The Manga Series
An extremely successful series, it won the shonen (‘boys comics’) manga category of the Shogakukan Manga Award in 1984 (sharing the honour with another Kaoru Shintani series – the motorcyle racing manga Futari Daka).
As usual, the serialized chapters were collected and published as a tankouban a few months after they appeared in Shonen Big Comic. In the end, all 172 chapters were collected into a tankouban edition that spanned 23 volumes.
Of course, you can’t keep a good series down, and Shogakukan released the series as a deluxe “wide-ban” edition of the series in 10 hefty (roughly 400-page) volumes in 1992. Despite being a deluxe edition, fans of the series should be aware that several pages were removed from volume 8 (Chapter 116 “Survival Game”). A flashback sequence set in Africa, it was likely removed due to the questionable racial depiction of an African tribesman in a single panel. This is the only edition to have removed the scene, and it was returned in subsequent editions.
The wide-ban edition was followed by a small, pocket-sized or “bunkoban” edition released in 13 volumes by Scholar in 1994 – notable for their black spines and non-Shintani artwork covers.
In 1999, the series was once again released in bunkoban format, this time as a 13-volume edition from Media Factory – a series which featured gold coloured spines and a return of the beautiful water-coloured artwork by Shintani. Media Factory also released a slightly larger 13-volume edition in 2003, easily spotted by the gold, bullet-ridden logo, however, it is their earlier gold bunkoban edition that now lives on in the digital age as an Amazon.co.jp Kindle release.
In English
Area 88 also has the distinction of arguably being one of the first three manga (along with Mai the Psychi Girl and The Legend of Kamui) to be officially translated into English and published in North America by Eclipse Comics and Viz Media. As the first serious attempt to bridge the pop-cultural gap with Japan, its selection was likely the product of two main factors – namely: the then recent conclusion of a popular series which was itself not overly Japanese and featured a diverse international cast of characters; and the opportunity to try to capitalize on the wave of “fighter jock” popularity that swept across North America following the mega-success of Tom Cruise’s film, Top Gun (1986).
And so, Beginning in May 1987, Area 88 was originally released on a bi-weekly schedule in the traditional American comic book format. Each stand-alone issue carried a cover price of $1.50 and featured a single “mission” (i.e. chapter) from the original manga serial. Although each issue sported full-colour glossy covers, the interior artwork was printed in straight black and white – unfortunately often muddying the beautifully subtle duo-tones of the original. Furthermore, in an attempt to conform to norms of the American market at the time, the artwork was “flipped” so that it could be read in the regular left-to-right sequence that native English speakers were familiar with, rather than the right-to-left format of the Japanese releases.
Although the first 28 issues featured cover artwork randomly selected from covers of the collected tankouban edition (along with a few other available original full-colour artwork pieces), these were a finite resource. As such, issues 29 through 36 featured featured stills from the Original Video Animation (OVA) series instead. However, when VIZ Media took over sole publishing of the series with issue No. 37 (December 1988), the series release schedule changed from bi-weekly to monthly, the cover price increased to $1.75 and the covers featured photographs of actual fighter planes.
Unfortunately, this was not particularly a change for the better and, citing a need to re-evaluate their efforts, the series went on a “temporary hiatus” a mere six months later, following the release of issue #42 (May 1989) – leaving the storyline unresolved. Although this effectively cancelled the series, Area 88 did make a comeback, of sorts, in the pages of VIZ’s monthly anthology title Animerica. Picking up where the monthly comic had left the story, Area 88 “Part Two” debuted in the October 1993 issue, and was published at a rate of roughly half a chapter per month. However, it was an uphill battle. In the nearly five years that had passed since the final issue, the manga/anime landscape in North American had changed drastically. Much of its existing fanbase had moved on (or was unaware that Area 88 had been revived), and the series no longer had the momentum of the initial wave of Japanese manga to wash up on North American shores. By 1994, it was simply one of a crowd of titles – and relegated to the low visibility status of being a “back up” feature in an anthology magazine.
