The Annotated Maison Ikkoku

Without a doubt, one of the best things about Maison Ikkoku is that, in spite of its being totally Japanese, it can be read and enjoyed by anybody without any deep knowledge of the Japanese language or culture. And yet, every now and again, there are little quirks that you run into that maybe leave you wondering "what was that about?". These can be references to customs you know nothing about, or places where you suspect there was a joke or double sense that did not make it in the translation, or a number of other little things.

The Annotated Maison Ikkoku is a project to address all these little issues, started by me in the purest Web spirit of amateurism. I am not, by any means, an expert in the Japanese language or culture (although I keep learning more and more each day); I just want to share what I have learned over the past two years of poring over the original texts and discussing them with equally rabid fans all over the world.

At the time I write this, the project has just started, and it has a lot of room to grow. But you will already find below links to the first thirteen Viz graphic novels, with dates of original publication for each of the first 150 episodes, and at least one little tidbit of further information per volume.

I do take requests! If you have a question or doubt about something which I have not yet addressed, please let me know (My name is Julio, at jgeabana@comp.uark.edu). I also take corrections, of course: please let me know if I got anything wrong.

• A note about other sources of information
• A guide to sites in Japanese, some of them worth visiting even if you can't read Japanese!

Numbering: for these notes I have numbered the episodes sequentially, as they were when first published in Japan. Subsequent republications (in Japan also) did not keep this numbering. The full correspondence between the various Japanese and American editions can be found here.

• Volume 14: "Welcome Home"