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1st Doraemon Manga Volume in 23 Years Features 6 Versions of 1st Chapter
posted on by Jennifer Sherman
Shogakukan's Tentōmushi Comics imprint will release the first new volume of Fujiko F. Fujio's Doraemon manga in 23 years on November 27. The "Volume 0" book will celebrate the manga's 50th anniversary and feature six versions of the series' first chapter.
The original manga debuted in the January 1970 issues of Shogakukan's Yoiko, Yōchien, Shōgaku Ichinensei, Shōgaku Ninensei, Shōgaku Sannensei, and Shōgaku Yonensei children's learning magazines in December 1969. Each magazine tailored the manga's first chapter to its individual readers. Tentōmushi Comics' first compiled book volume for the manga featured a revised version of the first chapter from Shōgaku Yonensei, the magazine targeting fourth-grade elementary school students.
The new manga volume will feature all six versions of the first chapter and include color pages. The release will also include supplementary materials originally published alongside the manga such as preview pages, Fujiko F. Fujio's Doraemon Tanjō (The Birth of Doraemon) documentary manga, and articles revealing the background circumstances surrounding the original publication.
Tentōmushi Comics released the manga's 45th compiled book volume, the most recent and final volume in the main series, in April 1996. The imprint released the sixth volume of the Doraemon Plus manga in December 2014 as the first volume in the series in eight years. Doraemon Plus premiered in 2005 as a manga compilation of Fujiko F. Fujio's Doraemon stories that did not appear in the original 45-volume series.
The Doraemon franchise has inspired numerous television anime, films, and specials. The 2020 Doraemon film, Eiga Doraemon: Nobita no Shin Kyōryū (Doraemon the Movie: Nobita's New Dinosaur), will open on March 6, 2020. The anime is inspiring a manga adaptation in the January 2020 issue of Shogakukan's Ciao magazine on November 30. The film also has a manga adaptation in Shogakukan's Coro Coro Comics magazine that launched in September.
Sources: Shogakukan, Comic Natalie, The Mainichi Shimbun's Mantan Web
