Eudial

Bishoujo Senshi Sailor Moon for Neophytes. teehehe. I always loved using the word "neophyte" in a sentence. trying to add a uncommon word into a sentence always helps to put on the fascade that you have excellent grammar and that you know more english words then others.

Well, the self-promotion section is rather...poor. It just has the creators name and apparently a copyright. lol. Its very small and at the bottom of the site. There's only one award that this person has ever received. Its a nice reward too, but still, one award from the time of the copyright which was 1998 to 2005. Thats not a good record.

Afflicates...i dont see any affiliations here. Not a single one...

.....yes....ummm....moving on...

Links...To be honest, it seems this guy made this site after he read "Lesson One" of any HTML book. Its all just generic text links...no banners, no buttons, nothing.

As im checking the links to make sure they are all working, i have one piece of advice...DO NOT CLICK on "Meatball Head Moon Page." It doesnt let you back.

The following links do not work:

1. Toei Official BSSM Page.
2. Sailor Io's Sailor Venus Shrine.
3. AloshaSitaJasmine's Haruka + Michiru Picture Gallery.
4. Parapara's.....Paraphenalia.
5. Tuxedo Will's SM Fanfics/Scripts Archive.
6. Bishoujo Senshi Sailor Moon [Lyrics].
7. Web Page Review List (As maintained by the Amazoness Quartet)
8. Bishoujo Senshi Sailor Moon Colouring Album.
9. The Compleat Sailor Moon CD List.
10. Sailor Moon Nexus
11. Sites to See

ELEVEN LINKS NOT WORKING!!!! BAD BADness.

As for your own site, the links work fine. The only problem, for me at least, was that the SM movie links didnt work.

Ok, overall rating on my end. I grant thee a 3/10. You have gotten more, but too many dead links and the overall genericness of your site didn't help either. You're not as bad as some of other sites I've seen, but you're also not as good as the others as well.

There's a saying, "Simple, yet Effective," however, your site is TOO simple. Thus, making in very UNEFFECTIVE.

Ptilol

AAAAaaaargh!!! I load the page and immediately the 50 cent song that I'm playing gets a frustratingly irritating buzzing sound as a hook. A banner at the top of this site has this annoying buzzing fly ad in which you "SWAT THE FLY! Get a FREE *blink* $250 *blink* Gift *blink* Card! *blink, blink, blink*" I want the fly to die, but only so that Usher can sing his song in peace.

I'm forced to turn off my iTunes just to review this site without developing a migraine. If a site has ads that inconvenience and irritate a visitor this much, it's losing mad points in the layout department.

Moving on, the layout is something out of that decade with the poofy hair and tie-dyed jeans -- it's the most basic, no-frills HTML one can find on the Net nowadays. It looks so bad you almost think it might be an HTML file with the CSS file 404'd. Beyond the Buzzing Fly from Hell, there's a pointless search bar over top the title and click-through Googld ads off to the right. Again I wonder why this site has been ad-ified all to Hell. This site is most likely supported through the free, ad-supported freeservers.com package, but that doesn't mean the visitor should have to suffer.

Flipping through the site, I see it is primarily text-based content... and there's a lot of it, but since the site offers only textual content, it's not much of a disk space suck. As much as I hate to do this, my first recommendation is that the webmaster switch hosts immediately to a far-less annoying free host -- even Geocities ads aren't as bad as all this, and despite the dwindling disk space offer of the free packages, this site could easily fit in the space allotment.

But, I've really go to move past the ads in this review. As far as web design goes, this site manages to make the word "minimalist" look bad. Although the site uses no flashy design tricks (or really, nearly no images at all) in its layout, it still manages to make the web structure unintuitive, unnavigable, and just plain bad. First of all, the main index page loads to a giant site title followed by a list of unstyled "Contents" links -- these are actually quick links to information further down on this page. Then, the site shows a black navigation bar with red writing for its main site links, which take you away from the index page to the content pages. Now, maybe I'm old-fashioned, but it seems like you should draw attention to the site's major subsections before offering links for navigation within a page; after all, visitors are most likely visiting for the site's contents off the main page than to read the site's introduction.

As far as the nav bar itself, basic colour sense dictates that red on black doesn't work. Somehow this nav bar manages to make garish red hard to read -- I actually have to squint a little to read the font on the navigation buttons.

The rest of the site is pretty much organized exactly like the main page with quick links to page contents given priority over subsection links. Now, the content is extensive (which I'm sure Viluy will get into in more detail), but the site is set up in such a disorganized fashion that it's a little bit difficult to find what you're looking for. In the Characters link, for example, you have to scroll all the way to the bottom of the list, past some tangential musings on the meaning of the Starlights' civilian names to get to the meat of the section, links to character profiles. The site also loses layout points for not having back buttons or links to other subsections from page "extremities" like the Character profiles: three clicks got me here, I shouldn't have to use the Back button to leave.

Even if this site was designed before the advent of CSS or iframes, this site, designed, developed and put online between 1998 and 2001 could do better. It'll probably have a great time being cross-browser compatible, but the site is just plain ugly. Even the early days of bare-bones HTML allowed some flexibility of site appearance; you could at least avoid the bright blue to puce purple links and the boring default Times New Roman typeface -- and yet this webmaster looked like they wrote a book in Microsoft Word, hit the Export as HTML file and threw it up into cyberspace without a care in the world.

While this site might've been the shiznit back in '94, it was way behind the times even when it was still being updated. A lot of time was spent putting all this information together, even a mere fraction of that time should've been spent making it look pretty. I'm a product of the visual gratification, Matrix-bullet-time generation -- one glance at a page this uninteresting-looking makes me want to run for the hills towards some easyily-digestible eye-candy, and if most of your viewers are like me, you've just wasted your time making an extensive Sailor Moon resource that no one will want to see.

Tellu

Bishoujo Senshi Sailor Moon for Neophytes

The first thing I noticed when visiting this website is that there was a word in the title that I didn't know - 'neophyte'. After visiting dictionary.com, I found the definition of 'neophyte' to be: A recent convert to a belief; a proselyte.

A site that is dedicated to helping out the newbies to the glorious series Bishoujo Senshi Sailor Moon - this is what every person on the internet interested in anime in 1997 was looking for. Not only is this site VERY extensive, but it is organized enough so that the novice internet websurfer can easily find their way around. The design is very simple - black text on a white background. I love it. There are no tricky css scripts that make the text harder to read, and the links don't do magic tricks when scrolled over. Truly, this is one of the original BSSM websites on the internet.

The webmaster is kind enough to give true newbies a 'suggested path' through the website to learn about Sailor Moon. This is something I've never seen before on a fansite (and I've been surfing around for five years - this is not the same thing as a 'site map') and quite honestly I love it. I wish when I was 11 years old surfing around on the internet that someone had helped me find out things using such an extensive site like this. More BSSM sites should have it. Hell, most sites in general should have it if they are a fansite!

After going through the site, I'm finding that this site is even more complex than I had originally thought it to be. There has to be hundreds of pages of information here. This site is like a more detailed, more complex, 1997 version of what The Oracle is today. I'm very impressed. There are summaries and synopses (which are great, one you can use as an overview, the other you can use for more in-depth information.) and a character guide. The character guide is VERY awesome. Aside from having the boring manga biographies, the author has included lots of insite and a hell of a lot more information (both mythically and within the context of the series) for each character. There are notes on mythology and best of all - there is a sources cited section made specifically for this page. In fact, almost all of the pages have a sourced cited section, and the author was bright enough to remember to put their copyright signature on the bottom of every page, to ensure that they retain the copyright for their intellectual material. This impresses me.

