Mon, 3 August 2009
What's up ADV Manga? I used to buy your books back in the day. Oh, the good old days when you were gonna release 1000 manga volumes. You released Volume 1 of Yotsuba by Kiyohiko Azuma, creator of Azumanga Daioh, in June 2005, Volume 2 in August and Volume 3 in October of that same year. Then things started to hit a snag. Yotsuba, along with other titles like Gunslinger Girl, Aria, and Cromartie High School, disappeared from shelves. Yes, the great disaster of ADV manga had begun. Volume 4 of Yotsuba didn't come out till July 2007! By that time I was very leery of buying ADV titles because you never knew when the next volume would come out. At first I boycotted Gunslinger Girl because it had been so long since the last volume that I had to go back to the first volume and reread the series. But I couldn't resist picking up the then new Yotsuba volumes. It ends up that I was hesitant for good reason. After printing Volume 5 in October 2007, ADV manga apparently died and Yotsuba was locked up in their basement, along with the other titles I mentioned up above. So far, only Yotsuba and a few others like Aria and Peacemaker have been able to find a way to escape from their dungeon of manga death. You would think Gunslinger and Cromartie would have been picked up by now. I think Cromartie would be a good fit for Dark Horse. Gunslinger? I think Seven Seas. But anyways, back to my main point. Yen is putting out a new edition of Yotsuba with new translations. And get this, they are releasing the first 6 volumes next month! Volume 7 is set for December 2009 with Volume 8 set for April 2010. Yen currently has the covers for volumes 1-6 up at: http://yenpress.us/?page_id=636 I don't really like the fact that they are clumping 6 volumes in one month. They should have spaced it out. If they had, like one volume per month, I would have bought each book as it came out. Since so many are coming out together, what I plan to do is just buy the first and sixth volumes. I already own 1-5 of the ADV editions, so I just want to compare the translations and printing quality of the first books to see how they differ and if it's worth buying the other four that I already have. If you are a One Piece AND Yotsuba fan, prepare to die of starvation, or hopefully, your parents are rich. Or you have a really good job. Or if you aren't living with your parents, maybe move in until this plague of riches passes over! Oh yeah, if you can answer this, you win a Sesho No-Prize!: "Who is Javier Lopez?" Think and discuss amongst yourselves. |