Bishoujo Senshi Sailor Moon
Sailor Moon

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ENJOYMENT SECTION: 8/10
Ah, good ol’ pretty sailor warriors! Despite being the series most other mahou shoujo copied thereafter, it remains in the tops because very few managed to have its variety and vividness. Plus, I like it too.

ART SECTION: 7/10 [Bishoujos in Sailor Suits.]

Following the trend, the artwork is extremely shoujo, that means very breezy sketches and loose borders between frames. It looks very amateurish in the first part but along the way it improves considerably and towards the end it now looks splendid. You just have to get used to the idea that the plot is driven by dialogue and mostly cinematics, rather motion ... or action. The battles are to the most part very short and unimpressive but what happens in between is plain wonderful.

Despite its girly looks there are parts with quite the disturbing graphical violence. The way most people die in it is bordering occult horror, as they are either turned to mummies or dust (and this applies to many innocents as well). There are also lots of illusions and psychedelic sceneries that make this rather inappropriate for too young readers. For the same reason I liked it even more, heh.

STORY SECTION: 8/10 [Once upon a time, there was a princess on the moon...]

The story is basically separated into five arcs and in each we have the stereotypical tale of superpowered girls fighting demons who want to take over the world. The plot is extremely fast for manga standards and in each chapter there will always be something new to further the plot. Although it gets repetitive and predictable after awhile, the events that happen in-between the battles are quite captivating so it is not that annoying.

Despite the cheesy premise, there are several overtones in each arc which don’t allow things to be too black or white, or even good or evil. To some extent each character has its dark side, some villains have more reasons than just being born evil, and every challenge is attacking the mind as well as body. Thus the story is more psychological and even philosophical that your typical superpower fighting formula. Although it always amounts down to using the power of love or friendship, it is still quite creepy and exciting most of the times.

There are also several themes that go far beyond the notions of good and evil. What is happiness, how it feels to be immortal, how can you live as nothing but a vessel for everyone’s grief. Also the scale of the battles escalates to encompass entire worlds and eventually the whole galaxy, making you feel like you are watching a story that is bigger than life itself. So although the basic idea is that of a fairy tale, it constantly expands to various serious matters that make it appear to be far more than just that.

CHARACTER SECTION: 8/10 [Although there are no original characters, their quirks and decent coloring makes up for it.]

The characters are the rather standard bunch of people you expect to see in such a tale. The teenage girls who do girly stuff by day (school, romance, hobbies) and battle demons by night. The thing is that they are colorized a lot along the way and each one becomes a distinctive personality, despite usually being grouped together in battles as a unit. So you are not supposed to criticize them in battles, which as I said they are very fast and unexciting, but rather of what they are doing, saying or feeling between battles. They are still 2 dimensional to the most part but they are very distinctive for their stereotype and easily become likable and memorable.

A thing which I didn’t like that much is how most of the villains weren’t given much attention. Most were nothing but generic one-chapter enemies and were killed right away before we get the time to even understand why or who or when. The anime version deliberately prolonged the plot with lots of stand-alone episodes where you could get to know them but here they come and go in a few pages. The big bads are otherwise nicely colorful and make delightfully evil adversaries.

VALUE SECTION: 10/10 [I find no reason for not considering it amongst the best of what this genre has to offer.]

Sailor Moon is neither the first nor the best Mahou Shojo on the block. But it became famous enough, thanks to:
-its likable characters. Since all of them are stereotypes, every viewer can easily find someone he/she likes and thus root for.
-its long duration, easily becoming the longest Mahou Shojo ever made. More than enough time to bind with the characters.
-its evolving story.
-its romance. It is quite stereotypical most of the time but the visual effects and the metaphysical plot make it more interesting than that of a typical slice-of-life romantic scenario.
-its several name allusions. Every Sailor Warrior has the basic element she controls in her surname, villains are always named after a specific category (minerals in the first season, crystals in the second, animals in the fourth, metals in the fifth), and special effects are tied to their user’s personality.