There is a section called 'Mailing Lists' which also really impresses me. It gives a list of all the contact places where new users can go to chat with others about Sailormoon. This is awesome. It is pretty hard to find other people who like BSSM (outside of visiting a fansite, and you're only going to get to talk to the webmistress and chat about Sailormoon once you know them) just randomly on the internet. This is a great idea, and it should be implemented on other websites. The author gives information about each list and how to be a new user. Very helpful.

Heading on to 'Miscellanea'. This is so far my favorite section of the site. The author has documented all of the citations for his website very carefully, which makes me very happy. I know where everything is coming from, which makes me feel like the author is very respectible and conscientious. It's hard to find such extensive works cited on a website anymore, and this is one of those few sites that takes joy in giving credit where it's due. More websites should do this. Why they don't is beyond me - if you get something from someone else, give them credit! This webmaster is awesome. There are comments on the author's opinions on the publishers of Sailormoon in America, comments on the site itself, adknowledgements (people who deserve credit for works taken from their website), and best of all COPYRIGHT STATEMENTS!! I love this guy. Having a copyright statement should be one of the first things your website has. When you have a nice, strong, legal backing to your website's content, it makes it that much easier to potentially get someone stealing your information to stop. When you can clearly prove that your work is yours alone - and give a copyright statement telling what is yours and what isn't, and what can be used and can't be, it gives you more justification in bitching someone off when they steal your stuff. GO WEBMASTER-SAMA! YOU ARE GREAT!!

Next I'm onto the 'Links' section. The credit goes farther. There are extensive lists of links for credits, references, etc. EVERYTHING is documented. I'm so happy!! If I had questions about where this person was getting their information, I don't anymore. This page clears EVERYTHING up.

Before I end the review, I HAVE to go on about this. There is a SEARCH OPTION for the website!! That is SO helpful. You can type in a keyword, and matching subjects and articles will come up for the user to browse through. This is very, very useful, especially if you're looking for some obscure information. The author gives an explanation how to properly use this function. Man. I'm so happy.

This review is over. If I had to grade this website out of 100 for giving credits and such, it would receive a 105. Credits, adknowledgements, works cited are all done in MLA format. Being a grammarian, I find this just wonderful. I love this person and I love their site. Go visit it for reference purposes alone!

Viluy

As far as written content goes, the front page is fairly basic, set out in almost a business-like manner. The first few paragraphs assume the visitor has little to no knowledge of what manga and anime are, which I found a bit boring and patronising, but whatever works. Maybe he gets a lot of newbies to his site who don't know.

Moving on, I have noticed that the webmaster uses the semi-colon a lot. If you're going to have those a lot in your work, you might as well just bite the bullet and make them proper sentences. They still work that way, without making yourself look like a stuffy academic. Looking at the objectives page, I can see that is your intention, and you succeed. However, a lot of people don't like to be patronised, whether they've seen the series or not.

During the first season summary, there is only one grammar mistake, which is fairly common, and not really worth noting. The second season summary has a glaring error, right from the get-go. 'Storyarc'? There is no such word, in any dictionary, lexicon, or otherwise. 'Story arc' is the more accurate way to phrase it. Picky? Sure, but that's what I'm known for, which is why I'm the written content reviewer.

Looking further, I can already see a few cracks in the write-up. In the first paragraph of the Black Moon arc, the last sentence should read 'Chibi-Usa follows Usagi everywhere, much to the chagrin of Usagi.' You need that comma in there. You really do. Then in the second paragraph, there is the mistake of calling her Queen Serenity. She is Neo-Queen Serenity, not Queen Serenity. There is a difference. The mistake is rectified later on in the summary, but it is still a mistake. In the third paragraph, there is a spelling mistake - 'subsiduary' is spelled subsidiary.

