lunarkitten:

I’m tired of people saying “you should just be grateful we finally got Sailor Moon back after all this time!”

Now, I don’t know Japanese, so I am not going to nitpick the quality of the translation.  There are some obvious errors, like “ai” somehow being translated as “beauty,” but I will leave that to the fans who actually know Japanese.  I do not mind the honorifics (though I think they should have explained them further in the translator’s notes), I don’t mind that the sound effects are left in Japanese (I think it looks better and interferes with the art less), and I give them props for including color pages and making the books larger while keeping them at a reasonable price point.

But why should I be “grateful” for a product that has obviously not even been proofread?  Brooch is spelled as “broach,” in Sailor V they use “their” when it should’ve been “they’re,” grammar is awkward in some places, and a lot of the typesetting is sloppy.  How can I appreciate something that someone seems to have rushed out?

Kodansha had months to polish this product.  They told us it was finished before they even announced the license.  That gave them at least six months to work out these errors and make it perfect or close to it.  When there are spelling errors abound in your highly anticipated book, something tells me someone didn’t care enough to pay attention, and that’s what upsets me.

Do I like Kodansha’s release?  Hell yes.  It’s miles better than Tokyopop’s and it’s about time we finally have an unedited, uncut version of Sailor Moon in the States.  I just think the final product falls short of the hype Kodandsha gave us.  We are the ones who are buying these books, we deserve nothing less than a fully polished and revised product that actually shows the effort they say they put into it.  Fans who blindly support this without being able to take note of its flaws are no better than those who complain about every little detail being wrong.  No, I don’t like that they’re “guardians” instead of “soliders,” but I’ll manage.

We’re Sailor Moon fans, people.  Us English-speaking fans have been treated to nothing but sub-par releases since 1995.  Do you really expect us to smile and pee our pants in delight when something new comes our way without critiquing it a little bit?  I am not telling people to NOT support the manga release — quite the opposite.  I will definitely buy the further releases because I want to support the franchise and the fandom I hold so dear to my heart.  I want to see Sailor Moon succeed.  But I feel we have the right to speak up if there are things we aren’t happy with.

I really honestly can’t believe that people are saying we should be “happy” with it and not complain just because it’s been a long time. This is a professional product. Kodansha is not a small company. Sailor Moon is not an unknown series. And we are paying good money for each volume. Having the most basic spelling errors in there - “who’s” instead of “whose” cropped up more than once - is not acceptable in something that is being professionally published and sold. To say that it is just because it’s been off the market for a while is ridiculous and is going to tell them that we, as Sailor Moon fans, don’t care about quality and will literally buy anything they sell, no matter how bad it is.

On a slight tangent, I think they may have gone with “Guardian” because these are the PGSM reprints and they were known as “Guardians” in English for that series. But even so, I much prefer “Soldiers” to “Guardians” too.

But in short… ^ This.

foreversailormoon:

Comes from “ The New York Times,” a new confirmation of the extraordinary success that the manga by Naoko Takeuchi is having in America.

According to the well-known and authoritative portal, the first issue of “Sailor Moon” and the first issue of “Codename: Sailor V” dominate (respectively the first and second place) the ranking of the best-selling manga in the United States, bypassing titles such as “xxxHOLiC”, “Bleach,” “Naruto” and “One Piece ”.

Congratulations Sailor Warriors!

- SAILORMOONWORLD

Natch.