This is a preliminary dissection of the ADV Sailormoon Uncut and Uncensored First Season DVD Boxset.  Further and "tighter" analysis will be coming at a later date.  I did a test of each of the 8 discs, a little piece here and there throughout the discs.  Both boxes of the set are 4 discs containing 23 episodes and a set of previews for other ADV anime shows on the final disc.

The video quality is fair but shows it age, other than that exactly as we seen on TV.  It is at least the same quality as the Sailormoon S DVDs from Pioneer but that is not necessarily much above VHS quality. This was something I more or less expected.

Sound quality is variable even from chapter to chapter with some having more treble and others more bass, though each "half" of the episode itself seems consistent.  In other words OPs, EDs, and eye catches can sound different than the episode.  Even episode to episode the OP and ED can be somewhat different in quality.  Not a really big deal, may require turning the bass boost off and on as needed.  It's Dolby2.0 I think, it says stereo but is only mono as the series was only mono in the first place, though the ADV openers are surround and the menus might be surround but I had it turned off to maximise the sound in the episodes.

The episode previews follow the OP and precede the "I'm Usagi, I'm Sailormoon" bit which carries on for most of the season.  There are two OPs and two EDs for the entire series.  The first is the one with the flowers that you wanted.  Some of the flowers are obscured by the English credits and the subtitles.  The subs can be turned off though, and there are at least two of the flower explosions with nothing obscuring them, but they seemed faster than the others.  If Sailormoon S is any indication having two OPs only means probably two to three similar versions of each were a part of the original airing.  The first OP shows Moon, Mercury, and Mars right from episode 1.  The second OP appears either just before or in the episode that introduced Jupiter and shows all 5 senshi.  The second ED comes on the same episode, whichever that is.

There are no "Next time on Sailormoon" bits but S does not have those either.  Unless things are really screwed in the subs or I find difficulties with the discs I am very happy to have the series. The packaging is pretty nice.  The back of each DVD case thumbnails and titles each of the episodes it contains.  Each box has an insert in the front with descriptions of each episode in the box.  The box opens in three parts.  The first has the first disc on the right side. The middle part has a disc to either side.  The last part has the disc on the right.  The discs came off of the spindle easily, each has a spindle with a little catch to the top and bottom and a spot to get a piece of finger under the top of the disc.

Each disc starts with the Federal warning then goes to a little ADV preview about "What is anime?" that ends with an advertisement to ask your provider for their anime TV channel.  Then the ADV logo comes up and is followed by the tenth anniversary addition to the logo.  Each of these sections can be skipped easily.  Then the disc drops you down to the main menu.  The menus are plain, pretty much a copy of the back of the box except the thumb nails are animated with a bit of the episode with the theme music playing in the background.  You can enter at any episode and the disc will play all of the episodes left, one after the other.  There is no menu option to turn subtitles on or off and the subtitles play automatically.  There is only one audio track so there is not options for that either.  There is no Chapter selection availability though each episode is divided up into OP, Part A, Part B, ED.  There are two eyecatches between Parts A and B, which to me is a huge plus.  Nothing says quality anime DVDs me like keeping both eye catches in a series.

This looks to be a great set.  I am very happy.

( Thank you for reading my review.
Bob Male)

All ideas, opinions, and information are from the reviewer and are not representative of any company or group involved with the creators and/or staff of the materials being reviewed.