Currently Reading - Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon by Naoko Takeuchi

Act 2: Ami, Sailor Mercury

I found this chapter a bit confusing to follow. I suppose it is appropriate to mention now that I am not habitually a reader of graphic fiction and perhaps do not have the reading tools to fully understand them. Especially, I tend to relatively ignore the images in favour of the text (I think of myself as a not very visual person).

Think this is the first appearance of Queen Beryl? Or whatever her name turns out to actually be, as Jadeite only names himself.

I do like the frankness of Usagi’s self-description. She does not seem to have any illusions about herself, or aspiration beyond living her life (which is feeling like an ambitious enough goal from here). Had to look up what ‘middle school’ refers to, although Wikipedia didn’t really explain. I suppose in this case “2nd year of middle school” means 8th grade / Year 8? Since that does not quite accord with how the Wikipedian explanation of Japanese education goes, I figure either the Wikipedia article is incomplete in its coverage, or this is an English language localisation that is too local for me.

Amused by the complete lack of realisation on everyone’s part that Usagi may herself be the missing princess. Unless my scattered memories of watching the show as a kid have misled me.

There’s a mention of Usagi’s father. I’d assumed her mother was a single parent up to this point.

Also the way Luna arranged Usagi and Ami to meet was cute, although it raises questions about how she knows who the allies are and in what order to find them. Sure, we saw her at a computer earlier but that just raises further questions.

Lots of those remarks above because I had to delay writing this after reading the story on account of being sick and having assignments due. So, I’d forgotten a lot of my impressions and went and reread the chapter to try and capture them back again and noted down a bit of point by point until I got some feel for it back.

I was a bit confused about the timing of this story but I suppose there must have been a ‘next day’ transition I did not catch, because it seemed to go straight from after school to during school again and then after school yet again.

Also a bit confused about whether or not Ami had been brainwashed because at first she seems to have been and then later not. Also, wherefore there came to be an obscuring mist at a pen toss, and that Ami got transformed into Sailor Mercury without any apparent awareness of this.

Was irked by Sailor Moon mooning over Tuxedo Mask again and forgetting herself; that romance thread still doing nothing for me. Touched by Ami’s apparent lack of self esteem and seeing value in herself only through academic performance. And found very cute Usagi’s delight at the end in discovering they’d just rescued Sailor Mercury to fight alongside her, that she’d had no clue what was going on beyond her determination to rescue a new friend is… simultaneously vexing and sweet.