By Naoko Takeuchi. Released in Japan as “Bishoujo Senshi Sailor Moon” by Kodansha, serialized in the magazine Nakayoshi. Released in North America by Kodansha Comics.

In the last volume of Sailor Moon, we had chapters each devoted to the development of a senshi, be it Mercury, Mars, Jupiter, Venus, or the Outers. That having been done, it’s time for an action-packed climax to the SuperS arc. Now, this can also be a drawback. Takeuchi’s battles do tend to have a certain sameness to them, and in many ways this is just another variation on “our light is purer than your dark”. So with that in mind, let me talk about all the other things that I loved about this volume.

First of all, the entire arc has been a look at the dreams and nightmares of the world, with the Dark Moon Circus dealing out both with impunity. We’re definitely on the nightmare end of the scale for this volume, with many grotesque, horrific images that look even better in Takuuchi’s long-limbed shoujo style. Seeing Usagi’s face melting off was what caused me to buy a copy of the manga in my comic store years ago (this was an older Japanese tankobon, I think), and it hits Venus and the rest of the senshi right where they live – the Princess is dead, they failed to protect her. (A flashback showing the very Sleeping Beauty-esque appearance of Nehelenia in the Silver Millennium only reinforces that – also, Venus and the others as chibi-Senshi are adorable.) Usagi, meanwhile, is caught in what seems an idealistic dream – she and Mamoru are the same age, and he makes her breakfast before they go to school together. But she immediately starts to see through it, even if regretfully – Mamoru was never that sicky sweet. It’s a childish Usagi dream, and she’s moved beyond that.

The other senshi mostly get to stand around and gape, but there are occasional moments of awesome. Venus and Uranus are the clear team leaders of their respective groups, and there’s a brief moment where we see they don’t really get along. We also see a magic mirror that needs to be broken, and after senshi attacks fail to do the job Jupiter goes with her Plan A – punch it really hard. (Who needs superpowers when you have MONSTER STRENGTH?) But the big winner here is Saturn, who is back, is around Chibi-Usa’s age, and is clearly the most savvy of the entire group – so much so that she and Chibi-Moon actually have to be banished from the plot for half the book (in another really creepy and well-drawn sequence where they’re imprisoned in shards of mirror). She confronts the Amazoness Quartet, abut can see them for who they really are – and almost manages to get them to remember before Nehelenia steps in and turns them into dull black orbs. (Also, she gets to do something in the volume on which she’s the cover star – a rarity for this re-released series.)

After Nehelenia is defeated (sorry, honey, no redemption for you here), we see everyone transformed into their ‘royalty’ dresses (we actually see it earlier as well, and it’s worth noting a couple of things. First, Serenity apparently has powers so vast that she can give her retinue prom formal gowns almost by default. Secondly, everyone gets white gowns bar Pluto and Saturn’s, which are black. I’d like to think there’s meaning to that beyond “breaking up the color scheme”), Saturn is still in her senshi outfit as she has another duty – have Serenity purify the orbs. And after she does so, we see the true forms of the Amazoness Quartet – the Asteroid Senshi, Chibi-Moon’s own inner retinue from the future. (This is actually not explained quite as well as I’d like, and is another weakness of this volume.) Add that to Helios, who is at last free to not be a giant magic horse and romance Chibi-Moon as himself – and one purpose of this arc is to give Chibi-Usa her own group to turn to in Crystal Tokyo that’s not simply her parents and guardians. She’s free to grow up.

For a volume that seems to be, on flip through, about half ‘senshi gape at encroaching darkness’ pictures over and over, there was a lot going on here. We’ve got two volumes of the main storyline to go, which will be the last arc, Stars. I’m especially looking forward to these as it’s the arc I re-read the least first time round, so I want to see what new insights I can find in it. (I also want a street date for the Takeuchi artbook – some of the title pages in this cry out for big color prints.) Still a can’t miss shoujo classic.

By Naoko Takeuchi. Released in Japan as “Bishoujo Senshi Sailor Moon” by Kodansha, serialized in the magazine Nakayoshi. Released in North America by Kodansha Comics.

I have so many things to say about this volume of Sailor Moon that I’m not even sure where to begin, so please forgive me if I start to ramble. For those of you wondering what’s going on, the Senshi are dealing with the Dead Moon Circus and Chibi-Usa’s getting visions of a pegasus who’s looking for the Legendary GOLDEN Crystal. Meanwhile, all the senshi have found themselves unable to transform and are wondering if this means their duties are over… and whether they can start to follow their dreams.

