...are you comparing the Sailor V manga to the Sailor Moon anime by any chance? Because a lot of your complaints are not relevant to the Sailor Moon manga. For example, the entire Sailor team has a greater variety of skills even within individual story arcs, much like Minako shows in her series. Furthermore, at least early in the series, Sailor Moon also employed physical attacks in her arsenal, and from time to time did so in the anime as well. But let's be honest, it's much cheaper to animate one set of stock footage and run it ad infinitum - a Sailor V anime would have gone the same route.
Sailor V also doesn't "fight crime", she's still fighting the same villain group that forms the backbone of the first Sailor Moon story arc.
Ultimately, Sailor Moon became an anime because it was intended to be a larger universe with a grander scale - much like a Super Sentai show with a complete team except all women. Sailor V is simply a focus on a much smaller slice of that universe - and also a much sillier series since Takeuchi tended to take it less seriously. Not necessarily a knock on it, but easily noticeable that Sailor V's story arcs are much more humorous and the serious plot doesn't really kick in until the end. had Sailor V become the crown jewel of the franchise (and it actually almost was!), it would have probably played out more like Sailor Moon.
Yes. Sailor V does 'fight crime.' The focus is on the latest dark agency plot, but it is her catching and tying up regular criminals that leads into the introduction to the police characters. The first panel of the Sailor Moon manga was a news article about Sailor V stopping some thieves!
And even only comparing the mangas I thought Codename Sailor V was much more creative and varied in how the heroes fought. Going back to the history of the franchise, Toei had asked for Sailor V to be made into an anime before there was a Sailor Moon at all. I agree that the greater number of characters in Sailor Moon as well as the greater scope of the threats made it on paper the better choice for becoming an anime, but it seems to me the very creation of Sailor Moon with the intention of making it an anime hurt the manga considerably and ultimately made it much less creative and fun than Sailor V. I also think it was much easier to just use stock footage of one attack over an over again adapting from Sailor Moon than it would have been adapting from Sailor V, where the fights were much more unpredictable, even if it would not have been avoided entirely.
I would've liked to see a "Sailor V" anime too, but I disagree that it's any better than "Sailor Moon". There was a good deal of fun and creativity in both, but their styles were different: V was a superhero comic, while Moon was a Super Sentai series.
Sailor V it's not better or worse than Sailor Moon, but it has it's own story and deserves to be telled in an anime, I read the manga and Mina has changed a lot in Sailor Moon cause she was lazy and careless before being Sailor V, it would be interesting to see that development.
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Why wasn't this made into an anime instead of Sailor Moon?
Given the pedigree, being the prequel to Sailor Moon, I was not expecting very much from Codename Sailor V. And while it is not among my favorite mangas, I was surprised at how much better it was than its more famous follow up.
The premise is largely the same, a ditzy teen gains super powers and fights evil. But there is a creativity to Codename Sailor V that is lacking in Sailor Moon. In the latter, the Senshei tend to be one trick ponies, having one primary attack that they use at any one time and not doing much else. Sailor V actually has more than one attack and will also often fight hand to hand (or foot to face, as it were), something that is rare in Sailor Moon. In addition, the transformation pen is used much more creatively in Sailor V than in Sailor Moon. While Usagi would just disguise herself, Minako at several points uses the pen to arm herself, one time even using it to give herself a giant machine gun.
Sailor V also fights regular crime fairly often, something largely ignored in the Sailor Moon manga for reasons I do not understand. This results in several policemen being recurring characters, some of whom I wished would have turned up in Sailor Moon.
These differences result in a series that feels much more varied, a world that feels more real, and a character that through her own actions is more fleshed out than Sailor Moon, which in turn makes the style of humor that both mangas share funnier. A few chapters in I was asking myself why this was not made into the anime instead of Sailor Moon. I also asked myself why the creativity so apparent in Sailor V was so absent from Sailor Moon.