Tool: mapchart.net

Source: Personal research (YouTube, asking people from each country born in that generation)

UK et al.

Poland

Germany et al.

Italy

France et al.

Portugal

I unfortunately couldn't find enough data on non-EU countries for a world map to be interesting. However, I would still like to mention the Thai one. It's Moonlight Densetsu, but reimagined.

I welcome input on the countries for which I have no data.

EDIT: People who have watched the French version, please answer this question. In the final fight against Queen Beryl, Moonlight Densetsu was played in the original, and it was thematically perfect and a great mood setter. I need to know, did your dub have the Bernard Minet version during this scene? If yes, I really need to find a clip of that.

Something I never thought I needed to know, be and frankly don't, but find rather compelling.

The Polish version was not dubbed at all, neither the opening, nor the episodes. We had a lector, which means there was a lady speaking in Polish while the characters spoke in Japanese, and both soundtracks were audible. I understand that this sounds weird for someone who is not used to it, but when you hear this since you were a child, your brain at some point does this one trick, and you starts to feel as if you understand the original language.

Cristina D'Avena has recorded almost 400 theme songs of animated series in Italy.

Yeah, I looked her up on Spotify when doing the research for this. I find it fascinating.

Kind of the same thing for 'Bernard Minet' in France. This guy is a legend

Yeah, I looked him up too on Spotify when researching. Maybe I should add the Spotify links to my top comment.

It's such a whiplash to go from the Italian one to the French one. Completely different vibes. I love it.

All Latin American Spanish speaking countries also had Moonlight Desentsu in Spanish :)

There was a Sailor Moon Eurodance group in Germany in the 90s, Super Moonies. The male dancer is now my dentist.

I have to say, even though I grew up that that lektor stuff... not a big fan. Nowadays I watch all foreign stuff with subs.

Wait, so did you actually learn some Japanese after watching the show this way?

Oh yes – to be clear, most of the countries using Moonlight Densetsu dubbed the song. But it's still the same song. The countries coloured differently used an entirely different song for the intro.

Mochiron! Demo, bakemono abunai!

It doesn't make too much of a difference but you can color Hungary red as well. The French version has nothing to do with the Hungarian one.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c7NWM_69eQg

It's a map glitch; it's supposed to be striped red and blue. I found a good amount of videos on YouTube with the French version overlain with Hungarian lyrics, with lots of comments in Hungarian expressing nostalgia and none expressing confusion. Therefore, I deduced that the French melody is for some reason very well known in Hungary. Do you have any insight as to why this may be?

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Actually stripped red and blue would be right. Apparently the first episodes were coming with the French version for the intro (which is kinda weird because Hungarians tend to dub everything) then it was switched to Moonlight Densetsu with actual dubbed Hungarian lyrics.

The explanation could be that the commercial broadcasting (we had TV broadcasting before but it was all state owned channels) started in 1997 in the country and Sailor Moon were among the first series for kids they aired (same month when the new channels started). I guess they did not want to make the effort to create a Hungarian version for the intro without knowing that it would be a success (it was).

Ah, that makes sense. Thanks!

Interesting that they were getting the French version of all things.

Not sure if this is a serious comment but this made me snort haha

Love it! Thanks!

I don't remember the German version being as much Euro Dance as it is lol.But I still like it the best.

The French version sounds like sitcom intro

I swear your honor, I am telling the truth!

I was going to ask, it made no sense to me either.

I would have seen it maybe in a country with a sizable french speaking population but Hungary seemed weird.

I must be misremembering the UK theme as the US version.

Is just it me or am I seeing a velociraptor chasing a ball??

Had to send this to my wife. This is awesome

The UK version and the US version are both using Moonlight Densetsu. In English, of course.

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My bad. I thought you meant original vocals.

In Latin America it was a spanish dub of Moonlight Densetsu like with most anime openings at the time. I didn't even like Sailor Moon that much but I get super nostalgic whenever I hear it. Same with the openings for DBZ and Saint Seiya.

I'm not pole or even european but I noticed russians (or soviets depending on how old the movies is) used to do, or maybe still do, the same. When someone starts speaking something other than russian another voice starts talking in russian over the original sountrack. Maybe is something normal in some eastern european countries?

Yeah here in Portugal they took the Japanese ending song, came up with new lyrics and then pasted it over the opening video.

The female version of Jan Dub!

In Indonesia Moonlight Densetsu was dubbed in Bahasa Indonesia. It was a pretty good dub.