Now, I'm going to stop here and give a little grammar lesson. It is a common mistake that I see everywhere, from fansites like this, to business reports and news websites. When you are dealing with a subject that is plural, like the Black Moon family, you do not write it like this: However, the Black Moon Circus, as advised by Wiseman, does not like this; You can see I've highlighted the error in this sentence. It is all over this website and not even consistently. No matter if it has the plural -s ending, it is still considered a plural suject, and thus you must use the plural form of the verb. This sentence (and others like it) should be written thusly: However, the Black Moon Circus, as advised by Wiseman, do not like this;.

The third season summary is full of punctuation errors as well. Here is a list of them all, and their corrections:
He also sends various daimon to aid Kaolinite in his quest. which ideally should be written: He also sends various Daimon to aid Kaolinite in her quest.
They have the same goal as the Death Busters in that they are also searching for the three talismen in an attempt to help protect the world; each time a heart-crystal is extracted from an individual, Sailor Neptune and Sailor Uranus examine it to see if it is a talisman. This is an improper use of the semi-colon - this would be better written as separate sentences.
Sailor Moon rescues the two by pushing Eudial off a bridge saving the talismen. Haruka then uses the Heart Buster (the gun that Eudial uses to remove heart crystals) on herself revealing the second talisman, the Space Sword. which should have a comma between '...herself' and 'revealing...'.
This car is boobytrapped by Mimete, another one of the Witches 5; Eudial drives off a cliff and dies. which should also be changed into two separate sentences, as it makes little to no sense as it is written and is also an improper use of the semi-colon.
Hotaru then gains control of her body and is able to destroy the Mistress 9 aspect of her, is able to return Chibi-Usa's heart crystal to her and becomes Sailor Saturn. which ideally should be changed to something like this: Hotaur regains control of her body, destroys the Mistress 9 aspect of herself. She returns Chibi-Usa's heart crystal and becomes Sailor Saturn.

The same pluralisation errors are in the Super S summary, which is mercifully free of major punctuation errors this time. The series 5 summary has a naming error - Makato is MaKOto. Ever wondered why she's called MaKO-chan and not MaKA-chan? This is why. Get the names right, please. I am not entirely sure what is meant by paredory forms discussed in the pre-Stars story arc of series 5. Is this the type of monster? I have never heard of them called that, so maybe some verification/clarification is needed for that.

In the Stars storyline, this part needs rewording: Helping to increase the level of infatuation in the Inner Senshi is the fact that the "Three Lights" transfer to the Inner's (save for Mars') high school. For obvious reasons, the Inner's should be the Inners' but it would sound better if the whole sentence were worded something like 'The younger senshi's infatuation is increased by the fact that the Three Lights transfer to their high school. Mars attends a different high school but is no less affected and is always to be found hanging around the other girls' school.' It's a bit more wordy, but it gets the job done in no less efficient of a manner. (And yes, the term 'senshi' is plural without adding an -s ending, just for clarification.)

Also, the part where Chiba Mamoru is taken could be worded a little differently as it sounds...a bit odd to me, as written. I will leave it up to the webmaster as to how he can change it, as it's technically not an error. It's just badly written in this reviewer's humble opinion. The same semi-colon overuse is found in this summary. *sighs* This entire paragraph is particularly badly written: Throughout the series, Seiya makes advances on Usagi; Usagi rejects these advances for the most part. Usagi does eventually go on a date with Seiya and has a very good time; however, she still loves Mamoru very strongly and is quite upset when her letters don't get answered (due to Galaxia's capturing of Mamoru's plane). as only one semi-colon should be in use per sentence.

These sentences could also use some rewording for clarification purposes: 'The other Senshi try to get the Senshi to stay away from Seiya because of his unknown motives and because he is an intruder into the solar system.' and 'Eventually, Seiya tells about his past and that his planet is destroyed in the action preceeding and that they have come to Earth to find their princess.' The first sentence because it's not clear which senshi is telling the others to stay away, and the second sentence because it's not clear what preceeding action Seiya is talking about.

