Saturn

Alpin's Sailor Moon Archives.... You know I have had issues with people that calls themselves and Archive for a long time. Mainly because they rarely are. They are usually a page that jacked everything from other very well known sites, don't mention any credit for it, and then they expect you to kiss their ass for it.... Frankly, from just viewing this page's front page, it doesn't look like its going to turn out well... But I hold out hope yet.

You see the main image of this page is really screwed. It is set up to look like a frame set up, but on the top, you can see a VERY bad cutoff for this image.... and then the links for the page are all down the left side covering ANY image that you might want to see. On tops of that, some of these categories could have definately been combined and then split into subcategories... because as it stands, most of them are redudant, including "Chat" and "Forum" stacked one on top of each other. Point of advice people, choose one or the other. Having both is just excessive and frankly redundant....

Well now that I have assessed that this "layout" is a piece of shit, lets move onto the first link. Ahh yes.... "Sailor Profiles".... the category that adorns every site for some reason... Because I couldn't get this information on fifty million other sites.... But lets see if they did something original or if they did the doll box...

Uhm...... I click the link and it then asks me "English" or "Spanish".... well THAT is a bit different, so I am going for English as I stopped speaking Spanish years ago when I ditched my ex. Alright, I now have an image map to choose my character, so lets start with the obvious... Moon.

Alright right off the bat, I gotta stop. The last TWO pages broke with the original layout of the page, and this profile does the same. I now have a badly tiled background of Eternal Sailor Moon, the calendar image on the left of Super Sailor Moon that we have all seen a zillion times, some doll box stats on the right, another Super Sailor Moon picture on the bottom, and then some more information..... This is not a layout and frankly it sucks.

By far, this profile is horrible.... and could somebody explain this phrase to me?

" On the Moon Kingdom it was a secret passed down from each Queen Serenity to the next that Sailor Moon was really the Moon Princess, after being sent to earth though the secret was eventually revealed."

I would really like to know where that came from because I don't remember it in either the manga or the animation or ANY version of SM to date.

You know I wanted to see if consistancy stuck for the rest of them, and there is the same calander image for Mercury, the same doll box stats (with the pronunciation in all capital letters...) and the same crappy profile that you see at other places, but the worst part is that ths person felt that Mercury isn't deserving of a badly tiled background like Moon.... I don't konw whether to feel sorry for poor Merc or to tell her she is lucky :P

Alright, for one last nitpick at the profiles, I had to choose my favorite character. Can you guess who that is? Wow, what a shock. It sucks too! There is a butchered non-blended picture of Hotaru with her umbrella (did you guess which character is my fav yet?), a badly done background that is meant to be a strip on the left that is badly done to begin with, and then the same crap below it.... I am getting out of profiles before I throw this keyboard....

I am back on the main page, and I have selected this Sailor Images for my next inspection, but I am curious as to why there is a seperate link for "Venus Images". Hmm.... looks like all the images in this category are taken from other sites with not a word of credit anywhere... nice job there buddy.... there better be something in the Credits section of this site as to where all of these came from....

The Venus gallery just escapes me as to why it is here... other then somebody has an obvious Venus fetish.... I am guessiing that these images would most likely be sticky if they weren't just on a website....

Uhm, why have a multimedia link if it is going to just lead to a white page with this in black text:

"All the free hosts suitable for storing big multimedia files stopped their service and suitable paid hosts are requesting too much money for huge bandwidth usage of these files. Therefore, multimedia part is currently down."

If this is the case, then you should have omitted the Multimedia link, or just stop being a cheap ass that wants to buy a domain by not do the research to find a better host....

The artbooks section is a let down. I highly doubt this person owns all of these books (some of which include the Infinity artbook), and I doubt even further that this person sat here and scanned them all. The part that really bothers me on top of all of this is the fact that this person couldn't even take the time to group the images into categories such as "Artbook 1 = Artbook 1 images". No, they are spread out all over. I know this because I own a few of the artbooks, and this is what leads me to believe that this person did NOT own these books, nor did they scan them themselves.

