So, like everyone else, I'd always been under the impression that the reason Naoko stopped working on PQ Angels was Kodansha lost several pages of its manuscript. This is what I'd always heard, so I assumed it to be true. However, upon reading
Alex Glover's translation of Naoko's "Return-to-Society PUNCH!" series for the first time, that doesn't seem to be the case (assuming his translation is accurate):
Naoko: I don't have any more material! This is too much! I'm worn out, so I can only draw strange names and pictures.
Narration: For the new serial, PQ Angels, I was exhausted after four chapters, and ended part one.
Sounds like Naoko decided to put the series on hiatus because she just ran out of steam.
Manuscripts Missing Punch!
Narration: In the fall of '97...
Osabu: We looked, but they're gone, so we can't make a book.
Narration: The crystallization of our blood, sweat, and tears as manga artists, the manuscripts I cut into my life to draw... They lost them!
Osabu: I'm looking for them now.
Comment: Every time he called it was like that.
Osabu: I'll get in touch with you again.
Comment: Never heard from him.
Osabu: It's nothing to get angry about. Even though I'm busy at the magazine, I'm looking for them.
Comment: Always so wonderful.
Narration: Everyone was very optimistic.
Kodansha: They just got mixed in somewhere. They'll turn up eventually. (Anyway, get to work.)
Anime company: We gave them back to Kodansha.
Comment: But there are like seven pages of manuscript lost.
Toy company: Since a subsidiary lost them, we don't know.
New boss and Nakayoshi: It's not our responsibility, we don't know.
[Naoko punches them all into the sky.]
Narration: Since it wasn't settled, I thought I'd go to the company myself and look for them...
Osabu: Don't bother coming!
Narration: I waited for a year, but there was no communication, there was no apology. Just when I consulted with the office chief (a great person in shoujo manga), they told me they'd give me an apology, but...
Comment: In the fall of '98, the company building moved, and while they were at it, everyone was sure to look for them.
Chief editor: But, we can't find them after all. Don't give up.
Office chief: This happens quite often.
Comment: This still sticks in my heart.
Narration: There was nothing I could do about the lost pieces, but I wanted to deal with it clearly sooner.
Comment: I got mad when they lost the seven pages and made demands. Nakayoshi is cold. *sniff*
Narration: But it happens quite often, does it... To determine if it happens quite often, I decided to try working for Shueisha.
Naoko: Saruko, that's why I decided to take this job!
According to this, the missing manuscript pages were lost in the fall of 1997, which is when PQ Angels began its serialization. While it's possible the missing pages were from one of the first chapters, it seems highly unlikely that they were from the last chapter as is sometimes claimed, and it seems doubtful that they were from PQ Angels at all as 1) Naoko never specifies what manga the pages were from; and 2) The loss of the pages was not the reason she stopped work on the series. Furthermore, the pages were apparently given to an anime company (Toei?) and a toy company (Bandai?). While it's been rumored there were early plans for a PQ Angels anime, and while some early promotional merchandise was made, it doesn't quite add up to me that it's PQ Angels she's talking about. It makes more sense that it would be Sailor Moon or Sailor V (maaaaaaybe an earlier work, like The Cherry Project), in which case they either eventually recovered the missing pages or have had to use copies rather than the originals ever since.
In any event, I'm now skeptical that it was PQ Angels's manuscript that had some of its pages misplaced. What do you guys think?