This is a good example of a bootleg. You can see it the cover has Chinese characters above SAILOR. The inside folds out like my bootlegs below. Right now, this is the only movie boxset that is being sold on eBay. Every seller I have seen has this exact photo up, which is where I got it from. It's also easy to tell sellers of bootlegs by their feedback. Most, I have seen, have 98% positive feedback or less and most of the neutrals or negatives are for slow shipping, wrong discs sent, never received items, etc. The legit, region 1 Sailor Moon The Movies - The Dream Set Uncut Trilogy is available from Pioneer/Geneon. Also, for other official American releases of the Sailor Moon series, see my Sailor Moon English Episode List & DVD Information. There is a link to each English season of Sailor Moon DVDs on it.

       For a more comprehensive list of the Sailor Moon bootlegs being sold here, including pictures of all of them, visit my Sailor Moon - The eBay Bootleg DVD List! guide. For non-eBay links to Sailor Moon, please see my About Me page.

    Note: If the pictures don't show up - refresh the page. Please do not message me and ask you to send you pictures. I will not since they are all here and on my other bootleg guide.

    Aside from the legal factor, bootlegs simply don't have the quality that legitimate anime has. You sometimes get HALF as many discs as the real copy has, and the compression results in poorer picture and sound quality. The box art may look good, but look carefully - it often has pictures from the wrong season, is fuzzy, or the box is simply put together badly.
    We know that bootlegs are bad, and most people probably wouldn't want something illegal and of poor quality lying around. The problem is that most people buy them without knowing they have them. They are sold online as "imports" by a HUGE number of sellers, and people buy them without ever knowing the difference.

Check the number of discs

    Real sets usually have somewhere between 3 and 5 episodes per disc, while bootlegs can have somewhere between 6 to 12. This results in less discs, and poorer quality (due to the compression).
    A typical Sailor Moon boxed set for one season will have 8 discs, while a bootleg has only 4. Before buying, check how many discs the set is SUPPOSED to have, and compare it to what the seller has. If it's less, it's a bootleg!

Check the picture quality

  
     (Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon)
     Because bootlegs are compressed to fit on less DVDs, the picture and sound quality often suffer. The picture may seem jumpy at times.Some seem good for a while, then spontaneously hit a bad spot. Or you may be lucky, and actually get decent quality. This really seems like a lottery at times.
    Some bootlegs look as though they've been recorded from TV. Japanese TV shows have the time displayed in the corner of the shows they run, if your episodes have this and you can't turn it off, that means it was recorded straight from a TV.

Check the price

    Is the price DRASTICALLY lower than the price in stores?
    If a Sailor Moon boxed set is usually roughly $140, and you find a copy for just $30-40, it's probably a bootleg. They're cheaper, of course, because they're just stolen copies. Remember, you get what you pay for!

Check the box art

    Does it seem kind of fuzzy? If not, is the art correct for that season? For example, on my Sailor Moon R DVD, the discs have art from the SuperS season! Anime are the cartoons and manga are the beautiful sketches that appear in comic books, graphic novels and artbooks. Anime DVDs should not have manga art on them.
    It all can still look professional, though, so look even more closely at the box construction. In the places where there is glue, has some of the glue run off, leaving little blobs of dried glue? That suggests that it was cheaply manufactured, and is probably a bootleg.

Check the Languages

    Most DVDs that come out of Hong Kong will have an option for Chinese subtitles and have the title of the show in Chinese above the original Japanese (and sometimes English) title. If the subtitles aren't listed ONLY in the English language, then it probably isn't the North American subtitled disc.
    I know most people can't see the difference between Chinese and Japanese characters like I can, but if you are a real otaku and are bent on buying all the DVDs you can, then it would be good to begin to familiarize yourself with the Japanese character system.

Check the Region

    If they are "All Region," "Region-Free," "Region 0," or "All Codes," they are definitely bootlegs! Region codes keep DVDs from one part of the world from playing in another part, where the title has not yet been released. A Region 1 DVD will only play in Region 1 DVD players (in North America), but won't play in a Region 3 DVD player. The North American releases of Sailor Moon DVDs are ONLY Region 1!!

Who is selling it?

