Highway Star ( Otomo The Complete Works Edition ) Manga Review

Posted By yonghow on August 29th, 2022

Highway Star ( ハイウェイスター ) is a collection of 12 short manga stories by AKIRA creator Katsuhiro Otomo, drawn during the period of 1976-1977 when the artist was only 22-23 years old. While a much older edition of Highway Star exists, it has long since been out of print and the stories contained within are kinda jumbled up with respect to their actual publish dates; this new Complete Works edition has been revised to tidy up the chronological order of the stories, and the timeline is right before the next collection of stories found in Goodbye Japan.

I’ve not finished reading all the stories in Highway Star so I won’t comment on the quality of the narratives, but as far as the physical quality of the book is concerned it is pretty much in line with the other titles from the Complete Works Collection; crisp and clean reproductions of Otomo’s drawings and printed on thick, high quality paper. There are also select pages with color art work, and they look great.

As with Boogie Woogie Waltz and Goodbye Japan, this new Complete Works edition of Goodbye Japan not only allow Otomo fans a renewed opportunity to enjoy and appreciate his early day works which were really hard to get hold of previously, but also provide an improved reading experience from the better reproduction of the art work. Recommended.

Availability : At the time of writing this review this title is only for sale from Amazon Japan; hopefully Marketplace stores from other Amazon countries will eventually carry it too. In the meantime, Amazon Japan ships internationally; use my How To Order From Amazon Japan post for a step-by-step guide.

“Highway Star ( Otomo The Complete Works Edition ) ハイウェイスター大友克洋全集” manga details :

Dimensions – 17.6 x 2.5 x 25 cm
Softcover with dust jacket, 320 pages
B&W, In Japanese language