Codename Sailor V, Vol. 1

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By Naoko Takeuchi. Released in Japan by Kodansha, serialized in the magazine Run Run. Released in North America by Kodansha Comics.

And here is where it all began – Takeuchi’s first big success (which was immediately subverted by its own publishers and then cannibalized into Sailor Moon) and the debut of Minako Aino, the only senshi besides Usagi not to give off that ‘I am ostracized from my peers and need a purpose in life’ vibe. Mainly as she and Usagi are the everyday heroines, and therefore get the everyday lives. Indeed, their families could be almost identical, minus Usagi’s younger brother. There are a few differences, though.

In fact, the cover pretty much gives the biggest one. Usagi is a sweet, but reluctant superhero who has to be dragged into her first few battles as villains are scary. Minako has no such issues. She is athletic, hyperactive, and ready and willing to leap into being a superhero, after a few initial shocks. She’s battling Dark Kingdom enemies as well – though these are far more of the monster-of-the-week variety – but she also uses Sailor V to catch bank robbers and generally ‘do good’. Not that she’s perfect – she also uses her magic tools to cheat at homework, and wonders at one point how to make money out of all this – but Minako’s proactiveness seeps through every panel here.

Usagi also had her main cast – she met Mamoru, Ami and Rei almost immediately. Minako pretty much just has Artemis there to poke her into doing the right thing and groan at her hijinks. Yes, she technically has a best friend (who, sadly, does not have a T-shirt reading ‘I am not Ami Mizuno’ like earlier scanlations gave her) and an annoying otaku classmate like Umino (the otaku actually gets more screentime than the best friend, oddly enough), but most of the time Minako sets out on these missions on her own, and you can tell that by the time they got to integrating her into Sailor Moon (especially the anime) they wanted to play up the Lone Wolf aspect of her.

The manga is very episodic in general – unlike Sailor Moon, which has a feel of an epic romance almost from the start, Sailor V looks like an action comedy, and doesn’t really gain depth until midway through it. The series ran very irregularly in Nakayoshi’s spin-off Run Run, and once Sailor Moon started, you’d see long breaks between chapters – sometimes yearly breaks. You can pretty much see the exact point the series goes from regular to irregular – it’s lampshaded by having Minako pass by Usagi in the final panel of the chapter.

Some other interesting things to note. Minako and Artemis here are communicating with a mysterious ‘boss’ who’s giving them orders – something which may puzzle those who know Sailor Moon. Is it Luna? No, can’t be, she won’t wake up Sailor Moon for about a year. (I did like Minako being 13 here, a year younger than Usagi in Sailor Moon, which means no timeline issues when the other senshi in Sailor Moon note Sailor V’s been fighting evil for over a year now). The identity of the power-that-be is an intriguing mystery.

Likewise, one of the highlights of each chapter is seeing Minako use her disguise pen to change into a different outfit, complete with pose – note how they’re timed to match the page turn, students of manga art! Usagi did this at the start of Sailor Moon as well, but it gets dropped once the manga gets more serious. My personal favorite when when she turned herself into a male teen idol – and seemed pretty much fine with it. (Bet she experimented when she got home too… *whack* Ow.)

The final chapter might give us a taste of what’s to come in the second and final volume of Sailor V. It’s more serious in general, and for the first time Minako’s disguise pen is used for serious purposes. There’s a more melancholy feeling to it, and it actually bookends nicely with the opening chapter. You sense that Minako is not going to be able to continue in the wacky adventures line for much longer. But for now she is, and thank goodness. Minako is my favorite of the ‘main five’ senshi, and I’d read the Japanese version of this (in 3 volumes) with a text translation years and years ago. It’s fantastic to see it here, and see Minako fight for (and sometimes run roughshod over) justice.

Oresama Teacher, Vol. 4

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By Izumi Tsubaki. Released in Japan by Hakusensha, serialization ongoing in the magazine Hana to Yume. Released in North America by Viz.

We are perhaps in a golden age of strong, spunky shoujo heroines. Minako from Sailor Moon is back in the spotlight. Iku from Library Wars is beating up those who would dare censor books. And now we have Mafuyu from Oresama teacher, who may have to dress up like a guy due to circumstance, but has shown that she is the one to bet on in a fight over anyone. Heck, I think she could take out Ichigo from Bleach if she tried.

It is entirely possible that this is not someone’s brand of humor, but it just happens to be mine. Mafuyu is wonderful. The way that she finds herself thinking like a thug in order to solve problems. And even better, the fact that she’s still learning as she goes, where she finds for the first time what it means to have someone you like injured because of you. And then, of course, there’s pretending to be a gay boy rather than a girl in order to fool the easily fooled Hayasaka. And any interactions she has with Takaomi are fantastic, if only as he can still wrap her around his finger without even trying.

There’s an awful lot of fighting in this manga, so much so that I wonder if it might be better marketed to Jump fans. Even better, as with last volume we see that Tsubaki is actually training her readers on the mechanics of being in a fight. Last time it was escaping from being tied up, here it’s how to dodge and parry, something that poor Hayasaka and his straight-ahead mind have simply never learned to do. Mafuyu’s actually quite a good teacher, but she’s up against a formidable opponent here, and I hope Hayasaka starts taking her lessons to heart before he dies.

I particularly enjoy seeing all the characters that you think are there to be goofball and comic show their inner badass. Maizono, Mafuyu’s masochistic third in command from her old gang, shows up to bring her a present. He never finds her (a given, since he asks the two guys who don’t know she’s a fighter), but we get a good chance to see that while he’s a goofball in front of her, he can fight like a demon when pressed. In fact, it’s notable how Mafuyu’s big problem in her new school is that she DOESN’T have a gang yet. Her old friends were trained fighters who all knew each other’s best strengths and weaknesses. Here she only has Hayasaka, who refuses to duck.

