The news was shared by Viz on their Twitter Feed, the message read as follows:
Viz Media wrote:Announcement: Transformers: The Manga Volume 1, rolls out this Winter. This collection of Generation 1 Transformers manga strips ran in Japan’s TV Magazine in the 1980’s and will be published in the United States for the first time!
Also, Sabrblade goes a little more in-depth about this release and explains it, as well as saying where, the image they give, came from.
Sabrblade wrote:It seems that Jim Sorenson's next book, Transformers: A Visual History, isn't the only new piece of Transformers print material coming from Viz Media. Viz has just Tweeted the announcement of Transformers: The Manga, Volume 1, a collection of the original Japanese manga from 1985, originally published by TV magazine, to be released in the United States later this Winter.
Note that the accompanying artwork included with the Tweet is actually a preexisting work. Originally, this artwork was the cover of a huge compendium released by Million Publishing back in 2002, which had compiled all of the 1985-1991 Transformers manga. Later, Million (under their new name Hero-X) rereleased this collection broken apart into seven individual volumes, split across each individual Japanese G1 series. The particular version of the art seen here in the Tweet is of Volume 1 of that split-apart series, which contained only the Fight! Super Robot Lifeform Transformers manga and story pages.
It is presumed that Viz's releases will be an official English-translated release of Hero-X's seven volumes, but it is currently unknown what kind of English translation this will be (as in, how faithful it may be to the original Japanese version). After all, this is no ordinary Japanese manga series we're dealing with here. Rather, it is a Japanese manga of Japanese-original stories (and characters, in later installments) published as part of the Japanese release of an American property featuring (at first) American-original characters.
So, it remains to be seen if this will use such terminology as "Optimus Prime", "Autobot", "Decepticon", etc. or "Convoy", "Cybertron", "Destron", etc. Or if such Western Transformers phrases like "By the Allspark!", "Scrap!", "Stick it in neutral!" "Sweet Solus Prime!" etc. will be used over less specific phrases like "Oh no!", "Curses!", "Stop right there!", "Oh my goodness!" etc.
What do you think of this news? Are you looking forward to these releases? Let us know in the Energon Pub and stay tuned to Seibertron for all the latest news and reviews!