The volume opens with each of the four Inner Senshi discussing their dreams of the future. Ami wants to follow in her mother’s footsteps and become a doctor, Rei likewise wants to succeed her grandfather (who I’d forgotten looks nothing like his anime counterpart) at the shrine. Makoto wants to be a wife and baker; and Minako of course dreams of being an idol singer. As we move on, it’s not limited to just them. Not only do the Outer Senshi find themselves living in a small bubble of ‘perfect happy family’ that seems like a dream, but even the Amazoness Quartet, this arc’s minor villains, use the same language – getting their freedom to move in the real world is referred to as their dream.

The first three chapters also remind us that many of the senshi have family issues. Ami’s mother is really too busy to give her the care she needs (though notably she seems to show remorse about it, unlike a lot of ‘education mama’ portrayals of Ami’s mother I’ve seen), and her father essentially ran away and divorced them a few years prior. Rei’s mother died soon after she was born, and her dad is a government minister who has no time for his daughter and has sent her off to live at the shrine. (As we’ll find in a later short story, he *is* as unpleasant as he sounds.) And Makoto’s parents are both dead, and she’s living on her own with the traditional manga “where the hell does she get the money to afford that place” apartment.

The Amazon Trio (who, this being the manga, are barely characterized and killed off right away) thus have no trouble finding ways to get into the girls’ heads and try to tempt them away from their true calling. Preying on Ami’s loneliness and abandonment issues, Rei’s sense of duty and how oppressive that can feel, and Makoto’s indecision and feelings of being weak. Naturally, in the end, each finds the inner strength to go on (in Jupiter’s case, MONSTER STRENGTH, a line that had me laughing hard) and are able to transform, power up, gain new attacks, and wipe out the enemy. (Though not, notably, the Quartet, who always get away. Maybe it’s because they always work in a group, rather than on their own like the previous minor villains. You’d almost think they were friends…)

And then there’s Minako, who has issues of her own. She’s supposed to be the leader of the Inner Senshi, after all (something the anime quietly dropped), and is rather upset that they can all now transform and she still cannot. What’s more, the other three are all mentioning the Outers more and more – how inspirational they find them, the good advice they received from them, and how it would be great if they could show up to help everyone out. This makes Minako even more annoyed, as she never really bonded with them the way the others did, and is unable to offer advice as she’s still powerless. We see in the previous chapters each Inner thinking of advice from their Outer mentor – Ami with Setsuna, Rei with Michiru and Makoto with Haruka. Clearly that would leave Hotaru for Minako, but as she’s a baby right now that doesn’t really happen.

(Speaking of which, when did all these chats and bonding with the Outers actually happen? Between S and SuperS, or in the bits we didn’t see between S? Also, I know that Minako and Hotaru is quite a popular fanfic crack pairing, and I wonder if this might be a reason why.)

In many ways, this parallels an episode of the S anime, where Minako is frustrated that she’s the only one who hasn’t been attacked by the enemy. Here she charges forward into the enemy’s trap (and yes, she’s quite aware it’s a trap) in an attempt to make herself power up through sheer force of will. Unfortunately, what this leads to is her being dropped off of a tall platform, and the only thing holding her up is Artemis. Ignoring the physics of that for a moment, this resonates the best of the four Inner Senshi stories. Ami and Makoto had tiny little versions of themselves gibing them pep talks, and although Rei and Phobos and Deimos turn human briefly, we’d never seen her interact with her crows in quite the same way. But Minako and Artemis are partners (in a way that Usagi and Luna will never be), and when Minako thinks he’s been killed she’s heartbroken.

Artemis’s transformation into a white-haired handsome bishie would likely be less startling to those who read the manga when it first came out (they’d already seen a side-story where Luna did the same, which was adapted into the S movie), and it’s presented as sort of a powerup, much as the senshi go from Planet Power or Star Power to Crystal Power, Artemis is now strong enough to turn human in times of need. This is turn allows Minako to find the strength to make her own transformation.

In the meantime, as I noted, the Outers are living an idyllic life in a mansion somewhere. Haruka’s racing idiots on the highway, Michiru’s recording CDs (and getting hit on), Setsuna is doing important research, and Hotaru… now seems to be about 5 years old. And is quoting Yeats. The Senshi of Destruction quoting The Second Coming is never a good sign. She has her memories as Hotaru, her memories as Saturn, and these new memories of growing up with the Outers all in her head, and it’s turned her into quite the little prodigy. Of course, she also has her deep bond with Chibi-Usa, and knowing that she’s in trouble leads to her age up, again (this time to about 12, it seems), and unite the other Outers to do the same. It’s the sort of scene you want to see set to music, and is beautiful, inspiring, and a bit scary all at once.

