Love Hina - Kodansha (bilingual edition) and Tokyopop
Did you know that in Japan, for a short while Kodansha released bilingual versions of some of their most popular series? If you didn�t, well, now you know. These special volumes where both in English and Japanese. One such series that got this special release was Love Hina. So how does this version compare to the English version that was released by Tokyopop? Sadly I won�t be able to comment much in the review because I only have 2 volumes of the bilingual version (volumes 2 and 3) and i�m missing volume 2 of the Tokyopop version. I still have enough material to work with to give you all a pretty in-depth look at it though.
The first major difference between the Kodansha version and the Tokyopop one, is that the Kodansha volumes are about half he size of the Toykopop ones. The difference is Tokyopop decided to add more chapters per volume in the version that they released. Let me break down the first 3 volumes like this so you can see what I mean.
- Tokyopop- Volume 1 - Chapters 1-6
- Kodansha- Volume 1- Chapters 1-4
- Tokyopop- Volume 2 - Chapters 7-15
- Kodansha- Volume 2 - Chapters 5-10
- Tokyopop- Volume 3 - Chapters 16-24
- Kodansha- Volume 3 - Chapters 11-16
I like what Tokyopop did here by having more chapters in one volume. By doing it this way, it makes it easier to collect the whole series. There is one problem by doing this though, it makes it confusing on people (myself included). When I first went and bought Love Hina at AX 2007, I bought a copy of the first volume of the Tokyopop version, and found volumes 2 and 3 of the Kodansha bilingual version (they where a dollar each, so why not?) I thought I would be fine reading them in a normal order. When I finished volume 1 of the Tokyopop version and started volume 2 of the Kodansha one, I was surprised to find my self rereading the last part of volume 1 at the beginning of volume 2. So take this as a warning people if you plan to invest your money and buy one of these versions of Love Hina: just because the numbers and covers are the same, does not mean that they will contain the same chapters.
Okay now for the cover comparison, for this part I will compare volume 3 of both versions (the only matching volume I have).
Lets look at the Kodansha version first. Now the Kodansha version has the name of the series in both English and in Japanese on the cover, even Ken Akamatsu�s name is like this as well. The book has a glossy removable jacket, and under the jacket, the book has a very plain green and gray colored look to it. On one jacket flap you have commentary from Ken Akamatsu in english and on the other flap you have a handy little character guide.
As for Tokyopop, like all other manga released by this company, there is no fancy book jacket and they just give it a typical glossy paperback cover. I also noticed something rather odd with the artwork here. Besides Tokyopop cutting off part of the picture so it could fit the whole cover, the color is off. As i�m typing this, I currently have the two versions sitting next to each other. The picture of the Kodansha version looks more yellow and the Tokyopop picture looks more red. With the picture being that its a bunch of the girls from Love Hina with a sunset in the background, I like the look�s of the Tokyopop version better in this case. The redder shade in the picture gives it a better a sunset look than the Kodansha cover, that's what I think anyways. Now there's one thing Tokyopop did which I find rather odd, and its like this with all the volumes they released (except volume 1). In the Kodansha version, Ken Akamatsu has a silly little drawing of himself above his commentary section. Now in the Tokyopop version, they place these silly drawings on the back cover of every volume, with the Japanese text untranslated. It is also odd that they have this, yet there's no author�s comment anywhere in the book. I have no idea why they did this. it just seems like a pretty random thing to do.
Paper quality-wise, the Kodansha version has this nice, smooth paper, that really helps the artwork stand out more. The paper the Tokyopop version used seams pretty good, but its just simpliy a higher quality of what looks like recycled paper. Its not as smooth, and the pages tear a bit easier than the Kodansha version. The art still looks good here with the paper that's used, but not as good as the Kodansha version.
Text and translation. Kodansha sure does get carried away with the different kinds of fonts used here. So it makes it kinda annoying when your trying to read it and it keeps jumping around to all these different fonts. So in this case I like Tokyopop better, they do change fonts around, but they don�t go crazy with it and only change fonts when necessary. As for the translation and wording, I mostly prefer Toykopop�s take on it. In Japan (as well as other countries that don�t have English as their primary language), sometimes when something is translated into English, it doesn�t sound very natural to someone who speaks and reads English fluently. This is exactly the case with these Bilingual comics at times, there's some times where they have such an odd choice of words (or they forget to add some), and as a result it doesn't sound natural. An example would be on page 49 of volume 2, it's the scene where Su is clinging onto Keitaro as she says "I won't stop you studying, Keitaro." In proper English, its supposed to read, "I won't stop you from studying, Keitaro." Meanwhile, Tokyopop�s dialogue sounds much more natural to those who are fluent in English.
Okay, you know what I said about the fonts in the Kodansha version being crazy? Now that I think on it, I think the reason why they used so many different fonts is so that people who read Japanese can follow the English text better. In the Kodansha version, they also added spaces between the panels and placed them in such a way so they can add additional text. This makes both languages easy to read, which I find this quite nice. So overall, Kodansha came up with a great way to help people learn English with these bilingual comics (or in my case, learn Japanese).
In conclusion, Kodansha may have an edge with being in both English and Japanese, but the English text in the Toykopop version sounds better much of the time. So in this case its all about the matter of what you prefer. I like the Tokyopop version for when I want to do a casual sit-down read, yet I like the Kodansha version for being a handy study tool to learn Japanese thats fun. So now that I have pointed out these differences, i�ll let you make your own choice and decide the winner here.
