Forum - View topicJason Thompson's House of 1000 Manga - Sailor Moon
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aluria
 Posts: 367 Location: New Westminster, B.C., Canada |
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Bit surprised you didn't mention anything about the rebirth Sailor Moon is currently going through. Not only is it back on the air and on shelves in many countries, but a new DS game coming to Italy this spring.
Granted all this just makes me insanely jealous of them. I want my Sailor Moon manga! |
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giapet
Industry Insider
 Posts: 205 Location: Washington DC |
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What happened, indeed?
It seems to me that since the Sailor Moon days, the "bad boy" bishounen has become more the standard. Heck, even back in my Sailor Moon fan days, I remember quite a few of us who preferred Seiya (the cross-dressing/transgender* Sailor Star) to Tuxedo Mask. Seiya was a lot more arrogant and childish...actually a bit more like Tuxedo mask had been in the earliest days of the Sailor Moon manga. Ditto the male lead of Kamichama Karin and even more true with Shugo Chara. Not to mention series like Vampire Knight. Boku wa Imouto ni Koi wo Suru comes to my mind as well. Even if you ignore the incest angle, those first couple of volumes the male protagonist is 100% creepy obsessed stalker and molester...but the female lead still falls for him by the end. * IIRC, in the manga the Sailor Stars were women who dressed as men as their idol performer shtick, but in the anime they were originally women whose human/non-scout forms were physically male. |
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neocloud9
 Posts: 1178 Location: Atlanta, GA |
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I would be so happy if Sailor Moon were to get a re-release...
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enurtsol
 Posts: 14896 |
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Heh, still have the first-issue MixxZines somewhere (before the much-publicized fight between Stu Levy and an ex-staffer and thus the rebranding to TokyoPop).
Funny story though: while coming out of the area's largest comic book store, we overheard a parent and her young daughter wondering if that was the right place to get the Sailor Moon MixxZines (this was the time before manga started appearing in bookstores). That was like the first time we've seen a mother-daughter come into that comic book store (albeit it was a large clean well-taken-cared-of one). That's how Sailor Moon changed the landscape; too bad it didn't last though (as aforementioned, manga moved onto bookstores). 
Sailor Moon was always been more popular in Canada, and the Barenaked Ladies are Canadians. |
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belvadeer
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Yup, and when Takeuchi heard about the guy turning into girl thing in the anime, she was understandably peeved at the studio. |
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bravetailor
Posts: 817 |
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The manga and anime do diverge in certain ways, but both of them inform each other and both have their strengths and weaknesses over the other. Jason encapsulated the charm of the manga, but the anime was certainly no slouch with talents like Ikuhara and Sato helming many key episodes of the show.
Like many, at first I wasn't a big fan of the anime at first. It's only when I started to watch blocks of episodes that I began to "get" its mix of unabashed melodrama, girly aesthetics and surprisingly brutal and even "masculine" clash of wills. There still hasn't been anything quite like it since. And now it's one of those franchises every knows but is tantalizingly unavailable in any form. It's a crying shame that one of the trailblazers for shojo in America has been treated so crappily by so many people involved with it. |
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SoloButterfly
 Posts: 239 Location: Masaki Residence |
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Sailor Moon is pretty much the reason I'm an anime fan. It was the first anime I watched before really knowing what anime was (on Cartoon network back in the early Toonami days) and was the first manga I bought. Even when it was in print it was hard to find. I managed to find and buy a volume every few months, my reward to myself with allowance money, and then found a few at used book stores when they went out of print completely. Currently I am only missing one volume, the last one. And I do not feel I should have to pay someone on ebay $80 for it (at least that's what it was running last time I looked). I really feel that it's a classic and should be enjoyed by each new influx of fans in some form or another. The relatively recent live action series and reprints in Japan show it still has a fanbase there, and I still see cosplayers and merchandise at conventions. I don't know if I'd go so far as to call it butch, but there is definitely a power and a majesty to Sailor Moon that keeps me wanting to re-read and re-watch it after all this time.
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asimpson2006
 Posts: 3151 Location: USA |
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If Kodansha (HINT, HINT) would happen to release the manga again in the US, let's just say I would not hesitate to drop some money on getting it.
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Adonisus
Posts: 20 |
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Sailor Moon had another major impact on the manga world.
