by Alison L. Roberts

[Before reading this review, please take a trip in the "way-back" machine to check out the review of Kadokawa Shoten's original imprint of Der Mond (published January 2001). ]

English-speaking anime and manga fans can find themselves in a slight quandary when they consider purchasing art books. Should they go ahead and get the Japanese or other licensed edition? Or should they go ahead and purchase a domestic imprint of the title, which is in English, but may or may not be of the same reproduction quality or — for that matter — complete?

If you wanted the best of both worlds, sometimes, the answer was to buy both. These days, that is not necessarily the best answer.

Viz Communications took a bold step in late summer/early fall of 2001, publishing a domestic version of Der Mond, a collection of illustrations by Yoshiyuki Sadamoto (Neon Genesis Evangelion, Nadia and more).

Other publishers have put out U.S. editions of artbooks before, so what makes Viz's Der Mond so special? Quite frankly, it is practically a duplicate of the foreign edition — from the slipcover and paper/print quality to the illustrations and their placements upon each page. It even reads "right to left," so none of the art is "flipped."

When the two editions are placed side by side for comparison, they literally cannot be told apart, until you reach the spread on pages 36-37. These are color pages of the Evangelion manga. . . in the Viz edition, they are translated into English.

One of Der Mond's most interesting and informative features is toward its very end: a page-by-page "List of Works" with notations about each piece's creation, as well as notes from Sadamoto, himself. This is a feature most fans would miss, if not for the U.S. translated edition.

A well-produced, virtual duplicate of the Japanese edition with a literate, English translation… all for $29.95 US. If you are a Sadamoto fan, what is there not to like?

Viz got this one right. Here's to hoping that Der Mond is a harbinger for the future domestic artbooks that we, the fans, so crave.