Manga Salad

‘Cos I damn while feel like it

Reviews shall intermix with theories/fandom

1, 2, 3, go

It’s very difficult to critique a beloved series like this - like many others, Sailor Moon was my favorite anime when I was little. Actually, Sailor Moon is the first anime I ever got into! Naturally, this means I have a bit of bias… But, again, I’m not the only one. Sailor Moon was a wildly successful franchise that garnered plenty of fans during its late 90s/early 2000s peak, and is probably the most popular “magical girl” series of all time.

In light of a little nostalgia inspired by the promise of a new Sailor Moon anime in the next year, I decided it was high time for me to read the manga, considering the anime was one of the highlights of my childhood!

The manga definitely lives up to the “pretty” tag with the very distinct art style of Naoko Takeuchi. The people - particularly the girls - are lithe and lovely and clothed in stylish outfits. (Takeuchi is a self-professed fan of high fashion brands like Versace and Louis Vuitton!) Everything is drawn in delicate lines, and relies heavily on a wide range of screentones and patterns that give everything a dynamic effect. (Though, some people may not be so appreciative of this.) One thing is for sure - while you can see the old-school shoujo influence, Takeuchi’s work still has a refreshingly unique flavor.

In the first volume, 14-year-old Usagi Tsukino (who fans of the English dub may know better as Serena) meets a black cat with a crescent-shaped “bald spot” on its head while on her way to school. It turns out that talking(!) cat Luna has been searching for Usagi to recruit her as a “soldier of justice”, who must fight the evil that has recently cropped up in Tokyo while searching for her fellow soldiers and a mysterious princess whom they are tasked with protecting. Thus does Usagi become the “pretty sailor-suited soldier of love and justice, Sailor Moon”!

The chapters throughout the volume follow a fairly formulaic setup - Usagi/Sailor Moon (often reluctantly) fights one of the “enemy”, who is trying to steal the life energy of innocent people while masquerading their intentions with some benign enterprise (a sale at a jewelry store, a prep school, and even a royal ball). Usually the chapter concludes with the discovery of another fellow soldier with her own special talents and powers (and variation of sailor suit) - by the end of the volume, we’ll be introduced to Sailor Mercury, Sailor Mars, and Sailor Jupiter, who are also 14-year-old junior high students like Usagi.

There is also the dashing Tuxedo Mask, who invariably drops in on the scene of a battle to help the fumbling newbie heroine Usagi, and who just as quietly disappears after the enemy’s defeat. Though anyone familiar with the series knows this, it is in Usagi and Tuxedo Mask’s relationship where the inevitableshoujoromance comes in, as Usagi quickly starts to fall for the elusive (but, as Usagi notes, HOT) rescuer.

While I was, of course, too immature to notice the character development as a six-year-old devotee to the TV adaptation, I find it interesting to note at the beginning of the series, Usagi is just lazy, somewhat bratty, but otherwise typical eighth grader. She tends to sleep in and get scolded by her parents for bad test grades; she and her friends talk about boys and daydream about getting married; Usagi tries to maintain a diet but always find herself tempted by food; and Usagi is a frequent patron of the local arcade, where she likes to unwind by kicking butt with the Sailor V game. Starting out as Sailor Moon, she’s almost shamefully cowardly and whiny (she discovers her “sonic cry” after cutting her knee and bursting into tears in the first battle). One of the most interesting things about this series, then, to me, is seeing how she matures and grows into her role as Sailor Moon.

 As before mentioned, it can be a formulaic series, but it’s a formula that works. It’s very simple, and only just embellished enough to keep you interested. (What kind of new special item/gadget will Sailor Moon get next? What’s the next scout going to be like and what are her powers going to be? What’s up with this “Dark Kingdom” and the lady with the crystal ball anyway? When do we get to meet the princess?) All in all, I think SailorMoonis actually a pretty good read, and it’s easy to see why it’s a classic.

Volume 1 of Sailor Moon includes Acts 1 through 5.

Volume 1 original Kodansha cover from Wikipedia

Volume 1 scan from MangaFox

Volume 1 Kodansha International renewal edition cover from rywn.net/goodreads

You know you’re getting into a thoroughly M-rated series when it begins with a butt nekkid 15-year-old girl escaping from a government lab and unabashedly beheading and gutting just about e’erybody she meets on the way.

