Volume 7

Uranus stroking her sword with a "come hither" look.

Volume 7 stars Sailor Uranus, who is "both male and female" and who possesses a sword that lengthens during periods of excitement.

There was nothing about this volume that made me scream into the cold, pitiless night, and nothing that made me dance a merry jig on my balcony.  There were a lot of grammatical errors and typos, which freaks me out, but if I chew enough Prozac, I get by.

Remember how Tokyopop translated Ptilol's name as Petite Roll?  Shh, I know, it's painful to remember.  Well, Flanagan didn't repeat that error.  I remember before this reprint even started, people were worried about what would happen to some of these wacky names in the Infinity story arc.  We can now breathe a sigh of relief, because all the names have been properly translated.

On a totally unrelated note, and just because I have to follow every bit of praise with a complaint:

 

What is with Flanagan and the phrasal verb "put out"?  His obsession is not unique to this volume; he's used it before to say things like "why doesn't the Legendary Silver Crystal put out light?" (Wiseman in volume 4).  One feature of English is that it has a bajillion words.  I think it's the duty of a translator, writer, or anybody manipulating language to use them.  Why not use "bloom" instead of "put out a bud"?  Why not "giving off" or "producing" for what Luna's saying?  Why not "grown", "sold", "distributed", or whatever for the last panel?  It's just lame, clunky, and boring to fall back on the same words so much.

 

Now that I've put that out there, let's go into the details of this volume.

New York Comic Con & Kodansha's Panel

Hello Kitty Chun Li, me, my friend, and my fiance.

I attended New York Comic Con Friday and Saturday cosplaying as a green Converse-wearing Sailor Jupiter.  This was my first time at NYCC, and I was surprised by how well-represented anime and manga were by both the cosplaying attendees and the booths on the showroom floor.  There weren't many Sailor Moon cosplayers, but it's safe to say that most of them were present for Kodansha's panel.

If you'd like to watch the Sailor Moon segment of the panel, you can check out this Youtube video recorded by another, more dedicated Sailor Jupiter who was in attendance.  FUN FACT: At 10:28, after they finish reading Takeuchi's special letter to us American fans, you can hear me shout, "I love you, Naoko!"

Since I know you're all such uber fans, you likely have already heard that Kodansha will be releasing a new art book featuring selections from the 5 original Japanese books AND some "unpublished original drawings."  This book will be released simultaneously in 7 countries, and the bonus material will differ for each country, which means we'll just have to buy them all.  Read Kodansha's official announcement here.

I won't sit here and summarize everything else, because you can just watch the panel yourself.  I will say that the panel was a lot of fun, and the folks from Kodansha were all very jovial and good-natured. Someone did ask about correcting errors (at 8:12 in the Youtube video) but besides that, there wasn't any talk about the quality of the manga re-release.  I think it was better that way, because if people started throwing down about Princess Beryl, William Flanagan, and sloppy editing, the whole positive atmosphere would have been ruined.  As far as I'm concerned, Kodansha is on notice about the various problems present in the manga and have actually moved their arses to fix some of them (such as many of the facepalm-worthy issues in volume 1) thanks to fans' repeated complaints, so I didn't feel the need to pick a fight at this panel.

Afterwards, a bunch of Sailor Moon cosplayers met up to take some group pictures.  This was a lot of fun, and we attracted quite a crowd of onlookers snapping photos.  God knows where I'm going to show up on the Internet after that.  I saw a few more Sailor Moon cosplayers at other times during the convention, including two different Professor Tomoes, a musical version of Super Sailor Moon who was sporting a big Sailor Moon tattoo on her arm, and a seriously creepy Tuxedo Kamen.  No Sailor Uranus, though!



I'm rockin' those Chuck Taylor's

 

 

Elios's head got cut off.  Sorry, buddy.

Other remarks about the convention:
-The convention organizers said that bootlegs were not allowed, period.  Yet, I saw many bootlegs being sold.  See that stuffed Luna on the floor in the picture above?  Bootleg.  There was even one guy running a booth stocked with nothing but bootleg DVDs.
-Popular costumes included Finn from Adventure Time, Poison Ivy and Bane from Batman, Deadpool, and lots of people with candy corn-colored horns on their heads.
-Want to buy lots of cute stuffed things?  Go to NYCC.
-While riding up an escalator in a train station, a guy behind me asked me if I was Wonder Woman.  I said no, Sailor Jupiter from the series Sailor Moon.  He didn't know who I was talking, and then said, "so, I guess if I get into trouble, you can't save me."  To which I replied, "Of course I can!  Sailor Jupiter is a superhero, too!"

Now, how about my review of volume 7?  Well, we are about two weeks away from the release of volume 8, so you guys are going to get a double dose of analytical goodness real soon.  I guarantee volume 7 will be posted by Monday, October 22nd.  If it isn't, I will post my home address so that you can mail me angry letters, garbage, poop, or any other unpleasant thing.  I will then have volume 8 up within 2 weeks of the official release date.  If that doesn't happen, please refer to the previous note about mailing me crap.