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Android 17 / End of Z

Hi there! I figured I could tell you people about the mangas I like to read and my favourite mangakas (this won’t include scans nor animes, only the book format of mangas).

Even though I don’t read many mangas these days, there are still some titles I’m very fond of and some I’ve been reading since I was a kid. I remember when I was in middle school (or even before that), a friend of mine made me read Dragon Ball (Akira Toriyama), that was my first time reading a manga! And since that day (I’m 30 now), Dragon Ball still is one of my favourite of all times, just because it reminds me of my childhood (and because it’s pretty awesome).

Here in France, since then, there have been a lot of different editions of this manga from publisher Glénat and even though I’m currently buying all the volumes of the latest and best edition to date, I still have the very first volume I ever bought, number 16 (yeah, I didn’t start at #1 for some reason)!

My old volume 16 pictured above (middle) along with the brand new edition (left) and a japanese volume from 1991 (right). The old one was published in 1995, didn’t include any color pages and was reading the occidental way whereas the new edition reads the japanese way, has a new translation and features the original color pages which are pretty amazing!

If you have never read Dragon Ball, here’s why you should: even though it’s not the best manga in the world, it’s one of the most famous and I think it deserves it. The first part of the story features innocent Son Goku at a young age and is full of funny gags and strong friendship acts, good principles for kids. Then Goku grows up and the story goes from cute and funny to badass (and still funny) with amazing fights against powerful foes. Obviously the stories at this point aren’t “award-worthy” (”hey we’ve got to kill the bad guy to save the universe!”) but it’s still a good read.

Also, if you like Dragon Ball, I hope you know about Akira Toriyama’s other main manga (made even before DB): Dr. Slump. It features the story of a young robot-girl name Arale, her maker (a lonely/pervy/crazy inventor) and all the weirdos around them, it’s hilarious from beginning to end and when you read this, you understand the first part of Dragon Ball (with Son Goku as a kid), it’s what Toriyama loved doing at that time and he did it pretty well.

Here’s a small edition from Japan and the french “ultimate edition”, juste like the Dragon Ball one (pictured above):

Artbook Island links (posts and artbook reviews):

- Akira Toriyama (all posts) - Daizenshuu #01 - Daizenshuu #02 - Daizenshuu #03 - Daizenshuu #04 - Daizenshuu #05 - Daizenshuu #06 - Daizenshuu #07 - Daizenshuu bonus - Dragon Ball Landmark - Exhibition - The World - The World Special

…and more reviews to come.