Girls With Comics

I love Sailor Moon. As a child my Dad diligently recorded it on TV for me off of both the USA Network, as well as UPN. I had all the toys I could get my little hands on. At the same time I was watching Sailor Moon (at around 8 years of age), I was already reading Batman and Wonder Woman comics, so I was very familiar with my local comic shop. They also carried standard American type manga for Ranma 1/2, Oh! My Goddess, and Spirit of Wonder. However, this isn’t about how Sailor Moon was my gateway drug into the world of anime and manga.

When I started to watch SM, I always read the credits. I don’t know why, but I figured out the show wasn’t from America real fast. My Dad took me to Toys R Us around that time, and I went on a pretty silly search for Sailor Moon comics (hey, the credits said it was based on a comic series). Of course at the time, no one had translated the comic. I had seen, and bought, various Japanese edition’s for Sailor Moon, as well as Sailor V. The art frankly terrified me, since it was not what I was used too, and oh yea the shit’s in black and white. I was just learning how to read Japanese at the time, so it worked out in my favor, I guess.

Then I went into middle school. Around late 2000, a new publishing company called MixxZine announced they were translating Sailor Moon! This was pretty huge news for me, since for the past 3 years I’ve read and barely understanding the Japanese versions. It was also at this time that I met Julie, who also loved manga like I did. Middle school was a magical time for me. I loved it.

Then, MixxZine did release Sailor Moon. At first they had the right idea, but then some asshat possibly named Stu went and decided to release the series out of sequence. Sailor Moon left Mixx Magazine, and started her own 32 page series (begining with Sailor Moon R), BUT at the same time, Smile Magazine (a magazine for teenage girls) was printing Sailor Moon Super S. If you don’t know shit about Sailor Moon, there’s 5 seasons:

Sailor Moon
Sailor Moon R
Sailor Moon S
Sailor Moon Super S
Sailor Moon Sailor Stars

So basically Mixx skipped over the ‘S’ season for some fucking dumb reason, and decided to just fuck up the continuity, which obviously didn’t mean fucking didly to them. Plus, if you’re starting to read Sailor Moon from he Super S era, you’re going to be lost. You probably won’t understand why these big eyes long legged black and white hussies can transform into short skirted big boobied soldiers when they shout a planets name. It’s hard to follow, I know.

Thankfully the graphic novels eventually came out, and all was well in the world. Without going too much more into the history, most of the series and movies were translated, save for the last season. Shame too, because the last season had one of the best villains, story lines, and had very consistent animation. If you don’t believe me, go watch the first season of Sailor Moon. It’s a new animator doing it every day and you can fucking tell.

Long story short, I can’t watch Sailor Moon anymore, because it’s fucking dumb. However, I will always love it for what I ment to me as a child, and I could never bring myself to get rid of any of my Sailor Moon stuff.

And now, I leave you with this:

-Lauren

Tags: Lauren

This entry was posted on January 18, 2010 at 11:12 am and is filed under Anime/Manga, General, General Geekery. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.