Overall I was VERY pleased with Tokyopop's rendition! It was very exciting to be able to read the first 6 chapters in English while holding an *actual book* with words and pictures there togther. ^_^

First I'll talk about the actual construction of the book. I'm kind of a stickler for binding. I don't like glue bound books (like most manga both here and in Japan are made) because they tend not to last and are much easier to crack, but unlike some of TP's earlier books it doesn't seem like it's going to fall apart after just a couple readings. The cover front was a modification of the original japanese one, and the back just a blurb of the story. The onigiri that was on the back of the Japanese dustcover was placed on the front interior cover, and the illustration of Tooru, Yuki and Kyo that was on the dust jacket front cover flap was put in the interior back cover. The only image lost was the colored clip of Tooru from the Tooru, Hana and Uo that was on the interior back flap of the dust jacket.

The paper is a heavier weight then the Japanese version, and the book is slightly larger. That means there is a little clarity loss in the pictures, but not too noticable. The main flaw I saw was that it the artwork had a heavier saturation of ink which made for a darker transfer then the original artwork. That means that some of the artwork lost its delicacy and was much darker. A good example of what I mean is on page 72 of both the new and old manga. There is a picture of silhouettes of Yuki's 2nd grade classmates when he was transformed as a child. In the original the background is dark, but the silhouettes were clearly distinguishable. In the new one you had to strain to pick them out. However, one thing I was really pleased with was the text. I've had problems with several TP books with the text being too small to be comfortably read, but even the side comments were easily picked out. ^_^

Since I can't actually translate myself, I can't speak too much to the veracity of the translation, but it matched pretty closely to the translations I've read so far. I was VERY, VERY pleased that there were almost NO attempts to westernize the dialouge! One thing I am sure everyone will be pleased to hear is that ALL the honorifics were left in place. Every -san, -chan, kun, sempai are properly in place. ^_^ In several places there were little side comments 'added in' explaining some of the cultural differences (that 'flower' meant 'woman', what Tooru meant when she said she wanted to be a cat instead of a dog) and several things were just left in Japanese. One of my favorites were that they left 'Riceball' as 'Onigiri'. (with an explanation that Onigiri meant riceball). The only thing they translated that I wished they hadn't was "Denpa" which they translated as Electro-Poison Waves, or just Poison Waves...which is accurate enough I suppose.

All in all I was VERY happy with the way the whole book was put together. They put some nice extras in it too. It opens with a page on what a phenomenon Furuba has been internationally, and closes with a two page spread on Chinese zodiac with blurbs on the traits of each, their years, and a little history on how the system came to be. Then there is a very interesting interview with Laura Bailey the voice of Tooru in the Funimation discs. In the opening they say they plan to have lots of other treats for us and I have to say I'm excited about that.

If Tokyopop keeps up this high quality I'm going to be one happy fangirl!


Merrow ^_^

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