Meet Sailor Mars :Fire by Joel Baral, K. J. Keiji Karvonen, Naoko Takeuchi (2000)

Those of you who are familiar with the English Sailor Moon manga by Mixx/TokyoPop know how badly they screwed up with the translation & how they chose not to include several pages of bonus art & notes from Naoko, well their poor editing skills (& I'm sure their translations) made it all the way to these Special Edition Guides, as well!

My rating is for the publishers & editors, not the books' contents.

My 1st edition (earliest printing of all my Guides, Oct '99) Meet Sailor Mars was released by Mixx (the others I have were released by TokyoPop, except Sailor Moon and is 1st edition Oct '00). I'm assuming this is the first of the guides ever released since it has the earliest printing & is the only one that differs in some areas from the other books. And in 1999, I received with my purchase of a Sailor Moon manga, a preview of these Guides which was about Sailor Mars & Venus, making my opinion stonger that this Sailor Mars was made before the other Guides.

1. The title of the book is not on the spine like the others, just a plain white space between the Mixx logo & the words "Sailor Moon Scout Guide". The other editions I have say their main title in the spine "Meet Sailor (whoever): (their element)".

2. Instead of a table of contents in the front like the others, it has an index of the chapters in the back like it's original Japanese form.

3. The editing & retouching artist of this book must not know how to use Photoshop since on some pages, sloppily placed boxes have been put over original Japanese text that the idiot wasn't able to edit out, not only showing some Japanese text but also covering some of the pictures.

4. The section called "Secrets About My Guardian Planet" has been fictionally titled as "An Essay by the Moon Princess" & has the largest amount of astrological info of any of the Guides. But, in the other Guides, this section has been fictionally written by "Moon Princess Kimiko - Fortune Teller"...Whoever she is.

5. NONE of the Scout Guides' pages have been reversed for these English versions (like the manga was) & therefore, we are reading the Transformation & Attack Sequences & episode summaries BACKWARDS! That's right - we have to read & look at these pages & pictures from right to left in order to understand the stories they're telling since the text underneath each picture won't make sense if you read from left to right.

6. The publishers decided to leave out some extra pages the originals have.
- In the originals, which were called "Pretty Soldiers Official Fanbooks", all have 3 pages at the end that Mixx's do not. Two of the pages are a "Last Message" chapter, with pictures of the star of the book's Japanese voice actress & a short interview or maybe a goodbye/thank-you to the Sailor Moon anime & Naoko, which could have been reproduced with the English voice actors.
- The third page states the character's name at the top & has a place to paste a photo of one's self in, with lines to fill in for your name & birthday. At the bottom of this page, it says "Pretty Soldier Sailormoon Official Fan Club".
- Like the Japanese manga, these books came with proffesional-looking book jackets that reveal the books' front & back covers to have the same images from the jacket, only to be in a blend of the characters' signature color.

7. Keeping with the English anime, (& not Mixx's manga version) Sailor Moon's name is Serena, but throughout ALL Guides, changes to Bunny several times, even on the same page.