Toon Makers

Toon Makers, Inc., alternatively known simply as Toon Makers, is a North American company. In late 1993, Toon Makers and Renaissance Atlantic made a pilot for an American live-action/animation adaption of the Sailor Moon anime.

History
In 1993, when Bandai was trying to get an English speaking company to dub Sailor Moon, Renaissance Alantic and Toon Makers showed an interest. Rather than dubbing the series, however, Renaissance Alantic wanted to remake the series and had plans of having their version air on FOX in the fall of 1994. However, Bandai had already struck a deal with DiC Entertainment and because of this, the Toon Makers and Renaissance Alantic series was never completed or aired.

Plot
Despite its origins, the Toon Makers adaptation of Sailor Moon was almost completely different. Rather than the Senshi fighting on Earth, battles would be held in space on their home planets. Prince Endymion and Princess Serenity's relationship was no longer a forbidden romance, and they were instead betrothed, with Queen Beryl coming to destroy them at the wedding party and steal their jewels. The Senshi tried to escape with the prince by means of a vortex that led them down to Earth, only for him to be killed by Queen Beryl, leaving only Sailor Moon and the rest of the team able to escape. The main plot of the story was centered on the girls returning to space to prevent Queen Beryl and her minions from attacking the planet Jupiter.

Characters
The original characters were depicted differently as well, one reason being that Toon Makers wanted to include a wider range of characters. Several of the girls were from different races with rewritten personalities; Sailor Mercury was a wheelchair-bound redhead who liked parties and showed airheaded tendencies. Sailor Venus was a Latina valley girl who would get angry if one of her nails broke, or, in one occasion, because they had to fight during a gathering that she wanted to attend. Sailor Jupiter was African American and frequently did comedic impressions, while Sailor Mars was the only member who retained her original Asian race. Sailor Moon was depicted as a smart, strong leader. When in space, the Senshi would travel on sailboards called "Sky Flyers", bar Mercury, who traveled on a rocket-powered wheel chair.

Music Video
Toon Makers made a two minute music video for the promotion of their live action American remake. In the music video it show the different Sailor Senshi, now called "Princess Warriors", and other characters such as Luna. The music video was a product of mixed media; When the Sailor Senshi were in their civilian forms, they were shown in live action, but were animated after transforming. The music video was shown to Bandai and later in 1995, Allen Hastings showed the video at an computer animation panel at Anime Expo that year.

Trivia

 * The logo used in the official music video was later bought by DiC Entertainment, which was used for their dub of the original anime series.
 * In the Toon Makers version, Sailor Moon keeps the same name in both her Senshi and princess form.
 * Just like the DiC English dub, Mamoru was renamed Prince Darien.
 * Adrian Barbo was to play Queen Beryl and Queen Serenity.
 * Queen Beryl had a minon/ally called Ursus.
 * Several Sailor Moon fans refer to the music video as "Saban Moon" despite Saban Entertainment never having anything to do with it.
 * In an interview with Animefringe, Rocky Sotoloff, the president and founder of Toon Makers, said that they tried to make the characters and animation more Americanized and they went for a Filmation art style because of the very low budget they had at the time. To this day, the people of Toon Makers are not pleased with how the animation turned out.