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Kodansha USA to Publish Sailor Moon, Sailor V Manga

posted on by Gia Manry
September return of Naoko Takeuchi's magical girl series after 6 years out of print

Kodansha USA Publishing announced on Friday that its Kodansha Comics imprint will publish Naoko Takeuchi's Sailor Moon magical girl manga and its two-volume prequel Codename: Sailor V starting this September. The former has been condensed into 12 bi-monthly "deluxe-edition" volumes (from its original 18), and two more volumes of short stories have been added.

The new edition — with "new cover art, retouched interior art and dialogue along with extensive bonus material from Takeuchi" — is based on the 2003 Japanese re-release of the manga.

The 1991 manga Codename: Sailor V revolves around middle schooler Minako Aino, a magical girl and crime fighter. In the more well-known 1992 Sailor Moon series, Minako Aino is the side character "Sailor V" while Usagi Tsukino ("Bunny" in the previous English-language manga edition and "Serena" in the English version of the television anime adaptation) takes the lead role, the titular Sailor Moon.

Mixx Entertainment (now called Tokyopop) licensed the manga for English release in North America, but the series has been out of print for six years. Codename: Sailor V has never had an official English-language release in North America.

In 1992, Toei Animation premiered a television anime adaptation that would run through 1997, and then be dubbed into Italian, Spanish, German, English, Tagalog, and other languages. The anime has seen a resurgence of interest in recent months, including an upcoming Italian videogame for the Nintendo DS and a relicensing by m4e in Germany (PDF).

Update: Added release details, background information, image.

Update 2: Added television anime information.


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