![[community profile]](http://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
Mai the Psychic Girl #1
Oct. 30th, 2012 03:45 pm![[personal profile]](http://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
skjamHi again!
Digging in my longboxes, I found one of the first few manga to make it in a legal translation to the United States. Indeed, it was part of the first wholesale translated manga importation attempts. Viz teamed up with Eclipse Comics (remember them?) to present three bi-weekly series, Kamui, Area 88, and today's offering, Mai the Psychic Girl.
Among the reasons this series was chosen for the initial launch was that it was relatively short, and Ryoichi Ikegami's art was Western-influenced, which Viz thought would go over well with the skittish general American readership. (They figured they already had the small but fanatical manga fandom by the balls, so they didn't need to cater to them.) As part of the "seamless translation" process, the pages were flipped to read left to right, then individual panels were flipped to restore handedness, and extensively retouched to allow Englishy sound effects. This resulted in what were for the time very expensive comics.
Twelve pages of thirty-eight.
( Twenty-fifth anniversary of publication, by the way )
There was a collected edition, but I believe it's out of print.
Your thoughts and comments?
SKJAM!
Digging in my longboxes, I found one of the first few manga to make it in a legal translation to the United States. Indeed, it was part of the first wholesale translated manga importation attempts. Viz teamed up with Eclipse Comics (remember them?) to present three bi-weekly series, Kamui, Area 88, and today's offering, Mai the Psychic Girl.
Among the reasons this series was chosen for the initial launch was that it was relatively short, and Ryoichi Ikegami's art was Western-influenced, which Viz thought would go over well with the skittish general American readership. (They figured they already had the small but fanatical manga fandom by the balls, so they didn't need to cater to them.) As part of the "seamless translation" process, the pages were flipped to read left to right, then individual panels were flipped to restore handedness, and extensively retouched to allow Englishy sound effects. This resulted in what were for the time very expensive comics.
Twelve pages of thirty-eight.
( Twenty-fifth anniversary of publication, by the way )
There was a collected edition, but I believe it's out of print.
Your thoughts and comments?
SKJAM!
