Books: The Art of Naruto: Uzumaki

Let me put people’s fears to rest as quickly as possible. Viz’s localization of Uzumaki: The Art of Naruto is at least as good as the Japanese edition of the same work — if not better by dint of being in English (at least for us on this side of the Pacific). It’s an example of how to do this kind of thing right across the board. Viz took the trouble to obtain the original digital prepress files, painstakingly translated the texts (leaving in the original Japanese whenever relevant), and wrapped the whole thing in a fine-looking right-to-left hardcover presentation. Come to think of it, I’m not sure they had a choice: If Viz had done anything less than that, a legion of outraged fans would probably have left a giant flaming Leaf Village insignia on the front lawn of their corporate offices.

The 145 pages of Uzumaki (not to be confused with the manga of the same name I just reviewed) are broken into roughly two segments: 110 color pages of assorted illustrations — cover art, frontispieces, individual character portraits — and another 32 or so pages of black-and-white commentary, analysis and insight on every single picture in the whole book, courtesy of Masashi Kishimoto himself. It’s the artbook equivalent of a running commentary track on a DVD, and it’s a delight — there’s something interesting to be said about almost every single picture in the whole book.

Article originally written for AMN. Click here to read full text.