Sailorcry.wmv

THE STORY MENTIONED BELOW IS ROUGHLY TRANSLATED TO ENGLISH:

The Sailor Moon franchise is something that everyone might've heard of back in the 1990's. For those of you who don't know what it is, Sailor Moon is an anime where this girl (originally Serena, but most popularly known as Sailor Moon), goes through many different adventures with one of her Sailor Scouts, and a purple talking cat named Luna. Even though Serena is a clumsy and much of a crybaby, she faces her fears and still goes through a lot of challenges.

To my knowledge, the original English anime started its release in the year 1995 with FOX, being the first TV station to air the show along with WB (Warner Brothers, if I recall correctly) and UPN (United Paramount Network). I've heard rumors in various anime forums that there is one episode that didn't make the final cut, nor that it ever had the chance to air on one of the stations. I have no other knowledge about the release of Sailor Moon, so I had to research on where the anime is originally animated from.

So, I live in Akiruno, Tokyo and the animation studios is located near the headquarters of Oizumi. My parents and I took an hour and a half road trip to the place, but there was a tad delay of traffic on the way. It was a cluster of cars and trucks zooming by, honking and beeping all around us. I took a close look to what is going on as I saw the police taking out a piece of barradic tape and crossing it in front of some exit that appears to be out of the studio. The tape marked yellow and black, "Warning! Do Not Cross". I just realized that we're almost here, but what was the tragedic incident that happend outside of this Toei Animation building? A car crash? Murder? No... don't think too deep about this. Just leave it and move on.

A minute later, we drove to the parking lot until I got out of the car. My dad and mom dropped me off as they made their way to a nearby mall out of the building. After I've did that research from before, I remembered watching that video on where the managers have toured guests to different rooms inside of this building. Memorizing which rooms they are, I snuck inside, went up one flight of stairs that led to the editing room. I swiftly opened up the door and many staff members (who work for the Sailor Moon series) turned their heads toward me, thinking that I was not supposed to be here at first. Instead, one of them greeted me and asked if I am new to here. I answered yes, and they invited me into the room. I questioned them about the unreleased episode of Sailor Moon, and surprisingly, none of them answered or knew what it was. It came to my head that there are three possibilites: they might've knew something as if I don't, they could've seen the copy of it themselves, or they're just saying they don't know. It's either because they don't really know if it happened, or they might have no clue on what I was talking about. Although, they're the staff of the series, I was thinking that the whole unaired episode rumor could be made up. After all, anyone could lie on the internet.

I decided to skim through the "Archives" bin and stacked up all of the tapes on top of the desk. I managed to go through them all and found a copy of a tape. The label was ripped off, revealing a middling bit of the logo with what looks like a letter "S" with its usual Sailor Moon font I recall seeing in other tapes. "This could be it," I thought. I called the whole crew to take a look and one of them answered to me that the tape was damaged and dusty. When I put it into the VCR and tried to prove them wrong, the screen focused and remained on the static for a good thirty seconds. It could be damaged for good, or the tape wasn't able to record any data at all for the episode. This was when I thought it could've been a first draft. I asked to a crew member if I could borrow his seat, and he was okay with that. When I digitized the tape into the computer, I noticed that the VHS had an actual recording of the footage.

I know this might sound too far-fetched at this point, but if internets' rumors serve me right, the filename for this very footage was labelled as, "sailorcry.wmv". I just thought it was a montage of Sailor Moon crying like she does in every other episode, but I started to think that I was wrong. I double-clicked on the video file and prepared for trouble.

The Episode
The scratching of the Sailor Moon tape got worse in this case, so it distorted throughout and cut half of the vocals and the instrumental during the opening sequence. After the introduction, it skipped right to the show. No cutesy title card like in any other episode. It just skipped to the episode.

The dark screen abruptly brightened to a realistic-drawn image of Sailor Moon. She didn't look anything like herself in the original animes at all, but more like in a human form. The background behind her looked like it was twisting and moving in different colors while Sailor Moon is standing on center of the screen grinning in an evil manner. Her eyes were gouged out, black and bleeding and her hair was standing up and scraggily, her two pigtails were curled up as high as a sad frown. The only thing that was unsettling in this scene was the soundtrack, however I never even called this a a soundtrack at all. All I could hear was a screech being played accompanied by rhythmic glitches and analog of unusual beats from the tape. Another part that was a tad disturbing for me was her gaping mouth, all black revealing big gums and crooked teeth. Her nose was short and bent and it oscilated back in forth in sync of how bad the distortion was getting. This scene happened for a good twenty seconds before the image quickly cut to a full face of her almost covering up the screen.

Her hair was more unkempt and black, strands swaying back and forth, her smiling eyes moving around and stopping every second to look at me. I was the one that wanted to look away despite how ugly she looked, but I can't turn my back because I felt like she was watching my every move. I will still never forget her face to this day. I just don't know how to describe it any further. But the way her mouth was still up to her old, crumbled up nose and below her big chin unnerved me as well. None of the staff members dared to look at the screen. There was an ear-splitting scream that bursted through the speakers, almost sounding like a woman with faint static covering as a background noise. This went on for fifteen seconds before Sailor Moon gave out the most frightening and appaling inhaling gasp. Spiders crawled out of her left cheek, now exploding and gushing in black blood.

