Kicking off the 2nd release phase of the OTOMO COMPLETE WORKS is Katsuhiro Otomo’s magnum opus manga AKIRA ( Vol 1 ) and “G……”, an omnibus collection of the artist’s earlier manga short stories ( my review in the coming week/s ).

Unlike the other manga works ( like DOMU, FIREBALL ) released so far from the OTOMO COMPLETE WORKS series, this new edition of AKIRA is not simply a re-print of the existing compiled tankobon, but the Young Magazine serialized edition.

So what is the Young Magazine serialized edition ? For most print manga in Japan, new releases utilize the serialized model, where a single chapter is published weekly in a cheap, pulp volume ( the pulp volume released by Kodansha, the publisher of AKIRA is called Young Magazine ), and these individual chapters are then later collected and published as a compiled tankobon edition.

For AKIRA, the tankobon edition includes editorial changes, omissions made to the art work/panels; this new Young Magazine serialized edition does not, and presents the manga in its original, pristine form exactly the same way readers saw it in Young Magazine the very first time it was published.

In my opinion, this new edition offers two significant improvements over the older, existing tankobon edition; the first is that the older tankobon is printed on more pulpy, lower quality paper that tend to yellow relatively quickly. As such, the screentone work gets muddy and loses its contrast over time, but this new edition’s higher quality paper will retain that contrast much better. Secondly, this new edition restores more of the select few but gorgeous colored pages ( as you can see in the preview pages below ), including some that are not fully painted but in red/green dual tone.

(image below) The new edition is just a tad bit smaller in print size as compared to the older tankobon edition. Photo courtesy of Jona Sanpo.

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— JonaSanpo? (@JonaSanpo) September 1, 2024

As a big AKIRA / Otomo fan, I was always going to get this new edition of the manga, even though I already own the older tankobon as well as the English language 35th anniversary box set. For more casual readers, the differences between the older/newer editions might not even be noticeable, although I still stand by what I said above about the 2 improvements over the old edition.

Will Kodansha publish an English language edition ? At the time of writing this review, there has not been any solid word or news of one. In the event that it does happen, I reckon it is still going to be a long wait.

“AKIRA 1 ( Otomo Complete Works ) Manga 大友克洋全集 コミック” details :

Dimensions – 17.6 x 2.2 x 24.8 cm
Softcover with dust jacket, 320 pages
B&W with color on select pages, In Japanese language

  
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