Manga Review: Sailor Moon (volumes 11 and 12)

Well this is months later than I had hoped but I finally found a library with the last couple volumes of Sailor Moon! And lucky for me volume 10 actually wrapped up the fourth arc so I wasn't left hanging in the middle and the characters in this series always have such, uh, interesting, wow the 90s sure were a thing, designs that I was even able to remember what the scouts had just defeated! So let's get to talking about this one last story and then my feelings on the series as a whole, especially since I never imagined I would read this story all the way to the end.

Sailor Moon (volumes 11 and 12) by Naoko Takeuchi

Manga Review: Sailor Moon volume 9 & 10

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.

Manga Review: Sailor Moon volumes 2-8

And I'm back with even more Sailor Moon! Technically I also requested the 9th volume from my local library but they don't actually have it yet and, since I have no idea when that will happen, I thought it would just be best to go ahead and talk about all these other volumes which does continue the first arc, completely covers arcs two and three and starts a fourth, that's more than enough material to talk about!


Sailor Moon by Naoko Takeuchi

Summary: Sailor Moon finds the rest of the sailor senshi (both those representing the inner planets and some unexpected other allies) and they continue to fight against the myriad enemies hellbent on taking over Earth and remember their own past lives in the process.

The Good: As I think I mentioned in the first review, this is surprisingly solid and a lot better than I expected so yes, I am enjoying this series quite a bit. The characters have started developing (I was really surprised to see that Tuxedo Mask actually gets fleshed out, abet kidnapped/brainwashed often, given how many people I've seen poo-poo him over the years, I guess they only saw the anime?) and the story does it's best to give all four of the supporting sailor senshi adequate page time. For me the fun part of this story isn't seeing all the action scenes (more on that down below) but seeing the girls just interact with each other and grow and there is a fair bit of that here so again, I really am enjoying this more than I expected and I find it interesting to see just how much of Sailor Moon is, well, unique to the series and hasn't really been copied by other shows (since there are plenty of people out there who swear that every single magical girl show since this one has been influenced by it which I would make a strong argument against at this point).

The Bad: I've seen/read a lot of magical girl anime/manga and they all follow fairly similar formats, a balance of the girl's daily lives and then showing them fighting whatever they need to be fighting. Sailor Moon has barely any of the girls' everyday lives in there and the constant action/making plans that will result in action, et cetera left me feeling rather exhausted and I would have liked small moments in the girls' mundane lives, especially for characters other than Usagi since there the manga does show her and Mamoru outside of fights a fair bit. Also, this series is paced really fast as you probably realized when I mentioned that technically the seven volumes here cover 3 different arcs which also lead to my fatigue. Actually, thinking about all of that, I wonder if that's why shonen series with similar premises (ie lots of fighting and "elevator bosses") are so long, because you really do need the downtime between action scenes and to pace your action properly which is going to eat up page space pretty fast. 

The Art: Someone on twitter warned me that Takeuchi's strong point isn't fight scenes and that they tend to get really cluttered when there are a lot of characters involved and yep, that is exactly what happens. Heck now I'm looking forward to the reboot just so that I can follow along with the fights, at least on screen I won't be trying to look at half a dozen different panels at once. The actual art hasn't changed much either, the characters faces are still a bit, fluid and Takeuchi still seems to have no earthly idea how to draw a cat. But the human characters look pretty regardless of consistency, the backgrounds are detailed enough, and the screentones aren't overused.

So, continuing along merrily with this and hoping that my local library gets volume 9 in soon (they might get 10 in before I graduate but I have no idea how I'm reading 11 and 12 legally since, even though I'm enjoying the series I'm not 100% sure I want to go buy all 12 volumes, money and shelving issues aside)!

Manga Review: Sailor Moon (volume one)

So I finally (finally!) managed to get a hold of a copy of the new Sailor Moon release in the US from a friend, excellent! So, I think I said this for my Codename: Sailor V review as well but to recap, apparently I watched some of Sailor Moon as a kid (I remember watching/wanting to watch it but not any of the show, according to my mom my favorite character was "the blonde, vivacious one" which I think means Venus), have read Sailor V, and then saw three or four episodes of the live action show in the past year (which had some god-awful special effects in them). So I'm going into this sorta-kinda blind, I don't actually know what the main plot (plots? arcs?) of Sailor Moon and wasn't super enthused after the live-action/Sailor V/the one or two episodes I think I saw at a girl's night in the past year so let's see how the real thing holds up!


Sailor Moon (volume one) by Naoko Takeuchi

Summary: Usagi was a rather normal middle school girl who likes video games and sleeping in more than homework and was fairly happy with her life. Then one day she finds a mysterious talking cat who gives her magical powers and a mission and her life hasn't been the same since.

