365 Days of Manga, Day 155: Sasuga no Sarutobi

SASUGA NO SARUTOBI (Sasuga no Sarutobi, “Good Ol’ Sarutobi”) （さすがの猿飛) • Fujihiko Hosono • Shogakukan (1983) • Shogakukan (Weekly Shonen Sunday, 1980-1984) • 1 volume, suspended (6 volumes in Japan) • Shonen Ninja Comedy • Unrated/16+ (comic violence, nudity, mild sexual situations)
English manga translations of any kind were nearly unavailable to fans in the early 1980s–which made all the more precious the handful of bilingual editions released by Shogakukan and Kodansha, designed for Japanese students of English. Both publishers used a format where a page of story would be lettered and retouched in English, and then a facing page would compare the text of the translation with that of the original Japanese. Both also printed the art in two-color ink (red and black) throughout–a feature still seen in the interior sections of some manga magazines in Japan. Shogakukan’s two titles in this format were four volumes of Rumiko Takahashi’s Urusei Yatsura–and one volume of its lesser-known neighbor in Sunday magazine, Sasuga no Sarutobi. Lesser is relative; Sarutobi, which inspired a 69-episode TV anime, seems something of a spiritual precursor to Ranma 1/2, being a high school love comedy set amidst the absurdist martial arts–except that Sarutobi’s Shinobinomono H.S. is a magnet school for ninja (oddly, ninja itself is translated–as “black magician,” despite it being a reasonably well-known term in English by 1983). Hosono later grew into seinen manga, including Gallery Fake, which shared the 1996 Shogakukan Manga Award with Boys Over Flowers. (Review by Carl Gustav Horn)

Today’s review is by Carl Horn, my good friend and manga editor at Dark Horse Comics (and probably one of the few people on earth to own a copy of the bilingual edition of Sasuga no Sarutobi). I’m still playing catch-up from my last weekend out of town, so today will feature three, count them, THREE, manga reviews! And this photo!

Yes, today’s winner is J. Thomason of Minnesota, who’s also commented on this blog before. (Hi J.!) Thanks for sending in your photo, and I hope you like the manga! I’ll be sending you your next batch right away!