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Star Wars Manga #9
Star Wars Manga: Return of the Jedi, Volume 1
Jabba the Hutt has your best friend encased in carbonite and is using him as a decorative paperweight. You sent your two favorite droids, your best friend's Wookie sidekick, and your sister to try and free your pal and nothing has worked! Looks like it's time to step in and handle things yourself, doesn't it? Be here as the last chapter in the Star Wars MANGA saga begins in Star Wars: The Return of the Jedi MANGA #1! With covers by Adam Warren.
96 pages, Paperback
First published July 7, 1999
About the author
Shin-ichi Hiromoto
42 books6 followersヒロモト森一 (Hiromoto Shin'Ichi) is a Japanese mangaka.
other writings: Hiromoto Shinichi, Sin-Ichi Hiromoto, Shin'ichi Hiromoto.
other writings: Hiromoto Shinichi, Sin-Ichi Hiromoto, Shin'ichi Hiromoto.
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Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews
April 29, 2016
I have always wanted to read this. I remember reading a Wizard magazine about a series of translated manga featuring Adam Warren covers. It took me the better part of two decades but I finally found the first chapter of the Return of the Jedi adaptation.
My main complaints would revolve around around how the publisher made this consumable for the American marker. First, it copied the panels in a mirror image of itself for the translated version. I don't find it inconveniet thought to read it in its original right-to-left orientation.
Second, a lot of the lines because blotted when it was mirrored. I wished the publisher invested some coloring into their adaptation to differentiate it from the original monochromatic Japanese edition. It would have given this rehashed material some added value. Otherwise, why buy it from the bookstore at all when one could get for free from the numerous scanlation sites available on the Internet?
Still, this was one of the best adaptation I've seen of the original trilogy; at least of ROTJ. It would have been even better in color.
My main complaints would revolve around around how the publisher made this consumable for the American marker. First, it copied the panels in a mirror image of itself for the translated version. I don't find it inconveniet thought to read it in its original right-to-left orientation.
Second, a lot of the lines because blotted when it was mirrored. I wished the publisher invested some coloring into their adaptation to differentiate it from the original monochromatic Japanese edition. It would have given this rehashed material some added value. Otherwise, why buy it from the bookstore at all when one could get for free from the numerous scanlation sites available on the Internet?
Still, this was one of the best adaptation I've seen of the original trilogy; at least of ROTJ. It would have been even better in color.
June 7, 2020
We have a new artist again. This one uses more shades of grey and generally has a much improved landscaping, which I appreciate, but the characters themselves are shoddy and blocky and overall inferior to previous. It's also lost a great deal of the unique manga style in exchange, undermining the reason I read these in the first place.
January 7, 2020
I do not love the art but it definitely gets an A+ on the attention to details!
May 31, 2023
The art is so wildly inconsistent in this volume. This new creator definitely isn’t my favorite. The faces on almost everyone are horrible. However, the backgrounds and details on certain aliens like the Rancor, Jabba, and the Sarlacc are really good. Some of this feels like it was drawn by a fifth grader, which makes sense because so much care and attention was put into getting Slave Leia just right. Haha!
April 10, 2024
The drawings where wierd but it was cool to see the Star Wars universe drawn like an anime ig
May 17, 2024
"Really liked it!" - 4 out of 5 star rating.
Return of the Jedi (ROTJ)... but in anime/magna form!
I really like these significantly more than I did my other most recent Star Wars Magna adventure with Episode I - The Phantom Menace (TPM). The first thing that comes to mind as the reason why, is TPM was smashed into only two (2) ~80 page issues... where as here, we get four (4) 80-pagers, giving us around 180 pages for the film. Massive difference here. Literally twice the content.
Also my biggest complaint for the TPM Magna was it didn't feel "Japanese" enough and might as well not even had Magna on the cover page and should have just been advertised as a traditional American comic book.
Here in the ROTJ Magna, everything we know, love, and expect about Japanese culture in the form of Magna however, is absolutely 100% found here. There are times as well where you cannot help but pause and just sit there and reflect upon a page - just being so beautiful and incredibly high craftsmanship of illustration placed before you.
This Magna has really inspired me to rewatch the ROTJ movie, which I shall do here within the next week or so. Definitely towards to the top of my to-watch list now after this.
