If you ever wanted to read what a 30-year-old dude thinks of the Sailor Moon manga, here’s your chance. It’s your lucky day! I’m pretty sure my flirtations with shoujo material are well documented, at least among certain friends. I used to own the out-of-print ADV collection 1 of the subbed Sailor Moon anime, but I ended up selling it for beaucoup bux.
Thanks to my job I’ve probably consumed more comics aimed at young Japanese boys and girls over the years than is even remotely healthy. It’s kind of interesting to note the differences between the two once you become intimately familiar with their gimmicks. Shoujo manga is, by its very nature, super flowery and ornate. There’s so much going on from panel to panel that would otherwise be seen as superfluous.
For a more purely visual take on the genre, I highly recommend this tumblr.
Here’s a good example. Sorry it’s from some stupid fan-translated pirate version or whatever but I didn’t feel like scanning anything and just grabbed it from Google image search:
The borders. The word bubbles. The stamped patterns. It’s like the manga equivalent of bedazzling a pair of jeans. Naoko Takeuchi’s style of storytelling is pretty briskly paced and fun to read, though, and Sailor Moon holds at its core a pretty typical monster/villain of the week formula.
There, I’ve only had this new blog for maybe a week and I’ve already jumped into a frilly pink outfit that I may never be able to pry off my body. Stay tuned for some more manly stuff. Maybe.
subhumanzoids 