Yotsuba&! Magazine Ad from ADV Manga, circa. 2003

 

This is not the full rez version, if you can believe that.

Just a short post today. I'm still working on the next scanlation project, it is coming along well but given that it's a full book and that I'm basically doing it all by myself, it's gonna be a while before release. I can't make any promises on a release date or anything.

In the meantime, I found something cool on eBay. It was listed as a poster, but it's actually a print magazine ad ran by ADV to advertise their release of Yotsuba&!. Neat!

 

I love how five of the six companies with logos have gone out of business.

The eBay seller cannibalized it from an issue of Shojo Beat, which was an attempt by Viz Media back in the day to bring Japanese-style manga magazines to the North American market. A few companies attempted to do this, but they all failed massively thanks to the onset of the internet, and every single one died around the early 2010s. Anybody who was subscribed to a gaming magazine at the time should be very familiar with this outcome.

Anyway what this means is that there's a part of a magazine article on the other side. Neat!

These types of "Check Out This Cool Crap!" articles are weirdly nostalgic, even though as a jaded adult I now realize that almost certainly they are the lazy work of a magazine editor just googling stuff.

Of course I framed it and hung it up on my wall, as anyone with respect should do, but before I did so I took a high rez scan of it, and cleaned it up in Photoshop.

Only the best decor for me. (Goes great with the Yotsuba&! Calendar!)

 

Here are download links to scans, if anybody else wants them. Given that this is a full 7"x10" page, which is much bigger than a tanko-ban or North American-sized manga, this may be the highest rez image of the cover that is publicly available. (Just ignore all the text and logos and crap pasted on top)

Full Size (231.3 MB)

Half Size (70.9 MB) 

Quarter Size (18.0 MB)

I'll probably post it on the Yotsuba&! wiki or something. Just a little fun bit of early Yotsuba&! history, before ADV Manga went out of business. Anyway have fun with it I guess!