Yes, don’t let those cute, brightly colored moe covers fool you.

Oh, yes, you deviant, cutesy covers. I know the truth. I know what you’re hiding.

Well, you probably do too if you’ve even heard of this series, which is notorious   for its gratuitous gore, usually executed by the simply adorable main character Lucy!

Well, she’s adorable, except for…… when’s she’s not. O_o

She actually has two sides - Lucy, her original personality, is a girl deeply traumatized by her existence as what is basically a lab experiment. Usually kept under strict watch and restraints, called a “new breed” and a threat to the entire human race, she manages to escape in the first volume.

After receiving a blow to the head though, she washes up on a beach as an amnesiac who behaves like an infant, and is named “Nyu” by the two unwitting people who find her, as all she says is “Nyu?”

She flits between these two personalities throughout the course of the series, the perfectly helpless and childish Nyu, and the spiteful and incredibly bloodthirsty Lucy.

Meanwhile, all the other characters seem to just kind of be along for the ride… (Interestingly enough, girls seem to keep cropping up all over the place, most of them underage…)

The art, by the way, is… disappointing. REALLY disappointing. It all has a very awkward, hastily drawn, and unfinished look to it. Often the anatomy really seems to miss the mark - which astonishes me, since you’d think anyone drawing so much gore would want to get their anatomy right. At some scenes, it would take me a while to figure out what was happening, which as you can imagine gets pretty annoying when you just want to enjoy the action. (Wait, did she just get cut in half…? What’s even happening to the train? Did it get derailed or like, what…?)

Mostly, it’s the fascination of Lucy/Nyu that really draws one into this manga. Her powers as a Dicronius - the utilization of several invisible arms that can only be described as a telekinetic ability - are wonderfully creepy, and her role as a “superior being” that could exterminate the human race is deeply intriguing, especially since Lucy is obviously well aware of this and seems to have intentions along these lines…

Meanwhile, your usual ecchi abounds and the other characters are… well, a mess of messy stories, really, but I suppose it would be interesting to see how they all relate in the end. We’ll see.

I’m gonna say right now, this is one of Yuu Watase’s best works, second only to Fushigi Yugi.

Aya Mikage and her twin brother, Aki, are both turning sixteen, and have both been summoned to their grandfather’s home on their birthday. What they find there, however, is not the typical warm family birthday gathering, but the entire Mikage family all clad in black and gathered in a somber atmosphere. Aya and Aki are about to be tested in a ritual that has long been practiced on the sixteenth birthday of every Mikage child - a test to determine whether either of them hides dormant supernatural powers within them.

And here’s where things get interesting, fast - Aya turns out to indeed have these powers, and the family immediately decides to kill her.

Aya’s despair in this situation draws you in from the get-go. Imagine - one minute, you’re ready to celebrate your sixteenth birthday, the next, your entire family has you pinned to the ground, choking you and apologizing and saying “it has to be done”…

Them’s the breaks, for sure, to say the least… And now from the moment Aya escapes death at the hands of people she loves, and all throughout the series, now she must struggle with this knowledge: that things could have changed so drastically in one single moment, that the family you’ve always known and trusted would be all too willing not only to watch you die, but to murder you themselves.

Just a small dose of the hefty drama to come in this series!

But of course, this is a shoujo series, so… let’s take note of our love interests, shall we?

In one corner of the love triangle, we have Touya, sans surname, since he’s an amnesiac. Interestingly enough, he works for the Mikage family as a sort of bodyguard, but he seems to be on Aya’s side from the very beginning - even before the birthday fiasco, when he saves her life.

Oh yeah, and he is GOOD. LOOKIN’. Like, unf-hhhnnnnngggg.

Annnnnnd in the other corner, we have Yuhi Aogiri, who meets Aya quite abruptly when his sister Suzumi suddenly decides they simply have to save this total stranger and why I’ll tell you later just get your ass out there and rescue her Yuhi gawd it’s not rocket science.

Yuhi is not as dazzingly gorgeous as Touya, and instead is the much more down-to-earth guy - he thoroughly enjoys cooking and is quite the chef, and is a regular high school student like Aya, except of course for his own connection to whatever it is that’s got the Mikage family itching to murder one of their own…

And ladies, you have your shoujo formula. I’m not normally very into romance, as I’ve said before, but Watase conjures up a complex romance here that fully explores all aspects of love - puppy love, first love, true love -

Oh, but I’m getting ahead of myself… The best parts of the romance come later in the series… ;)

For those of you who aren’t so crazy about the drama, the romance, or Watase’s soft and beautiful shoujo art style, supernatural, horror, and science fiction elements abound (though I will be the first to admit that it’s not action-packed). As in Fushigi Yugi, Watase creates a fantastic series here that is remarkably well-balanced and contains a little something for everyone.

