Following the last release of the Sailor Moon Complete Edition manga we now have all of Codename Sailor V released in Japan in this same format. The Complete Edition of the Sailor Moon, and now Sailor V, manga are high quality collector’s editions of the manga with larger, brighter pages and which include all colour pages previously only seen in pages of Nakayoshi and Run Run. While Sailor Moon appeared in Nakayoshi the Codename Sailor V manga was often serialized in another magazine, Run Run. The Codename Sailor V manga was also written by Naoko Takeuchi and it predates Sailor Moon, though it continued to be written alongside it and it’s final story was actually written after Sailor Moon’s run had been completed. It tells the story of Minako when she was Sailor V in the days before she joined Sailor Moon as Sailor Venus. Chronologically the entire story takes place prior to the first issue of the Sailor Moon manga.

This complete edition was released on Thursday May 29th. Unlike the Sailor Moon releases of this manga there is no new art for the covers but instead the art of the original books for Codename Sailor V volumes 1 and 2 are used for these. As you can see by the comparison to the original manga releases these ones are a bit larger and feature a much larger image of the volume 2 cover art. These books are Japanese only. You can order them from Amazon Japan (vol. 1, vol. 2) or CD Japan (vol. 1, vol. 2).

Keep reading to see more of the colour pages included in this release.

A Kanzenban or “Complete Version” of the Japanese Sailor Moon manga is in fact coming. A layout change will come with this printing which is likely to include colour pages not in previous releases. Sailor Moon’s editor Fumio Osano mentioned this on his twitter account recently. A translation appears below courtesy of the @OsabuP_English account:

Note: The aizoubon manga has a name change to kanzenban (complete version). The size + layout has changed too. More info in our next meeting

Since the 20th Anniversary event there has been talk of a new version of the Japanese manga in a different larger format. Numerous tentative release dates for this have come and gone. When new printings of the manga were released earlier this year it was not clear if these were in fact all we would get. It now appears that these were not the version we’d heard about but these Kanzenban versions are.

So what exactly is a “Kanzenban”? This term is used to describe special releases of a manga that are usually A5 sized which is 148x210mm or 8.5×5.8″ and will include all original chapter covers, colour pages and side stories. Many of the colour pages from the Sailor Moon or Sailor V manga were not included in any releases since their original inclusion in the magazines Run Run and Nakayoshi so this will be a real treat for completist fans. Original reports mentioned A4 sized comics which would have been double the size of the A5 size typical of Kanzenban releases.

Thanks to Andrew Yu for mentioning this on our Facebook page.