
Sailor Moon
a review by GiornoOp

a review by GiornoOp
You think Madoka Magica was your first Deconstruction Magical Girl Anime? Say hello to your prototype mother Sailor Moon Manga!
Take your Anime goggles off, this is what Sailor Moon really is.
Sailor Moon... this seems like another typical Shojo manga, but trust me I gonna unleash everything that people tend to overlook. Sailor Moon is actually more like Seinen disguised as Shojo. And if you are a Madoka Magica fan you should acknowledge and like this manga. SM technically a Shojo manga but how the Anime being handled is like most of Seinen manga.
Plot : 9/10
The plot is really really good, with interesting storyline connected to each parts, but the problem I gonna rate it 9/10 because BMC arc is being rushed and Stars arc, despite the flaws the overall story is great, nothing is Mary Sue so it won't be a much problem. The story is literally a grimdark magical girls tale like a proto-Madoka (another overlooked factor), characters fighting horror monsters like Berserk (ofc it's not really serious as Berserk but it comparable), and especially... (which is most people tend to overlook) Shonen-style power scaling and how the fights are handled compared to Anime (which I'm gonna talk later), not only that the Manga also covered a lot of topics like Suicide, Rape, Incest, Genocide, Human Experimentation, Children Killing, and so on,... this factor makes SM even more Seinen like than most of other Shojo published in Nakayoshi, yes there's even a zombie version of SM you can actually see. And death in this series even make sense, unlike how most people say: "Sailor Moon is just like DBZ because characters just keep being revived!", deaths in SM are more impactful and have more consequences, one that is possible is the sailor guardians having mental issues from being brutally killed and their souls being violated, and even when they are resorted to life they are still affected (life is like death), unlike DBZ is full of pointless deaths, and even Naruto abused the kill-off characters term and some deaths in Naruto are actually pointless
Art : 10/10
Of course it will be a 10/10 because Takeuchi's art is gorgeous that most of companies even struggle to adapt it like how 2016 Berserk was handled. Combining with the Dark tone makes the manga even feels like when you're reading Fist of the North Star, Berserk, JoJo,...
Character : 10/10
Characters in the manga is literally a different story which is noticably they're stronger unlike both Anime Toei nerfed all of them, yes they are even so broken that in their base form they can beat most of typical Shonen verses like Bleach, Naruto, One Piece, people even say SM can beat Goku: https://www.reddit.com/r/CharacterRant/comments/62pcs4/every_large_power_feat_or_statement_in_the_sailor/ (I gonna use reddit post for this statement because I'm lazy to write, you can search more but this is a brief for SM-verse powers)
Unlike the Anime all the characters are memorable, Usagi despite sometimes clumsy and lazy but she's less crybaby compared to the Anime (and yes even a crybaby can break a dimension by crying, see the like I posted), Rei is less annoying instead she's also elegant and serious in Manga (luckily Manga goes with ReiNako not UsaRei), Outer Senshis get better roles unlike how Anime downplayed them, Chibiusa is not annoying unlike Anime. Overall characters in manga is more serious than both anime counterpart displayed
Another factor I want to say is the fight scenes, yes the fights in manga is really insane and intense compared to both anime thanks to better power-scaling and insane haxes, which gives you a quite Gurren Lagann-like experience (GL is stronger but characters has also interesting feats, SM-verse even more hax-broken than DBZverse lol)
(Note I actually researched about DBZ and SM power so I can say that, and this comment may trigger some power-scalers especially some goku fanboys that still think SM is weak)
Overall rating: 9/10. Despite some of flaws, this manga is a must-read and you should overrate the manga more. And trust me most of people and even SM fans are likely to downplay the manga because most of them are so obsessed with the Anime and don't even realize how Manga is truly different (or can realize but not really due to being obsessed with the Anime) compared to the Anime, most of them only like to analyze the Plot and they don't even get further. Sailor Moon, just like Tokyo Ghoul, has a moderate/bad anime adaption (Tokyo Ghoul is better than SMC/SME ofc) by companies that doesn't utilize all the manga full potential (Toei, Pierrot, in terms of this thing Toei is far more worse because Toei also wants the show appeal to annoying kids and at least Pierrot has took risk), but also got a great and dark manga adaption.
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