Note: If you’re anywhere near as empathic as me, you WILL be bawling your eyes out before the end of this volume…

Volume 1 cover image from www.amazon.com

Volume 1 scan from www.mangahere.com

Man, I even love the cover designs in this manga series. It’s a fairly simple theme, but it looks. So. Cool.

You might think the Lord of the Flies scenario gets a little old, and it’s been done before, many times, I’ll give you that, but if you ask me, Cage of Eden keeps it interesting. Maybe Yamada’s that good. Maybe it’s dumb luck. Maybe it’s some kind of happy medium between the two. All I can say for sure is, ME GUSTA.

Right off the bat things get juicy when we see Akira has been abducted by classmate who is unrecognizable from behind a very Jason-esque hockey mask. Akira doesn’t even recognize his voice at all, which hints to us that this kid must not have been very vocal, nor could he have been that popular.

Of course, that was at school in Japan.

Now on this island he’s found his calling as “Hades, the God of Death”. Must have been the weird creepy one in class… The one you suspect has violent or even homicidal tendencies… Every school has one, but isn’t kinda scary to think that when you take them out of the bounds of civilization they might end up entertaining themselves by setting everyone else up to kill each other? Brrrrr!! Makes him a scary enough villain in my mind.

And don’t forget we still got yer giant man-eating prehistoric whatchamacallems and people goin’ cray-cray and any number of other uninhabited island dangers. So later when Akira & co. leave the plane… Wait, what was that, I hear some of you say?… I didn’t give you a heads-up on spoilers? What, ‘cos now you know Akira gets away from Hades? Gimme a break, the main character’s not gonna die at the beginning of volume two… This volume, let alone the rest of series, will satiate any appetite for unexpected plot twists and messy horrific deaths anyway…

As I was saying. So later when Akira & co. leave the plane and end up with some other classmates on the beach - where they think they’re safe from the worst of the predators - and start working to build a raft to take them to an adjacent island - which they think must be safe - oh, and of course the ocean in between the two is safe - ah, well, I think you can surmise they’re not going to be as entirely safe as they think.

Now that I will leave for you to further investigate. :3

Another reason to read this manga… If you’re not into all the nitty-gritty and drama that is…

Don’tcha wanna know why Kurusu-sensei has cat ears?

Lemme answer that for you… Of course you do!!

Serious manga, serious manga, seriously serious manga…

…and here’s some wet t-shirt action and neko-sensei!!

God bless this manga.

Volume 2 cover from mangahere.com/mangafox.com/Red Hawk scanlations

….Pic of Kurusu-sensei also from mangahere.com/mangafox/Red Hawk scanlations… Before I MS Paint’d it.

I take back what I said before about the artwork being limited “in a way that shoujo art tends to be”. It’s just plain limited. The more I read this series, the more the art annoys me. I’ve said this before too, but I’ll say it again: Narushima has the right idea most of the time, but then the illustration just almost hits the mark. Almost. Close but no cigar.

But maybe if you’re not as picky as me, you won’t notice it so much. 

The story is still fairly easy to follow, at least compared to later volumes. In volume two, we’re familiarized with Shiina Mol Bamvivrie, or “Bambi” as Kaguya calls her, a stunningly beautiful girl who lives by herself in an isolated castle. Though she ends up being Kaguya’s savior in the midst of a world she’s never seen or heard of, and quickly earns Kaguya’s admiration, she herself tends to give the cold shoulder, apparently being unfamiliar with communicating with others. (Been locked up in the castle a little too long, perhaps…)

Volume three, in turn, introduces us to Takeyoshi Waseda, the soul of an Earthdwelling man encased in the body of…

Wait for it…

Waaait fooor iiiiit…

A giant rooster. 

Why is he a giant rooster? …Well, even when this is “explained” later on, it pretty much comes across as “no good reason”, another sign of Narushima’s flawed design skills… (Pretty much a certain someone who I won’t name because that would spoil it - you’re welcome - inadvertently designed this rooster doll because… they didn’t know a giant rooster would be strange? So yeah, no good reason.)

