Customer Reviews

Sailor Moon 3

5 star:		(11)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Sailor Moon Volume 3 finishes up the equivalent of Season 1 of the Sailor Moon anime, and beginning the next arc of the story. In Volume 3 we see the senshi use the Moon Sword for the first time, and a much more tragic telling of the battle against Queen Beryl. As the inner senshi struggle to help Sailor Moon with the battle, Usagi fights to return Mamoru to normal and bring him back to her. As a fan who had mostly only seen the anime, it's wonderful to see more of the bond between Usagi and Mamoru that is often glossed over. Sailor Moon never moves along slowly, and the final battle is no exception to the rule. NOTE: The second arc of the manga is one place where the anime starts to depart from the series, and does not contain the 'Ail & Ann' storyline. The next arc soon begins and we are introduced to Chibi-Usa, and the Black Moon Clan. Peace never lasts however, and things quickly begin to fall apart for the Sailor Senshi.

Fans of the the use of the Japanese names will be happy to know that this has followed through to the Black Moon clan, and we see 'Demando' instead of 'Diamond' and 'Chibi-Usa' rather than 'Rini'.

I was extremely happy to see the gorgeous color pages at the beginning of the volume, as these are beautifully detailed and painted. In a bit of fan-girl squeeing, I was also happy to see the use of the image showing the inner senshi paired with the four generals as well for a chapter image and use of Mamoru's actual abilities as Prince of the Earth.

This manga concludes the Dark Kingdom arc and starts one of my second favorite arcs-the R arc. Chibiusa arrives! One thing I noticed in the manga in the Black Moon arc is that Naoko makes the Black Moon a lot darker than she does in the anime. It makes them seem more threatening. Although, I will say why does Naoko make the Sailor Scouts get captured so easily by the Black Moon. As for the errors in this volume, I was a bit surprised. I noticed right away how in one of the episode titles they spelled Queen Metalia wrong. They had it spelled Metaria:P And they mesed up Jupiter's attack:( Hopefully they will fix Jupiter's attack in the next volume. It was nice that we had some colored pages:) I can't wait for Book 4 to come out!

TL:DR - Awesome bang for your buck. This manga won't be wasting your time drawing out battle after pointless battle, and with only 12 volumes in the entire series, it won't be an economic quagmire to get hooked on this story.

And, in 15 chapters, the entire story arc for the first season of Sailor Moon is a wrap! WHAT? Yeah, you heard me: this manga moves at frightening, lightning speed. And I'm not complaining! I was very weary of buying this because I was worried this would turn out to be some Inuyasha debacle with 60 volumes, which will end up costing near $500 to own the entire set. This worry was unfounded. The entire Sailor Moon manga series only runs 12 volumes. This fact also worried me, because I thought I would just be getting a manga that had fight after pointless fight drawn out. NOPE! Really, the only other manga I've ever read with less filler is probably Claymore. (A shonen manga that goes out of its way to end battles quickly? WHAT?)

The only thing that bothers me is that some things are ridiculously filler-less. Take Mamoru's backstory in volume two. The whole thing is wrapped up in...2 panels. I found it to be highly comical, what with a picture of a car careening off a cliff in one panel and a doctor in the next going, "It's a miracle he survived that horrible accident...except the poor dear has no memory..." IT DIDN'T EVEN TAKE UP THE WHOLE PAGE! (I guess it's justified because he a) has no memory and b) his OTHER back story is the one everybody cares about, but still.) Drawing out two panels instead of him just mentioning what happened off camera kind of makes it seem a little melodramatic. HOWEVER, it certainly lives up to the NO FILLER standard that has been set by this series!

If you're worried about getting into this because the anime makes it seem like this manga will go on forever, then don't. It's relatively short and JAM-PACKED with story, so check it out!

I was quite surprised to see this book on shelves in Kinokuniya Bookstores on January 11, 2012 when the release date isn't til another six days on Amazon. For my review, I'm going to *SPOIL* a lot of things, mainly names and events that happen in this manga. As a hardcore Sailor Moon fan, I picked it up on the shelf and instantly began reading it (after buying it, cuz of its shrinkwrap), judging the new, accurate translations and comparing it to Tokyopop's version (which is half of books 3 and 4). Overall, like the first two books, Kodansha has managed to keep the translation very good with a couple mistakes here and there, but not that big (I'm not sure I caught any mistakes in this translation).

