Manga & Codename: Sailor V Information
History & Origin
Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon is a mahou shoujo manga which made its debut in the February 1992 issue of Kodansha's popular shoujo manga magazine
Nakayoshi. Its origins were a bit more complicated than one might assume, however.
It all began when Naoko Takeuchi penned a special one-shot story
for the launch of the magazine Run Run. Inspired by a suggestion of "sailor-suited allies of justice" from her editor Osa-P, she created the masked
heroine Sailor V, and entitled her story Codename: Sailor V. TV Asahi quickly took notice of the unique story and approached Takeuchi about turning her
manga into an anime for television. As a tool for maximum cross-market exposure, the Sailor V story would be relaunched as a regular series for Nakayoshi
as the anime ran on TV Asahi.
As the story began to be expanded for a full-length series, Sailor V was slated to be the main protagonist as in the original
Codename: Sailor V. The series was to be called Pretty Soldier Sailor V, and was advertised as such in the January 1992 Nakayoshi, just one month prior to
the series' debut! Eventually, however, Takeuchi created Sailor Moon and her team of pretty soldiers and the rest is history. Codename: Sailor V would
continue as the prequel to Sailor Moon periodically in Run Run up until the November 1997 issue.
The Sailor Moon manga made its debut in the February 1992
issue of Nakayoshi, and the anime first aired one month later on March 7th. The manga continued to appear monthly in the magazine for five years, and the
last chapter was published in the March 1997 issue. It spanned 52 acts in total, and several special side stories were released.
The Sailor Moon manga was originally published in 18 volumes, but was re-issued into 14 books in October of 2003 to coincide with the release of the
live action series. These re-issued volumes contain touched-up artwork, rewritten dialogue, and brand new covers. At this time the official English
title of the manga series changed from Pretty Soldier Sailor Moon to Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon.