About the Manga

Fujisawa Tohru is better known for his more famous work, Great Teacher Onizuka. Which has been licensed and released and enjoyed outings as anime. As well as the Rose Hip series, also licensed and almost fully released.

About the Manga

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I did a comparison review of the manga and anime of TOKKO last year.

The similarities between Rose Hip and TOKKO’s art style clear, both series while different have a distinct feel to them. Normally I wouldn’t mention this, since they’re done by the same mangaka, so it’s obvious there’d be similarities. However there are distinct similarities between the character designs, in fact first time I read the series I thought there were the same characters :) Not that that’s a bad thing, Tohru’s art is still spectacular to the max!!

The story he created this time is excellent, though I wish it was longer than two volumes :(

While it’s a short series, it’s none the less intriguing, and draws the reader into the world he creates, a world of demons, hot babes wielding swords (any guys dream!!) and major ass kicking all around.

This has been on my Essential Read list for ages, ever since I found it a few years ago. It’s a seinen manga that doesn’t hold anything back.

This was licensed by Tokyopop, and when I first heard it I was overjoyed. Since TP’s reputation was at a highpoint, and Viz had been sniffing around it for a while. however as Manga Entertainment had just released a hatchet job on the anime, so I went on over to the TP site and asked if they were going to change things like Manga Entertainment had done. I was assured they weren’t. This was going to be released unedited, uncensored and shrink-wrapped. This made my day, and I started counting the days until I could buy the release.

Sadly, TP didn’t live up to their promise, in fact I’m hard pressed to decide who gets the prize for biggest fuck up, Viz’s  Rosario + Vampire, or this from Tokyopop.

From the outset they bleached the manga. TOKKO starts with several colour pages, but these have all been bleached. I could forgive this if they had kept their promise of not editing the manga, but sadly this was apparently to much for Tokyopop to do, and it’s been heavily rewritten. Some re-writing is inevitable, since Japanese to English is never an easy process, but the extent that TP have gone to have changed the flow and feel of the series completely.

TP clearly felt that there wasn’t enough story revealed in volume one, so changed certain parts so as more was revealed, they also changed who was speaking on several times which infuriated the hell out of me.

Sadly, I’ve noticed that TP are backsliding into their Mixx days, with hatchet jobs, pointless rewrites and numerous other nightmares going on in their releases.

TOKKO remains a favourite of mine, but I can’t add this version to my Essential Read list. I suppose if you haven’t read the original version it will be an okay series, but if you have read the original, then all you’ll get is a headache over the changes :(

Where to Buy

I can’t recommend buying this series, to be honest I’d say stick with the original Japanese versions (Like I have) and/or scanlations, over buying the Tokyopop version. Save your money for other releases!!

However, if you must:

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