[Dr Kain]

Well I finally finished reading the Sailor Moon manga for the first time since Tokyo Pop released it and I have to be honest, it was not as good as I remembered it. I love the world Naoko built, and her characters are interesting, but the pacing was just awful and there was little to no development for anyone outside of Usagi and Mamoru. Hell, the villains seemed to be there just to have a reason for the series to have a conflict as only Nehelenia seemed to receive any sort of development whatsoever. I want to say the designs are great, but a lot of the villains were only in small panels and you rarely ever saw their entire body in one go with detailed view that they sometimes started to just blend in. Hell, I couldn't even keep track of the last batch of Galaxia's minions because they all looked the same. Sans the Amazoness Quartet and Kaolinite, the minions usually died within a few panels it made me wonder what the point of the Witches 5, the four Sisters, and the Amazon Trio was.

Even the sailor guardians seemed quite under developed. For example, in the Black Moon Family arc each member of the team was kidnapped in each chapter, so half of the arc had everyone by Usagi missing. The motives of some of the characters seemed inconsistent as well at times. For example, in one chapter Rei is talking about that she is finally going to be going to school with everyone now that they are going to the same high school. Then one of the chapters in Stars has Rei talking about how she wished she had gone to the same high school as them. WTF?

The pacing was absolutely horrible though and it made me wonder if the manga really did just exist as a reason for the anime to do so. Stories would move at such a rapid rate at times and then just suddenly drag on in other places it was distracting and confusing. Even the ending was convoluted. Also, the Starlights revealed themselves way too quickly and Sailor Moon's upgrades were done before you could even get used to the current one.

Now I do love the fact that the manga featured more of Saturn than the anime did, as she is my favorite character, but she seemed quite weaker in the manga for some reason. The artwork at times was gorgeous and I do love the world that Naoko was building up. The idea of a crystalized future city was pretty awesome. In fact, I wish we got more stories that dealt with the future. I also loved that the Amazoness Quartet did return in Stars and the truth behind Chibi Chibi makes so much more sense than in the anime. Another thing I loved is how everything was connected to one another. Chaos was the reason for Metallia, Pharaoh 90, Death Phantom, Nehelenia, while Nehelenia was the reason the Dark Kingdom was able to destroy the Moon Kingdom in the first place, and the Wiseman was the one who gave Galaxia her abilities.

Unfortunately, it seems like everything that was done well in the manga was held back by two things that were poorly executed. Naoko can't write a villain for crap and it shows. The ending itself also felt rushed and the series could have used just one more epilogue chapter instead of cramming the wedding and stuff into the last five pages. Overall, I give the manga 6 crying Usagi's out of 10.