Midnight... is great!

[strobe_z]

The night has a myriad of different faces, and there is a man who peers into them one by one... His name is Midnight.

I just read the first couple of chapters of Midnight (French language release). It's really really good. As always, Tezuka has a good concept - a Taxi Driver with a healthy disrespect for the law who picks up passengers and gets invovled in their life stories - and then ramps it up with great artwork, pacing and really interesting secondary passenger characters.

The first chapter deals with a kid and an oil spill, so Tezuka's environmental message comes through loud and clear. The second chapter is a race against time for a young man trying to deliver an important document to his boss.

I draw a lot of similarities between Midnight, Rainbow Parakeet and Black Jack. They each have their own "medium" (i.e. Taxi Ride, Theatre and Medicine) but the people they meet and the stories they get involved in are quite unique.

I likes it!~

[UnluckyLukeGR]

I just read the first two volumes, actually. I'd had the second volume lying around for a couple months because fnac kept not shipping me the first volume. I finally got my hands on the first volume a few days ago.

I really like it as well. What I found interesting was how, even though it's episodic, there's a continuous story about his girlfriend, which apparently continues throughout the series.

Make sure you read the afterward, too.

Also, the Black Jack crossover chapter is awesome.

Aagh...I want the next two volumes so badly!

[Tetsuwan Atomu]

It was so fast out of print i coudn't believe it can someone tell me why actually even second hand not all volumes are to find anymore.

I just ended up buying the Japanese version wich doesn't do much of course.

[F-Man]

I'm also actively looking for the French release. I've only got volume 4 so far.

[Boss_Aesop]

In the French iBookstore, they have digital versions of Midnight. Although by some devlish aberration, volume 1 is missing. Same deal with Vampires. I contacted the listed publisher Kazé about it and no response. I used the email: "contact@vizeurope.com." It turns out Asuka is the publisher for Midnight so I'll need to somehow get ahold of them. Some luck, huh?

[F-Man]

[Boss_Aesop]

You can see what I mean through the links below:



These volumes were first made available a year and a half ago. And the missing volumes have gone unnoticed since. I guess that means no one's buying them and/or no one cares. It's been a week since I send out the email. No doubt it's buried in some inbox that no one reads. Viz Europe's Kazé divison's number with the country code for France is as follows: 33 (0)1 44 08 77 71. I would call, but it would be troublesome if the secretary at the other end says "Désolée, je ne parle pas Anglais." And I would be royally screwed if they start giving me the runaround. It would be awesome if someone fluent could put the pressure on Kazé to fix the problem. The missing volumes are also gone from the Belgium and Swiss apple iBookstores.

[Tetsuwan Atomu]

That's weird but i don't care about digital anyway and i don't think digital Tezuka manga was ever really a thing in France since the only people buying it are the real collectors.
As for getting them i have gotten every rare tezuka manga released in France (that did not come out in english from like 2012) you just have to look around even if they aren't anywhere to get today in 2 months some copies just pop up out of nothing even though i'm talking mostly about second hand of course ... Only three in the sun i have picked up in Spanish cause i still could get them new at the time and the deal was just great compared to paying alot for 8 OPP volumes.

[Boss_Aesop]

For a life on the go, digital editions are remarkably convenient. For the French editions, my primary interest is reading and enjoying Tezuka not collecting per se. I did however recently nab a full set of «Le Cratère» and the books should be on their way now as I write this. The seller on Ebay.fr had me pay a paypal invoice. I dunno how safe that is. But if worst comes to worst, I'm out 40 bucks.

As for the missing books on the iBookstore, I opened a customer service ticket day before yesterday through Kazé's anime store. The ticket is open and I'm waiting for a response...

Oh yes, not sure if this is appropriate, but if anyone has scans of publisher editions of OOP VF tezuka stuff like «L'arbre au soleil», don't hesitate to PM me and/or link me to where I can find them. I could search myself, but it would take a while...Scanlations are less welcome, but if there are some good ones that I should know about then np. With the euro on a decline against the dollar, I'll probably start importing a fair amount of French manga. Shipping with La Poste is still killer though.