Sorry for the delay, forgot to mention I had a con this weekend and was just busy all day Friday and Saturday with no room for reviewing. Although I could suppose you could say that this review is even more delayed, I read this volume back in March during my webcomic review month and got a hold of ten recently so it only made sense to squish together the two of them into a single review. Especially since the two of them cover an entire arc and, since this is the third (or fourth, maybe even fifth) review I've done of the series by now, I'm going to skip the art section and will simply say that it hasn't changed much, if at all, from the previous volumes in both composition and actual art.
Sailor Moon by Naoko Takeuchi
Summary: The circus has come to town and it's a rather strange one at that, it sticks around longer than most and seems to be putting down roots, almost as if it's inhabitants plan to stay for a while. While the senshi investigate Mamoru has his own trouble since he seems to have caught a deadly illness and even Chibi Usagi is having her own adventures as she receives messages from a mysterious pegasus asking for her help.
The Good: I was glad that the story didn't wait too long to bring back the outer sailor scouts since I really liked them, crossing my fingers that they'll be present in the last arc as well. And, although this may sound a bit odd, I was surprised and happy at how much screen time Chibi Usagi got and how she grew as a character as well. It seems a bit odd to say this since this arc isn't focused just on her but this arc isn't focused on just any one of the characters, Usagi is actually gone for chunks of it with Mamoru and the inner senshi get trapped multiple times, it's a bit of an odd arc like that. Of course, odd doesn't always mean interesting....
The Bad: Yeah, by now the story is starting to feel rather repetitive and I'm glad there's only one arc/two volumes left. The characters grow a little each time, get some new power-ups but frankly nothing else seems to change, you could probably swap the order of the arcs around and a new fan wouldn't notice at first. I guess some of this could be dismissed as "oh this manga/anime was made for kids and they don't notice!" but that's not true, as a kid I got tired of the fact that nothing changed in Pokemon rather quickly, although who knows if I ever saw enough of the anime of Sailor Moon to feel that way. In any case, while you can't exactly skip this arc (just enough stuff happens to make it important) it did temper my enthusiasm for the series just a bit.
Even though I didn't like this arc as much, just because it was so similar, I am eager to finish up the series although I have no idea when I'll be able to do it. The next volume comes out close to my graduation so I have no idea if the library will get it before I leave town for good and who knows where I'll be able to read volume 12 (legally, I'm not going to be a manga-cow in Barnes and Noble and read an entire volume) since that's not out until the summer. I would say that at least I have the prospect of the new series to tide me over but there are rumors going around that it's been delayed, well crud.
