Wow, that came in fast =o
Some details about the book:
- spans from chapter 1 to 7
- includes some bonus art pages at the back
- includes a CD with 3 music tracks
Honestly, wow. It may be because this is the first Touhou book I’ve bought (still need to get Bohemian Archive and PMiSS), but I didn’t imagine the book to be that small. Well, thinking on it, it’s about the same size as your regular manga. It’s just that it’s probably the one book I’d give the most care to since it’s an official Touhou manga which made me hesistant at first to even open it.
After browsing it, a few things stuck out to me. One, the colored pages as seen from the magazine scans are grayscaled in the Tankobon release. Also, the text that you see on the cover of each chapter of the magazine isn’t there. (Check for example the text about Yuyuko ghosts getting fat in one of the chapters and you won’t see that in the Tankobon). Disappointed me a little bit, but it wasn’t TOO big of a deal though it did feel a little lacking without it.
The most important point though is the flow of the story. Some people complain about the pacing which I personally found nothing wrong with while we were getting the scans in chapter by chapter. As a reminder, a story takes a while to setup especially if the universe itself isn’t based on fast action, but once the story starts moving, it gets moving at its intended pace. With that said, having the first several chapters in a book consecutively made me realize just how appropriate the pacing really was as far as SSiB was concerned. You can’t rush that kind of story like you would a shonen manga, and it shouldn’t be rushed. Once the story is all said and done, then you can start making an accurate, personal judgment of the flow and content overall by its own merits and demerits. And I personally am waiting to see the story played out no matter where it may go.
I would have ended the post right here since I’ve said what I wanted to say, but I want to make a couple of comments about the music CD that came with it. First of all, typical ZUN work and loving every moment of it. There’s not much as to an up tempo because of the story thus far, but it gets the mood set for the first several chapters. And for those that played Uwabami Breakers, track #3 can be a real treat or make you genuflect like no other. (I orz’d)
Ahaha… to me, all the pacing complaints/jokes are simply a repeat of my 1 year in the Story Discussion subforum of Megatokyo. Trust me, MT moved even slower with only 2~3 pages a week, with more characters to focus on and no clear direction of plot until recently (5 years of running later).
But yeah, with the pacing issues, factor in that manga usually comes out once a week. SSiB is one a month. I’m guessing people wouldn’t be so noisy if we had a miracle situation with the chapters coming out on a weekly basis.
I am jealous! I can’t wait for my Internet to get turned on so I can order my copy. Too bad about the color pages, but oh well.
I’m still a little underwhelmed by the new ZUN tracks. Youkai Space Travel has some pretty good parts, though, and maybe I just need to listen to Watatsuki’s Spell Card more … since I’ve been disconnected my music listening habits have been pretty weak. I still haven’t listened to track 3 much at all because I want to really hear the song for the first time when I finally make it to Tenji, since I haven’t really had that experience with a ZUN game, owing to my suckage at STG.
The first two tracks didn’t stand out to me that much, but I loved the 3rd track.
It’s worth noting that the removal of that text and greyscaling color pages is very standard in a tankobon. Very, very rarely you will find color pages. They tend to be at the start, and such. Lots of the time they’re just duotones too, rather than full color. It’s a shame, but it’s cheap and efficient. In fact, the only tankobon I’ve ever seen with color pages in the middle was Onikakushi vol 1. But I digress.
Nice to see this. Big, usually Japanese tankobon are pretty small.