This book introduces the R season arc of the anime, "Black Moon," which features Chibi-Usa (not Rini!) and the Black Moon clan. It concludes the Dark Kingdom arc off with Sailor Moon sealing away Queen Metalia and obtaining her new Crystal compact. It ends with Rubeus kidnapping Sailor Mercury (cliffhanger). Just like in ADV's uncut subtitled DVD set of the R season, the names translated for the new antagonists are the same with Prince Demande (although I think they said Diamonde in the ADV version, but I don't remember), Saphir, Crimson Rubeus, and I don't think it mentioned Esmerald's name yet. The slight difference was the name of the Phantom Sisters (Ayakashi sisters in Japan). This version calls them the Spectre sisters, which I never heard of before, but I guess its the same as phantom. The two sisters introduced are Koan and Berthier (Catzy and Bertie in the dub).

The chapters included in this volume are:
Act 12-Enemy, Queen Metalia
Act 13-Final Battle, Reincarnation
Act 14-Conclusion and Commencement, Petitie E'trangere
Act 15-Infiltration, Sailor Mars
Act 16-Abduction, Sailor Mercury

The Sailor Mars cover art is beautiful, we get 5 beautiful colored pages at the beginning of the book (one large one with the entire cast) and the beautiful images will have the reader engaged and wanting more (since volume 4 will come out in March). Overall, Kodansha has managed to please fans of the old series, Sailor Moon with these special reprints and accurate translation. It'll be another two years until all the volumes come out, but as a hardcore Sailor Moon fan, I think its worth the wait. Now if only we can do something about Funimation licensing the entire anime series.

I loved Sailor Moon as a child, both the manga and the tv show. Both however were hard to find as a child to own. I am very happy to finally be able to own this manga series!

I am a collector of Sailormoon books and other merch. Which means this book and the others from this re-release have a lot to live up to. The cover image is the same as the re-released Japanese version that came out in the early 2000s, the back also matches that book as well. The paper and binding is 10x (if not more) better than the original Tokyopop release of the series and these thicker volumes also means less books to collect over all and with this release being a much better price point it has a lot going for it out of the gate. What I am disappointed with is the lack of dust jacket (same as you would get on some hardbound books, they are commonly found on Japanese manga), the translations are spotty at times if you know enough Japanese to recognize it and some of the extras included in the Japanese re-release were cut out of the American, I.E. the stickers and extra comics content. If you can over look those and like magical girl/superhero stories this is a good one to look at.

I finally got my hands on this the other day and as my grades can attest, I spent the day reading and re-reading this rather than focusing on studying for tests.

This volume finishes off the first story arc of Sailor Moon and moves into the second arc concerning Chibi-Usa and the Dark Kingdom. It's been a while since I've read the TokyoPop versions, but I could notice a few things that seemed to be different in this volume. (For one, I don't remember seeing the DK crew vaporizing what appeared to be a young girl/teen.) It brings a darker tone to the series that the initial English releases never had.

I'm still absolutely loving the manga covers for the series so far. The artwork in general is gorgeous, but the covers look fantastic and are attractive to look at. (People unfamiliar with the series might not know what they're picking up, but odds are that anyone savvy with manga could give them a rough description of the series.)

Now something I want to mention in this review is that if you're more familiar with the anime version, you'll probably be wondering where the Ail and Ann story arc is and why it's not here. That's because the Doom Tree saga was an anime only story arc that was written so the manga could progress far enough for a second anime season to be made. (Depending on how much you liked this arc this will either be a good or bad thing.)

i recommend it a lot and best of all, Guess who making her first appearence? that's right! It's (Beeep!)[censored for Spoiling Preventions ;3]

Very beautiful art and the new covers are stunning.
Wish we'd got the deluxe editions that Japan got.
There are several typos, misspells and translation issues that prevent this from being a five star recommendation.

It is also slightly awkward how the book wraps up the Dark Kingdom saga and jumps straight into the Black Moon Clan Saga halfway in.

Love love love sailor moon! The manga is so much better than the anime which also has a special place in my heart. Can't wait for the next one!