The last issue of the Viz comic book "Maison Ikkoku" came out on January 19th, 2000. To celebrate the completion of the series, this page has been substantially remodeled. Enjoy!
The
annotated Maison Ikkoku! An ongoing project with notes on
every volume of the Viz translation: cultural notes, translation
notes, dates of first publication, and anything else I thought was
neat.
"Maison Ikkoku" is a comic book in the romantic comedy genre, which has been serialized in the U.S. by Viz Comics (in monthly installments, since about June of 1993). It is a translation of a Japanese comic book ("manga") which ran in Japan originally from October of 1980 to April of 1987, with great success (it spawned a series of animated TV cartoons that ran for a couple of years, or about 100 episodes, and even a live-action movie, which most people claim is pretty awful, however). Like most manga, the original comic-book stories are in black and white. Most of the original Japanese run was published in bi-weekly installments of about 20 pages each; the American version typically collects two episodes per monthly issue. The characters age in real time, that is, seven years elapse for them as well as for the readers in the course of the series.
After publishing them in comic-book form, Viz has collected the stories in "Graphic Novel" format. The entire collection will consist of 14 "graphic novels." These are a bit smaller than the original comic books, but printed in better paper, they stay in print, and are available through any bookseller. They also occasionally include illustrations which were not published in the comic-book format. See The annotated Maison Ikkoku for more details.
Maison Ikkoku was written and drawn by a woman, Rumiko Takahashi, who is one of Japan's most successful comic-book creators. Somebody in the Netherlands has put together several Takahashi appreciation pages which include an often reprinted (or linked to) interview/short biography.
It is a very funny love story about Yusaku Godai, a college student (he graduates in the course of the series) who falls in love with Kyoko Otonashi, the young widow who manages his apartment building. Many difficulties stand in his way (including some incredibly obnoxious neighbors, and a very handsome, very rich rival), but the main one is Kyoko's attachment to her late husband.
Buy it! You'll like it. You'll love it. It'll haunt your dreams. You'll laugh, you'll cry, you'll want it to end and then you'll be sad that it ended...
(see also above for Takahashi info)
In case you want to drop me a note, the name is Julio Gea-Banacloche (Julio what?!), and the address is jgeabana@comp.uark.edu.
Disclaimer 2: None of the opinions expressed here reflect those of the University of Arkansas, which is not in any way, shape or form responsible for the contents of these pages.