2026 REREAD:
WELCOME TO SEPTEMBER MOON!
We have now arrived, way back at the beginning, of 'Sailor Moon' before Sailor Moon - 'Codename: Sailor V' (I know for certain now there's a colon in that title).
Wow is 'Codename: Sailor V, Vol. 1' - translated into English by Kodansha Comics - silly, cartoony, chaotic and OTT. It is rather messy, rough and repetitive. I wouldn't say it's derivative, since, while the sentai formula in Japan had been established for twenty years up until the manga's release in 1991, it was unusual at the time for the genre to star a female protagonist. Even keeping in mind that you are clearly not supposed to take 'Codename: Sailor V' seriously in the slightest, and it is mostly a comedy, the comedic elements don't always land well.
You can definitely tell Naoko Takeuchi was getting started on the writing and art departments, and that she would iron out her flaws, and refine her craft, through continuous practice - in time to create 'Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon' as we know it.
Both 'Sailor Moon' and 'Sailor V' star very flawed young heroines. Usagi is academically lazy, sensitive, and a crybaby, and Minako is almost like Harley Quinn, in how OTT, jokey, outrageous, selfish, and athletic she is. She is also not bothered with schoolwork, in a devil-may-care kind of attitude, and is unabashedly and unashamedly lovesick and boy crazy - not shy at all. One big difference between the girls is that Usagi is nice, friendly, genuine, and unselfish when she needs to be, while Mina is... not so much. She is much more self-centred, rude, and borderline mean, and even as narcissistic as you'd expect someone connected to the goddess Venus would be. Mina is not above cheating and stepping over and on people to get what she wants. She can be obnoxious, which I understand can be a turnoff for some readers. But these are flaws she is working on herself, slowly but surely, as realistically as a modern thirteen-year-old can - for her to be the future responsible leader of the Inner Solar System Sailor Guardians. Through all her faults, Mina/Sailor V can be legit funny sometimes, too. Many of her disguises are hilarious.
The noticeable things the two Sailor protags have in common are their gender, age, hair, eye colour, hatred of studying, and love of video games.
The manga is sexist and problematic for its time, even though Mina/Sailor V does subvert a lot of gender norms and stereotypes. There is the obsession with feminine beauty and upholding conventional attraction standards. One notable feature in 'Vol. 1' that holds up, however, is the entirety of the second chapter, 'Minako in "Game Center Crown"', which is about incels, and the toxic, exclusionary male gamer community. Over twenty years later, it would have been a great response to #GamerGate. The chapter depicts so many areas of misogyny in gaming culture, and other mediums in pop culture, and the internet, back when the internet was barely a thing. It is deeply tragic and depressing how much it still resonates today, in current year 2026.
Other notes:
Takeuchi-sensei would reuse characters designs and draw characters too similarly, especially for her light-haired human males. Mina's best friend Hikaru looks exactly like Ami/Sailor Mercury, and Amano is Umino, pretty much. None of Mina's friends are seen or mentioned in 'Sailor Moon'. How much of her old life disappears or doesn't matter in the sequel series?
Usagi and Naru make a couple of cameo appearances, as schoolgirls who go to the arcade. Rei appears once as well. I can't believe I didn't remember that. Takeuchi-sensei really did plan ahead. She must have always intended Sailor Moon to be a thing, with this manga's moon theme; such as Sailor V's crescent moon mark on her forehead, and her crescent moon-shaped, mirror-true-form compact, that shoots out a "Crescent Beam", and her "Moon Power: Transform" and communicator pen.
Furuhata, the arcade guy who nearly all the Sailor girls have a crush on, has been working there even back in 'Sailor V'.
Mina - and the manga and Takeuchi-sensei - are/were obsessed with video games and pop idols, and they are the primary source of inspiration and conflict in the whole manga volume.
However, there are parody elements when showcasing both subjects, and when it comes to idols, we get this pointed and relevant line from the villain Fluorite: "Using idols... to brainwash the people is the perfect method! We can suck out nearly limitless energy... and rake in the money at the same time." It's an accurate way to describe capitalism.