Only in Slavic countries? In Romania we had written translations. Got to listen to beautiful American, Italian, French, heck even Russian artists directly.

When I was kid made me want to learn how to read faster.

My brain doesn't even notice anymore that I am reading a translation. Now, even if I speak fluent English, I still like the captions on, they add something to me.

Remember seeing it in Ireland when I was a kid, and I’m pretty sure we got the 4kids/equivalent dub that was used in America, if that helps.

Pretty sure they didn’t dub it As Gaeilge but even then that’d probably be whatever they used in the US/England

American media will sometimes do this for things like interviews or documentaries. They’ll let the non-English dialogue or response start and then bleed in a translation. This is mostly done for nonfiction though. Fiction is more of a subbed-or-dubbed thing.

Yeah. And that lector is what gave us marvelous gems such as this scene from evangelion.

Learned this the hard way when I torrented Pillars of the Earth. Definitely weird hearing an incredibly disinterested person just reading in the same voice for every character.

🎶Fighting evil by moonlight never running from a real fight she is the one names sailor moon🎶

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The portuguese version is awesome. I don't recall any of the episodes but every time I see or hear "Luna" that song comes to mind

You should do more maps like this

The Romanian version was actually a voice-over. It was aired on TVR 1 in 1998 from what I know.

Same here in Romania, the Romanian version also had a lector instead of being dubbed.

Can confirm that abunai is actually useful in Japan.

Im telling the tooth *

No surprise, with all the bakemono they got there.

Yep I needed to know this…

Cristina D'Avena is a legend in Italy, grown adults goes to her concerts just to sing along all the songs she dubbed of the cartoons of our childhood.

Voiceover is much faster and cheaper to do than a professional dub, and can be done by a single voice for all characters. Since most cool movies / cartoons / series got to the audience in Eastern Europe through pirates, and pirates would only do voiceover, voiceover became a cultural norm for a while, even for officially released stuff. It has now shifted towards dubbing though. In the 90s, when the piracy was at its peak, there were several competing pirate studios in Russia that raced against each other releasing as many movies daily as possible. Some even employed simultaneous interpreters who would do the voiceover without watching those movies first, so listening to them was... an experience in its own right. One of those interpreters became a legend in the professional community and he claims to have done up to 8 movies daily at some point. He is responsible for infusing the Russian language with his translation of "holy shit", which is "god's diarrhea"

I'm starting to understand why a lot of these cartoons were labeled as "french" in our tv magazines back in the days.

I grew up watching anime on the Italian channels and had most of her songs memorized. I was about 20 and arguing with friends that anime were Italian :).. that was a rude awakening!

Same here with Andy Knote here in Germany. He and a hand full of people are responsible of every German song made in anime. They got even own sampler series. You can find them under "Anime Allstars"

some like Noel Pix got with Bands famous later.

For more TV shows you mean? Oddly enough I haven't found any others from my childhood where this phenomenon is so prominently displayed. Do you know of any?

That's a serious thing. They sold 1M+ records

Interestingly, the Portuguese version is known by most countries on this map as the outro theme. It played during the credits.

Bekommt der immernoch Autogramwünsche und Fan Mails?

It does, thanks! I suspected as much, but I couldn't really assume.

Yeah, you can imagine what a rollercoaster it was to research this map. The surprises just kept on coming.

Cristina is the childhood of every Italian kid.

For some, she had some influence during teen years too.

Same with Bernard Minet in France. He made pretty much all the anime songs in the 90s. He's very famous now and even do some concerts.

Cristina D'Avena goes beyond just anime. What have Batman, the Smurfs, and One Piece in common? The theme song in Italian by Cristina D'Avena :-D

She also played the role of Licia/Yaeko in the live action of Love Me, My Knight/Rock ’n’ Roll Kids :-)

I had to Google to watch them https://youtu.be/DrMyRBdaRU8

And they never represented Germany at the ESC? They would have been an easy win for Germany.

We do the same in Spain, at least with American non-fiction shows, like Hell's Kitchen or Pawn Stars.

I’ve always wondered how she managed to produce that many, perhaps some of you folks from Italy can fill me in.

Was it because some studio executive wanted to be cheap with the localization and had one gal perform all those songs? Or was she just that talented and was able to knock out that many tracks in such a short time? Or….? I’ve just always found it odd (from an American perspective) that a large number of Italian dubs from that era seem to have only used one singer for their opening tracks.

