My journey from Dic to Viz
Rewatched a Dic episode Naughty and Nice, and I’m so startled by the difference after only watching VIZ for so long. It’s night and day. I grew up watching Sailor Moon Dic on Cartoon Network and continued well into my adulthood. It was then that I learned how dic butchered the show but at the time, it was all I knew and loved. I saw a fan dub online of Season 1 finale and was up all night after finding out the sailor guardians DIED and were not kidnapped like I was raised to believe. It was also a gut punch seeing tuxedo mask torture Usagi before her fight with Beryl.
I lived by the dic music soundtrack and felt like I was listening to 70s disco when I heard the original music for the first time. Being a 90s kid, I loved Dic’s action-packed and beautiful melodic music and magical sound effects. I loved the voices and acting at the time too but now after being so used to VIZ the characters in Dic sound so over the top. The censorship and educational twist/marketing gimmicks they added in are nostalgic but so unbelievably crazy.
But when I first started the VIZ dub, I could barely tell some of the voices apart. It was like I had to retrain my brain but now it’s my fave version. I’ve grown quite fond of the original music as I’ve gotten older! It gives a more magical and authentic feeling as if the creators perfected and took pride in their work. I also now adore the voice performances of the VIZ cast.
The growth I’ve had on this journey is wild. I still like dic but not as much as I used to. I loved the actors performances but some of the voices and sounds they made are extremely distracting for me now. However, I still think it worked for what it was back then.
When I discovered the sailor scouts actually die in the big battle season 1, it haunted me for a little while like I was so shocked and sad and felt like I was lied to somehow 😂 but now that is my absolute favorite episode for all the reasons.