And lest we think that Mafuyu has it all together and isn’t an idiot as well, there’s that final chapter, where she completely forgets that she can’t swim. There’s a bit of romantic tease in it (really the only tease in the whole volume), but it’s second to simply laughing at everyone. There are no subtle characters here. Oresama Teacher is in-your-face gags about a girl who simply cannot stop being a delinquent fighter. And that’s why we love it.

Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon, Vol. 1

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By Naoko Takeuchi. Released in Japan by Kodansha, serialized in the magazine Nakayoshi. Released in North America by Kodansha Comics.

I will try my best, but don’t expect me to be unbiased here. This is one of the most anticipated re-releases in the last 10 years, and I have been waiting for what seems like FOREVER. And now, it seems, it’s finally here. Sailor Moon is back, and she is Usagi Tsukino again, and the series, as reprinted in Japan with updated art (and a few rewrites of dialogue) from Takeuchi herself, is ours once again.

I can’t really summarize, so I’ll just try to give my thoughts. I really liked this volume. Takeuchi is clearly taking the time to develop a very different heroine from Minako’s Sailor Venus, one better suited for the long haul of character development, like the best shoujo heroines. As a result, Usagi may grate on some in this volume, especially if they’re reading it in conjunction with Code Name Sailor V. She doesn’t want to be a hero. She finds lethal danger terrifying, strangely enough. Luckily, she has various weapons and allies at her disposal, and (leaving aside the poses for the reader) does a good job despite her faults. What we really notice her is her ability to make friends, and get even the hardest of hearts to open up to her. Even Rei, who’s the coolest (and grumpiest) of the cast, is worried about her instantly.

Speaking of the other senshi, I like how they’re all different yet share a similar background of feeling as though they don’t belong. Ami is looked on as a prodigy, with all the good and bad that this implies, and seems to have taken it a bit too much to heart. “All that I’m good for is studying”, she says at one point, making one wonder if she has the typical “education mama” behind her. Rei, in contrast to her anime counterpart, gives off a cool and frosty aura, and has those who visit the shrine wonder if she uses supernatural miko powers for evil purposes. As for Makoto, well, she’s dressed like your standard 80s shoujo manga girl gang member. She’s huge, left her school for ‘unknown’ reasons, and no doubt has knives under that skirt. Scary girls, all of them.

Except, of course, they’re all nice as pie. (Well, OK, Rei is nice as sour cherry pie. But give her time.) What’s more, being a senshi gives them all a new purpose, and all three seem to feel as if this is the destiny they’ve been waiting for. It’s actually spelled out by Makoto, in her speech towards the end of her chapter. Fate brought them together. Now, Usagi’s backstory doesn’t match theirs – she’s well-liked and has no issues with lacking a purpose. So Sailor Moon isn’t quite as defining for her. It’s almost as if she has yet to discover her true role…

I had forgotten how fast things move in the manga. Most of Western fandom is more familiar with the anime plotlines and pacing, where it’s a good 8 episodes before we even meet Ami. Here we’ve already got 4 of the 5 main senshi before the book is out, and the entirety of the first ‘arc’ will be finished by Volume 3. This is a pacey series, which does not have patience for long protracted battles the way shonen manga does. Sailor Moon’s battles are fairly perfunctory and noticeably lacking in awesome moves. How the villains die is not quite the issue here. However, this does allow the main plotline to become relevant, and there are no monsters of the week. The search for the Silver Crystal (and the Princess) are what everyone is concentrating on, and Jadeite and Nephrite don’t get many second chances before they are dispatched. (By the way, the senshi kill off the bad guys here. Get used to that, much more than the anime.)

There’s some great humor here, but unlike the action comedy that is Sailor V, this is pegging itself as an epic romance. That Mamoru is Tuxedo Mask surprises no one, as clearly he and Usagi have that ‘destined’ look when they first meet in Chapter 1. After all, they bicker with each other. (By the way, the whole ‘secret identity’ thing gets kind of tossed aside right away here. Sailor Moon calls out the real names of her fellow senshi right off the bat, and there seems to be no issue of ‘why don’t they get that it’s the girls they know?’ here, as no one really sees them closely unless they’re unconscious or a villain.) The climax to this volume is actually more effective than the original Volume 1, which ended one chapter earlier. It makes you want to get more right away.

The presentation here is fine. I’m sure there are some translation issues, but I didn’t bother to get out my old Tokyopop editions and do a line-by-line compare. Nothing jarred enough that it made me want to verify anything, which is just fine. I particularly enjoyed Sailor Moon comparing Tuxedo Mask to Lupin III. (Usagi, you’re no Fujiko-chan.) This is the reprint edition from Japan, meaning we get nice new pretty covers (no stickers, though), and Kodansha’s usual liner notes. I do miss Takeuchi’s author’s notes in the originals, but she removed them from the reprint, so what are you going to do? They are basically more variations on ‘I am a busy and fluffy shoujo writer!’ in any case.

If you’re a big Sailor Moon fan, you’re going to be buying this anyway. If you’re not, well, Usagi may grate on you a bit at first, but give her time. The series is worth it. And the women in it kick eight kinds of ass. (Usagi, OK, does not kick as much ass. At least physically. But she gets to be the emotional core.) As we get further into the series, everyone will get even better. Highly recommended.