artists & authors: Naoko Takeuchi
Naoko Takeuchi is the creator of such series as Sailormoon (Bishoujo Senshi Sailormoon), Codename wa Sailor V, Prism Time, PQ Angels, The Cherry Project, Miss Rain, etc. All of her manga are shoujo, and based on girls mostly with skimpy costumes and supernatural powers like Sailormoon or Sailor V or the PQ Angels. Meanwhile, The Cherry Project and Prism Time and Miss Rain (is that the name of one of her series??) are about normal teenage girls you'd meet on the street...well, not quite, but you get what I mean.
I don't want to spend too much time on Naoko Takeuchi's work because it isn't my favorite stuff in the world...I mean, it's good and for a while I was really hooked (in the beginning...) but now it's sorta faded out and Sailormoon is really overrated and and and....well, it just seems a little tame after everything else I've read. Plus, it's too much of the girl-with-magic-powers thing. Personally I'd rather see some real fighting instead of a bunch of girls in these tiny little sailor-swimsuits yelling things about moon power and honeymoon kiss or whatever...and then zapping bad guys with bright flashes of light and like....yeah.
So anyway...I will write a brief summary about each of the series that I have, and then there will be links to each below. ok? Ok.
SAILORMOON
Sailormoon...in case you haven't heard of it (highly, HIGHLY unlikely) is about this bunch of girls in tiny sailor-swimsuit type things that go zapping bad guys in the name of the moon or some other planet in our solar system. It's probably the most famous of Naoko Takeuchi's works...the manga series is 18 volumes long, and the anime consists of...many different series like...the pre-R series...the R series...the S series...the Super S series...and finally the Sailor Stars series...
Basically the series starts out with a girl named Usagi Tsukino. She's a middle school student who becomes this crimefighter called Sailormoon with the help of this talking cat called Luna. Actually, Sailormoon is involved in this huge thing about finding all the other Sailors....there's Sailor Mercury, Sailor Venus, Sailor Mars, blahblahblah on down the line. She goes off on this search for the other sailors in an effort to find the Moon Princess, Princess Serenity, who they all serve. It's this whole thing about past lives and stuff, there used to be a kingdom on the Moon where Queen Serenity ruled....her daughter Princess Serenity fell in love with the Prince of the Earth, named Endymion. However, they knew they couldn't be together since they were from different planets, and then this handmaiden of the Prince who was in love with him...got jealous of them and like....gave herself over to the dark forces or something. Actually the anime's quite different but I'm going by the manga. And yeah...they have to battle the dark forces blahblah, and Princess Serenity of the Moon Kingdom turns out to be Usagi/Sailormoon (gee, that was a hard one) even though they thought it would be Sailor V at first....and Prince Endymion is this dude called Mamoru Chiba...who goes around as Tuxedo Kamen (known to those of you who watch the English dubbed sucky version as Tuxedo Mask) and like...is trying to get his memory back in the anime but actually is being led on by this recurring dream he has of some princess telling him to find this silver crystal....aiya, complex. Anyway, this series goes on...every time they beat a bad guy, a new one comes up with a different intent...mostly they just want to take over the earth mwahahaha, and then sailormoon and the gang have to put a stop to it of course. Plus someday Sailormoon and Tuxedo Kamen become a couple and rule this big kingdom called Crystal Tokyo together...blahblah. There's quite a lot of time travel and seeing into their past lives. Lots of reincarnation and self-sacrifice (suicide). But yeah, good guys always win, dude!
Codename wa Sailor V
I have not read or seen this series. I suppose it's about Sailor V, or Sailor Venus as she later became....she is this crimefighter and blahblah...i don't know. Sorry =)
Prism Time
Prism Time is a collection of short love stories. Some of them, like Rain Kiss or Love Call, are rather pretty and cute...others just make no sense cuz they're too dream-sequencey...others are sorta pointless...... But yeah, it's mostly about two people finding each other...through various strings of events...or finally confessing to each other when they've liked each other forever...or whatever. you know? yeah. uhhuh.
PQ Angels
PQ Angels is, I think, Naoko Takeuchi's most recent work...I'm not sure whether the series ended or not. It's this warped thing about these two girls, P and Q for short, who come from this planet of cockroaches or something. They become cockroaches...I forget when...and only turn back to humans when they kiss humans. =) They scare a lot of people that way. (cockroach lands on your MOUTH, and suddenly you're bowled over with this girl on you....errr...rather frightening, though for guys i don't know, maybe it turns them on) Anyway, they have this assignment to find this princess or something. I really don't remember, it's been a long time since I read the translations and I never got to get the manga. =) It's sorta wacky and funny though, cuz these two girls aren't really used to life on earth as humans...they have magical powers...they generate a house out of thin air and freak the neighbors out...they give a party but people arrive early and see this weird monster that is helping them get things ready...etc etc etc. =)
The Cherry Project
I probably like the Cherry Project the most out of all these series, maybe because I am getting tired of the others and plus I actually have this whole series. The Cherry Project is about this girl named Asuka Cherry (or Chieri, or however you want to spell it...) who has natural talent for figure skating. I mean, her father used to be a national champion, so I guess it's genetic. Anyway, she's been skating since she was little but just for fun...she'd go to the rink with her father every week. She was also a big big fan of this champion skater guy named Tsuzuki or something.
Anyway, Tsuzuki is looking for a partner so he can do pairs skating. This is his dream and has been for a long time but he just can't seem to find the partner he's looking for. His friends Kouichi and Hiroshi (Hiroshi composes music for Tsuzuki I think...Kouichi seems more of the managing choreographing type) try to help him find this partner. By consulting various databases or whatever and matching up horoscopes, they find Cherry. It seems like fate is leading them to her cuz...well, string of events and everything...Cherry crashes into Tsuzuki when she's attempting a triple axel...actually...it would've been a quadruple if she hadn't crashed into him....
Tsuzuki and his friends set about making Cherry into a champion figure skater. They decide she's got to be a champion at singles skating before attempting pairs....meanwhile she's got to compete with this teen champion Canty, who turns out to be Kouichi's little sister. She's called "Princess" and is another skating genius, and happens to be in love with Tsuzuki. She sees Cherry as competition...in more than one way...especially when Cherry jumps the first six levels in skating to qualify for competition...something that's only been done by Tsuzuki. Plus, Tsuzuki sorta favors Cherry and he does a lot of stuff for her, like he becomes Canty's coach at one point to make Canty better competition for Cherry so Cherry will learn to improve faster. Canty gets mad at being used like that. (I would too.)
Pretty neat...Cherry faces a lot of like...emotional trauma...it's a pretty stressful and confusing time for her, since she falls for Tsuzuki but is pretty unsure of what he feels for her. Knowing Takeuchi Naoko's style...what else can you expect but a happy ending?
I'd do another thing on Miss Rain, but I'm tired and I don't have the manga with me right now. =) I'll refer you to someone else.
LINK
I'm only going to put ONE link here...but it's a good one. If you'd like to look up more specific stuff on any of the series, go to the links I have on the Anime/Manga page...like Anime Web Turnpike or Otaku World or something. You'll find good stuff there.
The Manga of Takeuchi Naoko--I guarantee this site is GOOD! It has a ton of manga translations and information. I don't think there's stuff about the anime, but the only big big anime series of hers is Sailormoon and you can find stuff on that anywhere. Manga translations, on the other hand, are hard to find. SO, yes, bow down and thank me. ;) J/k....My friend referred me to this site so thank her.
go back to anime/manga now =)
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