This concludes my Star Wars Magna run! Looking forward to my next upcoming Star Wars comic book adventure!
Return of the Jedi (ROTJ)... but in anime/magna form!
I really like these significantly more than I did my other most recent Star Wars Magna adventure with Episode I - The Phantom Menace (TPM). The first thing that comes to mind as the reason why, is TPM was smashed into only two (2) ~80 page issues... where as here, we get four (4) 80-pagers, giving us around 180 pages for the film. Massive difference here. Literally twice the content.
Also my biggest complaint for the TPM Magna was it didn't feel "Japanese" enough and might as well not even had Magna on the cover page and should have just been advertised as a traditional American comic book.
Here in the ROTJ Magna, everything we know, love, and expect about Japanese culture in the form of Magna however, is absolutely 100% found here. There are times as well where you cannot help but pause and just sit there and reflect upon a page - just being so beautiful and incredibly high craftsmanship of illustration placed before you.
This Magna has really inspired me to rewatch the ROTJ movie, which I shall do here within the next week or so. Definitely towards to the top of my to-watch list now after this.
This concludes my Star Wars Magna run! Looking forward to my next upcoming Star Wars comic book adventure!
Read
August 11, 2019It's taking me a while to get used to the very manga character designs for the main human characters, but the more kinetic approach of the shonen manga style fits "Return of the Jedi" well. The aliens are also well-represented, and given the comic medium everyone feels more part of the same world.
This is a pretty straight story adaptation, as you might expect; nobody's going far off the reservation on this. The dialogue is all verbatim copied from the final movie.
As such, this is an enjoyable read, though one I'm glad I didn't have to pay full price for.
This is a pretty straight story adaptation, as you might expect; nobody's going far off the reservation on this. The dialogue is all verbatim copied from the final movie.
As such, this is an enjoyable read, though one I'm glad I didn't have to pay full price for.
March 27, 2013
*3.9 Stars*
**Warning: I'm going to assume that everyone reading this review has seen Return of the Jedi at least once. Therefore, I will not be employing any measures to hide spoilers.
*The Gush*
If you've read any of my reviews on the A New Hope manga adaptation, then you know how highly I think of that series. The artwork, the pace of the story with the direct dialogue from the movie, and the adaptation of the familiar characters to the manga style are quite good. The same holds true for this series.
The Return of the Jedi manga is drawn by a different artist and it shows...and not in a bad way. The space scenes are beautiful and there is a amazing full page drawing of Vader in all his menacing glory. But it is in the characters and settings where the change in artists really shines. Return of the Jedi is a more mature, darker film then A New Hope and the two artists' style match this perfectly. Hisao Tamaki, the mangaka (manga artist) of The New Hope manga, draws the characters a bit on the childish side. Not enough to be sicky sweet or ruin what is still an action/adventure tale, but it is noticeable when compared to Shin-ichi Hiromoto - who illustrated this one. In here, Jabba's Palace is gritty and almost but not quite too bawdy for children. The characters are rougher, almost weathered at times. This is illustrated best perhaps in Chewbacca. I mentioned in my review of one of A New Hope's manga that Chewbacca is drawn almost cute at times, but still with the idea of strength and slight scariness that is in the movie. Here the gloves are off; he's scary looking with clear views of his long, sharp teeth. The Rancor fight is suitably gruesome and by and large this is a much more...dark look as befits what I think of as the darkest movie of the original three.
In short, be prepared for the soundtrack to play in your brain as you read this book.
*The Rant*
There are two reasons I can not in good conscience give this and the previous series the full 5 stars. Both of these are enumerated more fully in the first review of A New Hope, but I will briefly cover them here.
1). The Price. Dark Horse is known for, I think, high prices on their stuff and I find that ten dollars per book when there are four books in a series a bit much. It would be less of an issue if these were hardback books or better made but they are rather flimsy (in my experience) and not the best paperback graphic novels. In short, I'm glad I found them used.
2) My main issue is the fact that they messed with the pictures from the original. In Japanese, you read right to left rather then left to right; ergo, the back of the book by Western standards is actually the front cover on manga in its original form. This caused publishers over here problems as they began to translate and publish popular series. They decided that readers couldn't handle reading it the original way and so they flipped the pictures into a mirror image of their original form. Picture your favorite artwork messed with so Mona Lisa is smiling the other direction or the tower in Starry, Starry Night is on the right instead of the left. You might not even recognize some pieces. Manga artists were upset as were many Western readers, and finally in the mid 2000s most of the big publishers decided to print them in the original format and place a page explaining how to read them for new readers. In Dark Horses' defense, they did explain on a page in this and all their other Star Wars manga books the situation and why they chose to do this. However, for fans of the movie, it is rather noticeable at times.
