• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Home
  • About Us
    • Privacy Policy
    • Comment Policy
    • Disclosures & Disclaimers
  • Resources
    • Links, Essays & Articles
    • Fandomology!
    • CLAMP Directory
    • BlogRoll
  • Features & Columns
    • 3 Things Thursday
    • Adventures in the Key of Shoujo
    • Bit & Blips (game reviews)
    • BL BOOKRACK
    • Bookshelf Briefs
    • Bringing the Drama
    • Comic Conversion
    • Fanservice Friday
    • Going Digital
    • It Came From the Sinosphere
    • License This!
    • Magazine no Mori
    • My Week in Manga
    • OFF THE SHELF
    • Not By Manga Alone
    • PICK OF THE WEEK
    • Subtitles & Sensibility
    • Weekly Shonen Jump Recaps
  • Manga Moveable Feast
    • MMF Full Archive
    • Yun Kouga
    • CLAMP
    • Shojo Beat
    • Osamu Tezuka
    • Sailor Moon
    • Fruits Basket
    • Takehiko Inoue
    • Wild Adapter
    • One Piece
    • After School Nightmare
    • Karakuri Odette
    • Paradise Kiss
    • The Color Trilogy
    • To Terra…
    • Sexy Voice & Robo
  • Browse by Author
    • Sean Gaffney
    • Anna Neatrour
    • Michelle Smith
    • Katherine Dacey
    • MJ
    • Brigid Alverson
    • Travis Anderson
    • Phillip Anthony
    • Derek Bown
    • Jaci Dahlvang
    • Angela Eastman
    • Erica Friedman
    • Sara K.
    • Megan Purdy
    • Emily Snodgrass
    • Nancy Thistlethwaite
    • Eva Volin
    • David Welsh
  • MB Blogs
    • A Case Suitable For Treatment
    • Experiments in Manga
    • MangaBlog
    • The Manga Critic
    • Manga Report
    • Soliloquy in Blue
    • Manga Curmudgeon (archive)

Manga Bookshelf

Discussion, Resources, Roundtables, & Reviews

October 13, 2011 by Katherine Dacey 4 Comments

Codename: Sailor V, Vol. 1

Do you remember Wonder Woman? From an adult perspective, the show was dreadful, marred by ham-fisted scripts, low-budget special effects, campy plotlines, and wooden performances. From a child’s perspective, however, Wonder Woman was magical: the heroine had a secret identity, wore a cool crime-fighting outfit complete with nifty, crime-fighting accessories, and fought bad buys. Better still, she could transform from civilian to superhero by extending her arms and twirling a few times, a transformation made even more dramatic by a blinding flash of light and a musical flourish on the soundtrack.

Codename: Sailor V irresistibly reminded me of the old Wonder Woman show. Judged by adult standards, it’s repetitive, hokey, and poorly drawn; judged by a child’s standards, however, it’s an appealing fantasy in which an ordinary girl can assume a new, powerful identity in order to defeat bullies, robbers, and aliens who like to impersonate idols. (More on that in a minute.)

Sailor V follows a well-established shojo template in which a seemingly ordinary girl discovers her true identity as a soldier, priestess, or princess. For perky tomboy Minako Aino, her alter ego is Sailor Venus, a glamorous, sailor-suited warrior tasked with protecting the Earth from the Dark Agency, a nefarious band of aliens using the entertainment industry to enslave humanity. With the aid of Artemis, a talking cat, Minako begins mastering her two secret weapons: a magical pen and a crescent-shaped compact, both of which enable her to overwhelm opponents with the light of truth.

What distinguishes Sailor V from other magical girl manga is Minako’s can-do spirit. Minako may flunk math quizzes and miss homeroom, but when the fate of the Earth hangs in the balance, she embraces her responsibility with cheerful resolve. “I feel liberated! I’m overflowing with power!” she declares after her first successful mission. Even when the missions fall into a predictable pattern, Minako’s enthusiasm and competence prove irresistible: she delivers high-flying kicks with graceful precision, discovers new powers in the heat of battle, scolds evil-doers for evading the tax code (no, really), and experiments with different personae. (In one story, she transforms into a handsome male idol; in another, she poses as a military commando.)

Put simply, Minako kicks butt and has fun doing it.

I’m less enthusiastic about the artwork, which is a riot of busy screentones, arm-flapping chibis, and noseless characters. The visual flow is often choppy, with abrupt shifts in perspective and setting that can disorient the reader. The character designs, too, leave something to be desired, as the villains all have blank, doll-like faces and enormous foreheads, while Minako and her friends have saucer-shaped eyes. Only the fight scenes are well executed; using undulating lines and balletic poses, Takeuchi does a fine job of distinguishing Minako from Sailor V, showing us how a plucky teen transforms into a strong young woman.

And therein lies the key Codename: Sailor V‘s appeal: the series allows young girls to try on a grown-up persona, to imagine what it might be to like to be a strong, smart, and capable woman who’s free to realize her full potential. At the same time, however, Sailor V honors a young girl’s ideas of femininity, recognizing that it’s perfectly possible to save the day while wearing a cute outfit. Small wonder, then, that the Sailor Moon franchise proved so popular among young girls on both sides of the Pacific: who wouldn’t want to be a princess and a warrior?

CODENAME: SAILOR V, VOL. 1 • BY NAOKO TAKEUCHI • KODANSHA COMICS USA • 272 pp. • RATING: TEEN (13+)

Share this:

  • Email
  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • Reddit
  • Tumblr
  • More
  • LinkedIn
  • Pinterest

Filed Under: Manga Critic Tagged With: kodansha, Magical Girl, Naoko Takeuchi, sailor moon, shojo

Reader Interactions

Trackbacks

  1. Links: No flying, no tights « Good Comics for Kids says:
    October 17, 2011 at 2:26 pm

    […] Flying No Tights) Paige McKee on vol. 1 of Cage of Eden (Sequential Tart) Kate Dacey on vol. 1 of Codename: Sailor V (The Manga Critic) Bill on Dragon Puncher Book 2: Dragon Puncher Island (No Flying No Tights) […]

    Reply
  2. Sailor Moon soars, Kurosagi reappears « MangaBlog says:
    October 20, 2011 at 8:08 am

    […] Flyte Lubbers Calderone-Sixse on The Book of Human Insects (When We Were Heroes) Kate Dacey on vol. 1 of Codename Sailor V (The Manga Critic) Sean Gaffney on vol. 1 of The Drops of God (A Case Suitable for Treatment) […]

    Reply
  3. Sailor Moon MMF: Day Two and Three Links says:
    December 29, 2011 at 5:31 am

    […] Dacey reviews the first Sailor V manga, finding it suits its intended age group […]

    Reply
  4. Manga Bookshelf | Introduction to Shoujo I’m Scared Of says:
    January 19, 2012 at 7:21 am

    […] I started to realise what I could write about. I remembered some of Kate Dacey’s coverage and reviews about Sailor Moon’s forthcoming re-release in North America. Sailor Moon has always scared me. […]

    Reply


Before leaving a comment at Manga Bookshelf, please read our Comment Policy.

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

 | Log in
Copyright © 2010 Manga Bookshelf | Powered by WordPress & the Genesis Framework
loading Cancel
Post was not sent - check your email addresses!
Email check failed, please try again
Sorry, your blog cannot share posts by email.