Japanese reprinted manga is released without fanfare

Sailor Moon manga volume 1 - Japanese reprint

There have been a lot of rumblings about a reprint of the Sailor Moon manga that never came. Word from Naoko Takeuchi herself said it was coming by Thanksgiving. That came and went. Fumio Osano mentioned that it would be coming around the New Year and gave some details but no Amazon Japan listings ever accompanied that.

And then the books started showing up in stores. There’s really not much going on with these reprinted versions. As Fumio Osano had mentioned earlier it’s really just a touched up version of the original manga with improvements mostly relating to slight colour enhancements and digitized images. As I do not live in Japan I have not gotten my hands on these books myself but a few images of them have turned up online. The first image, as shown at the top of this article, was posted to instagram by user gracekansai shows the first volume with a new obi mentioning the 20th anniversary.

Two other images popped up on PrincessRabbit’s site. This shows a display case with volume 12 of the manga, which includes the final story.

If there were more substantial changes with these versions I would likely import them and do a full review but there doesn’t seem to be enough going on here to warrant that.

This release is unfortunately not the A4 release that fans have been anticipating. What is an A4 release? A4 refers to a size of paper that is 8.3×11.7″, roughly equivalent to a letter paper size of 8.5×11″. This release was first mentioned as coming at the 20th Anniversary Event but no specific date regarding it’s release has been given.

If this whole post seems sparse on the details I’m sorry but that’s just how it’s been with this whole affair. I think people were expecting these versions to be something much more than they were, but they’re basically just a reprint. If and when the A4 versions are even coming is something we can only speculate about right now, but if any definitive news about them comes up we’ll be sure to post it here.