Star Wars. Manga.

Can anything in the world come closer to total geek perfection than the marriage of these two genres?

Well, I suppose if Lucas granted the rights to a Star Wars anime, featuring the cool stylings of the Japanese animators behind Cowboy Bebop, then, yes, that would technically be a bigger slice of geek heaven. But until that glorious day comes, we can get pretty damn close with Dark Horse’s distribution of the Star Wars manga.

Have you ever asked yourself the question: What would Star Wars characters look like in anime form?  My sister and I once wasted an entire night speculating upon this point, though inevitably, they ended up sounding like character descriptions from Rumiko Takahashi’s Ranma 1/2. When Hisao Tamaki illustrated the first four-volume black-and-white series, A New Hope, it was like the Guinness Book of World Records finally settling any and all conflicts on the issue. And, to our glee, we found out our original Ranma-centric view was pretty close to the mark.

Characters in A New Hope are “cute”, and follow the standard anime design with big eyes and small mouths. Leia and her cinnamon-roll hairdo seems natural as an identical twin to Street Fighter’s Chun-Li. Luke is somewhat more effeminate, on par with anime male protagonists. Han even sprouts a barely noticeable pair of fangs, a standard amongst “sexy” anime characters. All your favorite characters are easily recognized, which is more than I can say for some American Star Wars comics --- Veitch’s Dark Empire II comes to mind --- that leave you guessing over a character’s identity.

Above all, Tamaki excels at technical details, and Darth Vader and Boba Fett are easily his best-designed characters. Vader is more menacing here than in the movie, thanks to dramatic close-ups and a grandiose bottom-to-top perspective. Other great examples of his technical artistry show up on his gorgeous renditions of the Millennium Falcon and the Death Star.

The story follows the plot of Episode IV, so there aren’t any real surprises. There are, though, quite a few new scenes that don’t appear even in the Special Edition. Biggs Darklighter says farewell to Luke before he joins the rebels, and the Stormtroopers are seen attacking the Jawa Sandcrawler. My favorite addition, which I think greatly adds to the Star Wars mythos, is the scene that shows the people of Alderaan as they gape in confusion at the Death Star, a new speck in their night sky. Isn’t this a great illustration that the Empire didn’t just obliterate a big blue rock, but also the people living on it?  The manga also includes the scenes from the Special Edition, which, unlike the movie, do not seem choppy or out of place.

As an anime fan, I had the biggest kicks watching the characters act in an anime-like manner. When Luke meets Chewbacca for the first time, a big drop of sweat rolls down his head. Han Solo abandons Harrison Ford’s subtle smugness and swaggers loudly like a self-obsessed kung-fu hotshot. Other stylistic changes do great justice to the action, and the scenes featuring Obi-Wan Kenobi best portray this point. Remember Obi-Wan’s stiff swordplay in the movie?  Not so in the manga, as Obi-Wan acts and moves like an expert swordsman from a Kurosawa flick. During the cantina scene, a whole two-page frame is needed to capture the effect of Obi-Wan unsheathing the light saber from its hilt, which he sweeps sideways while his baffled enemy watches from behind. The light saber duel, the highlight of the third volume, evokes an epic samurai sword battle with swishy katanas, rather than two old fossils bashing each other with sticks. The running slashes… the explosive force as the two sabers meet… you’ll be surprised by how good manga and Star Wars can work together.

The manga’s flaws, though, surface toward the final volume. Every space battle scene features distracting “speed lines”, which is not true to the movie. I appreciated Lucas’ sequence as a tribute to World War II dive-bombing runs, and I can’t imagine that sequence when everyone’s moving in hyperspace. Each scene repeats the same tiresome composition of either a speeding X-Wing and an exploding X-Wing, or a TIE Fighter and an exploding TIE Fighter. The entire sequence could have been covered in five pages to the same effect.

Overall, the Star Wars manga is the best comic adaptation of Star Wars, and I highly recommend this four-volume series to both Star Wars and anime fans. The beautiful covers are supplied by Adam Warren, and the books include a conceptual cover art gallery.

The Rest of the Saga

The Empire Strikes Back: Toshi Kudo provides a kinder, gentler style for Episode V. I didn’t like his style at first: he made my favorite piece of machinery, the AT-ATs, look too cuddly. Hell, Darth Vader looks too cuddly, and a cuddly Vader is just wrong. Later volumes proved, though, that Kudo was the perfect choice: his softer touches, marked by extended scenes and an abundance of white space, accentuated the more sentimental scenes. Han and Leia are more romantic. Kudo prolongs their chance encounter to build up tension, so that the kiss, when it comes, seems right. (Yes, they share a deep, long kiss, and there is no stupid C-3PO to interrupt them this time.)  Luke's confusion during Vader’s revelation becomes more personal, and Luke’s subsequent free-fall seems like a zen-like trance. Kudo fails, though, in his portrayal of technical objects and his over-reliance on facial exaggeration for comic humor. C-3PO’s eyes and mouth move, for Pete’s sake!  Still, Empire is worthy of the series, though the last two volumes are worth more than the first two.

Return of the Jedi: My gut feeling tells me that Shin-Ichi Hiromoto is an alternative independent manga artist. The style of Episode VI is like no mainstream manga I have ever seen. I suppose artistic freedom and non-conformity is good, but this is a Star Wars manga, dammit, and I want what I paid for!  The art is inconsistent, switching from heavily inked, deformed designs to sloppy chicken-scratch compositions where Hiromoto seems to be having trouble keeping his inking pen on the paper. Overall, the style is dark, and far too dark, in my opinion for the episode featuring both Ewoks and the galaxy-wide celebration at the end. Luke suffers badly, as his body is made to contort in ways not humanly possible. (Is hyper contortion a Jedi power?)  In fact, you wouldn’t know that this was manga except for the big dewy eyes. Still, the manga has its moments. The organic, grotesque style perfectly suits Jabba the Hutt, the aliens of Jabba’s palace, and the Emperor. Leia is suitably hot in the iron bikini, and looks a bit like a girl drawn by Sam Keith. Flip through this one at your local book store. Adam Warren, by the way, is at the top of his game here, and the covers are superb. This is one of the few times, though, that I wished that he were the artist featured inside the covers.

The Phantom Menace: Face it guys: young Anakin Skywalker was a character made for manga. The kid, illustrated by Kia Asamiya (of Steam Detectives fame), is stiflingly cute with the big eyes, and shows a far wider range of emotion than Jake Lloyd. Actually, the same can be said of all the characters: the drawings make them out to be far better actors. I’ve seen Asamiya’s previous works before, and Episode I --- with its crisp style, high attention to detail, and beautiful character designs (especially Amidala’s resemblance to anime goddesses) --- ranks among his best. In fact, Episode I features the best illustrations in the entire Star Wars manga series. Unfortunately, it’s still The Phantom Menace. Even manga cannot make Jar Jar cool. And while that scene where Anakin shoots up the Trade Federation battleship evokes a bit of Gundam, it’s still just as hokey. Unlike the other series, The Phantom Menace is completed in two volumes instead of four. This probably comes as a godsend to most readers (mentally as well as financially), but Menace was the movie most in need of fleshing out, and a few prolonged scenes of  heart-felt reflection or dragged-out battle sequences could have done the series a world of good. Asamiya’s excellent art was wasted: can’t he and Jedi’s Hiromoto switch places?

Overall, I’m enjoying the manga series, and every single one of them (except perhaps Return of the Jedi) trumps the American comic adaptations. I can’t wait for the manga for Episode II, which, if trends continue, will be better than the movie. Is there any way to get Rumiko Takahashi to work on this?

Written by Rook