    Is it from an official site, or is it from a third party? Be very careful of what you buy on eBay, or even from third parties on Amazon. Unfortunately, Amazon.com does very little to stop bootleggers on their site, and VERY many DVDs bought from third parties there are bootlegs.
    Also, watch out for these companies, which are confirmed sellers of bootlegs: Animation International, Anime Cartoon International, Jade, Anime Studio, DVD Ani, Fx, MAC (Manga Anime Cartoon), and Manga International. 
    Remember, the word manga is the term used for only the Japanese comics that the anime cartoons have originated from.

Think you have a bootleg copy? What do you do?

  If you send the DVD back, you will probably never see your money again. Don't re-order the same product - you're just risking getting another bootleg. And now that you have it, there's no use spending an extra $140 to get the real copy.
    Emailing the person who sold you the copy is a good idea, but keep in mind that many sellers don't know that they've got bootleg copies; even they have a hard time spotting fakes! Let them know that you've received a fake, and see what happens from there.

    I emailed the seller (who is now a "no longer registered user")  that I bought my bootlegs from about 5 times and they never answered me. The only message they responded to after I received my DVDs was that I had left feedback for them and then they were going to leave it for me.
  You can also report the seller you bought the bootleg from to eBay by using this link Report Bootlegs and then clicking "report" at the bottom of the page.
    Or go to this one Report Counterfeit and Unauthorized Copies
    You can also find more links and phone numbers in the eBay Group Anti-Bootleg Alliance (ABA) - DVDs, CDs, & More ABA

Compare Them to My Bootlegs!

    Here are pictures of my bootleg boxsets of seasons 1 and 2 Sailor Moon DVDs I bought from here, pretty much all the English seasons 1 and 2 look exactly the same that numerous people are selling so I'm sure they are identical to mine. Sorry they're not bigger -  they get automatically resized in here.

   These are the covers. They are made out of cardboard almost like a harder version of cereal box cardboard. The cover art (as well as all inside box art and DVD art) has been taken from ADV Film's releases of the single volume DVDs of Sailor Moon seaons 1 and 2.


    These are the insides of my boxsets. They open in a book-like fashion.


   Here are the fully unfolded boxsets. Each season has only 3 discs, while the real releases (only of the Japanese original) have 8. The discs rest on plastic holders and when the discs are removed, you can easily see  daubs of glue that are holding them to the cardboard. And the edges of the plastic lift easily off the cardboard as well.


  Here are the spines of the sets. You can see that SAIL is about a half inch away from OR which I thought was very odd and is an example of sloppy reproduced box art.


  Here are the backs. The bottoms have mostly Japanese writing on them, but some information says in English "MPEG 2", (I'm not sure why this is here, they don't work on my computer) "DVD VIDEO", "DOLBY DIGITAL", "03.03.04" (which I can only assume was the release date), "¥ 20,400" (the Japanese Yen price, which is roughly $176.00 and I bought both for $40.00 from a seller on here in Los Angeles.)


  Lastly, here is a close-up and of the first disc in the season 2 box. I know it's not visible in the picture since it's not it's original size, but on the top of the disc and all the discs, going around the edge, (I'm typing it exactly how it is on the disc, and as you can see, the person who made these didn't care about his spacing), it reads...
      "ALL RIGHTS RESERVED BY JAPAN ANOTHER DVD INC. ASIA'S AUTHORIZED PRODUCED BY.Manga Animation Cartoon, DVD. EMAIL:cartoon_mac@yahoo.com, Manufactured in Japan. AUTHORIZED HOME VIDEO IN Cambodia."
    And on the bottom of each disc is a picture of a video camera with a "1" in it. The back of the discs are gold toned instead of silver (I don't know if that's of importance but I haven't seen gold discs much) and around the middle circle in the back there's some glue smudge, which hasn't effected the performance of any of the discs.




    Unfortunately, since Sailor Moon is no longer licensed in the US, getting your hands on a real copy is going to be extremely difficult. When browsing, just keep these tips in mind, and be very careful!



   

Note: I ask you to please not contact me about my Sailor Moon guides. Lately, since I started selling, I have been getting questions about my guides and horrendous requests to make copies of my Sailor Moon DVDs to re-sell, through the "Ask Seller a Question" link. I think this so incredibly rude and inappropriate. eBay considers these kinds of messages as spam. Anymore questions and requests like this that are not about the item I am selling will be reported.