Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon x ANNA SUI Special Collaboration Book Unboxing

Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon x ANNA SUI Special Collaboration Book Front Cover

I saw this coming out, and I just had to preorder this book and mini purse set! So was it worth it? Find out below!

Warning: image-heavy post ahoy!

Item Info:

Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon x ANNA SUI Special Collaboration Book
美少女戦士セーラームーン×ANNA SUI Special Collaboration Book
Kodansha
Release Date: March 4th, 2021
MSRP: ¥2,970

About:

This is a special set featuring a magazine about the Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon franchise and merchandise from the franchise released by the fashion line Anna Sui. It also includes a sample product, an exclusive shoulder mini pouch.

Photos:

Thoughts:

Now, I know nothing about fashion, so I had never heard of Anna Sui. I just kind of assumed it was some Japanese brand. So I was very shocked when I found out that Anna Sui (the person) is originally from Detroit. I probably have but that sort of fashion-related stuff doesn’t interest me.

So while the whole Anna Sui push didn’t interest me, the included goodie did. The manga design of Eternal Sailor Moon was very familiar to me, and I’m positive I have some sort of old furoku (magazine goodie) featuring it. But the colors of her closest friends in the butterfly against the black background caught my eye, and since I had a coupon and wanted to pick up a CD, I figured this would be a good time to nab it.

Having bought a set like this before, I knew to expect a short book and a small pouch.

That being said, the magazine part is part of the box, not a separate booklet. That’s disappointing. I guess you could hope to peel the booklet away from the box, but of course the spine would be off since it’s made to wrap around a 1″ or so box. Also, I usually just post a few pages in books and such, but in this case, by the time I selected my first few samples, it seemed almost pointless to avoid the rest. Yep, the whole magazine is 8 pages long. And two of those pages is just about the item you can literally open the box to see for yourself!

Oh, excuse me, “poach”. Kidding aside, wow, there have been a lot of Anna Sui Sailor Moon products. Taking a quick look, I can see why I never paid much attention to this collaboration. Prety, but stuff is on the higher side, especially once you factor in the cost to import stuff.

So now for my first Anna Sui item. I have to say… the box was a pain to get open. First pulling it out was hard since you don’t want to damage the outer packaging because, hello, there’s a book there!! There’s very little room to grab it and pull it out, and then once I did after several minutes of struggling, now you have to open the box which has cardboard slits. Didn’t expect to spend several minutes just trying to get this opened.

The official synopsis for this release calls it a “shoulder mini pouch”. Well, it can be worn on the shoulder, it’s mini, but I think make-up/cosmetic bag would be a better description of it. It’s that same nylon/vinyl material you typically find on them. Inside, there’s a little slot for some trinkets or whatever. The strap can make it into a shoulder bag, but honestly, it probably would have been better off as a wristlet or lose the strap completely. Because, as recent reviews on Amazon point out, it’s too small for many if not most smartphones. I have a S21, and I have a slim/standard case, and it fits. But length-wise, there’s no extra room. So it’s about 6″ (15 cm) in long, so if you were planning on making this a mini purse, you need to have a phone no bigger than a 6″ S21. I think a lot of people — including myself — assumed a shoulder bag would be able to hold a phone.

Anna Sui has released several Sailor Moon-themed pouches before, and from what I’ve seen, they do not have the strap. Instead, they have a fancy butterfly zipper pull. It looks like the dimensions for those are the same as this one, but the other pouches also feature a design on the back. This one is just plain black, which is unfortunate. Ideally, Sailor Chibi Moon (or another image of Eternal Sailor Moon) would have been on the back with the Outer Planet Sailor Guardians’ color butterflies. Since there were no images of the back, I just figured it was the same design on both sides. So I was disappointed the back is blank. The design, however, is certainly beautiful. Maybe not the best out of the similar recent Anna Sui products, but the black color really makes Eternal Sailor Moon and the butterflies stand out.

Final Comments:

Looking at other the other mini bags, it seems like this one retails for about the same price. You do get the book and a strap in exchange for giving up a nicer fastener and a design on both sides. It’s pretty, but I did plan on maybe occasionally using it as a simple purse when I just needed my smartphone. While it works with my phone now, with smartphones gradually going up in size, it’s unlikely to be useful in the long-term. Best as a display piece or if someone needs a cosmetic bag they can easily carry around.

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5 Comments

  1. dreager1

    Sounds like if the purse was just a big larger that would have helped a lot so you could use it more often. If the phone itself can barely fit then I do see this being more of a display piece most times. The design is nice though and it does look pretty good

    Reply
    1. Krystallina (Post author)

      Yeah, the number of phones you can use this with is extremely limited. I have an old Sailor Moon case where you’d put the phone in and be able to touch the screen without taking it out, but of course it’s too small now. But then, no one expected smart phones to grow in size so much. This one, there’s no excuse!

      Reply
  2. Leafさんの夢が。。。

    Wow, it’s only 8 pages? That’s crazy xD Sorry the pouch isn’t as large as it seemed it would be, but it’s super cute!

    Reply
    1. Krystallina (Post author)

      And they spent two of them just on the pouch. One page would have been plenty! But you’re right, at least the pouch is cute.

      Reply
      1. Leafさんの夢が。。。

        I can’t xD

        Reply

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