Adventures in Japanese Manga Magazines

Okay, so a manga version of BBC's Sherlock, called Sherlock - Pink Iro no Kenkyuu (A Study in Pink), came out around October/November 2012. It's being serialized in Young Ace magazine with two chapters out now and the third one coming out in March (or sometime close).

So far the story is basically a manga version of A Study in Pink, which I don't have a problem with.

Anyway I was insanely excited for it and was over the moon when people started scanlating it. I don't know if it will ever be released in English, so I decided to buy the magazine the first chapter ran in just so I could have a physical copy of it.

I ordered it online from Hobby Search and paid about 32$ for it (ouch). Anyway, I got it back in October and photo-documented the whole thing (because I am a massive nerd). And here's a post on it.

Here is the box it came in and the box once I opened it. As you can see, it was a bigger box than was needed. Also this issue of the magazine came with a free figurine. I have absolutely no idea who this character is, but now I have a figurine of her. Whoo?

Here is the magazine compared to my copy of Parade's End, which is 906 pages long and fucking huge. Now THIS is what size manga magazines that are sold in North America should look like. Make it worth the 8$ I'd have to pay for it. And here's a picture of the cover.

And here are some pictures of the inside. The gorgeous colour opening pages, and some panels of the scene where Sherlock formally introduces himself. Awesome art is awesome. Also, the characters look like the actors, it's great.

 

So that's my experience ordering a manga magazine from Japan. It cost 32$ and took about a month to come in, but it was totally worth it. I didn't buy the issue with the second chapter, but I'll most likely be getting the issue with the third chapter (as soon as I figure out when it's being released).

 

Also, as a bonus, Young Ace also runs Kurosagi Corpse Delivery Service so I got to see the latest chapter of that (which I couldn't actually read, but the art was great and suitably creepy).