Bunny's Ambition has come a long ways from when I opened an English language manga website for my "fan page" project in my first web publishing class. Now it is over 5 years later, all of the manga now available from Tokyopop, and this site has passed 10,000 hits a while back. It has been so much fun for me and I hope it continues to be so for years to come. ^^

Version 1
When I was One,
I had just begun.

Mid-November 1999, I put the site up on my 5 megs of space on the Millikin University server. I called it "Pretty Soldier Sailor Moon English Manga", oh how creative. ~.^ It consisted of a main page with a picture on the side of Sailor Venus holding up the Moon Sword, and had links to summaries for the first 2 Pocket Mixx volumes next to it. Below that, links to very small character profiles of the 5 inner "scouts," and below that, small thumbnails of a half dozen images.

By the end of that semester, I changed the main page to only have links to other pages, such as the "Manga Synopsis" page, and "Character Profiles," and "Images." My collection of summaries continued to grow as more manga was released. (The picture above is actually of this later incarnation of version 1.)

Versions 2 and 3

When I was Two,
I was nearly new.
When I was Three,
I was hardly Me.

Manga page :: Character page

Version 2 came in January 2000, which gave the page a new look, new home, and a new name. An image of the five inners replaced that of just Venus, and a new background was used. Instead of plain dark blue, a dark blue patterned bar on the side with an overall white background was implemented. Each main section (like manga, images, characters, etc) featured a different inner soldier chibi from my Illustration Collection volume 1. And, new sections like "Fun" and "Site Info" came on board. The new home was Tripod, which gave 10 megs with pop-up ads. (I don't like embedded ads messing with my design.) And, I started to advertise. Also, I figured out that the name "Pretty Soldier Sailor Moon English Manga" was boring and long-winded. Using the only name exclusive to the English version of the manga, I came up with Bunny's Ambition with my friend Fro's help.

Version 3 went online in spring of 2000, which was really more of an overall content overhaul with some new additions to manga summaries and images. During this time, the site had it's first links. One at Anipike, and then Manga Style. People started to visit, and I added a guestbook and counter. And, Tripod increased the space allowed to 50 megs. During the summer, I had graduated and no longer had access to a designing computer. I could do little and made very few updates during this time. At this time, I got linked by the Moon Garden. In May, I expanded the Bunny character profile into a Sailor Moon shrine, A Soldier's Policy

Version 4

When I was Four,
I was not much more.

Site page :: Version 4.1

In the fall of 2000 I discovered a community computer lab in which to work on a new site design for Ambition. I used an image from my first artbook that is not seen all that often on the web, an early picture Naoko did, obviously while still working on the character. It featured Usagi/Bunny with white hair and a gun, not quite the magical girl we know her as today. This image itself is pretty amusing, and I also added the version title Packin' Heat to emphasize it. This is also the first time I no longer used a introductory paragraph on the main page, instead relying only on the catch-phrase "Pretty Soldier Sailor Moon English Manga" to convey the site's content to new visitors. Besides the main image, all other site graphics followed the color palette of red, dark blue and light blue. Besides the totally new look, I also tweaked the navigation and content at this time.

On September 11, 2001 the terrorist attacks on the east coast affected the nation and the world. In the wake of this, I dress up Bunny's layout with a pattern of stars and stripes in the background and called version 4.1 "God Bless America" and added a link to where online donations could be made to the United Way.

March 2001 brought about another major change to how BA was viewed. I finally got fed up with my Tripod service (pops up getting more annoying, my account being deleted or unavailable for days/hours on end...) and purchased web hosting from A+ Hosting and the domain name Bunnybeth.net to hold all of my sites.

Version 5

When I was Five,
I was just alive.

Manga page :: Updates page :: Valentines

Starting in the fall of 2001, in the middle of my full-time graphic design job and planning my wedding, I came up with version 5, "Work in Progress," after many false starts. This delayed it from being released until December 2001, almost a full month after the 2 year anniversary. This version featured frames-based navigation and a picture of Sailor Cosmos and Chibi Chibi that is a combination of the sketch of it from the Materials Collection and the finished image from artbook 5. This layout was in honor of the Stars series (and all of the series as a whole) being published by Tokyopop. Each section featured a heading with character designs from the Materials Collection. In addition to the new look, navigation was really tweaked, in order to make it easier to get places.

When the fall of 2002 rolled around, I found myself too busy to begin on my next version of Ambition between hosting my first holiday events and starting another major web project for the series Shoujo Kakumei Utena. But, I hit a milestone with 10,000 hits (!) and decided to mark the occasion with a small banner on top of the main layout. After a little while I took this down and replaced it with a Happy Valentines message for a special holiday look.

Version 6

But now I am Six, I'm as clever as clever.
So I think I'll be six now for ever and ever.

"And Now We Are Version Six" began as an idea to base version 6 of Ambition off of one of my favorite childhood poems, "Now We Are Six" by A. A. Milne from the book of the same name. I decided to use a child-like image of Bunny and found a really cute one in scans of the Infinity artbook at The Empire of Suns and Shadows. With a blue background and pink and yellow daisies, this layout is very "spring" and captures a light-hearted mood.