And the Winner Is... Sailormoon Sites
  December 1999


worst banner
Sailor Moon S English Campaign

http://free.prohosting.com/~serena


Here's Why:

  • Ridiculous membership requirements
  • Long loading pages with poor layouts
  • Way to many petitions to be anywhere near effective
  • Laughable news items
  • The owner of the site brings to much of what he wants personally into the site.

Positives About The Page:

  • A loyal group SM Fans who want to see more episodes in English
     
   Nominated by: ?

Comments:

CereCere

Reviewing a club with several members as "Worst of the Month"... Oh great, I can see the stupid flames already. [small sigh] That's not going to stop us from reviewing this page though.
So I'll get out my guitar and sing, sing, SING!
I'm a lumberjack and I'm okay... wait wrong one... AHEM!
LOADING, LOADING, LOADING... [Cere is joined in the singing by a small group Mounties]

Yes, sir! The senshi are counting on you, but I'm not counting on this huge picture to load up anytime soon! What is it with these campaign sites? There must be a rule of the genre or something that says they have to use overly large pictures everywhere on campaign sites. Even some of the more famous ones have been guilty of this. Just for once can someone pitch a campaign without throwing giant bandwidth hogging, kilobyte crunching pictures at me?

This site must have just made an update as they have removed something we were all talking about last week. A so-called news story that claimed more episodes were going to be made starting in January. Their source? Would you believe, "the Head of Research and Second in command's cousin" who happened to go to Dic on a tour and talk with the "Secretary of DIC's Vice President"? [Rolls eyes] I guess they removed it because they finally figured out that was incorrect and looked stupid.

Then there are the petitions- who needs five petitions? They first have one for SMS to be dubbed into English. Okay that's fine, but to have others? Like one to say you want the original names kept and the same story, then to have yet another to keep Uranus' and Neptune's relationship kept in tack (which is already covered in one of the other petitions). The owner even complains about the amount of petitions. My advice, drop them all except the first one. That's the only one you need. Concentrate on getting more episodes first, then worry about what's going to be in them.

Well, if you buy into all of this and decide you would like to sign up you have to go through eight steps. That's not counting the first page which askes you to download at least one SM song to "put you in the mood". The other steps include gems like: You must "Be Faithful"- what I'm getting married to the campaign? You must give your home address and then say if you would be willing to donate money. Next, get a Bravenet Account, so they get 50 cents for the campaign. Hate to say it, but all these requirements are just a wee bit steep.

The owner of this site uses the campaign way too much for his own gain. He uses it to advertise sites he's working on and counts it as a news story. In addition, one of the petitions (YTV/TeleToon) says you should sign it just because he doesn't get SM anymore.

I'm not against seeing SMS being dubbed into English, but I feel it will never see its way on to TV anytime soon unless the Cartoon Network is willing to foot the bill. These types of campaigns might be for a worthy cause, but I am not supportive of things like this because I doubt they have ever have a real effect on companies. Plus, a campaign that is as unprofessional as this one has even less of a chance of having any effect. You really need to have your act together if you ever hope to be taken seriously by companies.

JunJun

Well, they have since removed the picture Cere was talking about, butthis page still takes a while to load. (And yes, the picture DID take forever to load.) I mean, what is the point of that bar with Usagi in it on the top of the page?

As for the petitions? Well there's five, count them, five different petitions:

  • SmS English: If you want SMS to be dubbed but you don't know by who.
  • "YTV/Teletoon: For SM to go back up on YTV in Canada. Everyone sign, doesn't matter if you live there or not, just sign it because LovelySerena doesn't get her SM anymore on TV". Oh darn.
  • "Original: If you want the dub to be dubbed like the original with the same names, story, and Uranus and Neptune as lovers."
  • "If Neptune and Uranus should stay the same" What the heck? Didn't the above petition just say that?
  • "If you would like SM to be on all channels: If you want SM to be on all these different channels and not just cable." Unless these are different channels in different areas, I don't think that's legally possible.
Throughout the "fun sections" there are dead links, and dead pictures. The profiles aren't bad because they do stick to the original consistently (except for the years of birth and heights), but they are really far from unique. By the way, Saturn is not the leader of the Outers. The image gallery had one broken picture of Serena. The page says it'd take a while to load up, but nothing loads up at all.

How about the "What we Do" section? It says:
"At the start we will have basically no plans"
That is really smart, having no plans. I'm sure most people would like to have a little more of an idea what you plan to do with their names on your petitions.
Then there is this one:
"If worst comes to worst we will force Sailor Moon rights, right out of DiC's hands."
Sure, a company is going to be forced to drop the rights to the series they own by a few people signing a petition. I would, however, like to see exactly HOW you'd go about forcing rights from DIC.

On the "Join Us" page it says: "We don't want people who just kinda care, you have to be true to Sailor Moon, and download at least one of the songs on this page, cause when helping us it gets people into the mood of Sailor Moon, and will get the right work done, plus it will make people more eager to get Sailor Moon S were it should be." I have no idea what the last part of the sentence is saying. They really need to do a major proof reading and spell check of this site. Also, I just want to know what downloading one song has to do with getting SMS dubbed? Unless this site gets a major reality check, some people with a REAL idea of what to do, better grammar and site designer, then this site isn't even going to reach SOS... which isn't saying much actually.



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