wow. that looks pretty amazing.
Droid, Japanese food stuff: wonderful!
Oishinbo is far drier than these though...
Vol. 1 was ace, but I can't understand why the publishers didn't just publish everything in order- the 'a la carte' approach means missing out on all sorts of narrative subtleties, which jar a bit (suddenly Shiro and Yuko are married, a work colleague is dating someone we never see and then is immediately pregnant by them etc etc).
I love the dryness of it overall- its hilarious how seriously everything is taken- if it isn't, it's an affront to the spirit of Japan, even down to the length of time you leave the seaweed in the water when preparing dashi .
scanlations
I totally agree Matt. I guess the main reason is that its over 100 volumes and they probably felt it would be easier to market as deluxe 'themed' editions. I would happily have read through the whole thing myself.
They're bringing out 5 volumes (at least) this year, by the looks of it:
http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_ss_b?url=search-alias=stripbooks&field-keywords=oishinbo
How many issues are in the first 'a la carte' collection? 6? They should have had the balls to do it chronologically- hardly a huge leap from what they're doing already.
That its been translated at all however, is something to be thankful for- just to read stuff like this:
"the more familiar you are with a certain food, the greater the emotion when you discover its true deliciousness"
(from the extract above- Oishinbo has a similar tone throughout)
True - but Ive never seen such a huge series translated in its entirety... closest we've come is Naruto, which is 40 something volumes so far...
Good article here about Gekiga in general.