While the “Full Color Comics” have quietly — and hopefully temporarily — moved to digital-only in Japan after the Saiyan and Freeza arcs received print editions, Viz has been charging along chapter-by-chapter with their own digital release in Weekly Shonen Jump. The company announced plans for an English print version, and while we received pretty much every important detail at that time, there was one minor aspect still up in the air: the cover art!
Online listings have started adding what appears to be final cover art, and it looks as if Viz will be going with a straight port of the original Japanese covers:
We still do not know, however, if Viz will be porting some of the great Akira Toriyama Q&A material that was originally printed in the Japanese versions.
The first volume of Viz’s “Full Color” comic edition of Dragon Ball is due out 04 February 2014 for $19.99 and will cover original Dragon Ball chapters 195 to 211. The second volume will follow suit 01 April 2014.
Thanks to several folks for passing along the info!
9 Comments
Dammit…I should’ve held off.
I HAVE to grab these when they come out… Looks fantastic!!
Interesting use of “arc” instead of “saga”. I know it’s an extremely old fan quip/FUNimation thing, but I’ve never known Viz to apply arc divisions at all anyway.
Also, another chance at Viz not sucking and giving us an uncensored release. Anything questionable in these sets of chapters?
@batistabus Yeah, same here. Fortunately, I still managed to sell mine (I ended up losing money anyway, just not as much).
@B Mr. Popo’s lips, which have been censored in the digital chapter-by-chapter release. Though Viz HAS been know for uncensoring stuff in the tankoubon that was previously censored in their Shounen Jump release (like Neji’s manji in Naruto). Let’s hope that’s the case…
I’m really looking forward to these. Using the Japanese cover art probably means they’re only releasing the Saiyan and Freeza arcs though.
@B: VIZ is only putting “Saiyan Arc” on the cover because they’re translating everything that’s on the Japanese cover.
@Kendamu And thankfully so, means they’re being more respectful of the original. Hope that also applies to the inside of the book…
They won’t change their translation, they never do, apart from censoring more “bad words”.
Honestly, the volumes are most likely going to be the same as Viz put out digitally, because colored works are far harder to edit, and wouldn’t be worth the money to do so. It’d just cut into their bottom line at that point. When it’s black and white, the light parts are don’t need to be altered. But with color, there’s a lot more that needs to be altered and matched.