Her mouth agape, her blood from her cheek still flowing and trickling down her face as she let out a horrifying and gut-wrenching shriek on top of the noise. The scream didn't even sound like it came from a normal human at all, it was more like a broken chainsaw or an animal getting slaughtered. The annoying scream went on for twenty seconds before it got cut off by another image of Sailor Moon lying on the floor, with dizzy, purple bleeding eyes running down to her nose. The background was once again moving and morphing into different proportions of colors. I heard an infant crying very painfully and heartbroken in the background. I could've sworn I heard a woman talking along with the baby's voice, trying to cheer them up. After this played, the scene flickered to a man dressed up in a tuxedo. I couldn't tell what is going on because of the colors and the backgrounds were still transforming together, but this time into small quick blobs flashing one place to another throughout the scene. The man walked up to a child who appeared to be writing something on a desk, before he smashed the boy's head through it. His screams sounded upclose, more like into a microphone. They were somewhat cut off from how worse the tape's distortion was getting, and the buzzing of the static turned into a looping, loud and crumbling noise of analog. The camera cutted up close to the boy's face, brutally beaten and bleeding from the mouth. His side of the face was smashed in what looked like broken glass, and a few of his teeth were ripped out. The man put his head down to the boy, smashing his face once more through the desk; and as there were spots of blood that blotched up on the desk, I knew at this point that I had to look away.

I had one eye on the screen, and as I watched the boy picked up his head from the desk, blood gushed out of his throat like a waterfall and he let out a strange sounding bellow. I could see the man's hand smashing the poor boy's face again before the screen went entirely black for a couple of seconds. The crumbling distortion of the tape was bothering me, and I heard a familiar voice of what sounded like Sailor Moon crying really hard. It sounded more human though, but it wasn't actress that did it in few episodes. A few seconds passed as the cries from the girl got more and more intense, until I heard choking noises. I also heard the boy's bellow again, then a deep voice that overlayed on top of the sounds. The screen then played a short bit of a Sailor Moon episode, but I couldn't tell what it was, due to the horrible scanning and distortion of the tape. During the short episode, a voice said in a frightening manner: "All of my close friends and family are dead. Sailor Mars has been beheaded, Sailor Mercury has been assassinated, Sailor Venus has been raped..." there are many more of her friends that she had listed that have been killed in the worst way possible. The scary thing about this very part was that there was a montage of realistic-drawn pictures that show how all of the Sailor Scouts died.

"I know what must be done," quivered Sailor Moon. She sighed, and grabbed a knife out of her desk, and jabbed it into her arm as she screamed a loud, strange one. It was descending and was not even from her. It sounded more like a man crying for help. The sound of the knife rubbing and cutting into the girl's flesh was so painful and bloody, it made me recoil in fear. Dark red liquid gushed out of Sailor Moon's arm and she started to cry. She still kept cutting through her skin until grotesque pictures of murder, death, and suicide flashed through the screen within 15 frames each. One of the staff members vomitted on the floor, and another male ran out of the room.

The screen went to black for a couple of seconds and everything remained silent. No sound was playing this time, not even the feedback from the speakers picked up anything. The background cutted to the ending credits of Sailor Moon, but the song was a vintage music box playing instead of the usual reprise. There were no animators who wrote the episode, no storyboard directors, or sound effect editors that worked on the show. All that was shown on the screen were montages of different Sailor Moon episodes with names scrolling across the screen. It was pretty confusing on why they used different people instead of the original crew that usually worked on the series.

After the credits ended with the tune, the screen faded to black with the tape still running. I heard a deep quivering voice with incoherent speech, and it wasn't a language. After five seconds, the voice stopped and the tape finished the episode.

Aftermath
Needless to say, I got scared out of my mind after watching that episode. It really made me think that I will never watch another episode of Sailor Moon again. The staff members looked at one another, wanting to know what the hell just happened. I explained the whole thing and the reason why they didn't answer from before was that they wanted to keep the tape a secret and hidden from everyone at all times. I'm sorry I stayed.

I heard the door open and there came in were my parents, asking what was going on. I told them the whole story, and one of them told me to get out of here this instant. I wanted to know why, but my dad grabbed my hand and we all rushed out of the Toei Animation building and into the car.

Traffic was still going, and as we drove a bit, we stopped by the exit and I asked the police officer what was happening. He told me about an early incident by the studios,and mentioned that there was a male who broke into the editing room and hijacked a cartoon series, purposely airing an inappropriate episode on one or more stations. The episode frightened kids so much, they made them commit suicide in various ways, but mostly cut themselves like the girl from the tape known as "Sailor Moon". The police added on that the animator had murdered ten or more individuals in the building, two of them jumped out of the highest window, two that have been decapitated, one that has been raped, and another was a young boy that died of traumatic brain injury.

The strangest things I thought of was that I imagined the young boy as that child who had his skull being severly smashed on a desk, and the Sailor Scouts from that episode died the similar way those individuals had died. Another thing that the police officer told me was that the animator forced the voice of Sailor Moon to do a dying voice. From what he was told, she said she couldn't so the animator got mad and punched her in the forehead and gave her a bruise. She remained unconscious as he left her there in pain, running around in every room, murdering everyone in the worst ways that could be done by any human possible.

Another strange thing that still frightens me enough to this day was that the list of people were either a part of the animator's crew, or that they were victims of random people that died. If the animator was still there in the studios, I would be the next one on the list.