Below is a list of online anime stores that either have an
exceptional variety or price on Sailormoon items. Before you
look through them though, you may want to read on about certain
things every Sailormoon shopper should know.
First of all, let's talk about CD's. The two kinds of CD's
you can buy are the original ones or SonMay. You can tell the
difference just by looking at the price. Overall, if the CD is
like $40 dollars or more, it's probably an original as opposed
to the $15-$25 dollars a SonMay would cost. SonMay is a company
in Taiwan that copies CD's and then sells them for much cheaper.
These are a good buy because the quality is good and they're
cheaper. Of course, I seriously doubt that the people who made
the original CD are making any money at all on a SonMay CD, so
if you're a stickler for that stuff then go ahead and spend the
extra money.
As for videos, you have three choices. Dubbed, Subbed or Raw.
A dubbed video just replaces the Japanese voices with English
ones, but keeps the same music and sounds. If it's a good dub,
then they'll subtitle the songs and keep the words in Japanese.
Subtitled tapes have the original Japanese voices and then English
translations of what they say at the bottom of the screen. Raw
videos don't provide any translation at all, so if you don't
speak Japanese fluently, I would not suggest these. It seems
to me that subtitle tapes cost more then dubbed ones, which is
a pity (in my opinion), because I prefer those. There are several
companies that subtitle Sailormoon tapes, some better then others.
Although I'm not an expert on which ones are good and bad, I
have not heard good things about Artic, so try to avoid them.
Although there are companies that sub/dub Sailormoon movies
and episodes, there aren't a lot of movies or episodes that have
been dubbed or subbed, at least by big companies. All is not
lost though, because many fans who have the means, dub/sub them
themselves. This called fansubbing or fandubbing. Tapes that
have been subbed/dubbed by fans are usually cheaper and I have
seen them being sold on the internet for as cheap as 3 or 4 dollars.
Of course tape quality comes into play with these, but there
are good fansubbers/ dubbers out there.
