Ah, the nostalgia. Sailor Moon is the story of Usagi Tsukino, a clumsy crybaby of a fourteen-year-old with videogames and food on the brain. In fact, she would probably be highly interested in making a career out of laziness. (Honestly, who wouldn’t?) But her average life is turned around when she meets the talking black cat, Luna. After their initial meeting, Luna comes to Usagi in the night and proclaims she is a guardian charged with finding and awakening other allies, find and protect their Princess, find the Silver Crystal and battle monsters sent from the Dark Kingdom who are also searching for the legendary crystal. All this is expected from her, and she can’t even make passing grades in class. Fortunately, it doesn’t take long before she starts finding her guardian allies and awakening them to their own innate powers. She also has a tentative ally in the elusive Tuxedo Mask, but it’s too soon to tell if he’s friend or foe..
For long-time fans of Sailor Moon, like myself, it is an immense relief and a breath of fresh air that Kodansha International has stepped up and re-released the manga in not only it’s traditional right-to-left format, but with a complete re-translation from the original source material. I remember possessing all the volumes released by Chixx Comixx (the precursor to Tokyopop), ecstatic that the manga was becoming available after I was already hooked on the series. But the translation was limping and even worse than the Dic anime dubbing of the show, and it never improved. Kodansha has effectively wiped away the bad memories of those earlier releases with a translation that is far more accurate and reads well. There are a few hiccups there, such as using redundant Japanese honorifics when not necessary (e.g., “Princess-sama”), but those are minor things that can be ignored in the joy that all the character names have been restored to their original forms (not “Serena,” or “Bunny”). To sweeten the pot, the first few pages of each manga volume is done in color. The restoration of the original format also allows for things readers of the initial U.S. release of these comics didn’t get to see, such as the little character doodles on the side margins or between chapters and pages are no longer cramped and cropped to make room.
Given that Sailor Moon, which initially ran concurrent on the heels of Codename: Sailor V, the early artwork in the first volume of Sailor Moon may seem slightly amateurish with the way the scenes rapidly cut and progress. In fairness, this was the title that put Naoko Takeuchi on the manga map in Japan, and was one of her earliest works. It’s easy to see that by the end of the first volume her pacing settles down a bit and frames get less jumpy as she starts hitting a creative stride. Takeuchi’s artwork has always been very flowing and elegant, even at the most comedic of times in the manga. Her style is so uniquely hers that there is little about Sailor Moon that feels stale or dated. Similarly, she set the bar for series that combined a magical girl theme with the action team fighting scenes of the sentai (fighting group) genre. Consequently, no other such series has come close to this high standard since the series wrapped up in the late 90’s, which is a real testament to her artistic and story-telling abilities.
Old fans of Sailor Moon are going to find nothing but nostalgic joy in this new release. New readers of Sailor Moon should be warned that this is a series that causes an incurable addiction and promotes heated fan debates and horrid cosplay. I recommend you go purchase this volume right now and just leap feet-first into the heart of fandom.