I am skippig "Chat" and "Forums". I wanna see what is in the "Polls" column though. Oh boy... another Bravenet poll... Since 2000, 2345 people voted that this site wwas "Excellent"... so I have to wonder if this person has the money to bribe people for these votes, then why can't they afford a better host?

I am SEVERLY confused by this FAQ, so next category.

I can't seem to figure out "Moonie Code" and "Moonie Coder", so I am in the "Credits" section now, which did I tell you opens in the same window, which will force me to hit my back button again? Well it does :P

This credits page is making me laugh so insanely hard. I can guarantee that this person is lying through his ass on most of this. As he claims that all these people gave permission for whatever, and frankly if that was the case, I wouldn't be angry, but claiming that VKLL (who has long stopped production of fansubs as the series was licensed) and Hitoshi Doi gave permission is a bit out there. Considering those are both very well known names, you are not going to convince me that they gave permission to take their hard done work and put it on this piece of shit site that was obviously done with page builders and just looks like an overall pile that came out of the proverbial ass of the Sailor Moon Community.

OOOOOHHH!! Awards. This person is an obvious whore when it comes to their site as it appears they have applied for every award they could possible think of off every fan site they ever visited/stole from. Frankly I wouldn't doubt that most of these sites have long gone down, but if anybody wants to go through this mess and submit any that are still alive for review, please do so. Moving on.

Well we know this site lost any bit of credability after viewing the links section. Under personal favorites is SOS... meaning this person probably STILL has a case of strawberry Pop Tarts collecting dust in the basement right next to their Prince Uranus costume.

Alright, I am done with this site. I am signing the guestbook and getting out of this hell hole.

Uranus

Think back now on grade school, or junior high, when someone would have to read aloud something they obviously hadn't read before, and they would mess up grammar and not know when the ends of sentences were coming. Well, read Alpin's Sailor Moon Archives like that, because that's about how it's written. Come inside and wade through the miasma of misinformation and sheer stupidity.

When the first item on the menu is senshi profiles, you should know that bad times are a-comin'. Which is the most grievous offense? The different layouts for inner and outer senshi? The way that name pronounciations are given in all caps? Or the sheer incorrectness, like saying that Serena and Mina are the only two blond characters and that Saturn is the leader of the outer senshi? Look for yourself and see. Or schedule a root canal, because it would be more fun. Ah, here's the hands-down worst: the fact that parts of the profiles are lifted, in total, from Hitoshi Doi's site. No, wait, not quite in total. Spelling mistakes are introduced. That's wonderful, that the site author committed theft by typing rather than by cut and paste. For the record, credit is given buried in its own page, but it really needs to be delineated which parts are taken from which. And more to the point, why is the information here anyway? Why not just send people to Doi? Unless the author is trying to sneak it by people making them think that everything on the page is self-created in a pathetic attempt to gain false accolades. But we all know better.

We might move on to multimedia, but we are informed that "suitable. . . hosts are requesting too much money." Let me translate for you: "I'm too cheap to pay for a multimedia host and too lazy to take down my page." So let's go to the forum. All of two posts in the last eight months. A real swinging place, this. FAQs, then. There's the site FAQ, which contains the most salutary piece of advice on the page, "Please do not ask me to solve your web site problems." Yeah, if you're getting help from *this* site author, you're in trouble. Also here are links to some of the better known FAQs, like Ken Arromdee's. It's a hopelessly out-of-date version, but a quarter-point for effort. Also in the FAQ section, for some reason known only to the author, is Starfox's YKYWTMSMW page. Now, you know that it's Starfox's, because I just told you, and you'd know it if you read the whole thing, because he's referenced a few times, but you sure wouldn't know from any kind of credit. I don't care if his page is long gone; if you didn't create it, credit is needed.

For the final straw before I throw my hands up in despair, we look at the awards page, and find that in addition to a thief and an incompetent, the author is also an award whore. We also find that a lot of sites have standards far too low. As a great American philosopher once said, that's all I can stands, I can't stands no more. If you want One Good Thing about this, it's a throwback to some of the nice old school pages. Too bad it had to steal from them to get that.

Neptune

Layout-Well it's not good and not bad. Just right in the middle. Nothing is consistent. Meaning each link has a different background from that of the main page/menu.

