I love me some Star Wars — so much so that I have read every single post-A New Hope book that has come out (and more than a few of the comics, too). A lot of the novels have come out in Japan as well, but with one major improvement: the awesome covers.
American Star Wars book covers started out pretty good — just look at the art for the Thrawn Trilogy. However, by the time the New Jedi Order series started, the covers had become more minimalist — showing little more than a generic space battle or a close-up on one of the heroes or villains. Not in Japan, however.
The New Jedi Order covers in Japan were drawn by Tsuyoshi Nagano — who also draws the cover art for the long-running Romance of the Three Kingdoms video game series — and they are outstanding.
Reminiscent of the movie series’ classic posters, these covers not only showcase the characters prominent in each book — some of which had never had official artwork before — but also often show important events from within the novel. Moreover, as these novels were often split in two for their Japanese releases, the two covers link to make an even more epic image.
Outside of the New Jedi Order, Tsuyoshi’s covers for the New Republic and prequel-era Japanese covers are just as awesome.
Honestly, I wish the whole world got Tsuyoshi’s covers on their Star Wars novels. It’s a shame that this great art only sits on the shelves of one small country. To see more of Tsuyoshi’s cover artwork — as well as other Star Wars covers from all over the world — check out the awesome foreign covers gallery over at TheForce.net.
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4 responses to “Japanese Star Wars Book Covers Are Awesome”
Bloody hell! These Japanese covers are so clearly superior to their American counter-parts that it’s a surprise Tsuyoshi’s covers weren’t used as the default ones. They’re all great but my favourite are Jedi Eclipse, Rebirth and Traitor. You even get to see Vergere on the last one!
Remind me of when I used to read Young Jedi Knights back in the 90’s. One of my favourite things about them were the covers that harkened back to the original posters for the trilogy.
YJK #1: http://img3.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20090311123310/starwars/images/d/db/YJK_Heirs_of_the_Force.jpg
YJK #6: http://img2.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20090311130310/starwars/images/c/ce/YJK_Jedi_Under_Siege.jpg
The Japanese covers also helped a great deal in giving a far better idea what the Vong and other creatures (and even some characters) look like than the Us covers (and even some of the actual book content) ever did. They’re simply amazing and is there a coffee table book collecting them all yet?
Holy Crap! Get this guy to do the movie posters! He’s even aged them appropriately. I mean he has examples to work off’ve (you seen how haggard they all look these days?) but he’s made them age beautifully…