In celebration of how President Obama publicly declared his support for same-sex marriage this month, the cover of this volume features Sailor Venus hurling rainbows at your face.
I found this volume to be a significant improvement over the last volume. There are less instances of weird, clunky language and no major misrepresentations of the original content. The new translation surpasses Tokyopop's in quality much more often than not. If future volumes continue this pattern, I think I'll be satisfied.
Nevertheless, two problems became readily apparent the day this book was released: an inexplicable lack of translation notes and some nasty printing issues where the ink looks horribly smudged on several pages. Flanagan certainly hasn't had trouble filling up respectably-sized sections of translation notes, sometimes with entries of questionable value--writing about Tokyo Tower twice and explaining that the Crown Game Center's phone number isn't a real working number come to mind--so I'm puzzled as to why we have nothing to read at the end of this book besides the preview for the next volume. Worsening this situation is the fact that the advertisements for volume 5 feature the same promise to deliver "incredibly detailed translation notes!" As for the ink splotching / splattering, this only seems to have affected a small batch of books. My copy is fine except for a couple of slightly smeared words.
For this entry, I will first talk about the improvements, then I'll talk about the problems, and then I have some thoughts to share about the story itself, irrespective of the English adaptations.
