DBZ portion of Manga to be in full color?!

[Mewzard]

Edit:
http://www.kanzenshuu.com/2012/12/20/fu ... announced/

Well, I guess my timing was a bit off, because this little tidbit of news was posted on Kanzenshuu. This is something I've been wanting for a while, but thought it would never come...yet, it's coming! (insert Power Rangers Zeo promos here)

Some questions that come to my mind are:

How much of the manga will come out?

How much will it cost?

Will Viz put out English editions?

What does this mean for other awesome classic manga?

What does this mean for future manga?

Original Post:
In recent months, I've started thinking about Dragon Ball in a what-if way. Specifically, what if Dragon Ball was done in full color?

I know a high majority of manga are done in Black and White, but between Toei's tendencies to go nuts with hair colors and my experience with American Comics (which mostly stick with color), I've wondered if the manga might benefit from it either from an esthetic point of view, or even drawing in people who might enjoy colored comics more.

We've got occasional tastes of it when Jump allowed color pages in their magazine releases now and again, and in the Vizbig releases, but I'm talking Page 1 of Volume 1 of Dragon Ball until Goku flies off with Uub completely colored.

It's not like manga hasn't gone full color before; Masami Kurumada's Saint Seiya: Next Dimension (official sequel/prequel) was done in full color, and it looks nice:





Would you guys enjoy the manga more or less if it was in color (specifically like the full color example)?

http://www.kanzenshuu.com/manga/color-chp/

Also, I would extend said question to any future manga (Say, Toriyama gets a random shot of inspiration and comes back in full force).

Would it be worth paying more per volume if that did happen? Or instead, if releases were delayed from weekly to biweekly or monthly?

Maybe I'm a bit spoiled, but I love full color releases...yet I don't like the loss of detail that is common from manga to anime. Just curious if any one else shares my desires.

[Bussani]

I'm not sure I have any strong feelings either way. It would be cool to have plenty of color, but I kind of like the simplicity of black and white as well. I guess I'm happy with things continuing as they are.

[dbzfan7]

I would prefer colour, but I douhgt it would change anything.

[mattymoron]

I would kill for a fully colored version of the manga.

[Super Sayian Prime]

Dragon Ball SD is full colour and no one cares while that might as well be Dragon Ball in colour.

[VegettoEX]

I think we'd all be tempted to say "Fuck yeah!"...

But if you think about Toriyama and his style of both writing and drawing, it would likely fall flat on its/his face. We're talking about someone who took tons of shortcuts, came up with story/plot points just to make the drawing process easier, etc. Anything that would add extra work and production time on top of what he was already doing would likely be a huge detriment to what it is we actually love about both the series and the author.

[TheDevilsCorpse]

I dunno, I think I personally prefer the manga the way it is. I do like his colored art, but what I like the most about Toriyama's manga is the way he gets such great looking content with just the simple use of black and white most of the time, rarely even using any tones to introduce any of the various shades of gray. I guess a colored version would have beneficial for for the anime to stick closer to the intended colors as long as they were available on the animation pallet, but I think they did a good enough job anyway seeing how Toriyama may not have been consistent anyway (as proven by various individual pieces). Of course I'd still buy a colored version if it was released, but I'm not sure I'd like it better or anything.

[JulieYBM]

Eh, I don't know. I think what is done in color is good, but a lot of what makes Japanese comics so charming is how they use the lack of color to add power to their images. I think the art of Dragon Ball is plenty imposing enough as-is, espicially in high quality printings.

[Michsi]

I'm a big fan of the black&white (+ screentone ) style , so no, I can't say I would have liked the manga more if it were full colour. I suppose it would also depend on how the colouring would look. If we are talking about ink and copic markers, then yeah, I miht like that. Digital colouring like the one Toriyama uses now? Not so much.

[Hellspawn28]

Why not? Sometimes I'm against stuff being turn into color depending on the media, but I think it could work for Dragon Ball. As long you can get the original version then it should be fine.

[Mewzard]

I think we'd all be tempted to say "Fuck yeah!"...

But if you think about Toriyama and his style of both writing and drawing, it would likely fall flat on its/his face. We're talking about someone who took tons of shortcuts, came up with story/plot points just to make the drawing process easier, etc. Anything that would add extra work and production time on top of what he was already doing would likely be a huge detriment to what it is we actually love about both the series and the author.

Naturally, I assumed he'd have an extra assistant or two to take care of the coloring. It's like with American Comic books; even when someone does both penciling and inking, it's pretty rare that they color things too. Usually just have a colorist do that portion.

Referencing back to the above mentioned Saint Seiya sequel, I'm pretty sure Kurumada sinks in far too much time trying to get the details in to actually color the thing himself (his assistants probably do it).

On the matter of SD (I was trying to find something less...well...SD to reference), that manga also likely has a separate colorist.