In the meantime, what of our leads? Well, poor Mamoru is once again suffering by being the one who is always targeted. This time it’s shadows on the lung, which then becomes coughing up black blood – and even worse, it seems to be contagious, something we find at the very end of this volume when Usagi starts to cough as well. The ‘swapped bodies’ cliffhanger from last time is resolved fairly quickly (though not before Usagi tries to cuddle up with Mamoru in her chibi body, and finds that though he likes ‘em young, that’s a little *too* young). Most of the book has Chibi-Usa trying to figure out what’s going on with Pegasus, which is a combination of ‘I want to save him from the bad guys’ and ‘he transformed into a hot guy what are these feelings in my heart?’. This, by the way, leads to the other big funny moment in the volume, where Chibi-Usa imagines talking about her unicorn wannabe-boyfriend with the other Inners, and quickly realizes Makoto is the only conversation that wouldn’t be a disaster.

I seem to have gone on a bit. Suffice to say this book was basically everything I wanted it to be, gave me tons of character stuff to analyze (giving lie to the anime fans saying the manga characters are too dull), and had huge roles for Minako and Hotaru, my two favorite senshi. And, if I recall, the next volume is just as good, and will wrap up the SuperS arc. Get it!

By Naoko Takeuchi. Released in Japan as “Bishoujo Senshi Sailor Moon” by Kodansha, serialized in the magazine Nakayoshi. Released in North America by Kodansha Comics.

The third arc of Sailor Moon ends here, with more apocalypse than ever before. Given that this arc was all about trying to prevent the Senshi of Destruction from waking and destroying everything – and that in the end they basically fail – it makes total sense that there’s a lot of, well, destruction. Of course, Saturn is not the Plot-In-A-Box that she was in ancient times anymore – she’s also Tomoe Hotaru, and thus can take things in a different direction.

We pick things up, however, with Hotaru still very much being a disembodied spirit held back by Mistress Nine, the Black Lady of the S arc, who is possessing her body. Hotaru thus uses her disembodied spirit power to help save Chibi-Usa, who proceeds to take off with Mamoru so she can join the others for the end of the world, then destroys her body and Mistress Nine’s taking them both out. Of course, this leaves the traditional final boss, a miasma of evil energy. Luckily, our heroes have an insane amount of power, especially when Usagi let’s the Power Of Christ… erm, the Holy Grail compel her and pours a large amount of sweetness and light into the darkness… which just makes it grow stronger and stronger. Whoops.

Sailor Moon, being who she is, decides to turn herself into a giant nuclear bomb and throw herself into the maw of the enemy. This, as if to show the universe finally throwing up its hands and saying “OK, I’ve had all I can stands, I can’t stands no more!”, seems to be what inspires the talismans (with very little input from their three owners, who mostly get to join the Inners is standing around gasping “Sailor Moon!” a lot) to do what they have to do – resurrect Saturn to destroy everything. Saturn, of course, being Hotaru. And give Takeuchi credit – she does indeed destroy everything. Saturn has an INSANE amount of power, and we briefly see shots of the few bits of Tokyo that weren’t taken out by the villains falling over dead and crumbled.

Of course, Saturn does this knowing that they have an ‘out’ clause – Sailor Moon, who is now SUPER Sailor Moon, can resurrect everyone and everything. So after Saturn shoves herself and Pharaoh 90 (the villain, in case you had forgotten) into a different dimension, Moon proceeds to do just that. Everyone and everything not evil (well, supernaturally evil) is resurrected – including Hotaru, who is now a little baby and presumably lacking cybernetic implants.

This arouses the other Outers’ maternal instincts, in a scene that screams ‘crap I only have 10 pages to wrap this up’ but oh well. They grab Baby Hotaru, thank the others, say they’ll surely see them again, and take off in their private helicopters to a land where they can presumably raise Hotaru and be really freaking rich. All they leave behind is a shot of them nude from the shoulders up in the sky, a classic ‘they may be dead but we will always remember them’ shot only slightly marred by their not actually being dead. This whole arc, honestly, has lost something in textual description, and really does sound less silly and more epic if you read it. It’s quite good.

The last third of the book is the start of the fourth arc, which brings us a new set of villains, a new set of adorably quirky minions (the Amazoness Quartet, who get a lot to do in the manga, and the Amazon Trio, who don’t), and a new theme, this one being dreams. Everyone is now in high school (and Makoto has a real uniform that fits at last), and Chibi-Usa is ready to finally return to the future. But don’t sigh with relief just yet. She can’t quite make it due to unknown forces. Could it be the unicorn that appears and begs her for help? Could it be the evil-looking Circus that’s just gotten into town? Or could it be that she still needs to grow up (as does her mother), with Chibi-Usa whining about wanting to be adult and Usagi whining about how kids have it easy. If you’ve ever watched a wacky Disney movie, you can see what the cliffhanger of this volume will be!

Super S’s arc starts off slow here, but will really pick up next volume, as it (finally!) focuses on the other Inners and their own dreams and desires. Still the epitome of magical girl shoujo, even if I sometimes wish it would take a bit to catch its breath.