YouTuber Ray Mona uncovers unaired American Sailor Moon pilot

For years, the collective internet has been fascinated by the mystery of an Americanized Sailor Moon pilot, which was created in the early ‘90s as an attempt to market existing toys based on the Sailor Moon anime to Western kids without having to make anyone actually watch anime. Bits and pieces of the American Sailor Moon—called Saban Moon in the fan community due to the involvement of Power Rangers producer Haim Saban—have leaked online over the years, including a second-hand video of what would apparently have been its awful theme song (in terms of themes that explain the premise of the show, it makes The Transformers look like… Twin Peaks?).

A few years ago, Cecilia D’Anastasio at Kotaku put together a fascinating investigation into what Saban Moon was and how it (almost) came to be, detailing the hybrid live-action/animated series about a teen girl who hangs out with her friends as a real person but then transforms into the superhero Sailor Moon to go on animated adventures. It looked, in a word, awful. But Kotaku’s investigation uncovered an interesting thing: A second project called Team Angel was put together by some of the Saban Moon people to try and salvage the concept, and certain portions of that were able to be uncovered, but any actual evidence of the Saban Moon pilot—which, according to some accounts, did exist somewhere—was apparently gone.