Don’t get me wrong, I love that Waseda is a giant rooster, it just drives me insane that there’s no freaking reason for it. 

…Anyway, Waseda turns out to be a poor soul accidentally transported from Japan to one of the parallel worlds - similar to Kaguya’s situation. (He is, however, not from modern-day Japan, but from pre-World War II Japan!) His story takes up a hefty majority of the third volume.

Oh, and it really kind of dials down on the romance in these volumes… So I am further disappoint… :T (Although there is a little scene at the end of volume two… *cough*)

I realize I probably sound like I’m really bashing this manga… And I kind of am… But really, it’s not terrible. Like I’ve also said before, it is a legitimately interesting story, enough so that it warrants my respect and my attention despite all else.

Volume 2 cover from goodreads.com

Volume 3 cover from openlibrary.org

Have I told you how much I love this series?

Okay, well, I do. I really love this series. For the record. Mmkay.

I maintain what I said before about this being the manga you want to read when you’re having a crap day and need a good pick-me-up. Let me count the ways I have laughed my arse off with these volumes………

For one, I’m loving the creative use of crazy martial arts forms that would only exist in Takahashi’s world. Here we’ve got your martial arts rhythmic gymnastics and your martial arts figure skating! Probably just as ridiculous as they sound, and yet Takahashi of course makes it work beautifully. (Bless this woman!!) In fact, I am astounded at how she can take such a simple and plot and always come up with new twists and complications so that it stays fresh and interesting. When you really get to looking at it, after the initial laughter of course, it’s amazing. Considering it isn’t a “serious” shounen series (or even a shounen series at all, for that matter) and in fact is very light-hearted in comparison, it’s as well executed as the story of Bleach or Naruto in my opinion.

As per usual, we’ve also got wonderful characters, even in the ones who simply make a one or two volume cameo. Ryoga Hibiki, who we met in volume 1 (has such a horrible sense of direction it takes him days to locate a place down the street?) is now revealed to have an alias as P-chan the adorable piglet! who Akane claims as a pet, and of course he develops the cutest crush on Akane. Everyone say awwwwwwwww!!

……..Well, I think it’s cute anyway, Ranma certainly doesn’t………

Moving along!! We’re also introduced to shameless cheater Kodachi the Black Rose and Shampoo, the Chinese Amazoness who seeks to kill female Ranma and marry male Ranma!

Another of my personal favorites is bratty martial arts figure skater Azusa Shiratori, partners with fellow skater and serial womanizer Mikado Sanzenin. Chronologically about the same age as Ranma and Akane and mentally about four years old, she has a curious habit of naming anything she decides is cute and savagely defending it as her possession. I just about died when she decided a fish cake splattered on Mikado’s face was her ‘Francoise’. A fish cake, people. Named Francoise.

*Ba-boom, chhkk!*

………

Eh, maybe you had to read it. I’m sure no explanation of mine could do justice for these characters!

Takahashi’s diverse artistic ability also makes this a great read. The variety of expressions, all of them equally hilarious, that she can apply to the characters is fantastic. Besides that, her prowess in illustrating the female figure really impresses me, personally. I’ve come to appreciate her very individualistic style just in drawing the curves of the female body. Really, she draws all figures in general quite well (I’ve just always had an eye especially for female figures) and this is very apparent in the way she draws the characters in such flexible and anatomically accurate poses, in and out of battle.   

So, to conclude, quite simply, I still say everyone should read this series!

*=Again, only reviewing chapters as covered by Viz’s volumes, for sake of consistency. (See my original review on Volume 1.) It gets a little wonky here - I’m having trouble keeping up with it myself - so bear with me, folks…

Volume 2 Viz/reprint cover from openlibrary.org; volume contains chapters 15 through 25; Volume 3 Viz/reprint cover also from openlibrary.org; volume contains chapters 26-36.

Volume 2 original cover from goodreads.com; (Japanese) volume contains chapters 9-17; Volume 3 original cover from coverbrowser.com; (Japanese) volume contains chapters 18-26; Volume 4 original cover from goodreads.com; (Japanese) volume contains chapters 27-36.

Volume 2 (Viz) scan from anymanga.com

PHEW

I don’t read many shoujo series (especially not the rom-com types - just not my thing), but Planet Ladder is one that I have always found fascinating, at least. 

