Uranus

Hello, my name is Sailor Uranus, and I'm a manga-holic. I love manga because it's all the intensity and pathos of an anime in a form than can be easily carried in a pocket. The Sailor Moon Manga Room does nothing to support that love, unfortunately. A combination of poor layout, scanty information, and an acute case of wannabe-teacher syndrome make this site a must to avoid.

The site is headed up by that annoying "four advertisments in individual gray boxes that all have something to do with the page" banner that's all too commmon, and is the tell-tale sign of someone using a free hosting service. Below that the page starts in earnest, but the title bar is left-justified. This is awkward at 800x600, and downright bent at 1024x768. Behind all this is a wrapping-paper-style background that still manages to get in the way of the text despite being gray on white. The litany of advertisments on the left, for everything from the host to the e-mail provider to the computer brand on which the site was written, further testify to the cheapness of the site.

Somewhere amidst all this is content, and I'm pleased to see that when I enter a sub-page, the left hand bar that was filled with advertising now holds the menu. Good use for it, just needs something better to cover it on the home page. The first page is a set of images to coloring, and I disapprove of this on principle. Not that I have anything against coloring, which I consider a wonderful way to pass the time, but it brings to mind horror stories I've read of people whose relatives have brought small children over to the house and let them play with "the funny coloring books." We don't need to be endorsing that. For some reason the page is themed around Sailor Jupiter, despite the pictures being of various characters. And the thumbnails used are croppings instead of shrinkings, which makes it all but impossible to tell if there's any worth downloading.

Manga info is next, and here's where the latent desire to be a teacher starts showing up. There is a brief preçis of Takeuchi Naoko's career, which doesn't get into nearly enough detail. Annoyingly, all titles are in a different color on first use, which appears to make them link to something, but they don't. There's a Shopping guide, but it's useless to anyone other than Toronto residents, and outdated as well, still linking to the Mixx webpage instead of Tokyopop's. We've seen a far better manga shopping guide in our reviewing travels. A fanart gallery is next, and this isn't half bad. The artist has some trouble with faces, but has some interesting positions and outfits for the senshi. But then there's a downturn with a how to draw guide and a link to an online card site, which is just pointless advertising.

The manga version of Sailor Moon, being the primary creation, is often considered the purest version of the legend, and is favored by those of discriminating taste. Because of this, web pages that endeavor to discuss it need to be well-written, well-designed, and extremely deep. The Sailor Moon Manga Room is a shallow and rough page, and while it might have gotten away with this as an anime page, I can't help feeling extreme disappointment. One Good Thing though is some nice factoids about manga in general on the info page.

Chibimoon

The Sailor Moon Manga Room is a site dedicated to Sailor Moon Manga.

The design is poorly done.

When the site loaded I saw THREE banners and an Angelfire window POPED-UP. That's VERY annoying. I higly suggest you to Koolpages.com. It is a "banner-less" free host and it'll give you more space.

There is some kind of...layout. On the left site of the layout, where the navigation links are supposed to be, there are pretty useless banners (kind of credits) for other sites. At the bottom of the left part of the layout are the Sailor Moon credits. I though that my English is bad, but see this "Sailor Moon is © Naoko Takeuchi et al, 1992." And no, that's not a typing mistake because there's the same spelling mistake on each page.

The colours of the layout are dark pink and white pink - they are nice for my eyes. The background of the site is a wallpaper with the Sailor Senshi. It's nicelly done and it doesn't make me press Ctrl+A. The size of text is okay for me - neither too big, neither too small. Good choice.

On the main page there's an introduction to Sailor Moon: "Sailor Moon is a story told in the form of a manga, which is the Japanese word for comic book. It was written and illustrated by creator Naoko Takeuchi. There are 18 volumes of Sailor Moon in total. Created in 1992, it was an instant hit and over the last several years it has spawned such spin-offs as a television show, three movies, several live-action musicals, and more merchandise than you could count." Okay, but the author didn't say WHAT'S SM ABOUT!! Something like "Sailor Moon is about a 14 years old crybaby who becomes the warrior of Love and Justice".

