Nigorimasen! Blog

The moment I read the news that Viz would be releasing the Shonen Jump-based series Hunter X Hunter in season box sets beginning in Q4 2008, a huge grin appeared on my face. At last, this awesomeness will be brought to America! The manga by Yoshihiro Togashi is already on volume 19 (Vol. 20 comes out May 6th) and for those of you who have never heard of HxH, shame on you! (For a good introduction to the plot, read this Animefringe feature from September 2005.)

To get some perspective of how long it has taken for this anime to hit US shores, the anime was created in 2000 and it has since been dubbed into French, Spanish, Italian, Portugeuse, Tagalog, and even Arabic. Viz pitched HxH and Monster to television broadcasters at this year’s NATPE and they have DVD rights for both so the next logical step would be to get Monster on DVD and perhaps TV. (Adult Swim, you know you want a psychological thriller/drama to replace InuYasha…) Failing that, just Hunter x Hunter getting onto Toonami would be fantastic.

P.S. Did you know Viz is a part-owner of a future 150-seat movie theater to be the main attraction of the yet-to-be built J-Pop Center in Japantown?

From top to bottom: Japanese, German, English

When I was in Germany last August, I bought the first volume of Honey and Clover and wrote about how Tokyopop GmbH was releasing titles noticably ahead of US licensors. Now that Viz’s English version has hit shelves, I bought one of those and looked for differences and similarities between the German and American adaptations. What follows is a comparison of many features between the two in attempt to determine which is the better visual adaptation.
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