Kaitou Ace and Sailor V

The original serialization publication dates of the chapters of the Codename Sailor V Manga are not easy to find, they aren't on that Manga's Wikipedia page or Wikimoon or MAL.  Fortunately I found this Forum Thread with the dates provided for both Sailor V and Sailor Moon.

https://www.sailormoonforum.com/index.php?threads/timeline-of-the-mangas-original-serialization.34386/

For most people the main thing they know up front about the Sailor V Manga is that it came before Sailor Moon.  However it was published in a sporadic schedule and in fact only the very first chapter actually came out before Sailor Moon did.

However what I really want to talk about in this context is the character of Kaitou Ace or Phantom Ace.  It's easy to read the Sailor V Manga assuming it predates Sailor Moon more completely then it actually does and then observe how the Kaitou Ace storyline is both similar to and different from Tuxedo Mask and think that Tuxedo Mask was subverting expectations set by Kaitou Ace.  But in fact Kaitou Ace isn't introduced until Chapters 9 and 10 which were published in February and April of 1994 when Sailor Moon was starting the Infinity Arc the source material of Sailor Moon S.  Meaning it's the opposite, Ace subverts what a Genre Savvy reader expects based on Tuxedo Mask.

Now I shall have the Spoil the Manga to discus that subversion.

Kaitou Ace does in fact turn out to be a villain, he's given a sob story backstory but still is revealed to have been working for the Dark Agency the whole time.

There is also dispute about how much the Sailor V Manga and Sailor Moon actually work as being in the same continuity, some things arguably don't line up.  But still I think the idea that future readers might read Sailor V in relation to Sailor Moon chronologically may have been part of the idea.

Because Sailor Moon pretending there is any ambiguity to if Tuxedo Mask is one of the good guys or not tends to be one of things Genre Savvy viewers/readers with decades of hindsight find pretty silly, of course the love interest in a Shoujo Manga isn't going to be evil.  In that context Kaitou Ace may have been written explicitly to say, yes it was theoretically possible.

I do kind of wish the genre would do a Reverse Femme Fatale type villain more often.  When there is Romantic Tension between a Magical Girl and a villain it's usually more that it's what leads to his redemption rather them him at all trying to be seductive.  In Shoujo Manga based Anime that aren't any type of Superhero story like Nana the melodrama of the protagonist being seduced by a Hot guy she knows is bad for her can be quite compelling.