As such, it’s easy to suspect that VIZ’s revival of the series had more to do with a clearing out of backlogged material on hand, rather than an honest attempt to restore the series to it’s former glory. And so, with little fanfare, Area 88 came quietly to its final close in February 1995.
At the final tally, between the 42 chapters published during its initial run, and the 10 chapters completed during its revival in Animerica, only 52 of the 172 chapters of Area 88 were released in English – or roughly 1/3 of the series.
In Colour
Although, for the most part, the chapters as originally published in Shonen Big Comic [少年ビッグコミック] were of much lower quality than the subsequent book editions, they do have one advantage over them… full colour and duo-tone pages. For the truly die-hard Area 88 fans, here is a listing of the issues that contain full/half colour pages:
Shonen Big Comic 79-08 (1979/04/25) | v01c01 – 001 – The Blue Skies of Betrayal
Shonen Big Comic 79-13 (1979/07/10) | v01c06 – 006 – Blue Mirage
Shonen Big Comic 79-20 (1979/10/25) | v01c13 – 013 – An Angel in Camouflage
Shonen Big Comic 79-23 (1979/12/10) | v02c02 – 016 – The Explosive Sky
Shonen Big Comic 80-03 (1980/02/**) | v02c06 – 020 – The Sky of Passion
Shonen Big Comic 80-10 (1980/05/23) | v02c12 – 026 – Coffins in the Sky
Shonen Big Comic 80-22 (1980/11/28) | v03c09 – 038 – Ryoko – Melancholy Love
Shonen Big Comic 81-05 (1981/03/13) | v03c16 – 045 – Under the Scarlet Sands
Shonen Big Comic 81-07 (1981/04/10) | v04c02 – 047 – 88 Desperate Situations
Shonen Big Comic 81-09 (1981/05/08) | v04c04 – 049 – When the Devil Greets the Dawn
Shonen Big Comic 81-14 (1981/07/24) | v04c09 – 054 – Spirits, Twilight, and Men
Shonen Big Comic 81-16 (1981/08/28) | v04c11 – 056 – A New Set of Molars
Shonen Big Comic 81-22 (1981/11/22) | v05c02 – 062 – Memoirs of a Tiger [Part 1]
Shonen Big Comic 82-06 (1982/03/26) | v05c10 – 070 – Stairway to Ruin
Shonen Big Comic 82-11 (1982/06/11) |v05c15 – 075 – The Grim Reaper’s Fugue
Shonen Big Comic 82-14 (1982/07/23) | v06c01 – 078 – Heaven and Earth
Shonen Big Comic 82-17 (1982/09/10) | v06c04 – 081 – Queen of the Sand
Shonen Big Comic 82-20 (1982/10/22) | v06c07 – 084 – Winged Armor Corps
Shonen Big Comic 82-24 (1982/12/24) | v06c11 – 088 – 88 Air Force
Shonen Big Comic 83-03 (1983/02/11) | v06c14 – 091 – Fortress of Solitude
Shonen Big Comic 83-12 (1983/06/24) | v07c06 – 100 – Love with Iron Wings
Shonen Big Comic 83-21 (1983/11/11) | v07c14 – 108 – Prelude to War
Shonen Big Comic 84-08 (1984/04/27) | v08c06 – 119 – The Devil’s Pipeline
Shonen Big Comic 84-15 (1984/08/10) | v08c13 – 126 – Wings Laden with the Past
Shonen Big Comic 84-21 (1984/11/09) | v08c19 – 132 – Amidst the Sound of the Waves
Shonen Big Comic 85-01 (1985/01/11) | v09c04 – 136 – A Day for a Sortie
Shonen Big Comic 85-04 (1985/02/22) | v09c07 – 139 – Courage to Face the Future
Shonen Big Comic 85-08 (1985/04/26) | v09c11 – 143 – Showdown with the Devil
Shonen Big Comic 85-23 (1985/12/**) | v10c05 – 158 – The Sortie of No Return
Shonen Big Comic 86-10 (1986/05/**) | v10c16 – 169 – Asran in Flames
Shonen Big Comic 86-13 (1986/07/11) | v10c19 – 172 – Battlefield of Sand