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I have the original 4 volume translation that was began in the US in the early 1980s. IMO, anyone reading either this or the new translation (10 volumes) really needs to read Nakazawa Keiji's I Saw It!, which was a direct autobiography of Nakazawa's experiences during and after the bomb dropped. It was published in the US by Educomics in the early 1980s, and a book I still own to this day.
I watched the first anime movie, and while it is still a harrowing viewing (as one would expect it to be), IMO it gutted a lot of Nakazawa's pre-bomb exposition about how life was like for the family during the war, and sought instead to create a more "obvious" villain with the scene of the American fighter coming in low to deliberately target a little girl. At least in the 4-volume books I have, such a scene never occurred and given it was published by Last Gasp, I don't think it would have been edited out by them.
I hope that I Saw It! has been reprinted with the Hadashi no Gen collection, because I think it really shows Nakazawa's mindset as he was about to produce Gen (the Hadashi no Gen series began in Japan just after I Saw It!).
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