The Good: That ended up being a whole lot better than I expected, Usagi stopped being annoying nearly immediately, the characters had, well, character. It was also paced quickly, though formulaically, I liked it! It doesn't seem to be dragging out any of the mysteries too long and like I said Usagi (and the rest of the cast) become likable pretty quickly (as of right now my favorite character is actually Jupiter because she is a Boss). 

The Bad: It was a bit of a slog to get through the first chapter or so (since I remembered the plot of that from the live action version) and I'm wondering how the story keeps going after this first arc finishes, is this going to be a "you defeated on boss BUT THERE'S AN EVEN GREATER ONE LURKING IN THE SHADOWS!" kind of story? Other than that there's not much to say here or in the Good section, it's just the introductory volume and technically not a lot of stuff has happened yet, which isn't a bad thing but just a thing related to telling stories in a comic format, they take a bit more time to get going usually.

The Art: While it's clear that Takeuchi is struggling with drawing some things (poor Luna looks less like a cat and more like a blob with details half of the time) but I was surprised that I liked Tuxedo Mask's designs here more than in all the anime screencaps I've seen, I think it was the lack of giant 90s shoulder pads. All of the human characters are rather pretty to look at (some of the aliens not so much, they also look a lot less distinct from each other) and while there aren't backgrounds in a lot of panels the ones that do show up have a good amount of detail to them.


So, a few days ago I found out that the local library has more volumes (they list up to the most current one, nine, in the catalog but it sounds like they only actually have up to five or six right now) and I requested those so hopefully I'll be able to review those in a few weeks and provide a fuller review. But for the moment yes I liked it, yes I'm reading more, and yes I plan on checking out the new series in summer (but I was already at least going to try it, practically the whole internet was going to do at least that).

Manga Review: Codename Sailor V (both volumes)

As funny as it sounds, despite the fact that I love shojo manga and that I've enjoyed quite a few magical girl series I have never read the Sailor Moon manga and only saw a little bit on tv when I was a kid, not enough for me to remember anything about it at all (I actually had to check with my mom to make sure I hadn't simply imagined it since I literally remember nothing). Ever since Kodansha started publishing the new releases I've wanted to check out the series but fate seems to be conspiring against me since I have the worst luck getting hold of it (my first friend wanted to read her copies first, fair enough, but got so bogged down with school work that the semester ended and she's studying aboard now and the girl whom I borrowed these from has three other people also reading the series, while also dealing with a lot of school work, so at this point I've given up on getting a hold of them in the next few months). I am actually happy that I was able to read Codename Sailor V first since I do like reading things in chronological order and it seems like even if I forget some of the details from here by the time I get around to Sailor Moon that it won't matter too much.

 

Codename: Sailor V by Naoko Takeuchi

Summary: Minako Aino was an ordinary, boy crazy girl when one day she is approached by a mysterious white cat and told that she's the reincarnation of Sailor Venus and must use her powers for justice.

 

The Good: I was pleasantly surprised to see other characters from Sailor Moon making background cameos, especially as the series went on, since it provided a nice sense of continuity and the ending wouldn't have worked as well without those little hints. I suppose the story also works rather well as an introduction to Sailor Moon in general, it seems to give a good feel for the early story and at two generously sized volumes it's not a huge time commitment either.

The Bad: I honestly did not like Minako that much which makes me a little nervous for Sailor Moon since I know that Usagi is supposed to be similar but with more crybaby tendencies. The stories all felt rather disconnected and like the wrap-up arc was shoehorned in at the end and I had to re-read the final confrontation part because I had no idea what was going on which is never a good sign. I was also confused by the whole "Minako and Artemis' boss who sends them on missions" thing, who WAS that? Is this explained in Sailor Moon? That detail, that there is someone else who knows about the senshi and is in charge of giving out orders to some extent completely baffled me and I'm still confused by that point. I think confusion sums  up my feelings here pretty well, there's very little plot advancement, barely any character development for Minako, I'm still not sure where the villains were from or why they were there, I'm just a bit confused why this exists. 

The Art: If someone in America is vaguely familiar with manga and you ask them what shojo manga looks like (once you explain what shojo means that is) they'll probably describe something very similar to Takeuchi's art style since for a lot of people that was their biggest exposure to it. The characters are all big eyed with perfect, bouncy, flowing hair and the way you can tell the good guys from the bad guys is that the bad guys are the only unattractive ones. Screentones abound and the art feels a bit rough at times, personally I'm not a huge fan of the way Takeuchi draws her character's faces but there's nothing wrong with the way she draws them. A lot of the characters look very similar however so I'm curious to see if she gets any better at differentiating people for Sailor Moon since that has a much bigger cast.

 

 

So yeah, I just didn't like this and it's making me a bit nervous about the main series. I do really like shojo and have enjoyed a number of magical girl series in the past, this one was just a miss for me. I will still be trying out SM once I can get a hold of the volumes but it's not at the top of my to-read list right now.