Media’s uncut redub, recorded after Viz licensed the series in 2014, which keeps the Japanese names and story. Against both stands the Japanese track with English subtitles. This page sets out what each version is, what named critics said about them, and which to pick.
The short answer
Watch Viz’s release, in either language. Anime News Network’s reviewer graded the Viz dub level with or above the subtitled track on every set we checked. The 1990s English version is a historical artifact with different names and rewritten plots, and the one named critic we found who compared it with the Japanese preferred the Japanese.
The Japanese track
The original anime is five television series and 200 episodes in all, plus three films; when Viz licensed it, ANN reported that the deal covered “all 200 episodes from the five television series, the three feature films, and the assorted tie-in specials.” According to ANN’s encyclopedia, which is user-edited, the Japanese leads include Kotono Mitsuishi as Usagi, Aya Hisakawa as Ami, Michie Tomizawa as Rei, Emi Shinohara as Makoto, Rica Fukami as Minako and Keiko Han as Luna; for the third series, its Sailor Moon S entry lists Megumi Ogata as Haruka and Masako Katsuki as Michiru.
The first English dub: DiC, then Cloverway
The version most North American viewers met first was a television adaptation. ANN’s Rebecca Silverman, reviewing the second half of Viz’s first season in 2015, calls it “the bad old days of the Dic dub” and notes the changes a returning viewer will feel: Naru was called Molly, Mamoru was Darien, and Zoicite and Kunzite “have been returned to both being men in the new dub.” She also says the Viz set includes episodes “which were butchered or simply omitted from the first English release of the series.”
The third and fourth series were adapted by a different company. ANN’s Answerman column on Cloverway explains that the company mainly represented shows to broadcasters, but “occasionally, like in the case of Sailor Moon S and SS, they would also oversee the dubbing and adaptation process.” ANN executive editor Lynzee Loveridge, writing in 2021, recalls those seasons reaching Toonami “via Pioneer” with “a dub by Cloverway,” and adds that “any criticisms for the original DiC dub can be applied to Cloverway’s release as well.” That dub rewrote Haruka and Michiru, a couple in the Japanese, as cousins (Wikiquote’s transcription of a Cloverway-labeled scene has a villain refer to Uranus’s “cousin”); our fact-check on the cousins rewrite covers it. The fifth series, Sailor Stars, was never part of that era: ANN’s 2014 report says Viz’s license would bring “the first North American release of the final television series.”
Reviewing ADV Films’ uncut, subtitled first-season DVD set in 2003, Zac Bertschy wrote for ANN that the show “resembles the American broadcast version of Sailor Moon only in aesthetic,” that “the dialogue, tone, plotline and characterizations are completely different,” and that “Sailor Moon is a better show in Japanese than it is in English.” That verdict is about the old dub. It predates Viz’s by eleven years.
Viz Media’s redub
Viz announced in May 2014 that it would offer the anime “without edits in its original uncropped 4:3 aspect ratio, with the original Japanese names, story elements, and relationships,” and that it was “producing an uncut English dub with a new voice cast,” ANN reported, adding that Naoko Takeuchi would personally approve the cast. The dub’s first episodes premiered on Hulu and Viz’s Neon Alley service in September 2014, per ANN. Its principal cast, as announced in July 2014:
| Role | Viz English cast |
|---|---|
| Usagi Tsukino / Sailor Moon | Stephanie Sheh |
| Ami Mizuno / Sailor Mercury | Kate Higgins |
| Rei Hino / Sailor Mars | Cristina Vee |
| Makoto Kino / Sailor Jupiter | Amanda C. Miller |
| Minako Aino / Sailor Venus | Cherami Leigh |
| Mamoru Chiba / Tuxedo Mask | Robbie Daymond |
| Luna | Michelle Ruff |
| Artemis | Johnny Yong Bosch |
For Sailor Moon S, Silverman’s 2016 review names Erica Mendez as Sailor Uranus and Lauren Landa as Sailor Neptune, and says Mendez “hits a similar pitch that is neither masculine nor feminine” to Megumi Ogata’s. The same review says of Haruka and Michiru that “it’s also clear that this is a romantic and sexual bond” and that “their relationship is accepted by the show at large.”
What the reviews say about the two tracks
Silverman reviewed Viz’s discs for ANN across the series, grading the dub and the subtitled track separately:
Her review of that first-season set gives the reasoning. The new dub script “generally does a good job of adapting the subtitle track, though there are some interesting changes”: where the subtitles say some people call Usagi a “crybaby,” the dub has her say she can be “a little emotional,” and some lines are “added in for humor value,” such as Usagi calling Mamoru a “walking fashion disaster.” She found Stephanie Sheh’s Usagi “significantly less annoying than in any other version.” Her one complaint specific to the subtitled track was its song subtitles, which mix romanized Japanese with English, starting with “gomen-ne, it’s hard for me to say.”
How the English versions differ, line by line
Wikiquote’s Sailor Moon page sets English transcriptions it labels as the DiC dub and the Viz dub side by side for many first-season scenes, which shows the gap more plainly than any review. In the first season’s finale, as Princess Serenity remembers her friends, the DiC-labeled block gives Ami “Hey, Serena. I’ll help you finish this assignment if you want,” while the Viz-labeled block gives her “Love is no laughing matter, but you get a happy feeling from it.” Those are transcriptions, not the releases themselves, so treat them as a guide to the difference rather than as the official scripts. Our best Sailor Moon quotes say which English version each line comes from.
Which to pick
Pick Viz’s release. Take the dub if you want English audio: ANN’s reviewer graded it equal to or above the subtitled track on every set listed above, its script keeps the original names and relationships, and the changes she flagged are matters of tone. Take the sub for Kotono Mitsuishi and the original Japanese cast, accepting the odd song subtitles. The old television dubs are worth knowing about mainly so that a remembered line can be traced to the right decade; they are not the show as made. We have not checked where each track currently streams, and availability changes by region. For the order to watch in, see the Sailor Moon watch order; for the manga behind it, the Kodansha edition catalog.