If you like Your Lie in April or Wicked, you’ll love Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon: The Super Live!

From its story of love and reincarnation to teenage girls with superpowers fighting against evil while singing and dancing on stage, here’s why this Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon: The Super Live is a must-see at HERE at Outernet.

A beloved, empowering story of love and friendship

Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon: The Super Live is based on the manga series by Japanese artist Naoko Takeuchi. Since its release in the ’90s, fans have been able to read the manga, watch two different animated series and now, as Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon: The Super Live opened in London this month, they can finally see a stage adaptation which has never before been performed in the UK.

Following Usagi Tsukino, a klutzy Japanese teenager living in Tokyo, the story begins one morning when Usagi, late for school, rescues a cat named Luna who reappears that night to give her a gift: a brooch that transforms Usagi into Sailor Moon, the champion of love and justice and a Sailor Guardian. Usagi’s first encounter with a possessed human controlled by Queen’s Beryl’s Dark Kingdom is a bit of a mess, but she is saved by a mysterious man wearing a mask and a tuxedo.

Usagi quickly meets the rest of the Guardians: Ami (Sailor Mercury), Rei (Sailor Mars), Makoto (Sailor Jupiter) and, finally, her heroine Sailor Venus, Minako. As the girls grow the bonds of friendship, they begin their search for the lost Moon Princess, Serenity, and a mysterious crystal which holds the power to beating the evil Queen Beryl. While saving Tokyo and the Earth, Usagi learns about her past life and falls in love with Mamoru Chiba, the human alter ego of Tuxedo Mask.

A musical extravaganza in Japanese!

Where Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon: The Super Live stands out is that it introduces the first arc of the manga with a reduced cast of main actors and an ensemble. The performance is 95 minutes long and, while spoken in Japanese with English subtitles, was designed to be easily exportable and to appeal to international fans. It’s a spectacular visual experience with toe-tapping songs like “Moonlight Densetsu” (“Moonlight Legend”), the opening theme for the original anime, to a host of original songs and a few classics from the modern adaptations for good measure.

With the popularity of Japanese exports like anime, ramen, stationery and kawaii culture, we’re now seeing waves of new trends and favourites from across South East Asia coming to the capital – from from the spicy kick of gochujang, to the beauty products from Korea, a newfound love of boba tea, the celebration of Lunar New Year and the 40-hour long Xianxia (high fantasy) television serials. There’s never been a better time to live in London!

Anime on stage!

Japan has a long-standing habit of taking popular series and transforming them for the stage, from series like Attack on Titan, Spy x Family, Your Lie in April, Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba and, even though it’s not a musical per se, the recent London stage production of the Studio Ghibli film, Spirited Away (which is starting its China run later this year).

Sailor Moon has had classical concerts and seven original musicals, plus a musical special event showcasing the most popular songs, since being rebooted by Nelke in the mid-2010s. There was even supposed to be a “Prism on Ice” event which was cancelled due to the Covid-19 pandemic. These included five stage productions which revolved around the main arcs in the story to an adaptation of the short story Kaguya-hime no Koibito (Princess Kaguya’s Lover) as well as another original stage play of the manga’s first arc done by pop idol group, Nogizaka 46.

Even in Japan these events – regardless of the property – sell out quickly, so official Blu-Ray releases or ticketed online streaming are often the only way for fans, either domestic or international, to attend. The use of official subtitles is becoming a thing, which means it’s only a matter of time before original productions of Japanese stage plays begin foreign runs in the same way that popular Broadway / West End titles like Hamilton or Wicked have had their own, albeit translated, runs in cities like Hamburg or Tokyo.

Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon: The Super Live follows the tradition of the famous Tokyo all-female troupe, the Takarazuka Revue, who performed Nelke musicals by having the cast, even the male characters, played by women. This melds well with Sailor Moon primarily being a story of girls with superpowers who fight to save the world, bound by love and friendship across adversity, as well as having predominantly female villains.

The hope here is that this limited run, which includes a north American tour in March with a different cast, will serve as a gateway to a new form of media becoming even more popular outside of Japan. It would be fantastic for other Japanese anime and manga-based series to be treated with the same reverence as cinematic anime releases, like Your Name or The Colors Within.

So be part of that huge new trend and catch Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon: The Super Live! while you still can!