In recent years, older Rockman manga have been reprinted digitally, but one notable absence was Shigeto Ikehara's work. Fortunately, that wait is over! Today, Fukkan has announced that nearly the entire catalog of Ikehara's works is now available in digital stores across Japan!
New Version Rockman: Rockman 1 & 2 Edition: A massive 467-page book featuring manga based on the first and second Rockman games.Rockman World: Manga based on the Game Boy games Rockman World 1 & 2, The book is packed with stage maps from both games.
Rockman World 3: Manga based on Rockman World 3 for the Game Boy.
Rockman 4: Manga based on Rockman 4 for the Famicom. The book includes an enemy encyclopedia.
Rockman 5: Manga based on Rockman 5 for the Famicom. The story spans two volumes.
Rockman 6: Manga based on Rockman 6 for the Famicom. The story spans three volumes.
Rockman 7: Manga based on Rockman 7 for the Super Famicom. This is the two-volume reprint edition published in 2011 by Wedge Holdings.
Irregular Hunter Rockman X: Manga based on the first Rockman X game. Published in two volumes.
This collection includes nearly all of Ikehara's works, with the exception of a few one-shots published in the Kodansha Manga Encyclopedia, which are missing—unless they are compiled into a future book or the encyclopedias themselves are reprinted. Also absent, oddly enough, the book Rockman: Yomigaeru Blues (ロックマン 甦るブルース). Perhaps that one is coming later
Currently, all the books can be purchased digitally on eBookJapan and Amazon Japan.
Darn, I thought it would be a worldwide release, but this is still nice, and I hope it indicates plans to publish these in other regions. I know they're generally just tie-ins for the relevant games but they're still cute bits of Mega Man history!
ReplyDeleteI’d love to own physical English versions of these, unfortunately with Udon having zero interest in the 90s manga and a monopoly on publishing any Mega Man books I don’t see it happening unless another publisher can work something out with Capcom and the author.
DeleteGosh, I wish all of them could be translated and released overseas.
ReplyDeleteThat's awesome. It's always nice when something like this becomes more widely available.
ReplyDeleteThat's cool, these deserve to be preserved. I hope we get physical reprints eventually since the early volumes are kind of hard to get.
ReplyDeleteIt's really interesting seeing the ways in him and Hitoshi Ariga have taken and adapted the stories of these games into their own works, as well as how they clearly love the series.
ReplyDelete