Fireball is a collection of twelve short manga pieces drawn by AKIRA creator Katsuhiro Otomo during the period 1978-79 when he was around the age of 24/25. The 12 stories appear in this volume in chronological order of their publish/release dates. Just flipping through the pages, it is evident that Otomo already possess technical excellence in his drawings at a young age of 24/25, and his storytelling and composition skills are also starting to sharpen up.

This is especially evident in the panels one see in Fireball, the 11th story collected in this book, the sci-fi story dealing with ESP that is a sneak peek of what is to come in Domu and of course AKIRA.

While I recognize 2 of the short stories have been published previously in a different format, namely Hansel & Gretel and Hair, the latter which appeared in the Memories omnibus, I believe many of the other stories have not been collected in tankobon format until now in this Otomo Complete Works collection ( please let me know if I am mistaken ).

The print quality overall is crisp and sharp, and pretty consistent with the rest of the manga titles published so far with the Otomo Complete Works like Domu, Highway Star and Goodbye Japan. Several of the stories also feature select color pages.

Because these manga stories were published so long ago ( more than 4 decades ago in 1978/9 ), and coupled with the fact that many of them were never released in English or any other language other than Japanese, it is easy to understand why they are relatively unknown and of less interest to younger manga readers today, who know Otomo’s work mostly through AKIRA. It is therefore a great service that Kodansha is providing by releasing his earlier works as such so that they might find a new generation of readers. Recommended.

“Fireball ( Otomo Complete Works ) Manga 大友克洋全集” details :

Dimensions – 6.93 x 0.94 x 9.84 inches
Softcover with dust jacket, 310 pages
B&W/some colored pages, In Japanese language

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