First Look at Ode to Kirihito

[strobe_z]

Yay! Chapters.ca just sent me an email saying that my copy of Kirihito has shipped. Hopefully I'll be getting it early next week.

Nice of them to ship so that it should arrive BY the release date instead of ON it... which is what I thought would happen...

[putrocca]

My coppy has already arrived at my apartment in Boston... unfortunately that does me no good while I'm in Florence, but I hope my roommates are enjoying it.

[strobe_z]

well, I my copy of Kirithito arrived today - a nice little surprise just in time for the weekend!

As expected, it's a really top-notch production job by Vertical. Was I imagining things, or was this advertised as a Hardcover? Yep... is still calling this a hardcover.

Well, surprise surprise, it's a trade book instead. I'm guessing Song for Apollo is going to be the same (despite being advertised as Hardcover for the present)

After getting over the slight disapointment that it's not hardcover, I'm still impressed by the overal presentation. The paper-stock and cover-stock are very similar to the Buddha trade books. What I really like is that the grey fold that covers half the cover is actually glued at both ends... so you can slide it to reveal either the human or inhuman face - without having it fall off. A nice little touch that makes one think that Vertical cares about the presentation of their books. Makes me wish Viz handed Phoenix over to them as well...

I was a little disappointed that there's no Tezuka "afterword", but it doesn't surprise me. Despite really liking to hear Tezuka's own thoughts on his work, at 823 pages of story... I guess you can't really complain.

Haven't cracked the spine on it yet, but the fact that it's already worth the cover price says something!

More later...

[cmoon]

I think its been pretty clear from day one that Vertical is very concerned about graphic design, and VIZ doesn't seem to have any real sense of it (or at least puts much less value in it.) Honestly however, this is true for most comics. It isn't like the dark horse reissues of Astroboy are a thing to behold (actually, they are pretty much butt-ugly.)

[cmoon]

[Blockhead]

It's also printed on really nice paper. Great feel and contrast. Now if only they'd hardbind them.

I've already nearly destroyed my Complete Bone single-volume because the perfect-binding is so flimsy.

Well at least it looks like ink and not Xerox. I'm impressed.

[putrocca]

Kirihito just got another great reivew, this time on AnimeNewsNetwork:

http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/columns ... .php?id=41

[cmoon]

[strobe_z]

I finally had a chance to finish Kirihito, but I think I want to review it a bit before I make any thoughtful comments

However, I translated Tezuka's afterword from the Korean edition and I thought it might be something of interest. It's too bad that English editions of series like Kirihito, Buddha and Phoenix don't come with some sort of Afterword by the author. Those ones especially intrigue me to find out what Tezuka might have commented about.

Anyway, without further ado... some words about Kirithito from Tezuka himself:

-----------------------------
When this publication (Ode to Kirihito) was first being serialized, a lot of people asked me if it wasn

[cmoon]

Awesome Strobe!

[strobe_z]

I think the two things that really stand out for me from this afterword is that:

a) It's interesting to see that even Tezuka had people doubting and second-guessing his story ideas. I can just imagine all the "helpful suggestions" he must've gotten over his career.

b) How much energy he put into making sure his medical stories were up to snuff. Given that he received his MD, I was always pretty sure that they were accurate enough, but I like the idea that even someone as talented and full of imagination as Tezuka had to do his research. There's a hint of the saying 10% inspiration and 90% perspiration in there.