Okay, and yeah…. I’m kind of into the romance…. 

*ahem* Planet Ladder is the story of a girl named Kaguya, the classic orphaned amnesiac - she doesn’t know where she came from or who her real parents were. She lives a happy enough life with her eccentric Japanese foster family - her stand-offish brother, strangely deluded, childlike mother, and her oft-absent white collar father. (For some strange reason though she feels the need to randomly and melodramatically exclaim that even though she’s always been useless and doesn’t do anything right, she’s gonna change, someday she’s gonna make a difference!!!)

One day, she is kidnapped from her home by a strange man called Seeu, who carries a huge sickle and is accompanied by an incredibly lifelike doll, temporarily dubbed “Gold” for the “organic gold” whip he wields, embedded in his left hand. She ends up transported along with Gold to another world entirely, and now she’s left wondering where she is, why everyone keeps calling her a “princess”, and why Gold seems so familiar to her.

I love the fantasy element in this the most. Many hints are made at a “Great War” from three hundred years ago, which apparently has had significant effect on present events. We are soon introduced to the Planet Ladder, the sequence of nine planets called “Worlds” that apparently us Earthlings were just always too ignorant to notice. Each world has its own distinctive characteristics - Earth, for example, being the Third World called “Eden”, said to be the ugliest of the Worlds.

Enchanting mysticism and otherworldliness aside, though, I do have one major complaint about this one. I find the storytelling to be very confusing, to the point even of being disruptive to the reading. Mostly it’s an issue of vague or disorganized dialogue and ill-planned order of events. Is this a flashback?… Okay, so which guy is Seeu and which guy is Idou?… What the hell was he doing in that panel anyway, tying a string to a weird telephone box…? I understand it’s supposed to be a mystery and all, but it gets kind of ridiculous.

A lot of this is probably due to the fact that Narushima did not fully plan the series before creating and publishing it, as you can tell from reading her author’s notes at the back of the volume. She seems to be making it a lot of it up as she goes, in other words. This kind of approach to a series generally turns me off, since it tends to produce a confused product - like so.

The art I sometimes find to be awkward. Narushima has a very pretty shoujo style of course - but it seems limited in a way that shoujo drawing styles tend to be. The kind of character design or caricature I’ve seen in shounen comics and come to appreciate, for example, are absent here. Perhaps that’s just a personal bias on my part, but I do often think the art seems to just barely miss the mark, as if it could be extraordinary, but something is holding it back, and that tends to be frustrating to me.  

Still, this manga has its charms, and if you enjoy fantasy like I do, or if you’re looking for some fluffy romantic fluff… ;) Well, you should definitely try it!

Volume 1 cover from goodreads.com

Scan from mangahere.com

You’ve probably heard of Neon Genesis Evangelion. On the back cover of these volumes, Viz proclaims it to be “one of the most controversial series of all time”. It’s pretty old school, the anime having concluded about 15 years ago now, but it has left behind quite a legacy, with many spin-offs and additional manga series and movies being made after its completion.

This manga series was conceived after the anime, and is therefore an adaptation - however, it was released before the anime. Yoshiyuki Sadamoto, the anime’s character designer, is the author responsible for the manga series. The volumes have been extremely slow in coming - the last volume was published in 2011, and it still hasn’t finished publishing! - but, if you ask me, I actually think the manga is better than the anime.

While the anime series tends to sometimes be held up by episodes that feel like “fillers” and scenes that are awkward or even a bit cheesy, the manga is extremely well-paced, and the storyline perfectly portrayed. (Sadamoto doesn’t really begin to stray from the plot of the anime until around volume 6, though.)

A pioneer in many ways, not in the least as a “mecha” series, the story takes place in Japan in 2015. In 2000, an event called the “Second Impact” melted the Antarctic ice caps and floods a good portion of the land on Earth - more than half the population is destroyed in the incident. Now, humanity is threatened by beings known as “Angels”. An organization called NERV has established headquarters in the city of Tokyo-3 with the only weapon that can defeat the Angels - the giant humanoid Eva units. Neon Genesis Evangelion follows the journeys of the officers and scientists of NERV, and most primarily, the pilots of the Eva units as the battle with the mysterious Angels heats up and the top secret “Human Instrumentality Project” is slowly uncovered.