It is established early on that Mina's number one ambition is to be an idol, which doesn't change throughout 'Sailor V' and 'Sailor Moon'.
A major repetitive element and pattern is the villains - who we know nothing about at this point, other than they are called "the Dark Agency", and are aliens (?) - and their plots-of-the-week. It's all about draining human energy and brainwashing them into slaves, in hopes of taking over the world. It's similar to the first arc of 'Sailor Moon', only it's much more egregious, hectic, predictable and poorly planned out in 'Sailor V'. Who are Danburite and Fluorite? Why is Kunzite mentioned? Is the Dark Agency related to the Dark Kingdom after all? How, exactly? Do we find out for sure in the next volume?
Toshio Wakagi, a cute but angry and serious young police detective, has it in for Sailor V, for making cops look bad. And he's suspicious of her overall. He's the Chase Devineaux to Sailor V's Carmen Sandiego. His boss, who is just called Inspector General, is a capable and enthusiastic woman, and a secret fangirl of Sailor V. Lots of comedic potential is met in this area of the manga. Plus it's a sign of how Sailor V is exposed and open to the public, not only in how she has fans, but in how the law enforcement in Tokyo would be on her case. This doesn't carry forward to 'Sailor Moon' in the least. Police barely exist in the sequel series.
Mina has both parents who are present, and she never seems to get along with her family.
When Artemis first explains to Mina that she is Sailor Venus, and is destined to be a Champion of Justice on Earth, he actually shows her, from space, both Earth and Venus. He also shows her she has her own castle floating around Venus, called "Magellan". I recall this only ever coming up again at the end of the Dead Moon Circus arc in 'Sailor Moon', which is ages away. This much comes back, huh?
Is Artemis's "Boss" Queen Serenity? Is that where this is going? Was planned from the beginning?
After Sailor V defeats her first enemy in the first chapter - a guy she had a crush on who turned out to be a literal monster to girls - she cries. Art comforts her. It's a brief but human moment for her.
In the particularly silly, chaotic, yet still pretty funny seventh chapter, 'Sailor V on Vacation--Desire for Hawaii!', Mina ends up in Greece by accident, and finds she likes it there. The ruins, the temples, the air, she describes it as a recollection, or "a memory of a previous life", as Artemis puts it. And a tourist tells Sailor V that a temple suits her, like she belongs to the place. This is clearly meant to be a part of Mina/Sailor V's connection to the goddess Venus, as she was "born under the protection of the Goddess of Beauty" (Art again, in the first chapter). But was it intended to be foreshadowing her future role as Sailor Venus, the reincarnated Sailor Guardian, Protector and Princess of the planet Venus? The goddess Venus herself is hardly mentioned, if at all, throughout 'Sailor Moon'; where does she fit into the planetary Guardian and Princess business?
I quite like the eighth and final chapter, 'Love on the Boulevard--Full Throttle Turbo'. It contains smatterings of sincerity and character development. Except, Sailor V describes the female villain-of-the-week as: "An evil woman who pollutes the world of duty and obligation felt by the manliest of men!" There are so many things wrong with that line, and how it has not aged well, I don't even know where to begin. So I won't. Moving on. But at least it then demonstrates how the male juvenile delinquents in question continue to be violent even when they are no longer under the woman's control, so all the blame cannot be placed on her. It's toxic masculinity, male entitlement, and the enabling, condoning and encouraging patriarchal system that favours men and hates women that are the true cause of men ruining the Earth, for themselves as well as others.
Mina uses her transformation pen to disguise herself as a male idol at one point. Girls crossdressing as guys has always been a recurring feature in this franchise of Takeuchi-sensei's. Down with gender norms, and the gender binary!
Yeah, 'Codename: Sailor V, Vol. 1 ' is a stupid mess, that's like a Saturday morning cartoon from the '80s to the early '90s. But it is a guilty pleasure for me. There are genuinely funny moments here and there, and I am forever for unconventional and "unlikeable" heroines; from the early '90s and beyond.
It's reasonable to assume that 'Codename: Sailor V' never grew in popularity, nor received an anime adaptation, nor helped define a generation and practically create and influence a whole genre of manga and anime, like 'Sailor Moon' did, because it is unserious, unfocused and haphazard. 'Sailor Moon' has its unserious, comedic, light breather moments, too, but not to the extent of taking over everything; over the parts that should be taken seriously, in high stakes situations. 'Sailor Moon' also has much better, more refined artwork, to aid in its success.
Read my original review below for further thoughts and points of discussion.
Welp, on to 'Codename: Sailor V, Vol. 2' next, where we might see glimpses of the Minako/Sailor Venus we know and love from 'Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon', even if it'll take a while. She will eventually mature, while remaining goofy and a little selfish and self-centred, and become someone who has rightfully earned the titles of Champion of Love and Justice, and Sailor/Planetary Guardian. It requires patience, experience, learning and confidence - for both her and her creator.
FYI, don't put so much pressure and expectations on a thirteen-year-old's shoulders.
Happy September Moon.
Final Score: 3.5/5
Original Review:
Before Sailor Moon, there was Sailor Venus, or Sailor V as she was called back in her old adventures (I'm not sure why, personally).
'Codename: Sailor V, Vol 1' (really, why the codename? She already has a superheroine alter ego. I guess one less syllable to her name would make her more marketable). Anyway, 'Sailor V, Vol 1' was where Naoko Takeuchi started off in what would become her biggest, most phenomenal hit about cosmic girls in cute sailor outfits fighting the forces of pure evil and darkness. Despite being a 'Sailor Moon' fan, I'd been reluctant to buy the prequel, because I never thought much about Sailor Venus as a character. But the manga ended up being a very entertaining and hilarious read, where almost nothing makes sense and concepts such as logic and prioritizing are Sailor V-kicked right in the crotch.
Sometime in the future, I plan to write a review of each of the renewed manga volumes of 'Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon'. The prequel volumes seem like a good place to start. It won't be much, since 'Codename: Sailor V' isn't deep at all, but I'm excited to get started.
The first thing to talk about regarding this manga is Sailor V herself. Minako "Mina" Aino is a thirteen-year-old Japanese middle school student. She's beautiful, but isn't a typical girl of the late eighties: She's athletic but lazy in the brain department; she likes to sleep and eat and go shopping; but above all she loves video games and the arcade. For even back when video games were not such a globally-recognised medium, girls made up a lot of their players and fanbases. Mina faces scrutiny for being so unlike a girl because she is tough and good at games, and a few people even accuse her of being a boy (gender stereotyping at its finest!).
One day Mina is met by a talking cat named Artemis, and her life changes overnight as she reluctantly becomes the Champion of Justice - and the protector of the Earth and Venus - Sailor Venus!
Minako is an absolute hoot in this manga. We get to see what she was like before she became the brave, smart and competent Sailor warrior we know her from 'Sailor Moon'. She was a fairly normal teenage girl who liked to goof off a lot. People like to point out her similarities to Usagi Tsukino. But I don't think they're that derivative of one another. Mina is an athlete; confident, graceful, and very silly. She rarely cries, and when she does she is ashamed of showing weakness and learns to overcome it. Usagi is much more clumsy and less confident; with no obvious talents or restraints. She is the sort of person to let all her feelings out and cry on the spot.
Reading 'Codename: Sailor V' definitely made me like Sailor Venus a whole lot more than in 'Sailor Moon'. I just love Mina's ridiculousness, and her screwed-up priorities.
Examples of said screwed-up priorities include:
- After taking a shower, she finds a cat. The cat talks to her. Her first reaction to this is kicking it out of the window... because it's a "pervert".
- She wears a red ribbon in her hair because a boy she'd known was a villain-of-the-week had suggested it to her.
- She spends most of her time in the game center instead of studying and training to fight her enemies (quite ingeniously, Mina's cat mentor Artemis turns the 'Sailor V' arcade game into a means of training for Sailor V herself).
- She transforms into Sailor V to stop some kids bullying other kids on the street... because they'll make her be late for school. (She gives the bullies possible concussions with her V-kicks - in the words of Little Kuriboh, "Our protagonist, ladies and gentlemen!").