*Conclusion*
If you are a fan of Star Wars or manga, I would suggest giving this a read as it is a great adaptation of the movie. If you are uninterested in either of these, I'd give it a miss.
**Warning: I'm going to assume that everyone reading this review has seen Return of the Jedi at least once. Therefore, I will not be employing any measures to hide spoilers.
*The Gush*
If you've read any of my reviews on the A New Hope manga adaptation, then you know how highly I think of that series. The artwork, the pace of the story with the direct dialogue from the movie, and the adaptation of the familiar characters to the manga style are quite good. The same holds true for this series.
The Return of the Jedi manga is drawn by a different artist and it shows...and not in a bad way. The space scenes are beautiful and there is a amazing full page drawing of Vader in all his menacing glory. But it is in the characters and settings where the change in artists really shines. Return of the Jedi is a more mature, darker film then A New Hope and the two artists' style match this perfectly. Hisao Tamaki, the mangaka (manga artist) of The New Hope manga, draws the characters a bit on the childish side. Not enough to be sicky sweet or ruin what is still an action/adventure tale, but it is noticeable when compared to Shin-ichi Hiromoto - who illustrated this one. In here, Jabba's Palace is gritty and almost but not quite too bawdy for children. The characters are rougher, almost weathered at times. This is illustrated best perhaps in Chewbacca. I mentioned in my review of one of A New Hope's manga that Chewbacca is drawn almost cute at times, but still with the idea of strength and slight scariness that is in the movie. Here the gloves are off; he's scary looking with clear views of his long, sharp teeth. The Rancor fight is suitably gruesome and by and large this is a much more...dark look as befits what I think of as the darkest movie of the original three.
In short, be prepared for the soundtrack to play in your brain as you read this book.
*The Rant*
There are two reasons I can not in good conscience give this and the previous series the full 5 stars. Both of these are enumerated more fully in the first review of A New Hope, but I will briefly cover them here.
1). The Price. Dark Horse is known for, I think, high prices on their stuff and I find that ten dollars per book when there are four books in a series a bit much. It would be less of an issue if these were hardback books or better made but they are rather flimsy (in my experience) and not the best paperback graphic novels. In short, I'm glad I found them used.
2) My main issue is the fact that they messed with the pictures from the original. In Japanese, you read right to left rather then left to right; ergo, the back of the book by Western standards is actually the front cover on manga in its original form. This caused publishers over here problems as they began to translate and publish popular series. They decided that readers couldn't handle reading it the original way and so they flipped the pictures into a mirror image of their original form. Picture your favorite artwork messed with so Mona Lisa is smiling the other direction or the tower in Starry, Starry Night is on the right instead of the left. You might not even recognize some pieces. Manga artists were upset as were many Western readers, and finally in the mid 2000s most of the big publishers decided to print them in the original format and place a page explaining how to read them for new readers. In Dark Horses' defense, they did explain on a page in this and all their other Star Wars manga books the situation and why they chose to do this. However, for fans of the movie, it is rather noticeable at times.
*Conclusion*
If you are a fan of Star Wars or manga, I would suggest giving this a read as it is a great adaptation of the movie. If you are uninterested in either of these, I'd give it a miss.
October 20, 2016
Star Wars en manga publié par Dark Horse que je me suis procuré pour 1$ à la friperie. Les illustrations sont efficaces, les angles et les cadrages sont bien choisis. Par contre, l’histoire est exactement celle du film le Retour du Jedi, ce qui ne donne aucune surprise.
June 12, 2012
*only 4 star cause I wasn't too fond of the drawings*
December 25, 2015
Love the art!
January 10, 2016
A really good adaption. The art is amazing.
April 17, 2017
It's the movie script, in manga form! The artwork varies in quality, from alarmingly slapdash in figure and character work to techno-licious when depicting the half-finished Death Star 2. Runs though Luke Skywalker's fateful encounter with the Sarlacc...
Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews