Manga is the Japanese word for a comic book or series. The Sailormoon
manga came first, and the anime is loosely based upon the manga. The comic began
in 1992 and appeared monthly in Nakayoshi, a serial published by Kodansha.
The manga was never really supposed to go past the second arc, the Black Moon
story, but Kodansha convinced Takeuchi to continue doing Sailormoon.
There are a total of 52 acts in 18 tankubon (volumes) covering five different story
arcs. There are also many special stories that don't count as acts and don't fit
into the storyline in any important way. These include the "Chibi-usa's Picture
Diary" series (four stories total); the Inner Senshi special stories in the Dream
arc (three total); "Casablanca Memories" focusing on Rei from the first series
(later reprinted in tankubon 11); tankubon 11 with "The Lover of Princess Kaguya";
and the special parody story in the Materials Collection artbook called
"Parallel Moon" which focuses on the children of the Inner Senshi- Kousagi, Mina,
Mako, Rei, and Ami- and their transformation into Sailor Senshi.
There are lots of major differences between the anime and the manga, many of which
become particularly apparent in the SuperS anime. There are characters in the
manga that never appear in the anime, some of whom play fairly important roles
(more or less). Characters who appear in both the anime and the manga can differ
in personality.
Codename wa Sailor V is about Minako and her life as Sailorvenus, or rather,
Sailor V. There are three tankubon covering this series. Sailor V started
off as a short story in Nakayoshi and was actually created before Bishoujo
Senshi Sailormoon. Several months after its debut, the Sailormoon
series started, and Sailor V later became an actual series. It was because of
Sailor V that Takeuchi-san created Sailormoon.
Takeuchi has done several other manga besides Sailormoon, mostly romantic
ones like Cherry Project and Miss Rain. After Sailormoon,
she did some things with the monthly publication Amie, and her first manga
series after Sailormoon was PQ Angels, which
appeared in Nakayosi. The manga series never finished, and Takeuchi left
Kodansha. Afterwards, she did a manga called Princess Naoko's Punch Return
to Society, and that basically just had stuff about her life. Takeuchi's
latest series were Toki*Meka and Love Witch.
Takeuchi is married to Yoshihiro Togashi, the mangaka of Yu Yu Hakushou
and Hunter X Hunter. They have a son.
Takeuchi has also released six commercially avaliable artbooks, the first five
being individual collections of artwork she has done for each story arc. The
sixth book is called the Material Collection book and features sketches and
original designs for nearly all of the characters that ever appeared in the manga.
There is a very rare seventh artbook, Volume Infinity, that is a collection of
doujinshi by Takeuchi, her staff, the Sailormoon seiyuu, some of the animator
leaders, Takeuchi's friends, musical actresses, and other people. The Infinity
volume is rare and very expensive if you can find it. She also collaborated with
other famous mangaka to release an artbook that featured each of their works.
Credits: All information on the original Japanese manga were collected
and summarized from the wonderful manga translations by
Alex Glover at
The Manga of Takeuchi Naoko, a great page and resource
for fans of Takeuchi's manga series.
Note: All info in this area is based on the original Japanese
manga and not Mixxzine (Tokyo Pop)'s poor commercial English
translations. Tokyo Pop's releases have tons of errors, use the dub
names and terms, and leave a lot of translations out. As one of
Tokyo Pop's first translations, it's also one of the worst.
