Dragonball Z Part 2

(Viz, 1998-2000)
™ and ©1983 Bird Studio Viz Communications, Inc.
’Manga Style ’ Edition

The alien race, Saiyan, in pursuit of the wish-fullfilling Dragonballs, has arrived on Earth. Goku, who first appeared in Dragonballs, has grown to become Earth’s mightiest warrior and now he and his allies prepare for a battle which will determine the fate of the cosmos.

Rather than employing lasers or other high-tech weaponry, as would be the case in an American comic, this fight will be a martial arts showdown. As a product of Japanese culture, manga comics’ confrontations invariably result in a hands-on denouement.

Akira Toriyama’s extremely popular Japanese manga series is translated for American readers in this series from Viz Comics. Unlike other manga series that are photographically reversed to allow readers in Western countries to read the book in the familiar left-to-right method, this series maintains the Japanese right-to-left direction. Aside from the chance of a logo or letterform appearing as a mirror image, flopping the artwork sometimes revealed flaws in perspective. Maintaining the traditional Japanese layout avoids these concerns.

— George Haberberger

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