Pretty Guardian Sailormoon Short Stories 2 (Japanese) by Naoko Takeuchi: C+

Book description:
This volume compiles the final three side stories associated with Sailormoon: “Parallel Sailor Moon,” “Casablanca Memory,” and “The Lover of Princess Kaguya,” the basis for the Sailor Moon S Movie.

“Parallel Sailor Moon” originally appeared in an artbook and follows the adventures of Tsukino Kousagi, the second daughter of Usagi in an alternate reality. “Casablanca Memory” (featuring Rei) and “Princess Kaguya” (featuring Luna) formed the original volume 11 in the first edition of the series.

Review:
While “The Lover of Princess Kaguya” is a decent story, there are some things about it that bug me. I know readers must accept the notion of magical girls with powers, guardian planets, et cetera. Fine. But even if those things do exist, that doesn’t mean that regular people must cease behaving like regular people. So, like, doctors shouldn’t be allowing random cats into hospital rooms, and astronauts shouldn’t be “ho-hum, that cat just showed me her name by pointing to a picture of a lunar rover in a magazine.”

I didn’t really much care for “Casablanca Memory” or “Parallel Sailor Moon.” The former is alright, showing a glimpse of Rei’s relationship with her dad, but it just had to include an enemy. It probably would’ve been better without it. “Parallel Sailor Moon” includes some eventual offspring of the senshi, and they are wholly bratty and unpleasant. Only the plethora of cats made this one even remotely cute.

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Comments

  1. I didn’t realize the reprints of Sailor Moon stuffed all the short stories into the last two books. I don’t recall liking any of them, so I’m kinda glad I didn’t spontaneously buy these reprints, especially since I would have started with the last few volumes and assumed they were the Sailor Star series. I seem to remember that Casablanca Memory was one of my favorites among these stories, but even all these years later, I still hate Chibiusa’s Picture Diary with a passion.

  2. I can’t summon passion about any of them, either good or bad. 🙂

    These two volumes have slightly different title and begin anew with the numbering scheme, so you probably would’ve been okay just buying the last few of the other volumes. I, too, love Stars though I think I actually prefer the anime simply for larger amounts of Seiya!

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