Monday, January 03, 2011

HANGING BALLOONS BY JUNJI ITO: COMPLETE!

Hanging Balloons by Junji Ito is now completely posted on the Same Hat Tumblr! Many thanks again to Dave & Michael for sharing their fan translation with everyone!

Enjoy this madness, one of my favorite "short stories" by the dude! For your reading enjoyment, here are links to each of the 59 pages (thanks to ----comix):


1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 
21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 
31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40
41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50
51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59

23 comments:

hahhah42 said...

Thanks for hosting this, I always enjoy Junji Ito's work. Also, you said in your previous post that Hanging Balloons is part of the Museum of Terror series; could you please tell me what volume it was in?

Ryan S said...

It's in Volume 4, the one with the FACE BURGLAR as the main story:
http://junjiito.trilete.net/comicreviews.php?bookid=JIC4

hahhah42 said...

Thanks for the info; I really appreciate it! So it would be in the next volume released, if Dark Horse or some other company ever picks it back up again... I guess that's pretty unlikely at this point.

JE said...

On a slight tangent, does anybody know why Dark Horse does this all of a sudden to its titles? Museum Of Terror is one example of a series that suddenly stops for some reason, and there's also MPD Psycho. Is this because of licensing?

Ryan S said...

@hahhah42: In theory yes, though they must've broke from the JP versions and changed the 3rd collection they put out to not overlap so directly with FLESH-COLORED HORROR from ComicsOne, OR there are a few different editions of the Museum of Terror series in Japanese. I say that because the 3rd book from DH included stories from MoT 8... I'd have to dig up my books to check;

@JE: All of a sudden? All the series-ending stuff from Dark Horse went dont over a year ago (maybe more?) when they stopped Octopus Girl, Museum of Terror, etc mid-run. I stopped keeping track of how they've been doing lately, but it's all a sales numbers game; I feel cheated that they never finished Octopus Girl since there was only 1 volume left, but for MoT, the sad truth is not enough people we're buying it to make continuing the series profitable. Folks have talked that perhaps the price point for those books was too high, but I think the production and formatting of MoT was sorta impeccable. Blame the cratering of the , blame the lack of horror genre fans, but the end result is that it sucks for readers (and for the companies themselves too, from friends like Carl Horn I know they loathe having to kill something midway)

What is up with MPD? I haven't been following it, did they stop publishing it?

JE said...

@ryan: i meant that they stopped publishing it without people having any idea as to why. no question its already been a year or so since those last volumes of MoT and MPD Psycho.

on MPD, the last one they put out was vol. 9, whereas there seems to be 14 or 15 volumes out already in Japan.

those MoT editions were stacked, btw. and i don't recall them being too overpriced at the time i bought them.

Ryan S said...

@JE: Ah yeah, thanks for the details! I remember thinking that MPD was only 11 volumes in Japanese? But I don't recall anymore if that's the case-- I think you're right that it's longer.

I was at an event where Carl Horn spoke about Dark Horse cancellations and with Museum of Terror it was simply that there was not enough sales to justify continuing the entire 11-14 volume series... :(

Anonymous said...

Any thoughts as to why horror manga sales do badly in the USA? I'd think that Junji Ito would do fairly well, but if his titles don't, then I can't imagine any horror manga would. Hideshi Hino "Hino Horror" was canceled at volume 14 and it seems there is not enough interest from anyone for even scanlation.

spork said...

Awesome. Happy to see this since they stopped doing the English translated Museum of Terror at volume 3. :(

I'll admit I didn't buy 1 and 2 but that's cuz I'm not that into the Tomie stories.

DrSenbei said...

Thanks for posting this Ryan!
I actually translated all of Book 4 on a lark (this was almost 3 years ago when I was still on JET and had nothing but time), but the guy who commissioned the translation never got back to me.
I'm happy that it saw the light of day.

Anonymous said...

Wow! awesome!
I jus discover this Blog and it's awesome...!!

Great Ito!

Sorry if its sounds silly, but can I ask where can I buy ero-guro, horror manga on-line? Or an easy way to export it? Tried to search on the "famous" pages but they just have limited titles

Anonymous said...

*sorry, meant import it.. :S

Ryan S said...

@LordBryan: akatako.net

trevor brown said...

off-topic but inquiring minds need to know - what's the big problem with "the strange tale of panorama island"? - it's pushed back to july 2011 now? - does it really take two years to put a book out?

Ryan S said...

@Trevor: Taking a look back at your last 5 comments on here--- is it possible for you to post something without coming across as a bit rude? I guess it's simply your online persona and you can't help yourself...

The book will be coming out in 2011, it's been delayed for a few reasons, but mostly because of my non-manga job responsibilities (which take up about 96% of all my time). We think you'll be very pleased with the English edition when it hits shelves later this year.

trevor brown said...

???

i won't comment anymore

goodbye

Ryan S said...

@Trevor: I may have slightly over-reacted, I am simply pointing out the implicit criticism and snipes in your comments-- occasionally about things now worth getting plussed about:

"does it really take two years to put a book out?"

"hmm, they could have been slightly less conspicuous with the red dots? - must be hard trying to look at an artwork with this FUCKING GIGANTIC red blob distracting your eye"

"last gasp? schmast gasp! - buncha nancy fat old hippies who don't have the spunk to handle trevor brown books"

etc etc.

Anonymous said...

@ryan: Many thanks! Keep up the good work!

Mike said...

Thanks for hosting this for us Ryan!

Chris Karpis said...

Great great great job !
Thank you Same Hat !
I've just discovered your blog and I am absolutely thrilled !

zach hazard vaupen said...

finally got around to reading this...ugh so good!!

apnasindh said...

i like ballons by huni ito .... they are very nice in picture

Unknown said...

Thank You for translation!
I enjoyed reading of the Hanging balloons.

The story shortly after start looks like to be based on triggered collective suicide phenomena, something that unfortunatelly can and sometimes really happen in a society of recent days.
Is known such thing rather easy can happen to "inner circlers"... the groups of "chosen" devotees of celebrities.
....But there in the story some invention appears making all the bad thing even easier...and even turning the suicide to collective murder of fans and finally mass homicide.
But, even after reading the recent translation I am still not sure of one thing. Should this be a revenge or something like alien attack?

Anyway, it´s really good.