Tsuki ni kawatte....

[laceblade]

The news that the Sailor Moon manga is being re-released in America is very exciting, like, I feel elated.

The manga originally started being released over here in 1997 by MIXX/COMX/Tokyopop, and has long since been out of print. The versions were pretty shitty. I have double-copies of a number of tankoubon, because the glue jobs were pretty terrible and pages would fall out, sometimes entire sections.

ALSO, they're releasing the prequel to Sailor Moon, Sailor V, which has never been released in the U.S., and I've never read before!



It bodes well for the re-release of other items that have been out of print for a long time, like Takeuchi's artbooks, or the anime DVDs (which also weren't stellar quality products the first time around).


Sailor Moon was the first anime that I ever saw, and the first manga that I ever read. I still love the artwork, it is a major comfort reread for me.

Even if the manga and anime that I own right now will plummet in value (single volumes range in price on Amazon.com from $20-300), I am really grateful that new fans will be born, and that I'll be able to use my money to support one of my favorite fandoms of all time in return for quality, beautiful products.

Thank you, Kodansha USA. I hope that you continue to do badass things in the future.

2011 will be a good year for historical shoujo in the U.S.! Vertical's release of Osamu Tezuka's Princess Knight are slated for this year too, I think.

Comments

[owlectomy]

Hahah, Sailor Moon as "historical shoujo" makes me feel old! I guess I started watching it right around the time the series finished, but one of my high school classmates actually saw Sailor Stars while doing a homestay in Japan. But seriously, that is excellent news. I was really annoyed at the Mixx translations ... Sailor Moon fandom was pretty wild in those days and after the terrible job that DiC did with the dubs it felt like adding insult to injury for the manga translations to have so much aggressive localization. (I STILL to this day bear a grudge against TokyoPop although objectively they seem to be one of the better US manga companies these days.)

[laceblade]

"Historical" was perhaps not the beset word on my part! I meant that it's important to the history of shoujo, not so much that it's Teh Old, bwahaha.

Annnnd, yes. DiC dubs = SO LOL. There is speculation that a re-dub might happen, but since I never really watch dubs, I don't really care one way or the other.

[owlectomy]

When I was in Sailor Moon fandom, and just starting out in anime fandom, it felt like a self-evident thing that Sailor Moon was just fluff and not something with SIGNIFICANCE like Evangelion or whatnot. But fandom was really male back then and there was hardly any shoujo that was being translated... so it feels a bit weird for me to think of Sailor Moon as being important to the history of shoujo, though it's undeniably true!

It's kind of amazing, actually, that I could become that attached to and moved by a series listening to those terrible dubs. It speaks to just how powerful the story is.

[the_andy]

A) Am am super excited for this!

B) Now I feel old. Watching Sailor Moon was my guilty pleasure in high school. Also I had one of the first subscriptions to Mixx.