Hey everyone, im curious about the amount of censorship that the dubs have faced during licencing in North America. I know different companies have dubbed different seasons, but I did notice censorship was severe in the first season by DIC, in my opinion those last episodes of the season are so bad that they don't even make sense and I know they have done major things like change the relationship of Michiru and Haruka to a familial cousin relationship (which was a bad move because it just made things even more confusing and me and my friends all just thought they were lesbian cousins growing up hahaha ) . I was just curious as to what major things were edited out that may have changed the message? also what edits offended you the most? 
Asking because I never was able to follow the anime closely as a kid, I caught a few episodes of Infinity, and had those three movies that were my whole world growing up, but never properly followed the anime and wasn't able to get my hands on the manga until I was an adult.

Hmmm, if I remember correctly, didn't they edit out Chibiusa using the gun when she meets Usagi? I remember being totally shocked by that when I saw it in the original! It makes their meeting completely different and sets up Chibiusa's character differently as well.

Also I could've sworn we had a thread like this already but I can't find it LOL

There's a cool website called Sailor Moon Uncensored that has episode-by-episode comparisons of the sub and original dub.  I think they also have some places where they compare general things but it's been a minute since I've used the site so I can't find it... highly recommend looking through, but also be careful, it's easy to get caught up reading Every Single Difference and lose track of time. The website is here: https://www.smuncensored.com/

I know that they often tried to "Americanize" it, such as flipping vehicle shots so the driver was on the left instead of right, but then forgot to switch external shots (driving on left side of road instead of right). I remember seeing one episode, where Sailor Moon goes to rescue her friends from Rubeus's ship, only we never see them in the room (except Rei's hair), because in uncensored version they we hanging on crystals shaped as crosses. We don't see them in full until after they are free, where to find out they were in the room the whole time.

Some of the in-depth dialogue is also more shallow in dub, but I won't delve into that.

I know they cut out the actual deaths in the pre-ultimate episode of the first season, saying the Scouts were captured (though I still thought they dead), but during Mercury's scene, in the original, she uses her computer to smash the DD Girl's jewel to stop her illusions, before dying from her injuries, while in the dub, it appears like she is captured and then the DD Girls prepare to use her computer to find the others. That one felt a little offensive to me that instead of just "capturing" her, the editors made it seem like Mercury's tools were used to hurt her friends.

Saying the girls got captured instead of killed didn't fool anyone, though. I remember watching the episode with my sister when we were both in elementary school and we were just shocked and were like OMG THEY DIED. Same thing with the changing of Uranus and Neptune from lovers to cousins. We always thought they were both lovers and cousins-bonus points because both of my parents are only children, so we didn't have any actual cousins.

I was unaware of the image flipping during driving scenes, though. Nice catch!

The only censorship I actually didn't mind was with two episodes:

PG-13 just in case:

I thought those were totally unnecessary. It didn't attribute to any characterization or plot whatsoever, and I have no idea why japan had them in the episodes the first place-Though a simple edit would have worked instead of removing both episodes entirely.

The edits that I was most frustrated by, when I learned about the original series versus what was aired in the US, were the episode removals. In the first season in particular, a lot of episodes were excluded (2, 5, 6, 20, and 42) or condensed. I know that most of these episodes were filler, but that doesn't personally bother me. DIC was aiming for a specific series length (65 episodes), even though they knew that Sailor Moon was not that length, they did their best to fit it in. I'm not sure if this was related to US television network programming or what, but I think it really contributed to the sense of haste with the cuts that were made.

I always felt like DIC seemed so sure of their knowledge of the US market that they felt they were serving their best interest by making so many adjustments to the original content. They removed lines from the silhouettes of the sailor soldiers' transformations, as though that was enough to suggest too much nudity for a young audience. They added "Sailor Moon Says" to join the bandwagon of teaching lessons in children's programming, even though the show wasn't designed to support that kind of structure. They went all-in for the localization, covering up as much Japanese text as they could and ignoring food and culture specifics. They were very heavy-handed with the removal of "violence", constantly cutting or obscuring scenes that depicted physical conflict. Frequently this made the flow of an episode's plot harder to follow. And, of course, all of the random CGI haphazardly added in.

Cloverway was less aggressive with their changes, but they are to blame for the "cousins" and making Fish Eye a female. It bothers me that they were so intent on removing all hints of homosexuality, especially when that is explained as related to the rating, which I have a hard time believing it actually was. There's even the scene where Fish Eye is topless, and clearly male, but they continue with the "she" identification just so he won't be a guy chasing after other guys.