Robot - Tome 05

Robot #5

by Various, Hirotaka Maeda, Yusuke Kozaki

Compiled and edited by Range Murata (Last Exile, Blue Submarine No.6), this quarterly series features anime and manga's most skilled creators at their best. Featured in Volume 5 are stories and artwork by Yoshitoshi Abe (Serial Experiments Lain), Hyung-Tae Kim (Magna Carta, War of Genesis), Shin Nagasawa (Wolverine: Soultaker), and over a dozen more of Japan's finest artists.

Genres: Manga, Art, Comics, Graphic Novels

168 pages, Paperback

First published April 10, 2006

About the author

Various is the correct author for any book with multiple unknown authors, and is acceptable for books with multiple known authors, especially if not all are known or the list is very long (over 50).

If an editor is known, however, Various is not necessary. List the name of the editor as the primary author (with role "editor"). Contributing authors' names follow it.

Note: WorldCat is an excellent resource for finding author information and contents of anthologies.

Reviews

[Parka · Rating 3 out of 5]

(More pictures at parkablogs.com)

Robot is a Japanese manga anthology. This English version is translated by Udon.

Basically, this is sort of a portfolio books for the artists. They are Range Murata, Neovision, Hyung-Tae Kim, Mani Itou, Suzuhito Yasuda, Shigeki Maeshima, Yusuke Kozaki, Hirotaka Maeda, Sabe, Miggy, Yoshitoshi Abe, Micho Murakawa, Imperial Boy, Shin Nagasawa, Fujijun, Hiroyuki Asada, Yumi Tada, Shuzilow.Ha and Nick Stick Robot-kun.

Some of the stories are continuation from previous volumes, others are just standalone. As with continuation, if you don't have the previous volume, the stories won't make a lot of sense. Besides, Japanese comic plots are a little hard to grasp in the first place. Storytelling is definitely not the reason you'll want to buy this book for. With so many artists, the variety of art is great. Some are very beautifully illustrated, while others go for the more comical line art.

This book is a mixed bag for me. I'll probably give it 3 stars out of 5. Well, a good comics anthology should have more better stories. Or it could have been a better art book if they scrap storytelling altogether.