When the Sailor Moon manga was re-released in late 2011, despite being advertised as having "An entirely new, incredibly accurate translation!" and being "completely true to original" these new releases contain a shockingly large amount of errors concerning grammar, translation, wording, name and phrase consistency and general dialogue fluidity.

I've created this page as a resource for Sailor Moon fans who are interested in finding out about all of the errors or mistakes in this version of the English Sailor Moon and Sailor V manga and also as a place for me to go into more detail concerning the errors and translation issues that I didn't have the space to write about in my manga reviews (which I recommend reading if you're curious about other aspects of this manga release beyond the translation / text).

If you find an error that is not listed here, don't hesitate to contact me about it and I'll add it here, naturally giving you credit for finding it and letting me know.
If you're curious about someone else's view on the new manga, check out Miss Dream's Manga Error Page for some further insight.

General Release Issues

Here are some issues that span multiple pages and volumes. I will go into more specific examples in extreme cases when called for in each individual manga volume.

Characterisation: For the most part, a lot of the characters fall flat in this release due to the phrasing chosen by the translator. While in the original Japanese release, each character had his or her own voice, in this English version even dramatically different characters seem to talk the same. An obvious example is in Codename Sailor V #1 where Minako (a Japanese school girl) and a Japanese gang member both use the same phrase, "Putting on airs" on separate occasions.

Awkward Dialogue: One of the biggest complaints by fans new and old, is the dialogue which often seems unnatural (especially for a cast of 14 year old Japanese school girls) and doesn't flow as well as it should. There's also a fair bit of words used such as "Mommy", "Daddy" and "Dummy" that make characters appear more childish than they were originally intended to be in the original release and these same words are used by all characters across the board leading to characterisation issues mentioned above.

Incorrectly Written Character and Place Names (aka The Attack of the Hyphens): For some reason the translator seems to really love adding hyphens to place and character names despite the fact that there were no hyphens in the original Japanese and that the majority of the names have previously established English spellings that are correct and accepted. A good example of a character's name spelt wrong is Chibi Usa who is written "Chibi-Usa". There is absolutely no reason for the hyphen unless you feel like also writing "Small-Lady", Princes-Serenity" and "Sailor-Guardian". Luna P is another character who suffers and is written as "Luna-P".
It really is the place names that suffer though with almost all of them being given unneeded hyphens at one time or another. Arisugawanomiya Park for example is written as "Arisugawano-Miya Park" in Volume 3 of the manga. Even one of Japan's most famous newspapers, the Yomiuri Shimbun (which is it's official English name and can be seen in every train station and convenience store in Japan on a daily basis) is retranslated as "Yomi-uri Newspaper". Examples like this really bring into question if the translator does in fact live in Japan as he says.

Japanese Honorifics: As a professional English adaption of a Japanese manga series, Japanese honorifics have absolutely no place in a legitimate release and simply make it look unprofessional. I do realise that there are people in the online fandom that prefer the inclusion of honorifics so I must stress that this is not meant as a personal attack on any individuals who feel honorifics should be included in English releases.
I have to say though that I think a lot of fans want honorifics included because they believe that they are an integral part of Japanese culture and that they are impossible to translate into English. This is simply not the case. All Japanese dialogue using honorifics can be properly translated into English while maintaining the original meaning and relationships of characters involved and despite what those beginner Japanese textbooks say, honorifics are not as cut and dry and relationship defining as they would have you believe.
A perfect example is the honorific "chan" which despite having a lot of background information is simply used half of the time to make the speaker sound cute.
I have several close friends who are professional Japanese / English interpreters and translators here in Tokyo and abroad and all of them tell me that leaving Japanese phrases, words or honorifics in a translation is unprofessional, lazy and frowned upon in the industry. Japanese films, novels and magazines are translated extremely well and are given a lot of respect however for some reason manga (and recently some anime) is seen as not deserving of the same quality. I highly recomend watching this documentary on YouTube about fansubs as it covers a lot of points that I don't have room for here.

Coming back to the English Sailor V and Sailor Moon manga, there is a lot of inconsistency with the translation regarding honorifics and other Japanese words in general (which tends to happen when you leave them in an English release). Despite the apparent policy to leave the honorifics in, some are randomly translated (sometimes in the same panel as an untranslated one) and others switch back and forth such as Motoki being referred to as "Bro!" (awkward dialogue in and of itself) and then the original "Onii-san" depending on which chapter you're reading.

Reading on, I'll discuss honorifics and other Japanese words only when they appear awkward or are incorrectly translated.

"Oh, honestly!" makes Usagi sound more posh than the character really is and more like Ami or say, Umi from Magic Knight Rayearth. A more accurate translation of the original Japanese would be "Aw, man!" or "This sucks!".

sailor moon eternal edition manga
sailor moon naoko takeuchi collection manga
sailor moon crystal anime blu-rays and dvds
sailor moon funko pop! figures
sailor moon t-shirts and tops
sailor moon proplica item replicas
sailor moon tamashii nation figures
90s sailor moon anime dvds
-- more -->

sailor moon characters
sailor moon locations
sailor moon voice actor interviews
sailor moon attacks
moonie mailbag
-- more -->