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Reviews tagging 'Transphobia'
コードネームはセーラーV 新装版 1 Codename: Sailor V Shinsōban 1 by Naoko Takeuchi, 武内 直子
1 review
roach's review against another edition
adventurous
funny
lighthearted
fast-paced
2.0
I don't like the police much. They're so arrogant.
(Quote translated from German.)
I'm absolutely not the target audience and I wouldn't have read this Sailor Moon spin-off manga if my niece hadn't wanted it for her birthday. But seeing that she is such a huge fan of the franchise right now and I'm remembering watching some episodes of the show myself when I was a kid, I was curious to read this one before I had to wrap it up for the birthday party.
To me, the Sailor Moon franchise has always been an odd mix of surprisingly progressive and oddly reductive themes, flip-flopping between an empowering breaking of gender norms and an awkward clinging to stereotypes.
I've been wondering if my outside point of view was accurate or not, but at least judging from this single volume of Sailor Venus prequel stories, that seemed about right.
I don't know how much of this spin-off's style and storytelling varies from the original series, but Codename: Sailor V follows a very repetitive formula throughout each little story. When it comes to the magical girl action, every enemy basically did the same thing of stealing people's energy and turning them into mind-controlled minions for Sailor Venus to fight and it doesn't care to deviate from that in a single story. I know this is written for young teens, but I did expect or hope for a bit more variety. I remember liking the monster-of-the-week aspect of the original show when I was a kid, so this volume was a bit disappointing in that regard.
It also frequently dives head-first into gender stereotypes about what makes a "real girl" and where they belong or not. Sometimes those themes are set up to be challenged by the way of the main character rebelling against them and at other times they are just taken for full. The whole subject of gender-conformable behavior even went so far that this book, at least in the German translation, had a kind of awkward argument where one character jokes about another being trans, which came unexpectedly.
There are also odd things like using Egyptian hieroglyphs to symbolize Greece for no reason, which I hope was just a joke lost in translation and not a genuine error.
Again, like I said, I'm not at all part of the target audience and this was more a curiosity read out of happenstance than anything else, so take this whole review with a grain of salt if you're a fan of it. I think there is much worse that teens could read.
I'm absolutely not the target audience and I wouldn't have read this Sailor Moon spin-off manga if my niece hadn't wanted it for her birthday. But seeing that she is such a huge fan of the franchise right now and I'm remembering watching some episodes of the show myself when I was a kid, I was curious to read this one before I had to wrap it up for the birthday party.
To me, the Sailor Moon franchise has always been an odd mix of surprisingly progressive and oddly reductive themes, flip-flopping between an empowering breaking of gender norms and an awkward clinging to stereotypes.
I've been wondering if my outside point of view was accurate or not, but at least judging from this single volume of Sailor Venus prequel stories, that seemed about right.
I don't know how much of this spin-off's style and storytelling varies from the original series, but Codename: Sailor V follows a very repetitive formula throughout each little story. When it comes to the magical girl action, every enemy basically did the same thing of stealing people's energy and turning them into mind-controlled minions for Sailor Venus to fight and it doesn't care to deviate from that in a single story. I know this is written for young teens, but I did expect or hope for a bit more variety. I remember liking the monster-of-the-week aspect of the original show when I was a kid, so this volume was a bit disappointing in that regard.
It also frequently dives head-first into gender stereotypes about what makes a "real girl" and where they belong or not. Sometimes those themes are set up to be challenged by the way of the main character rebelling against them and at other times they are just taken for full. The whole subject of gender-conformable behavior even went so far that this book, at least in the German translation, had a kind of awkward argument where one character jokes about another being trans, which came unexpectedly.
There are also odd things like using Egyptian hieroglyphs to symbolize Greece for no reason, which I hope was just a joke lost in translation and not a genuine error.
Again, like I said, I'm not at all part of the target audience and this was more a curiosity read out of happenstance than anything else, so take this whole review with a grain of salt if you're a fan of it. I think there is much worse that teens could read.
Content Warnings
Moderate: Transphobia
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