As the week of One Piece on MMF draws to a close. I find myself inspired to at least get out another article for this week of feasting. Earlier this week I wrote this entry for my own blog. So I am am selfishly indulgent to drag Anime Diet into the feast. Now I am still on my tip toes just reading other blogger’s impressions, and thinking about a personal invested and beloved series. All I have to say that I can contribute some more is of my love for Color Walk, which is the artbook equivalent to this long running series of 60+ volumes.
The Color Walks are released infrequently, since I can only imagine it would happen when the mangaka has time to oversee projects like this. Nearly all other popular series like Gundam, and Evangelion to name a few anime titles get this type of treatment in Japan. There are other franchise business other than the manga, and for the One Piece lineup, there are the Data Books, or Linear art books or Production work books.
Benefits of a Color Walk
- Color Walks are used to highlight or recap key images from the various manga arcs, giving it the Color treatment, so it is very much like a yearbook, since in the pages table of content mentions years.
- You have to be a fan to really really appreciate throwing the money onto getting this. Since it is very much a coffee table book purchase.
- Fan keepsake, since it take a lot of shelf space to keep 60+ volumes, so to know that these are representative art work from those periods make it more nice.
- Knowing the artist’s feelings when making these is nice, there’s always pages of notes at the end of the book.
- Shows a linear development/improvement of art. Because I have always been in the mindset that initially the art was hard to get into for One Piece, so to see the art evolve into the later art is a great record to have.
So far of the four Color Walks that has been published, only one of them got picked up to be released in English from Shonen Jump. Watching the price of all of the existing Color Walk being sold for $50+ by Amazon sellers shows of a market that is tied to how much supply and demand that there is.
Tying back into my own blog post…..
As I was in the middle of reading the arcs of Waters 7 and Thriller Bark. One Piece Color Walk 4 specifically featured art from the Waters7 arc. I was quite happy to finally read a translation of a mini-story in Volume 32, which is around the area of Davy Fights Back mini-arc. This I believe mostly ties into the initial wish of what type of people Luffy wants on board his ship, so for this mini-story, it showcases music and food for him.
The 5th Color Walk: Shark, is going to be out soon, and New York’s Kinokuniya will have in in the next two weeks or so, since its release date is December 6 in Japan. It would probably include images from Thriller Bark, Sabaody Archipelago, and Amazon Lily. I am grasping at straws if I am going to hope that Impel down be included, since the Color Walks are often a year or two, OKAY Five years behind. I can only try to predict what is in it. I do see the recent calender that is for One Piece in 2011, that has more possible future Color Walk inclusion.
I am right now putting on my hopes to see more inclusion of Franky and Brooks to finally be integrated within the art pages of the Color Walk line up. Randomly, the Mugiwara Crew got showcased from the very beginning on the covers of the Color Walk, but that doesn’t mean the cover reflect the contents
For fans it definitely is a dent in the wallet, and prolongs the longevity of the series, so in a good and bad way. Critics would mention that this is just placing the series to another level. I was recently having a conversation with @OtakuDan, and we got into the conversation of when will the big 3 end.. The big 3 meaning, Naruto, Bleach, and One Piece. He disclosed that all three series had a time skip. Just knowing when One Piece can gratefully bow out is probably going to be Edo’s call. If he still has the vision, then he would be going on with the series, so with this success, will the story become a big fish?