This isn't really post-creation coloring I'm referring to, but a hypothetical situation where the colors were planned in advance and done (with Toriyama likely getting another assistant or two to help out). Or, if not that, then a sequel. Toriyama probably couldn't handle a sequel, but the thought is fun.

As for the matter of Toei...trust me, they'll find a way to give people weird hair colors, even if the series is all normal hair colors. Their art department had a few occasions of going nuts in some of their series.

[Titan]

Actually, full colour would give a new dimension to the manga, so, yes, i would love to see it.

[Cold Skin]

Absolutely yes, as long as it's not anime-based colors.
The digital coloring was fine and respectful of Toriyama's style, keeping things to how he would have likely made it himself (occasionnal flashy backgrounds, etc).

I really love the artistic side on Toriyama's color pages, it really brings something.
So if they were done in that style, sure, I even wonder why they still haven't made an ultimate edition of the manga fully colored based on Toriyama's choices.
I know the Kanzenban was already said to be the very last, ultimate edition there would be... but you know, after the ultimate, there's gotta be an ultimate-ultimate, and then an ultimate-ultimate-ultimate... There's always room to improve and/or offer more in a new version/edition, there's never a point where you have to say "well, it's the end, we can't do better than what we did, ever".

[DanTheBib]

Would it have benefited? At the time, I don't think so. It might have spurred on a little extra success in Japan (due to the novelty of it being in colour) but I can't see it making that much of a difference. Same goes for the worldwide releases.

But would I like to see full colour now? Hells yeah. I mean, I don't think it'll happen - that's a lot of effort to go through after all. But it would be nice to see something like that, and it would be like crack to a lot of fans similar to ourselves. We'd buy one volume, then get hooked.

I too would like to mimic Cold Skin's testament of "I'd rather not have anime colouring" for everything. I wouldn't mind it for covers/splash pages (after all, that colour scheme is what most people would recognise), but I really enjoy Toriyama's way of colouring.

[Fizzer]

If they were to now bring out a fully coloured kanzenban series with Toriyama's choices of colours, at triple the price of the kanzenbans we have now, I would live off of cheap bread and tap water to be able to by them. That would be brilliant. Would I have wanted Toriyama to start making the series with the idea of making it all colour in mind? No, because it would have changed the story too much, and probably caused it to end after the Hunt for the Dragon Balls arc.

[Mewzard]

If they were to now bring out a fully coloured kanzenban series with Toriyama's choices of colours, at triple the price of the kanzenbans we have now, I would live off of cheap bread and tap water to be able to by them. That would be brilliant. Would I have wanted Toriyama to start making the series with the idea of making it all colour in mind? No, because it would have changed the story too much, and probably caused it to end after the Hunt for the Dragon Balls arc.

You think it would cause the end of the series early? Interesting thought. I'm not sure how much time would be dedicated on Toriyama's plate to colors. I just can't see him coloring the manga himself entirely. Suggesting the colors and maybe teaching an assistant, yeah, but given his typical way of trying to make things easier, he'd probably be minimalistic in some way to save time and effort (it is fun to imagine Toriyama's attempts at getting out of extra work by pulling a Tom Sawyer to his manga's fence *Gee, this coloring sure is fun...*).

[Eire]

It reminds me times million years ago when I wanted to send back my Sailor Moon manga because of "coloring defect".
When Toryiama was starting, the way of drawing in black and white was an established tradition, accpeted by readers and profitable for publishers (because it allowed quicker and cheaper releases:)) I wonder how his publisher would react for such a proposition- having assistants wouldn't solve anything, since outside USA it's pretty unheard of. There are the questions from the buisness side.
From aftistic one- I doubt that it would cath on from reasons mentioned before. No, I don't think I miss that.

[Mewzard]

I find it interesting that Color comics in America have been around for many decades (well longer than the Shonen magazines) yet Japan has been for Black and White comics for a long time as well. Sure some independent stuff like the original Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles comics were in B&W, but that was usually for financial reasons.

I suppose Japan has the same reasoning, but they do occasionally do color pages for their B&W releases, and that kind of thing makes me want to see more. Full Color releases are rare, but not impossible. I suppose if Toriyama wanted a full color release, Jump would do it, given how big a seller for them Dragon Ball has been.

I suppose Next Dimension spoiled me, but seeing a manga I like in full color really makes me want to see more manga do the same. Even if most creators can't afford to do it, why not some of the bigger names? It's like with America; just because something's a standard, doesn't mean we can't get a few books now and again that don't follow said standard.

[Kingdom Heartless]

It honestly wouldn't surprise me if a colourized version was released. Though I wouldn't expect every volume.

I'd love something like the new Scott Pilgrim editions.

[B]

It would have been nice to validate my pet theory that throughout the story the characters wore different color gis at different stages of the series, but other than that, I don't think it would have changed a whole lot on how I view DB.