When I started getting the new copies of the Sailor Moon manga re-release in the mail in 2012, I decided to go through my old copies from 1998 to see what had changed! Scanned a ton of pages to do comparisons and thought I would put it together in a post for all you moonies out there to enjoy! <3
All images on the left are from Mixx, and images on the right are the newest release!
Color
One obvious new change: We finally have the color insert pages!! This was an exciting improvement for me since I only own one copy of the Japanese original manga so many of these color pages I hadn't seen yet outside the internet!
Better Translations
The translations have been improved on and make a lot more sense now... To me at least! I feel like everything flows a lot better.
Correct names
Along with the translations, the new manga release also has the Japanese names instead of the US names!
Better text layouts
Even the visuals of the manga has changed slightly. On many pages, they have changed the layout of the text to suit the images better. I was really impressed with these changes because parts of the illustrations previously not visible were now there and looked like they had always been there! Nice restoration work!
Art quality improved
A lot of the illustrations have been cleaned up as well. Above, it's noticeable in the brooch, word bubble bunnies, but check out the images below... Lot's of various changes!! I really like all the extra detail added in.
There are even pages where they have added additional panels with illustrations!
I love all the new little changes - Naoko's art was already very beautiful but the improvements really enhance the artwork making it seem more magical!
While most of new details are only in the brooches, wands and magical details - there are lots of other nice things like eye details added in and other finer details of the faces that for some reason were not included in the original artwork.
Sometimes they even take it further and completely retouch the whole position along with adding details. It really creates a great look to the transformation scenes!
Outside of transformation scenes and adding details, you can see the over all scans and contrast of the original artwork shows up much better in the rerelease. The original release was very washed out and sometimes details went missing due to switching the Japanese text out to English.
Along with the art quality, information details were updated to look cleaner or more current.
New art added
Something that really surprised me was the fact that on some pages there were completely new illustrations!!
Some changes make sense because the new images have an overall better look...
But some are just odd - why did they change this scene? The original illustration was nice too!
All I can figure is maybe Naoko decided to update things after all these years... I know there have been times where I looked through my old illustration portfolio and no longer liked the way I drew something.
I love how this scene was redone.
This one as well!! The new illustration's details are gorgeous.
But I actually prefer the older version of this scene!
Naoko's notes - missing!
Last but not least - all the letters from Naoko are missing in the new versions.
Which is a shame because I loved reading this as a teenager! They really made me feel closer to Naoko and more curious about what was going in Japan related to Sailor Moon. I understand now that these letters would be VERY out of date and possibly confusing, but it still could have been cute if they were included and marked with their past date!
New additions
There are also a lot of things included in the new releases that were not included in the old ones!
- Translations/explanations on cultural differences and words that aren't familiar in the US
-Previews of the next book
- Larger pages
- More chapters in one book
- Over all better book construction
In conclusion - these are the changes I noticed when comparing the first two volumes of the Sailor Moon manga! I really love the new release and am so happy to have it in my collection.
What do you think of all the new Sailor Moon items that have been coming out over the past few years?! Are you enjoying this new era of Sailor Moon? I sure am!! <3 The manga was always my favorite version of Sailor Moon and I'm really enjoying the faithful adaptation of it in Sailor Moon Crystal! :D
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