Thursday, January 26, 2012

Volume 8

of Sketchbook is now in my possession. More specifically, Sketchbook 8 [Limited Edition] w/ Illustrated Tote. YOO0000000°°°°°……

Let me take you through the unpacking of the package worth $(24.04 → 24.42 → 24.79 →)25.04, which arrived from Japan in 15 days:

Sealed Package

Unsealed Package

Unsealed Package w/ Contents

I was expecting Kate to be on the cover of this volume and she indeed is! Next would be the President and then finally, we’ll see Ooba as the Cover-girl. Wait, the two Sensei’s could have their turn before her… Well, we’ll have to wait.

Contents in Bubble-wrap

Contents in Plastic-wrap

Contents Freed

Tote Bag Freed

Sora & Mike on the Bag

I was expecting the whole Art Club to be here… Oh well, next time!

Now let me take a sneak peek inside the volume. Since I don’t understand the script, I will have to wait (to fully understand the strips) till the Scanlators get started on this volume (or I could bug my Superpartner to translate for me… should definitely give it a try!). But the beauty of Sketchbook is its simplicity and all this ‘tension’ is almost unnecessary as the following pages illustrate:

Sketchbook v8ch102pg3

Sora tries to suppress a whirlpool… Natsumi is confounded as usual.

Sketchbook v8ch102pg7

Natsumi & Daichi let their Kuro & Inuo meet… and hilarity ensues?

Sketchbook v8ch102pg9

Nagisa is trying macro photography… with not so great results!

Best of Luck to You, anyway!

4 comments:

  1. That does look really cool. I like how it is surprisingly easy to import stuff from cdjapan.

    "Next would be the President and then finally, we’ll see Ooba as the Cover-girl."
    I am not really holding out hope for Ohba to get her own cover since she is still so obscure. I figure that it is probably more likely for the teachers to have one (as you said). That being said, if she does have a cover to herself, I guess I would be morally obligated to buy that volume.

    Do you have any plans for what you will be doing with that tote bag? I would be afraid of ruining it if I actually used it for something.

    As for the comics themselves, I think that the Kuro/Inuo kind of altercation is pretty common in real life. From what I can tell, things are considerably less fun when you happen to have the dog that innocently makes all the other ones go nuts.

    Anyhow, sorry for rambling there.

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  2. Ya... I wasn't expecting it to be so easy!

    Yes... you should definitely buy that volume. There's an exhilarating feel to holding a brand new manga volume! Also, most of the Sketchbook strips are understandable despite the language barrier. There's a full-page strip where Sora 'teaches' Natsumi how to be 'sophisticated'... Single pages like that make having a physical copy worth it! :)

    I'm afraid of ruining it too! So am not going to use it either...

    Yes, that would be quite terrifying. It sounds like you're speaking from personal experience!

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  3. I would consider buying the volume, but it looks like it is out of print on cdjapan. That may just be the special edition version though.

    It would be nice to support the author though. One of my least favorite things about stuff not getting licensed here is an inability to have physical copies of things. The other is probably not being able to support the original authors/writers.

    I am not sure what you think about those two things though. If I may ask, why did you ultimately decide to import the volume?

    "It sounds like you're speaking from personal experience!"

    A little bit I guess, I have definitely seen that kind of thing happen in real life at least. Some pets do seem to be oblivious to the amount of pure rage they cause.

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  4. Ya, limited edition is out of print but 1 copy of Volume 8 is still available.

    I imported this volume just on a whim. Seeing that this was a 'limited edition' got me excited too much to look back!

    Those two are compelling reasons but I'd not go out to get original (raw) mangas based on them. But I have bought a few translated mangas from Viz.

    Having physical copies is fine for a while but as the collection grows, I think it becomes a pain. After all, space is a factor too (at least for me)! Having said that, I wouldn't think twice before buying the licensed volumes of a few manga, if they were available in a softcopy format!

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