Rating (Out of 5): ~3.5
Publisher: KodanshaUSA
Volumes: 2 (in omnibus)
Goodreads Synopsis:
Its Valentine’s Day and
chocolates are being exchanged, but Minako Aino can’t decide if she
wants a crush to give her chocolates to, or just to eat them all
herself. If stress of Valentine’s Day wasn't already enough, now Sailor V
has to contend with a chocolate shop fatting everyone up, and an evil
spa draining people of their life force. It’s up to her to defeat the
Dark Agency and their servant deVleene and maybe even find a Valentine
of her own.
Review:
So this book took
way too much time for me to get through. I started it around the same time I
finished the last one (or, um, maybe a bit after), but then it took me quite a
while to finally get around to reading all of it. Mostly I think it was because
every chapter had a new villain that Sailor V had to go defeat, in which most
of it was filler type stuff. That just doesn’t interest me enough.
I am glad that I
finally got around to finishing it, though, particularly because the last two
chapters had an actual plot and point. Honestly, the fact that Takeuchi decided
to wait until the last two chapters to show me that she could actually write a
story with plot and character development and a point, kind of infuriated me. I
mean, I somewhat suffered through one and a half volumes before she showed that
she could write something worthwhile.
And I was kind of
suffering, too. I don’t know if it was just the mood I was in while reading it
or something, but I was nitpicking almost everything that was happening. Not
that I didn’t have reason to.
The first half, or
maybe six chapters, in this volume were terrible. Dumb. Sailor V was shallow,
as was every other chapter introduced. There was one chapter in particular,
where a villain used chocolate to make everyone fat and then a spa or workout
place to make them think that they were getting skinnier, and every single
person was obsessed with it and upset about being fat. It was utterly
ridiculous and unrealistic. Another chapter showed that everyone wants to be in
love, and how Sailor V needed to find another guy to fall for, which is also
dumb. (Really? You can’t just be happy on your own?) Another thing that
bothered me was how Takeuchi kept making Artemis pushy and whiny about how
Sailor V needed to be focused and couldn’t have any fun, ever. Which, yea, she
should have been more focused and actually trying to save people, but some of
the things he tried stopping her from doing was just useless, and there was no
reason for him to be so pushy.
Another thing that
bothered me: how she seemed to only care about being Sailor V in order to be
popular and get attention. When Phantom Ace, another superhero or whatever,
showed up and began stealing Sailor V’s spotlight, she was all ready to give up
being Sailor V and worship him instead, which was just dumb. She’s supposed to
be focusing on saving people, but she acted like she couldn’t care less about
that.
I try not to
nitpick how fighting the villain goes, but I just can’t help myself: the
fighting only takes place for a couple of pages, and when it does, Sailor V
pretty much only uses her crescent beam mirror with no problems, which it seems
like anyone could do, so I don’t understand the significance to why she has to.
I’m sure there are tons of people better for the job than she is. It just…
Ugh. Almost
everything about this book seemed to bother me.
The last two
chapters are what bumped my rating of the book up, though. Originally it would
have been a three, but I was a little impressed by the last bit.
Within those
chapters, we got a look at her past life and how she lived on Venus and what
her significance there was, and how she and, ah, this guy had a special
relationship. Sailor V actually grew just a little, I think, character wise,
from meeting the guy she had loved again and realizing some things about
herself. Some of her growing seemed a little farfetched to me, seeing how
nothing like it was even hinted at in previous chapter, but I can mostly accept
that.
I actually kind of liked the guy, or at least was intrigued by him, so what happened with him was a little sad to me. Other than that, I actually
enjoyed the end a little bit.
The main thing that
bothered me about this, is that there wasn’t more of that throughout the
series, and how the author decided to wait so long to show me something
actually a little good. I have hope that Sailor
Moon, which I plan to start soon, will actually have plot and a point, so I
am looking forward to that. I’m just ready to move on to whatever is next, I
guess.
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