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As I got home from work today I've had some neat late Christmas gifts in my mailbox waiting for me: Two Astroboy manga books containing several episode stories from the 80's version! I recently buyed them off of ebay from Harakiri Books (great name for a store). All images shown in those books are adapted 1:1 from the 80's eps, in color as well, just put up in manga form. Those books are real gems for a collector's heart dedicated to the 80's series!!
I so wish I could take scans from the inside of them, but, alas, the books are hard to bend open, thus trying to make scans would possibly damage the binding.

So I'm just able to share the covers:

Front


Back

The mangas are written in japanese only, which fits me right as I still have a go in learning japanese.
A huge plus factor are the Kanji symbols having Furigana beside them, so I won't have to learn all the 1945 Kanji's along with each one's different reading. :d oh:
The stories are written in Kana writing for the most part, and besides that - the storylines are well-known anyway.

It's better that you don't risk damaging them.

Thanks for sharing. Where does the picture on the bottom left comes from? I mean, which story? The style is so familiar, but not the background.

Very cool. I've had pretty good luck finding Tezuka manga on ebay, but I've never come in contact with these before. Tell me, do you know of any other copies available?

Do the stories seem to be based upon the 1980s episodes?

"Astro Forever" wrote:Where does the picture on the bottom left comes from? I mean, which story? The style is so familiar, but not the background.

It's from "A Robot President", about 10 minutes into the episode. The frame appears in the scene with Astro fighting against the huge robot used by Dead Cross as a diversion, allowing him to keep the way free for kidnapping the robot president.
If I hadn't seen the episode just several days ago myself, I too would've been puzzled about the frame's origin. The scene's length is about 1 sec, therefore easily to miss.

"mr skunk" wrote:Very cool. I've had pretty good luck finding Tezuka manga on ebay, but I've never come in contact with these before. Tell me, do you know of any other copies available?

Unfortunately I haven't seen any other volumes of these releases so far, they appear to be rare mangas printed back in 1981 by a japanese publisher. The ones above I own are second-hand.
I did a google search using the Katakana characters printed on top of the books, but couldn't come up with anything worthwhile. I guess the best you can do is to regularly keep an eye out for that seller's range of products.

"jeffbert" wrote:Do the stories seem to be based upon the 1980s episodes?

Yeah, in fact the stories are the 1980's episodes. The mangas entirely consist out of frames taken from 80's anime series.
It's a weird feeling actually reading the episodes rather than watching them.

The episode stories from volume 2 are:
- Atlas Lives Again
- Robot Land
- Frankenstein
- The Red Cat

Those from volume 3 being:
- The Crystal Of The Desert
- A Robot President (hence the frame on the manga's backside)
- The White Planet
- Goliath's Head

The stories seem to be put up according to the japanese episode order.

I see whether I'll manage to borrow my brother's digital cam over the weekend for delivering a few shots from the books' inside.

It does indeed follow the original sequence: http://en-f.tezuka.co.jp/anime/sakuhin/subtitle/ts017.html

It must be a weird reading indeed. But there's not better way to learn Japanese in my opinion! (Well, aside perhaps from watching the Japanese soundtrack, too).

"Astro Forever" wrote:It must be a weird reading indeed. But there's not better way to learn Japanese in my opinion! (Well, aside perhaps from watching the Japanese soundtrack, too).

Reading japanese mangas is a great way to train each character's spelling. The Kana-characters are considerable fast to learn, trying to read the Kanji ones however will remain a life long task for non-japanese people (partly even so for native japanese people, hence the creation of the Furigana reading-aid).

You're right, listening to the audio is a very good way to practise too, especially concerning the pronunciation.
The most part of my japanese vocabulary I learnt by repeatedly watching the '03 series.
Most of the japanese learning guides are coming with audio CDs since hearing the words' pronunciation is inevitable when you seriously intend to have a grasp for the japanese language.


I was able to make a few shots from the mangas' content. See whether you can name the respective episodes (shouldn't be too hard for people introduced with ).

These are from volume 3:

List of the cast













Now for volume 2:

List of the cast











Pretty much the 80's, aye?

Have you noticed any differences between the story versions here, and those in the anime?

BTW, thanks for the scans.

No, as far as I had noticed the stories do accurately follow the uncut japanese storylines of the 80's anime series.

I just finished reading volume 2. For once, I won't have to put a DVD into the player when I happen to have a need for watching some certain 80's episodes. Like that, I can spare some electricity (wow!).