#petit comics

   On my way back from Florida, where I did not see Man-Thing by the way, I finished the last half of Hagio Moto's adaptation of Mitsuse Ryu's 10 BILLION DAYS AND 100 BILLION NIGHTS (Hyaku oku no hiru to sen oku no yoru, originally published in 1967, updated by the author in 1973).  I'd say it's my least favorite Hagio Moto work I've read thus far, and most of the blame I think is on Mitsuse.  The novel, which I've also read, is extremely talky, relying a lot on dialogue to tell you what's going on while the characters phase in and out of one part of space and time to the next.  If you read my translation of Hagio's interview with Tezuka, you know that her publisher had prompted Hagio to adapt this work and it appeared for about a year from June 1977 through 1978 in Weekly Boys' Champion.  It really works more as a girls' comic than a boys' comic.  Yes, it has characters with wrist-mounted lasers and incredible tech that only bearded old men can jimmy and config.  Lots of explosions, oh, and yes, a bearded evil Jesus who is always trying to blast Siddartha, quasi-female Asura, and old man Plato to bits.  But most of the time Hagio's "adaptation" focuses on the philosophical questions.  Similar to, but not quite like the standard "Who am I?" question found in a girls' comic, we have a bigger question:  "Who made us and why did they screw us over?"

I'm posting a couple of pics of the two different versions I have of the comic.  Petit Comics (Shogakukan) put out a tankobon version in two volumes in 1985.  It's a nice copy to have.  Each volume has about 200 pages, very easy to read and because it is tankbon, it's a bit larger.  You also get more initial color illustrations.  Originally sold for 580 yen, but I was able to get a copy from amazon.com (sent from Japan for about $13).

Here are some of the color illustrations/plates you get with this edition.  I would imagine that they opened the first few episodes in Weekly Champion.

An illustration of the Asura King (Ashura-oo), undoubtedly the main character in Hagio's adaptation.  Hagio draws her definitely feminine (Hagio's contribution), but she is lithe and still has a boyish quality as well.

Another plate (#3) from volume 1 of the Petit Comics edition.

For comparison's sake, I'll show a few images of the other, more recent edition from Akita Bunko (1994).  This smaller edition lacks the color plates, but it does begin the epic with the same limited-color pages of the story as in the Petit Comics' edition -- the creation story and the first part of Plato's episode.

You can see the size difference here.

Notice how the coloration of the initial pages of the Akita edition is of the same quality as the Petit Comics' one.

Finally, back to the Petit Comics' edition we get a nice color plate of a Buddhist guardian Kubanda (Kumbhanda), a lieutenant to Asura.

Tezuka had expressed great interest in Hagio's project, wondering how Buddhist iconography would appear in the manga of this artist, who had previously drawn more Christian imagery.  (Again, check out the interview).