In the paragraph where Sailor Lead Crow and Aluminum Siren attack Sailor Moon and Chibi Chibi touches Sailor Moon's tiara, the word 'tiara' is misspelled as 'tiera'. The next paragraph also contains a few errors, namely the first sentence where I believe it should be 'After yet another failure...' rather than what it is now. In the same paragraph, the second time a black hole is mentioned, it's misspelled as 'black hold'. Princess Fireball's name is actually Princess Kakyuu. 'Fireball' is merely a translation of Kakyuu.

Where Princess Kakyuu is explaining their situation to Sailor Moon, her name is used to start all but one of the sentences in that paragraph. You might want to change that, as it's rather over-doing it. The action preceeding...' is also mentioned rather a lot without clarification of what the action is. You might want to clarify that as well. It might make for a longer read, but it's worth it.

While there is a lot of nitpicking going on, I believe that it would actually help for these things to be sorted out. You have NO idea how annoying it is reading an entire website with nothing but semi-colons keeping sentences together that are best kept apart. It is NOT good grammar, no matter what anyone might think and it just plain doesn't look right.

The Specials summaries, other than the one for Make Up! Sailor Senshi, are hosted elsewhere, and thus not subject to this reviewer's nitpickiness. *grins* I would hazard a guess that the webmaster and viewers will be breathing a sigh of relief at this, right about now, as this review is getting rather long. I wouldn't be counting my eggs just yet, though, as there is still a substantial part of the site to go yet. *evil grin* The Make Up! special is quite short and to the point with no major issues that I can see.

For the character profiles, I would like to just take a moment out to offer my opinion on the article presented for the argument of the Starlights and their first (fore) names. In this reviewer's opinion, it's all a bit of rubbish. It is common sense to most people that their forenames are established as Seiya, Taiki and Yaten, rather than all being called Kou, respect by the others notwithstanding. I feel that it is rather obvious throughout the story that this is the case, rather than some lame-ass explanation that they're not all related. Of course they're not all related, but think about it. Not everyone in the Western world with the same last name is related, so of course the same holds true for Japanese (and others, as the case may be). This would be like saying my husband is related to Lord Elton of wherever the heck he lives (somewhere in Lincolnshire, I believe...) just because they share the same last name, whereas he is NOT related. Kana and Kanji aside, this is how I feel anyway and is also in fitting with Takeuchi-sensei's stated intentions were, according to this very article. That aside, I'll now move on to the actual profiles. All 15 of them. *sighs*

Tsukino Usagi - Is the webmaster aware there is a slight mistake (strike of the keys on the keyboard perhaps?) in the 'Interpretation of the Kanji' title? 'Punctuality' is misspelled, as is 'omission' in the third and sixth paragraphs respectively. In the fourth paragraph, there is something very confusing written here which could use some re-doing. Tskuino Usagi is Sailor Moon, the one who (continuing dialogue in this statement depends on the situation). What is this all about? It just makes no sense as is. Hate-filled (in the last paragraph) rather than hatefilled is the proper usage of this term.

Mizuno Ami - Consensus is misspelled in the first part (Kanji interpretation), as is criticize (or criticise in the UK spelling) in the third paragraph of the character summary. In the first paragraph, there is a grammatical error in that this 'Mizuno Ami is one of the, if not the most, intelligent of the Senshi.' should be 'Mizuno Ami is one of the, if not the, most intelligent of the senshi.' with a simple change of comma location.

Hino Rei - An ending bracket is missing at the end of the part on Kanji interpretation. The explanation of what a miko is is incorrect. There is no mention of sorcery as being any part of a miko. A miko is simply a Shinto shrine maiden. It is crudely called a temple, but they are shrines, not temples. Kumada Yuuichiro's forename is also misspelled.

Kino Makoto - Her name is actually spelled correctly for her profile. 'Connoiseur' (first paragraph) is misspelled. 'Smirkly' is not actually a word...you might want to use something like the word snidely in this context.

Aino Minako - Minako was a crimefighter, not is. 'Siblingless' is not a proper word either. Is an only child would be more accurate.

