I have to say that I found the story good. Not great, but good. It
dragged a bit in places, and some of the dialogue was a little stiff.
The plot was good, and John did manage to capture a lot of the spirit of
the Morte D'Arthur. My mother wrote her master's thesis on Morte
D'Arthur, and I read it when I was real young, so I understand a lot
about Arthurian legends (did you know that the sword in the stone was
*not* Excalibur?). John did a good job of sticking to the spirit of the
Morte D'Arthur.
The only problem, alas, is very similar to the problem I faced with my
recent fanfic, "Weapons of War". WoW used the theme of an abomination
that gets out of control, kills its creator, and goes on a rampage. One
of my C&C'ers pointed out the Frankenstein thing has been done before.
To death. Frankenstein is a powerful, moving, and interesting story,
but since its been told so many times, the hundredth iteration leaves us
a little bored. We've been there so many times, the passion behind the
original becomes so diluted as to make us lose our interest. I got
almost no feedback on "Weapons of War", because, I think, the story
didn't really interest anyone.
The same thing happens with Arthurian legends. The same story has been
told over and over again for hundreds of years. What's left to say
about it? Yes, applying and merging the Sailor Moon mythos with the
Arthurian mythos is interesting, and well done by John, but the heavy
reliance on the Arthurian side kind of dulls the interest, I think.
We've just *been* there before, way too often. We *know* how it's going
to end, and no matter how moving and dramatic the story is, it just
doesn't rouse our passions like it did the first time we heard it.
For those of you who weren't around or old enough when "Star Wars" came
out, I'll tell you that, at one point, it became kind of a badge of
honor to say that you'd seen the movie ten or fifteen times. This was
before the days of video tapes, so seeing it in the theater was the only
option, other than the cut TV version that would appear a year or so
later. Movies had much longer runs back then, because if the story was
good, people wanted to see it, knowing that would be their only chance.
Nowadays, people say, "I'll wait for it to come out on video".
The first time I saw "Star Wars", the jokes were funny, the action
breathtaking, and the whole audience cheered when the Death Star blew
up. The fifth (and last, in a theater) time I saw it, nobody laughed,
nobody was impressed with the special effects, and the desctruction of
the Death Star was greeted with silence.
I think John is running into the same phenomenon with "Tokyo Senshi".
I feel bad saying this, because the story is good, and reflects all of
the time and effort John put into it. I will say that, as retelling of
Arthurian mythos goes, his is one of the best I've seen (much better
than, say, "First Knight").
I fear, however, that reaction may be muted because we've been there,
we've done that.
My only exposure to Sailor Moon has been the dubbed episodes, but I
thought that it made much more sense for Usagi to be Arthur, rather than
Rei. Rei would make an excellent Lancelot, so the juxtaposition
confused me a little.
All in all, a good work by a good writer. I still think DnR #15 is the
best thing John's ever written.
All of this is, of course, just my opinion. I've been wrong before. :)