Unboxing the Nausicaä Manga Box Set

There are very few things a manga collector can get that are cooler than what I got today. It's just impressive in almost every way, to the point where even knowing roughly what it contains couldn't prepare me for actually seeing it with my own eyes. I am, of course, talking about the Viz Media deluxe edition box set of Hayao Miyazaki's legendary Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind. 

A photo of the box set

Bought from Amazon Germany at the price of €57.18, the package arrived on time and in good condition. I had it delivered to a Posti parcel point (just across the street from where I live) from where I picked it up. I luckily had a bag with me to carry it because let me tell ya: it is heavy. 3.5 kg to be exact, might not sound like a lot to some, but I'm a scrawny weeb not used to carrying around stuff that heavy. 

Anyway, on to the actual unboxing. The set is in a large (26 x 10 x 18 cm) rigid cardboard box, with an illustration and the title on the front cover, an introductory text on the back cover, and the barcode, age rating and other information on the bottom side of the box. The blue-tinted texture adorning all sides of the box is from the wall scroll shown in the opening credits of the movie. As I mentioned earlier, the package arrived in good condition and there is no visible damage on the box. 




Inside the box are the actual contents: the complete Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind manga in two hardcover volumes, and a two-sided A3 poster. The volumes have on their front covers the cover illustrations of the original first and second tankōbon volumes of the 7-volume edition, and on their back covers the same texture as the box. The poster has a beautiful pencil-and-watercolor illustration on both of its sides. 

The first hardcover volume contains chapters 1-4 of the manga (one chapter equal to one tankōbon), in addition to 8 color pages (including 2 maps), a 10-page sound effect glossary, a black-and-white illustration and a short text on Hayao Miyazaki. 

The second hardcover volume contains chapters 5-7 of the manga, in addition to 8 color pages, a 9-page sound effect glossary, a black-and-white illustration and the essay "On Nausicaä" by Hayao Miyazaki. 

The sound effect glossaries exist because Viz Media, in an unusual move, decided to leave all sound effects in this release untranslated. 



Honestly, these pictures that I took don't do justice to the absolute size of this thing. It's the second tallest and widest book I own, and definitely the thickest (counting the entire set as one book). It's insane to think that it's finally in my collection. I highly recommend getting it if you can afford it and love this manga as much as I do. (For first-timers this might be a bit challenging due to the sound effects lacking in-page translations but you never know.) 

  • Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind Deluxe Edition Box Set 
  • Story and Art by Hayao Miyazaki 
  • Length: 1104 pages 
  • Published by Viz Media (under the Studio Ghibli Library imprint) 
  • SRP: US$70.00, CA$84.99, £55.00 
  • ISBN: 978-1-4215-5064-0 
Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind © Hayao Miyazaki, Nibariki and/or Viz Media. 
Pictures (taken by me) of the product used in this blog post are not intended to infringe copyright.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Happy 20th Anniversary to Sound Horizon!

Yeah, I know I'm a week late with this blog post. Been a lot going on so haven't been updating this blog much. But that should change in Near Future™. Anyway, happy (Around The) 20th anniversary, SH! The major debut album is a couple of months younger than me, so our ages match for most of the year. Fun coincidence, perhaps divine foreshadowing. And right off the bat, we already have anniversary projects from SH, including the shortly upcoming Halloween to Asa no Monogatari and its already released lead track Halloween Japanesque '24 - fun song, that. Also concerts but those I won't be able to see since they're in Japan. Here's hoping for a Blu-ray. In fact there's many concerts I'd like Blu-rays of. As for fan projects, ICYMI my  365 Revo Songs  Twitter bot is now up and running and will tweet one Revo song every day until the next anniversary. I had a lot of technical problems with getting it to run reliably, which I might talk about in another blog p...
Read more

It's Time for Me to Touch Grass

... or snow, I guess? With it being winter and everything. Almost minus 20 degrees Celsius at the time of me writing this! Let’s hope it warms even a little before next week. After all, I'm starting my military service next week. I've already written about it here months ago, but to recap: Finland has mandatory military service, 6 to 12 months depending on how important stuff one ends up doing. I'm aiming for 6 because it would fit my future plans, but who knows. What this means is that I'm going to be very busy for a few months starting from next Monday. So, I'm officially(?) putting this blog on hiatus. It's not like I updated it very often anyway, but it's likely going to be at least 6 months until I expect to post here again.  As for social media, I might still tweet every now and then but definitely less than usually. So, uh... if you really need to contact me for some reason, feel free to DM but don't expect a quick answer. It's going to be int...
Read more

Around 20th Birthday and New Horizons

A lot has happened since I last updated this blog. I went and touched grass (well, snow for over half of it - dear god it was cold this winter) and served 165 days (fairly standard length for rank-and-file soldiers) in the army. With my citizen's duty now fulfilled, I'm a free man once again, at least until that dim-witted dictator on the other side of our eastern border decides to mess with us. If that happens, Signalsman [redacted] may have to grab an assault rifle again. Here's hoping that never happens. With that out of the way, it's time for some more long-lasting big changes in my life. First of all: I'm now in my 20s! As of today. Happy Around 20th Birthday to me, yeah~ (as you can see, still a brainrotted Laurant). Secondly: I'm going to university! In a different city! Since it'd be a bit of a long commute, the third thing is that I'm moving on my own for the first time in my life! In fact, I'm celebrating my birthday in the middle of packin...
Read more