Hopefully people won’t take it the wrong way. I’ve heard a number of her songs and even if I don’t know the language, she’s definitely made some real bangers.

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Ich frag beim nächsten Mal

Technically Spain had it both with lyrics and with no lyrics, for some reason, some channels broadcasted it without them. Also Andorra had Sailor Moon too, with Moonlight Densetsu.

Noted, thanks!

And if they wanted to be cheap with the localisation, why create all these new songs from scratch instead of just karaokeing localised lyrics over the original tune, as seems to be the norm elsewhere?

I have to say I'm glad they did, whyever they did it, because they're bangers as you say.

I think it's because she was the one doing most of the openings for the biggest tv network in italy (mediaset) which also had the most stuff for kids/teenagers so she ended up doing so many anime.

Animes that were bought by other channels have different singers if they adapted the opening eg some of the most famous probably are fist of the north star and saint seiya.

Mediaset/Berlusconi. Berlusconi's TVs had a massive role in importing and popularise anime in Italy (and other European countries, like in Spain), and the company responsible for the recording of the songs was owned by Berlusconi as well. So she simply worked for a single company that distributed hundreds of animated series. Mediaset even produced several albums with the theme songs from animated series https://i.discogs.com/LyMJAWm9_zjQl_o97lOogZv2NG1CsMLN5nItCM6VHuY/rs:fit/g:sm/q:90/h:350/w:350/czM6Ly9kaXNjb2dz/LWRhdGFiYXNlLWlt/YWdlcy9SLTU1NTY1/NzktMTM5NjQ2MTQ1/NC03OTAyLmpwZWc.jpeg

And u/Liuk7

Ah, that explains it.

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Shrugs I just know that would be something along the lines dubbing studios here in the states have done. 4Kids instantly comes to mind.

Spend all their budget on dubbing all these projects and putting together new opening songs, only to save a few bucks by using the same pool of voice actors they already had on speed dial.

I sure do love the 4Kids Evangelion spoof.

The way that blue and green a adjacent made me read it as “Sailor moon by Andy Bernard” and my mind was ready to accept this

Well, a "legend". Just because it's from our childhood doesn't mean we should disregard how terrible it was.
Bernard Minet's songs were ridiculously childish even for my 9 year old self!

We have (had? Haven't noticed it in a while) this on the news in Belgium. Honestly, it's just distracting.

I never specified what 'legend' meant.

His songs are not to my taste. At least, he had his own style. That's something

Czech, Slovakia, Hungary and Germany/Austria have a very long tradition of professionally dubbing movies and TV series. There's iconic dubbing artists that were associated with specific actors. There's industry awards as well. You'd be hard-pressed to find single voiceover movies or series unless they're documentaries perhaps

It makes me happy every time I find out the original opening in Japanese is the same song and the opening I got used to in Spain, (as mentioned, Sailor moon is one, and Dragon Ball another one) not always the case since many anime came to Spain from Italy or France and they use totally different openings

I am in Quebec and watched about 5 episodes in French because it was an extremely bad dub. They didn’t censor things like the American one, but the quality was baaaaaad!

So sadly no, I have not watched the last fight in French.

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So my husband is a major eurodance fan (from Canada).

I just told him about that. Took about 30 seconds and he played it for me. He has it.

I have been a sailor moon fan my whole life.

The original American one, while different, was also heavily inspired by the main theme.

Wouldn't say his style was that different from, say, Dorothée's. So, not even that.

Well i looked around a bit just searching [One Piece OP 1][Language] and found these.

Original JP ver.

German ver. uses different song

Interestingly i found 2 different French versions, maybe one is Canadian idk ver. 1 and ver. 2 Both start of French and switch to JP later

Portuguese sounds like it's just a dub

The US rap Opening

And the Italien ver. also uses a different song, which btw. goes hard

As someone who wasn't aware of his work until listening to the French intro right after the Italian one gave me a cultural whiplash, I wouldn't hesitate to call him a legend if this intro is representative of the rest of his work. Who knew Sailor Moon could be a sitcom?

Ah, that explains it. One Piece was a bit after my time, so I didn't think to check.

If you want to see him on the drums.
That's what we got instead of Cha-la head-cha-la.
Warning: that song is going to stay with you for decades, and not in a good way.

Goodness! He does have a formula, doesn't he?

I dunno, I kinda dig how it's essentially the same song with the same lyric structure. It's so ridiculous I can't help but like it.

Good instincts honestly