Luminary Moon: http://members.xoom.com/farallon/
Luminary Moon is a general Sailormoon site that combines a pleasing atmosphere with insightful information to create a nice general webpage. Both the splash page and the front page are very well-done. They loaded fast, they are not hard on the eyes, they are well-designed and pleasant-looking. In the case of the front page, a fairly-common picture is taken and used in a way that I had not seen done before. The site is full of information about the Sailormoon series, the life and experiences of the author, and the influences her high-school experiences had on her later career as a manga writer. The information on the site seems accurate, although some rather conspicuous gaps are apparent. I'd be looking for them in the next site update. :) Artemis' Score: 7
"Luminary Moon" is one of the best sites on the net I've seen; not only because of it's layouts, but because of the loading time. It took me under 10 seconds to load the pages I went to. It's a very informational, well-organized and a very nice site. Although it's not often updated, it's a fantastic site. Keep up the great work, Farallon! ^_^ Luna's Score: 7.9
The first thing I noticed when viewing this page was, "Wow! Fast loading!". It took no time at all to load up thanks to the height and width tags in the HTML. It literally took seconds! The front page as with the rest of the site is not overly complex. There's none of those ugly banner exchanges or popups to be found. There's the Xoom advertisement at the top of every page but I soon forgot about that as it doesn't interfere at all with the viewing pleasure. One thing that puzzled me though was why she bothered with the "without images" option as it only refers to the main page. I'd scrap this personally as the "with images" page is fast enough. The graphics are very effective though at times I found myself wishing that all of them were manipulations of the manga instead of the anime. The profiles on the characters are very basic, some simplifying the characters to the degree that they loose their appeal. The Mercury profile is an example of this. Some of the facts aren't necessarily wrong, but the webmistress seems to have gotten the manga confused with the anime in places. She needs to clarify which events happen in which media. For example: Sailor V never even visited London in the manga series. There is also a big difference in Diana's introductions. She claims that she hasn't read the Mixx translations yet, which probably explains the lack of info. Something else that is a big no-no is placing the assumed "Dubb" names for the Outers in their profiles. She should probably placed these in a rumours column. The thing that caught my eye though was the definitions of the Senshi's names. I found this really insightful and found it highly original. Something else worth crediting is the way she paired the Senshi off. Also very original. But as far as I can see, she has no plan to create a Tuxedo Kamen profile or even one for Sailormoon! The series information is brief at best and could use some more elaborating where needed, yet it gives the viewer an "impression" of each season which is probably what it was meant to do. However if you wanted a episode by episode guide/ translation, there is a link provided. The manga information is also very interesting. There is a list of Takeuchi Naoko's other works and also some insight into her personal life and schooling! This is the first time I had seen this information. Well Done! The pictures placed throughout the site also came as a breath of fresh air. No more fuzzy screen captures here! Wonderful selections of artworks and only ONE broken link! (The last pic in the "Inners" page). Very well organised. I also hadn't seen many of these before, suprisingly. The links page was well done. Not too many to make it look untidy. She supplies summaries of the site to help us navigate. Very impressive though several need to be updated. Good choice of links though. The awards gallery was also handled well. She didn't apply for every single award out there like most other sites and the ones she had won were good quality ones at that. The Preferences section was basically very simple. Though she admitted to creating it purely for aesthetic purposes, I found it very enjoyable. An impressive site which needs to brush up on some of it's information. I'm looking forward to seeing how it's going to look in a few months time. Well worth the visit. Diana's Score: 7
Overall Score: 7.3
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