Evangelion makes savvy use of Sadamoto’s willowy, graceful drawing style;  the kind of drama and emotion akin to that of any expertly executed psychothriller; and futuristic technology and science fiction elements (I still can’t believe how well thought out the plug suits are, both in aesthetic and functional design).

The greatest offering I think Evangelion brings, though, is of the overall theme - not in the least because of the Biblical connections and religious and spiritual implications (every volume is even named for a quote from the Bible). This becomes more apparent and significant as the series progresses, though, so we’ll open that can of worms in a later review…

What is readily apparent from the first volumes, in relaying the theme, is how the characterization relates. Many series, especially prior to this one, always depicted a hero who saved the day every time, always lifted up others spirits, and always had unwavering bravery and a heart of gold. No such character exists in this series, though. Evangelion has an unabashed realism in its approach here: the people living in this bleak, apocalyptic environment are broken and flawed.

While they certainly make accomplishments and make connections with each other, bonding in friendship, love, or trust, it is always hard-won. Everyone has a dark as well as a light part of their heart. Take Shinji Ikari, the main character, who is weak and even cowardly - at first he has no aim in life, feels no purpose, and does not even bother to communicate with others. (Hideaki Anno, the producer of the anime series, once stated that Shinji is “unsuitable - lacking the positive attitude - for what people call heroes of adventure”.) Besides that, he has ongoing daddy issues - his father being Commader Gendo Ikari, the head of the operation who in the first volume has Shinji brought to NERV HQ and asks him to pilot Unit 01 and fight an Angel, all out of the blue.

The first two volumes are lighter on all this, obviously, but as the series progresses, you can literally feel what it is, what it must be like, to live in the world they live in. Through Evangelion’s uncanny psychoanalysis - especially in Sadamoto’s manga - we are forced to really look at who we are as human beings, the futility, or the meaning, of life, and the nature of our very place in the universe.

Deep and intense stuff, as you can tell - so if you’re looking for something more on the fluffy or humorous side, stay awayyyy from this one. (Believe me you, this series will screw with your mind before the end.) However, it is something I think every anime and manga fan should read, especially if you’ve seen the original TV series. Neon Genesis Evangelion is not a landmark series and the “most controversial series of all time” for nothing, and actually, in my opinion, is a prime example of how manga can compete with some of the world’s best literature.

Volume 1 (“Behold the angels of God descending”), cover from Wikipedia

Volume 2 (“A flaming sword, which turned every way”), cover from r-galaxy.com

Volume 1 scan from mangareader.net

Kind of old school, but a good read nonetheless, one that I’ve read before but that I was happy to return to. I’m a huge fan of Rumiko Takahashi, who has been called “one of Japan’s most beloved creators” with damn good reason. Any manga connoisseur would probably agree Ranma 1/2 is not only one of Takahashi’s best (likely second only to InuYasha) but a milestone in the world of manga in general.

The premise alone provides for ample humour - the feature character, Ranma Saotome, fell into a cursed spring while training with his father Genma in China, and now turns into a girl whenever he’s splashed with cold water. And, of course, he’s been engaged to Akane Tendo, the youngest of three sisters, who prefers practicing martial arts to the usual “feminine” hobbies, and ends up having to fight a swarm of boys every morning when she gets to school.

Besides gender-bending hijinks and arranged marriages, Takahashi lends her wonderful, clever sense of characterization to a number of characters, and that’s probably the best part of the comedy. Genma Saotome, for example, also fell into a cursed spring, and turns into a panda when splashed with cold water, and so is often seen in his panda form communicating through signs and awkwardly making appearances where pandas don’t generally make appearances.

It’s a light read, but it’s a classic, and great when you’ve had a sucky ass day and just really need a good laugh. It’s great if you want to laugh for WHATEVER reason. :]

* = There’s two versions of Volume 1. The original, as published by Shogakukan/Shounen Sunday, contained chapters 1-8. Viz Media’s later print of volume 1 was much thicker and included chapters 1-14 (although Viz has also published an English adaptation of Ranma in the original tankoubon format). For sake of consistency I’m going to review only the chapters contained within Shounen Sunday’s Viz’s edition. (I decided this makes more sense. …So much for consistency. ^^;)

Viz/reprint cover (top) from openlibrary.org

Original cover (bottom) from imagehost.com

Scan from anymanga.com