- Zoids SS: Dengeki Comics
previously issued chapter-by-chapter in Dengeki Hobby Magazine was released as one solid book in July 2014. Issued by Dengeki Comics it features the complete comic from start to finish, including full color concept art, images from the Zoids Original Story, and an 11 page Epilogue at the back that was never published in the Magazine.
The color pages mostly picture art we've already seen, such as box arts, chapter covers, etc. Some of the character art is also featured as a colorless line art version between chapters.
Title: Zoids SS (Dengeki Comics EX)
Original Work: Takaratomy
Art: Iwase Masatsugu
Price: 950 Yen
Publisher: Dengeki Comics
ISBN: 978-4-04-866598-8
Language: Japanese
Total Pages: 248 pages
Color Pages: 24 pages
New Epilogue: 11 pages
- New Concept Art and Pages
At some point I actually plan to get these pages translated and uploaded but it may be a while before that happens so I thought I'd include a teaser. The book includes quite a bit of concept art and Zoid information, packed into 24 full color pages.
The only down side here is that many of these images are ones we've seen before. Some of the concepts for Mirage Fox, Geno Ritter, etc. were published at a much smaller size in Dengeki Hobby's 'going away' article. You'll also find a lot of images from the Zoids Original story and even the color box arts, which were annoyingly placed over page splits so you lose a lot of the image in the binding.
Roughly 46 color images (lumping 'groups' like that Mirage Fox one into a single image) are included in the book. The box arts and story images make up 1 image each, so roughly 25 can be found at good resolution on the Zoids Original site. I didn't include the Twitter icons, some of which are presented at a fuller size in the book.
It's disappointing that so many are recycled but I still find it worth picking up at only $9 per book.
- Book and Magazine Differences
Opening the book you'll notice that the first two chapters are littered with huge visual differences. Some are as simple as adding snow effects and a couple of second effects to more dramatic changes like shading in areas and fleshing out backgrounds in panels that were otherwise completely lacking them. You'll even find a panel here or there that was almost entirely redrawn, such as the one to the right!
After the first couple of chapters these differences decrease, and most pages are the same as they were before. You'll still find shading and minor background changes throughout the box, and also notice that title headings are posted in different places or sizes. This means you get to see more of the chapter image than you did before.
One loss on part of the book is that they no longer have the chapter summaries that you'll find in the Magazine version. These weren't particularly detailed or meaningful to begin with so it's not a huge loss but still would have been nice to include, maybe just on a blank page before each chapter.
I suspect there may be an extra (or at least differently placed) page here or there but I have not verified that at this time! I'll do a more thorough search and see what I can turn up. I may have actually just missed these pages when going through the magazine translations.
Further Examples:
These images illustrate some of the beautiful changes made to earlier chapters of the manga!