- She cares more about bands and pop idols than potential (meaning: bloody obvious) threats from monsters out to brainwash and suck her hometown and the people she loves dry.
- She exclaims that brainwashing people of all demographics is... Immoral? Sick? Evil? A violation? Nope - she says it's greedy!
- She wants to go on a trip to Hawaii... when there is the certain matter of evil space aliens in Japan who she must fight.
There are other case-and-points of Minako's exploits (and no doubt she takes after her hypocritical mother). But my point is that they make this thirteen-year-old all the more fun and enjoyable to read about.
'Codename: Sailor V' has a parody element to it that I did not expect. It came out at a time in Japan when computers, video games, pop idols and teenage delinquents really were a big thing, and it shows. But not in a way that looks dated through today's lenses. Naoko Takeuchi took popular Japanese pop culture references and both celebrated and made fun of them (to the point where "otaku-ism" is rather shamelessly targeted). Even American icons such as Jason Voorhees and the Terminator are referenced at one point. However, structurally Takeuchi-sensei never forgot to just write a silly, episodic and cool Sentai manga - which happens to have a female hero.
It seems a bit meaningless to talk about the negatives, when of course nothing in 'Codemane: Sailor V' is meant to be taking seriously. But specifically I'll mention the main weakness: Its repetitiveness. The first six chapters are very formulaic and even a few of them revolve around evil pop idols doing the exact same thing (they even look alike and have similar names) - and yet Minako, even excusing her dimwitted-ness, is given no incentive not to catch on. I know villain-of-the-week plotlines are basically what made Sentai manga and anime what they are, but a different setting and varied villain plan would be called for at least. However, things really start to pick up in chapters seven and eight; where, respectively, Sailor V is in Greece, and crushes on a street delinquent.
Another negative is that the villains - of the "Dark Agency" - have no origin or backstory whatsoever. We know nothing about them, nor why they want to take over the world and make human slaves and drain their energy. At least we are given a hint of the Dark Kingdom's motivations in the first volume of 'Sailor Moon'. And Artemis's purpose is vague at this point in the saga as well. He mentions a "duty" which Sailor V has to get ready for, and there's a "Boss" who talks to Minako through her transformation pen. 'Sailor V, Vol 1' is just that: the first volume. So withholding information from the protagonist (and hence the reader) is forgivable. Plus it leads to another funny Minako moment where - after being dropped into the lair under the 'Sailor V' arcade game - she tries to persuade the Boss (a computer) to tell her what is going on. She cries - but it's only fake tears, and it doesn't work.
Also, there are quite a few grown men and creepy guys in this manga who are far too interested in Sailor V and her short skirt. I remind you that she is meant to be thirteen-years-old...
But back to the positives. The artwork in 'Codename: Sailor V' is great. Like in 'Sailor Moon', the style is stunningly graceful but very expressive and anime-esque - a perfect fit for a comedic and action-packed series revolving around a heroine who's related to the Greek goddess of Venus.
Usagi and her friend Naru - and Rei Hino - make cameo appearances in this volume, and the appearances of the Inspector General, Mina's best friend Hikaru, and her nerdy friend Amano, all show how Takeuch-sensei will develop her story in the future (the Inspector General looks like Sailor Mars, Hikaru like Sailor Mercury, and Amano is whom Umino will become an expy of). Even the game center owner, Furuhata, is in this.
The panels involving the police force are very funny as we get to see how angry the head of the police department is at Sailor V. For she always stops criminals before he arrives at the scene of the crime. And she gets into big trouble for screwing up and causing property damage.
The last chapter - about Minako's "first love" - is quite touching. That is, if you throw logic right out the window.
Really, 'Codename: Sailor V' is such an adorable, side-splitting and colourful read. And it is nice to see how everyone's favourite Moon princess in a sailor outfit came to fruition. It's plain silly fun, and just what a comic book from the golden years is like. I have a new-found respect for Sailor Venus, and I look forward to reading her final lone adventures in Volume 2.
Final Score: 4/5
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