VERDICT: 8/10
Very naïve and repetitive but its heart is pure and intact.

I never grew up with Sailor Moon like most of my friends did, so I don't really have the nostalgia associated to it that most people seem to have. That being said, I was always curious about it as I've always heard how good it was from those around me.

There will be spoilers so read on at your own risk:

I think for what it is, it was a decently good series overall. However because I haven't grown up with the series I think my expectations were too high considering how much everyone around my hyped it up. It wasn't for me really, most of the ... characters felt somewhat bland as the character who was most built upon is Usagi. We don't really get full-on arcs on just other characters to see them grow and develop as people. The person who probably does from memory is probably Chibi-Usa and Mamoru. Most of the centralized character development for the rest of the cast felt like there could have been more, as I felt like everyone had the most development somewhat close to the overall end of the series.

Another problem I had was that the writing was somewhat okay, as from an outsider's perspective, it had some problems building up connection from each past arc. It all felt somewhat messy, especially during very important parts. One example would be how near the beginning, they make a very huge emphasis on the importance of the Silver Crystal, and how it's passed down from generation to generation to the next Queen in the Moon Kingdom, and yet in the Dead Moon Circus Arc it's entirely changed when Chibi-Usa gets her own Crystal, as well as the rest of the Sailor Senshi. It feels a little convoluted as to how it had to be revealed that every Sailor Senshi has a Sailor Crystal, but that could just be me. It just felt like it undermines the fact that the Silver Crystal was an artifact of the Moon Kingdom and basically a family heirloom that's passed down, as well as the fact that it's proof that they are from the Moon Kingdom Royal Family.

Overall, the series is decently good despite having it's own set of flaws, it gets a 6 out of 10 from me.

(READ REVIEW BEFORE HATE RATING!!!!!)

One of the WORST manga I have ever read.

I am NOT the target demographic of a little girl, which this manga's story is supposed to be consumed by, therefore, I think it fair that I am NOT going to critique the STORY ITSELF, because it's a story that's meant for little girls to enjoy, and it is written to be that way. So in fairness, I will not criticise the story in this review. However, I AM going to critique how the story is PRESENTED, as well as the art, structure and so on. As the story could be the ... best, most violent adult thing ever, but the if the presentation is as bad as Sailor Moon is, then I will still critique it in the same way. As this is a product, while the story may be fine for little girls, the product itself is downright horrendous in the all the ways which it's presented to the reader, something that little girls wouldn't be mature enough to understand, but as an Adult, this is one of the worst presented manga I have ever read. This review counts for the horrid prequel, Sailor V, too.

-Art/Structure/Layout

The art in general if fine, with some stunning art here and there, especially with the character designs. However, the way in which the Mangaka, Takeuchi-sensei, presents this art is abysmal. This is a clear case of page and panel over-saturation. While it may seem commendable at first to have so much going on in a single page, with full-spread characters overlaying the page and all sorts of twinkles and posh decorations littering every panel and empty space, it leads to absolutely INSANE levels of visual noise. There's nary a white space to be found. This over-indulgence may have been tolerable if reading as it came out, as it was a monthly release, however, reading the entire manga back to back leads to crazy amounts of eye-strain and visual clutter that tires you out. Part of this is due to the target demographic, as the main cast are mainly females, so have a lot of "dreamy" moments (faces in the sky, etc.), which little girls could perhaps relate to. Nonetheless, it's an agonising read despite the clear effort Takeuchi-sensei puts into it. Panel layouts are wild, they break the mold of what is traditional in favour of using up as much space as possible, sometimes even going as far as putting over TEN panels in a single page. There is absolutely ZERO room for the panels to breathe, and they all blend into one another in a mish-mash of twinkles and over-layering. I realise that this is a monthly manga, which are sometimes forced to adopt as much panels as possible per page to keep up the pace, however this manga is so terribly messy despite it's chic and fancy facade.