How many of you are fans of Ken Akamatsu? You know, Negima and Love Hina? Yeah, he's publicly credited Sailor Moon for getting him into the manga/anime world. Heck, his first claim to fame was being a doujin artist at Comiket who drew Sailor Moon doujinshi. |
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Akukame
Posts: 117 |
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It seems amusing to me how that setup sounds exactly like the plot of Kamikaze Kaitou Jeanne. I've actually never read the Sailor Moon manga. But this makes it sounds really interesting to me. Sailor Moon wasn't an anime I ever particularly enjoyed. I can't say that I particularly enjoy most magical girl anime. I find that, in the transition from manga to anime, they're made very episodic and very formulaic. Theres always a lesson to be learned (even if theres not a sailor says at the end). Even if the source material is exceptional. I think Kamikaze Kaitou Jeanne is an excellent example of that transition. Even as a guy, I really enjoy Arina Tanemura manga. KKJ has some interesting twists and things that are brought into it. But, as an anime, theres a different bad guy every episode, something is learned, maybe the story progresses, maybe it doesn't. And it all leads into a relatively predictable ending (the manga ended after the anime was produced, and had a very different, and arguably much better conclusion). But its not the magical girl-ness that turns me off to these anime (and consequently not giving the manga a chance). Its the episodic and formulaic nature of them. And it feels as if, more so than most other genre, that it has kind of stagnated. Every new show that comes out has similar female leads, similar male leads, follows an episodic format where every episode the characters learn something about themselves. Bad guys are made good. Throw in a little romance here and there, but never let them get together. Theres no real innovation anymore. There are some minor exceptions to that rule in anime. A few shows take a more shounen approach to the same themes. Nanoha is super predictable in this regard, because it retains almost all of the pieces of the formula, without being episodic or shoujo. Every season is basically the same story. she's super powerful without training or reason, and basically just fights with her will to fight. And at the end of the day, the bad guys aren't really bad, they're just misunderstood and become good guys. Something like Star Driver, is very shounen looking, but when broken down into its most basic elements, follows the magical girl formula word for word. Those are two of many examples, where minor changes are made, but its really not all that different. Obviously something like Madoka Magica would be an insane outlier where they're trying to destroy everything about magical girl anime. And I'm not necessarily seeing we need more of that (though I love Madoka). But I'd just like to see a shoujo magical girl show that tried to be a little more different and a little more unique. |
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Saphiro01
 Posts: 71 Location: California |
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I am an unapologetic original MALE Sailor Moon fan (And I consider myself an equalitarian as well). I watched the anime as often as I could in California despite the 6 AM time slot in 1995. Several of my male friends who were around 14-15 (the same age as our heroine coincidentally) loved the show as well. When the show got picked up for broadcast on Cartoon Network on Toonami we were all very excited to see the entire show in chronological order at a time slot after school we could actually sit down and watch. To top everything off this was about the time I started going to San Diego Comic Con regularly and my close friend got me into the manga on my 17th birthday by buying me my first chapter of the single chapter run of the manga). I was hooked.
On a hilarious side note, I think Sailor Moon fans may have caused the first huge internet fan communities for young people. I could list over 100 Sailor Moon websites that I used to frequent for news and stories back in the mid to late 90's. Save our Sailors (SOS), Sailor Moon Uncensored (safe for work btw this is actually an in depth analysis over broadcast editing practices and changes to the anime), and my very first manga image scan and episode capture site ever (remember this was in very slow modem land) Castle in the Sky Sailor Moon were all awesome. You know your an original American Sailor Moon fan when you know about the whole 'Prince Uranus' debacle. My how far we've come regarding gender roles in family entertainment haven't we? Last edited by Saphiro01 on Thu Mar 03, 2011 5:21 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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Metanomaly
Posts: 107 |
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If I may: It sounds more like you've reached a "critical mass" of experience with the genre (or, perhaps, with Japanese comic genres in general). That is, you're aware of the tropes and can pick them out while cross-referencing to things you've already seen. Sometimes people call this "becoming jaded", but that sounds too accusatory for me. Maybe "burned out" is closer to the truth. But, listen, every story plot that ever could be written has been written (and probably in the most optimal way) centuries ago, long before any of us were born. In literature (and this includes scripts for animated/live-action films), there's nothing new under the sun. Any "innovation" only seems that way because it has "come around again" (either to you personally, or to the genre). All the world's a stage and we are merely players, as it were. So, my advice to you is this: Step away for a little. It'll let you come back to the genres (or hell, anime/manga in general) with a fresh view and enjoy them all for what they are: the same stories with new actors in new costumes. |
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Metanomaly
Posts: 107 |
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As I remember it (subjective of course), the two major American Anime Internet Site Creation Trends in the 90's were: Ranma 1/2 and Sailor Moon. But, Christ, there were at lot of them! Edit: Missed a word |
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Sailor S
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I don't credit Sailor Moon with making me an anime/manga fan, but what I do credit it with is broadening my horizons. When I first started out on the road to becoming an anime fan, it was all shounen stuff like DBZ. I'd catch a little bit of Sailor Moon at the end, usually the Sailor Says segment, and I'd largely roll my eyes and wait impatiently for Goku to come on the screen and spend the whole time powering up. But eventually, whether because my class schedule at college allowed it or because I was just bored, I started tuning in early enough to catch some of Sailor Moon. And I started at the right time to get me going, which was the end of the first season when everyone is getting killed off (of course it was all edited out, but somehow you just knew that they had been killed) and it made me realize that shoujo wasn't just hearts and flowers and sparkles. These days, I enjoy the hearts and flowers and sparkles, but I credit that with Sailor Moon for easing me into it and letting me know there was more to anime than just fighting.
As for the manga, I desperately wish that they'd rerelease it. I only bought the Sailor Stars manga because I had just discovered that there was a Sailor Stars at the time, so I wanted to get anything I could related to it. If Kodansha would release the whole thing unflipped with a new translation, they couldn't stop me from shoving money at them. |
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Paploo
Posts: 1875 |
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The whole lamer/sexist magical girl manga thing? I guess Japanese trends just moved away from the sort of heroines we saw in Sailor Moon. It's an odd thing considering many of these artists would of grown up with Sailor Moon- though Two Flowers for the Dragon was a recent series I found had a strong heroine [she turns into a DRAGON! And keeps pet tigers. How keen is that?], though yeah, in general a lot of the stuff seems to be made for different tastes. I'm re-reading Maison Ikkoku, and it's surprising how different it is from more recent seinen romances [I guess that's part of why I like Rin-Ne so much]
I'd be surprised if Kodansha doesn't reprint it- there's so much demand from it, as there's a whole ton of people who got into anime via Sailor Moon, but by the time they got into manga it went OOP. I still have my assorted Sailor Moon manga [though it's a mixture of the comics and french trades- I only got 1 Mixx trade. It seems so long ago now], and though I hardly ever buy things a 2nd time, would probably trade up for a nicer edition. |
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