Content-There's a suitable amount of content but the drawback is that it's all standard "senshi profiles" and the like. Speaking of which the author goes from Japanese terms, "senshi" to DiC terms, "scouts". It would be easier to stick with one rather then confusing new fans with using both.

Backround(s)-Vary from page to page. It would of been better if the author kept the same image as the main page. I think things would of been better if she had done so.

Overall Opinion-Lots of improvements-such as the design. An Iframe would be perfect as that is what I first thought the layout would be. Also, the author could migrate some of the links into one. I don't know why there's "Sailor Images" as one link, and "Venus Images" as another link. Images are images and should be treated as such.

If the author takes a little more time and redesignes the site, it can be a good site to visit.

Pluto

Breakdown of site 17/100

Welcome and site identity 1
Not very inviting. There's not much on the welcome page other than an invitation to update a bookmark, and an out of date update.

Navigation 1
Via links at the left hand side. Pretty basic categories. A bit confused as to why the Venus images are separate from the other sailor images, as she is a sailor too. Categories for a moonie code and a moonie coder are absolutely redundante. It would be better to combine the trivial stuff into one link marked 'fun stuff' or something along those lines than waste single pages on something like that. Clicking on the profiles brings up an 'English/Spanish' type splash page that would be better AS a splash page, not smack in the middle(ish) of the website itself.

Content of Interest 3
There would be, if it was organised properly. The profiles each have a separate page, with different backgrounds. Huge continuity issues, with poorly done (tiled) backgrounds and images within the information. The information is not entirely accurate in places, and seems to contradict itself in the written portion. Having it split into paragraphs like that with images between looks sloppy and outdated. Fine for an amateur site of ages ago but not for a 'modern' site.

Clicking on the images gallery brings up a links based archive. Not a bad idea but it looks very stark as it is with no background and just a bunch of links. People don't have the time or patience to click on endless links to get the information they want and my first instinct was to go back and forget about the gallery altogether. Clicking on the Venus archive still brings me no closer to the reason as to why it's separate from the others.

Having a chat and a forum is VERY redundant and the chat took too long to load up. (not that I wanted to chat with anyone anyway....) Credits page is pretty useless. It doesn't really say where he got anything for the site, just thanks a bunch of unknown people for various stuff. If you're going to have credits, supply links where we can go to see what the people have rather than email addresses which may, by now, be out of date anyway. BTW, your 'remember shiho' page (whoever s/he may be) doesn't go anywhere...

Erm, why is there a list of other stuff where the FAQ should be? If you're going to have a FAQ, have it. Not a link to it and a bunch of other stuff. Nuff said.

An updates page is useless. You should be making use of the front page for updates, not a separate page. It looks like a frame, but probably isn't (the front page, that is) since nothing is targeted to it as it should be. Having a look at the source tells me why. It's not a frame at all, and it's generated code, rather than done by hand. *sighs*

Advertising and sponsorship 0
none

Self-promotion 2
Tries to promote site as the best archive in the SM universe, but...I've seen a lot better. Most (recent) regular sites have more information than this site. So far I've yet to see anything truly original except the moonie code thing, which I have to admit is kind of interesting, tho a pain to get thru and try to work out for oneself. You'd have to be pretty dedicated to want to bother.

Filler 1
Far too much filler in this site and poorly presented. As I mentioned before, the 'fun' type stuff should be on its own page, rather than several redundant links.

White-space 1
Too much white-space in the site with images cutting between the text. It may have looked cool at one time (tho I never have liked that kind of design, very amateur) but it's not now.

Other 3
Extremely poorly done. Generated code that could have been done easier by hand. There is no need to have an image map for all those links - it could easily be done with link tags. A frame would come in SOOOOO handy here, but isn't anywhere to be found. It would make the content a whole lot more presentable. Background continuity is sadly lacking and a HUGE issue throughout the site and taking other peoples' page designs is a huge NO-NO...not even with permission. The whole idea is to have your OWN site. Not part of someone else's. BTW, a note to the idiot in the guestbook who suggests background music. NO, that is HUGE bad practice in website design. Not everyone wants to hear bad music blasting thru their speakers thank you VERY much!