Speaking of Pace:

-Pacing and Story presentation

You've probably heard that Light is the fastest thing in Existence. You're wrong, it's actually the damn pacing of Sailor Moon's Manga. Characters, plot points and fights all take place at a breakneck speed. I mentioned before about the layout of the manga not having space to breathe, well, the story doesn't either. It reads more like a plot point summary of a story than an actual story with natural build-up and exposition and down-time. In the span of only 14 chapters, what could've been the plot to a 140 chapter weekly manga takes place only in those 14 chapters. It's utter insanity. While the story itself is extremely simple, just a female team of heroes fighting against clear-cut evil, with themes of royalty, which is par for the course for an accessible little girl's manga. Especially as this manga gave little girls all over the world female heroes to look up to and wish to be like. Although, there's a lot of the manga which could be further elaborated on if given the chance. You're left feeling breathless only 14 chapters in, and there's still 50 more. There's practically no character development, as the entire point of the Sailors is that they "awaken" to their memories of their previous lives, rather than developing as actual characters. There's also the issue of morality, as the Girls are 2 separate entities of their lives before the awakening and after. So the implications that the lives they led up to that point was for nothing and they don't get to live their own lives, but the lives they get forced into, is an issue nobody talks about. It also doesn't help that the manga repeats things like crazy, such as character introductions. Which is fine for little girls with short attention spans who may have forgotten between each monthly release, but is grating and patronising for an Adult like me binging it back to back. The fights? What fights? The fights last panels, and the action is so extremely hard to make out that it's laughable. I keep wondering what I'm supposed to be seeing only to not get what is being shown. Choreography is non-existent, powers are so wishy-washy and inconsistent and there are undeniably no stakes at all. Leading to relentlessly boring back and forths making them the worst part of the manga.

The fights are perhaps the WORST FIGHTS of any single product I have ever seen. I'm not joking.

The 2nd worst thing it does is repetition.

Takeuchi-Sensei uses the exact. same. plot. for every arc.


The exact same things happen, just wearing a different skin. It's truly one of the worst stories in history, and while the story itself in isolation is fine for what it is, it's irrefutable how much DeJa Vu one gets reading this. I do not kid when I say I was suffering reading this manga, if painless torture exists, this is it. For the hundredth time, this reusing of the same premise every time would be fine for ignorant children, but oh my goodness, does it accentuate the worse parts of the manga even more by not even gracing the reader with actually new content or scenarios.

I've never read a story that felt like the author was forcing huge handfuls of story down my throat without even being able to swallow between each handful. While it may have worked for a little girl reading monthly, as intended, it's lack of foresight in the collected volumes which make up a lot of the sales, as well as literally every sale overseas, is asinine. I don't wish to be rude, this manga did a lot for the industry, however It is a problem that cannot go without scrutiny.

Sailor Moon fans think Sailor Moon could beat Goku in a fight, but they are wrong. However, Sailor Moon's manga can absolutely beat Dragon Ball's manga with how much characters are killed and brought back to life! The way in which the manga doesn't care for it's characters or tension may sway the hearts of little girls who take things at face value, but again, as an Adult, it's just.... lame.

Overall:

Official translation also doesn't replace the sound effects with English, instead translates it below the SFX, which is lazy. But a good release nonetheless. While some people would call me stupid for reading a manga meant for little girls as an adult, I do say that there are plenty of "for kids" products that can appeal to adults as well as children, many of which I have enjoyed (Harry potter, Dragon Ball, and more). However, this is NOT one of them. The poses the Sailors make are at least PRETTY cool (pun intended). While the manga does nothing actually "bad", like pushing wrong messages or hostilely making fun of groups of people, the low rating is based purely on how little enjoyment the manga provides as well as it's horrible presentation, as opposed to doing anything outright malicious or lazy like certain other manga.

I do not recommend this manga to anyone, unless, of course, you are a little girl.

2/10

(P.s, this review ISN'T "CONFUSING" If you actually read the manga without bias!!! Each and every "Confused" rating just makes your fandom look like they can't take Criticism well!)