Analyzing the new Sailor Moon manga - #3

As we wrote about a while back, the Sailor Moon manga are being re-released with a number of new updates. Ian Miller, of DIES GAUDII fame, has written up for us a list of differences between the third volume of the new manga, and the previous version of the tankoubon. Forum member DoseiNoSenshi, of... uh... Forum Rank Contest Winner fame, has gracefully provided the pictures.

So lets look at Ian's notes on the new manga.

Style and bonuses:

The title text on the third cover is elevated off the paper like on the covers of the first two books. The outfit that Sailor Mars wears on the cover is the one that she begins to wear in the Dead Moon part of the manga. (In the manga, Sailor Mars still has the name Sailor Mars when she wears that outfit. More words do not get tacked onto "Sailor Mars." "Eternal Sailor Mars," "Sailor Star Mars," "Star Sailor Mars," and such are all fan-created names.)

There is a mini cover over the main cover that advertises the upcoming live-action series. Much like the other advertising covers on the first two volumes, the advertising cover on the third volume is removable. One prominent phrase appears on the cover in yellow text: 

Haihîru de, oshiokiyo, which means "With high heels, I will punish you."

That is a Sailor Mars speech, so it looks like those mini covers are featuring different battle speeches of different sailor soldiers.

There is a page of stickers. Six of the front pages are in color. Two of the six colored pages feature most of the characters who appear in the Dark Kingdom Part of the manga. The names of those characters can be found here:

http://antares7.prettyodango.net/articles/all-character/volume1.html

That list used to say "Queen Metallia," but I have changed it to "Queen Metaria." The reason that I changed the spelling is...

"Queen Metaria" appears on the Contents page and on the Act 12 title page. In the original version of the manga, Act 12 has the title "Decisive Battle -- Reincarnation." In the new version, Act 12 has the title "Enemy Queen Metaria." We can explain “METARIA” spelling. In the manga, the characters mention that the evil creature was confined deep within Earth. Sailor Venus also carries around a sword in that part of the manga. Luna says, “What is written on the sword is the method for the seal” that will seal away the evil creature. When the creature was confined, the seal acted as the boundary between the creature and the outside world. The Latin word metaria is feminine and it means "of boundaries" or "belonging to boundaries." (The masculine version of the word is metarius.) The Latin word can describe the femininity implied by the “QUEEN” in “QUEEN METARIA,” and it can describe the boundary between the creature and the outside world. In other words, Metaria is metaria when “she” is inside the seal. The “METARIA” spelling could simply be the transliteration of the katakana-character combination that approximates Metallia or Metalia.

Many of the pictures of Queen Metaria in volumes 1, 2, and 3 are blurred. In the original version of the manga, those pictures do not have the blur.

Page 71 of the book shows a picture of the moon that is different from its counterpart in the original version of the manga.

The old and new versions of the manga show a katakana-character combination that can be romanized as Mâre Serenitatisu, which is evidently an approximation of the Latin phrase Mare Serenitatis, meaning "Sea of Serenity." Mare Serenitatis is a lunar mare (Latin: "sea") that is near Mare Imbrium ("Sea of Showers"). There is at least one part of the Mixx/Tokoypop version of the Sailor Moon manga that shows "Mare Serenitas." The problem with "Mare Serenitas" is that it means "Sea Serenity." Serenitas means "serenity," but it needs to be changed to serenitatis if the phrase is supposed to mean "Sea of Serenity."

(Incidentally, the manga shows the Japanese phrase hare no umi near the katakana-character combination that can be romanized as Mâre Serenitatisu. Hare no umi means "sea of fair weather." That may not seem like a Japanese translation of the Latin phrase, but it can be. Mare Serenitatis, in Latin, can also mean "Sea of Fair Weather.")

There are 5 acts included in the volume three of the new version of the manga:

Act 12: Enemy Queen Metaria
Act 13: Decisive Battle -- Reincarnation
Act 14: Ending and Beginning -- Petit Étranger
Act 15: Invasion -- Sailor Mars
Act 16: Abduction -- Sailor Mercury 

There are 3 acts in volume three of the original version:

Act 10: Moon
Act 11: Reunion -- Endymion
Act 12: Decisive Battle -- Reincarnation

Notice the spaces in "Sailor Mars" and "Sailor Mercury." Act 2 and Act 3 of the new version of the manga show the names without spaces: "SAILORMERCURY" and "SAILORMARS." The names Kôan and Berthier do not appear in the titles of acts 15 and 16.

Chibi Usa appears near the end of Act 14: Ending and Beginning -- Petit Étranger. Some people may say that the phrase should be Petite Étrangère if it refers to Chibi Usa. Although Petite Étrangère is correct if we are talking about Chibi Usa (since she is a girl), it is not necessarily incorrect to refer to her as Petit Étranger. Petit Étranger is the masculine or generic form of the phrase. It could be that Naoko Takeuchi did not wish to specify the sex of the new character in her title.

Page 230 shows Sailor Jupiter performing her Sparking Wide Pressure maneuver. That maneuver now seems to involve flowers because flower-like shapes appear around her when she performs it.

Kôan (one of the sisters of the Black Moon) appears in this book. Some people refer to her as "Cooan." The "Cooan" spelling obfuscates the origin of the name. Since that spelling begins with a "C," it looks as if the name is something besides Japanese. Some people subscribe the mistaken notion that terms that are written in katakana characters are not Japanese. However, katakana characters can be used to write Japanese terms. Ms. Takeuchi wrote the first two kanji in Kôankô (Kermesite) and used the katakana-character combination for Kôan as furigana:

http://antares7.prettyodango.net/off/kak.gif

The first kanji means "crimson" or "red," and the second kanji is an abbreviation for "antimony." Kôan may be an abbreviation of "Red Antimony," which is often used to refer to the mineral Kermesite. It has been claimed that "Cooan" appears on a piece of merchandise, but nobody has told me what the piece of merchandise is.

Many thanks to Ian Miller for that write up and to DoseiNoSenshi for the scans. He did a few more of them which you can find by poking around the BSSM category of the forums.

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