Chibi-Usa - The first statement is rather inaccurate. She doesn't fall on Usagi's head in the house itself, as implied in the sentence - she does so while Usagi and Mamoru are on a romantic date, with hilarious consequences. She was also not technically sent back by Sailor Pluto, she went back of her own accord, with the complicity of Sailor Pluto, who allowed her to steal the time key.

Kaiou Michiru - In the third paragraph, she could be considered the intellectual rather than the intellect of the outer senshi. It is also an accurate set of statements rather than inaccurate, as the strength of her power has little to do with the similarities between herself and Sailor Mercury. In the last paragraph, vehemently is misspelled, as is dominating. Also, 'Bishoujo' is a more accurate way of spelling than is spelled here. It seems to be accurate in most of the site, just not here.

Tenou Haruka - The word vehemently is also misspelled here in the last paragraph.

Tomoe Hotaru - There are a few inaccuracies here. Hotaru is not weak - she has an illness (shown in the anime) and thus is sheltered and weak. This stems from the accident which almost claimed her life and in which her father, Professor Tomoe, bargained his life for hers, becoming posessed by the Daimon Lord. There is also a minor grammatical error. The second sentence should have a comma between '...greatly' and 'as...' and the outer senshi should be phrased like that, rather than as Outer Senshi's, as 'senshi' is already a plural word. This is proper even in this context rather than what is there.

Chibi Chibi - Tiara is also misspelled here, and under the Powers heading, the word has is added in after the word 'tiara' where it shouldn't be.

Chiba Mamoru - In the manga, he does have a named attack as Tuxedo Kamen - La Smoking Bomber (don't ask me why LOL).

The Starlights - There is a HUGE inaccuracy here that I should mention, which is also one of the major issues within the Sailor Moon fandom. They are not men transforming into women. They are always women. They just choose to appear as men in order to get Kakyuu's attention. This is made clear in the manga AND the anime, as well as in many, many statements to that effect by Takeuchi-sensei herself. In Taiki's profile, there is a < br > or < p > tag missing between Information and the first sentence of the profile. Also, I believe it should read something like 'Taiki is one of the musicians...' as that would make more sense given the context. In Yaten's profile, the Kanji interpretation is wrong - it's given as 'Taiki' rather than 'Yaten'. The webmaster might want to change this. *winks*

The mailing list page is a rather interesting list of the major mailing lists, but there is no mention of whether these lists are still in existence, other than one of them which it quite clearly states is pretty much dead. It comes with notes on who runs the lists, how to sign up and netiquette for the uninitiated ML n00b. The SM misc. page is very entertaining, and the site misc. page is fine as well. It helps to clarify why this site exists, altho not why he chose to have it as such, rather than in a less dry, and well....frankly un-boring, style. On the copyright and AUP page, omissions is misspelled, again, as are plagiarism (summary and quoting) and courteous (images) respectively.

Although I have limited my scope to pages hosted on this site itself, there has been an awful lot of really dry wording, leading to my rather nitpicky error-hunting. I know that the webmaster strove for a scholarly feel to the site, but that isn't really what most people are looking for, even when merely looking for information. It might help some to have the website appear more entertaining and less...boring. That is just my opinion. This has been a rather hard slog to get through all of this, but I hope it's been worth it, even if just to have everything as accurate and proper as possible.

Cyprine

The site gets immediate bonus points for proper use of the word 'Neophyte'. However, the webmaster seems to be a bit of a web design neophyte -- the site is painfully boring on the eyes, and it looks like something out of the early days of the Internet, when the best browser was Netscape 4.0 and people still used dial-up.

Lil' Cyprine and I are curious to find out what kind of Visual Media the site has to offer, but unfortunately, other than a profile picture for each of the Sailor Senshi, the site focuses entirely on information and therefore hosts no images, movies, or audio clips. But, since this is the stated intention of the site, I can't hold the webmaster too much at fault.

Not too much...

Bored, now...