The content of the page could be rated as so-so - good. In the Colouring Page you'll find 12 pictures which you can print and colour. Huh, Jupiter layout? In fact the layout is the same - just the colours of it and the background wallpaper are in green. The main advantige of the sub-pages (Colouring Page, Manga Info, Album, Shopping Guide and so on) is that the site is MUCH easier to navigate because the links are put on the left side of the layout. What can I say about this page? Go and print the pictures!

Now we move on the Manga Info section. I'll tell you what's it about in short - the owner of the SM Manga Room explains how Code name wa Sailor V expanded to Bishoujo Senshi Sailor Moon. There's some info about Takeuchi-san's "Princess Takeuchi's Return to Society Punch". Alright, that all those facts about Sailor V, Sailor Moon and Takeuchi are interesting but character profiles must be added! And NO, character bios would NOT be useless because between the Manga and Anime there're many differences. Another thing I noticed is some facts about the manga from bellow the navigation links. I wonder why the webmistress put them THERE.

Let's continue with the Album page. It consists of 12 pictures from Usagi and Mamoru's weeding. 4 coloured and 8 black and white images, so totally 12 images. That's absolutelly NOT enough for a gallery page. The owner should also add another images - not only from the weeding. And yes, I know that there are pictures in the Colouring Page, but even 24 images are NOT enough for a whole gallery.

In the Shopping Guide page you can find some handfull information on how to buy SM Manga. The author talks about a company named Mixx Publications and the name of the company is bolded and in different colour which makes me think it's a link. I try to click it, but it isn't. That's kind of annoying and if the visitor get nervous I suppose she/he'll press the big "X" in the top right corner of his/her browser instead of scrolling down so that he can find Mixx Publications 's link.

The Vote page didn't worked for me. "The page cannot be found" Perhpas a broken link? And the Greetings one "refuses" to load. The Art page is about the Sailor Moon Manga Room drawings. Wow! She/He is TALANTED! Do you want to draw like him/her? Then visit the How To section! It contains tips and instructions on how to draw like him/her. That idea is very, very nice!! The Links section is usefull! You'll find many links to nice and insteresting Sailor Moon-related web-pages.

Overall rating: 2,5/5 That's a so-so site. Perhpas if the site is re-designed it would look better. I also suggest adding more information such as character profiles. Put some more pictures too. Well, that's not the greatest site, but there're fun things to do like: tutorials how to draw a SM picture; you can also print images and colour them if you enjoy colouring pictures.

Pluto

Breakdown of site 60/100

Welcome and site Identity 5
- The site opens up to a weird background of little sailor heads. There is a nice banner-type head with the name of the site on it.

Navigation 5
- A plain set of links on the front page with simple explanations of content.

Content of Interest 7
- Each page opens up into a similar version of the main page, but with a different senshi profiled (with the corresponding colour). The same background is on every page. The manga room link takes one to an explanation about the series, as well as some subsequent work by the same author. There is a link to a shopping guide, albeit one for the Metro Toronto area, rather than other places, altho Ebay is linked. There are however suggestions on where to look in your general area and what to look for. The album is a very small gallery of wedding pictures. It might be nice to expand the gallery to include the entire series, rather than just the limited set included. The vote link doesn't work so shouldn't be included. The artwork is very well done, and shows a lot of talent, altho more could have been included. The how-to section is very well done, altho the steps could have been presented all on one page, rather than a series of pages. A good link list, altho I have no idea (and no inclination to find out) how many of them are still around. The greeting card link no longer works either so should be taken out.

Advertising and sponsorship 5
- Advertising shops in Toronto where one can get the manga from, as well as some of the other works of Takeuchi-sensei and other manga-related books.

Self-promotion 4
- Unfortunately there isn't much here to promote, altho the art section is a good start.

