The anime was a part of my childhood and the manga became serialized for a second time when I was in Highschool. This is one of the few manga series that I own in its entirety, though I still can't call it my favorite series, even if we're just taking the graphic novel medium into consideration. That's because there are many flaws with this series that become very relevant the more times you read it, which makes it so that it's not the best series to re-read, at least not for me. But I'm here to write a short review of the series and I did give it an 8 on my overall rating of it, so it still does hold a place in my favorites.

-----------

The Bad:

The biggest thing that's bugged me since I started reading this series in high school was the length of every female character's legs and the fact that every character looks vastly older than they are. In the first volume, Takeuchi introduces Usagi as a 14-year-old girl but I'd have trouble understanding that for a couple of reasons. I know what 14-year-old girls look like and that's not it. These designs make a lot more sense for characters like Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto or any of the other adult characters, but no for the bodies of these still-developing teenage girls.

Another aspect of the designs that I'm not too fond of is that you don't really have any differentiation between the designs of different characters when it comes to their physical builds. Even when we get the "guyish" senshi, they only end up being taller and maybe having larger breasts. We don't have a heavy set senshi, or an overly short senshi, or a really tall and lanky senshi. Some variance other than breast size would be nice.

Now onto my gripes with the story. Well, this is a bit of a comparison to the anime, which I know is wrong to do, but the villains pale in comparison to their anime counterparts. The four generals in the first arc didn't have their own individual personalities, nor did Beryl. The same can be said for pretty much every other villain in the franchise until we get to the fourth arc, which I'll talk about in the good section of this review. The supporting cast also tends to suffer in characterization until the fourth arc (when they're separated from Usagi and have to deal with their own inner demons).

But that's about it for the bad.

----------------

The Good:

The story for Sailor Moon is, for the most part, very good. It's hard to really talk about it without going into a full analysis of the series but you'll just have to take my word for it in this case.

Even though the rest of the series doesn't do characterization very well, I do honestly think that fourth and fifth arcs make up for the lost ground with the amount of character development that we get for each member of the supporting cast right before killing them all off in the final. Even though the series ends with each character dying twice and Usagi (arguably) choosing paradise over starting over with her life again, it's written in such a way that makes sense if you're capable of reading between the lines. A lot of revealed about the lore of the Sailor Moon in these arcs that isn't translated into the anime and Galaxia is a lot more ruthless in this version of the story.

Now onto the designs I actually really liked. Galaxia looks identical to her anime counterpart and the design really suits her. The same can be said for Princess Kakyuu, who, while still having a small role, has a much bigger role in manga as well. I also like how the Starlights masquerade as men during the day but are completely female during the night, they don't just change genders.

And I do actually really enjoy this series, it keeps me entertained from beginning to end, and even though I can see the many flaws in the series, I do still really love it.