Filler 6
- With not much content, there isn't much filler at all either and what there is is not that bad as filler content goes. It at least keeps the interest of the visitor.

White-space 6
- The site flows very well and is evenly proportioned, with a good balance between wording/content and white-space. The background is a little annoying after a while but is sufficiently muted that it doesn't detract from the information.

Other 6
- The site is extremely limited in the amount of information presented. There is much more to the manga than what is here. Perhaps a detailed synopsis of the books could be included, as well as a more comprehensive gallery.

Saturn

The Sailor Moon Manga Room. I have hopes for this, but upon seeing that it is hosted at Angelfire I have lost all thread of a hope. Let me explain why.

There was a time back in the late 90's when I first started learning web design. I was using an old 75Mhz Packard Bell and had a whopping 2Gb of hard drive space to run Windows 95... yeah those were the days... unfortunately those were about the last time Angelfire was a decent host. Back then when web design was NOT all the rage, 5Mb of space on a free service was godlike, and that was what you got. You also go a page builder and some nifty graphics if you so desired them. In 2000 Angelfire sold out and let Lycos buy them, and frankly they have gone down hill ever since. Suddenly there were obscene amounts of popups on Angelfire sites, in page ads, and you suddenly had 50Mb of space only for them to drop it back down to 20Mb a year later. How nice of them as most of my files disappeared without a trace.... That being the case, I gave up on Angelfire and started seeking out better free hosting.

As you can see from my last paragraph, I don't like Angelfire and dare I say it, I would rather use Geocities if I had to choose a better bad free host. At least there I don't get advertisements for Viagra or how to make my penis larger even though I am female... But also along with the popups, Angelfire insists on putting horrible banner ads on your page as well, which shifted everything that COULD have been a design on this page down so that it now resembles the main page of Neopets... aka... it looks like shit.

The fact that this "design" if you can call it that has advertisements for other crappy free services down the left doesn't do it any justice either. I applaud that you made this with a Mac... ok well maybe I don't. I like Macs, but being proud of this is just showing your ignorance because this layout is atrocious. It might have had potential or been worthwhile back in the times I spoke of in my earlier paragraph, but not by today's standards. I mean there is NO reason for a layout like this when there are multitudes of free graphics sites that offer FULLY MADE layouts on the web....

Another thing that bothers me is that I have a feeling that this person inflated their counter. They either started it high, or they bribed a lot of people. Maybe I should get in line for some of this bribe money that these sites seem to dole out... But frankly if 318014 people have viewed this site then you wouldn't be on Angelfire on their obviously free service as your bandwidth would exceed almost instantly with a hit count like that.

Onto content please....

Well while I am waiting for the "coloring pages" to load along with all the advertisements and popups, I am going to ask, who did you think you would impress with this background? You have used it in different colors on two pages thus far and it does absolutely NOTHING for the site. You have a solid color "layout" why not have a solid color background? Oh wait, because this site REEKS of generated code.... and a quick "view source" proved my suspiscions....

Now that the page has loaded, I can view these "coloring pages". These look like nothing but images that were greyscaled and then desaturated to me... try again next time honey cause you aren't fooling me.

The "Manga Information" did nothing for me. It tells me crap about crap. Meaning that it tells me about the history of the manga and about Naoko Takeuchi... it tells me NOTHING about the story!!! Why would you waste somebody's time with this?!

The "Album" is just Usagi and Mamoru wedding photos.... Can somebody tell me when this is going to be the "Manga Room"? As it stands I have seen nothing that really pertains to the manga itself....

You know what? I am not wasting my time with the rest of this site. There is no actual content here! It is all crap and the title of the page is horribly misleading. I am signing the guestbook and going to promptly coat myself in vaseline and rub my SM Manga against my skin so that I know what manga REALLY is.

Advice? Scrap this site, get a better host, and learn what content is. As it stands I know you HAVE to be completely lying about your hit counter (unless you gave all the hits yourself) as you have nothing here to keep people coming back. Nice try, but try harder.