Are Vinland Saga Covers the Same in Japanese and English?
English readers sometimes assume the covers were redrawn for them. On Vinland Saga they were not: Kodansha USA’s hardcover line reuses Makoto Yukimura’s Japanese cover paintings, beginning with volume 1’s young Thorfinn and ending, fifteen books later, with volume 29’s snowbound farewell. What changes is everything printed on top of the painting.
One genuine cover difference does exist, and it is inside Japan: the 2005 Shōnen Magazine Comics printings of volumes 1 and 2 wear completely different designs from the Afternoon KC reissues, compared in the gallery and explained on the two-first-volumes page.
SIDE BY SIDE
Japanese vs EnglishVolume 1, two countries
Kodansha USA’s hardcovers retain the Japanese cover art rather than commissioning new covers: each English book fronts the painting of the first Japanese volume it contains. The differences are typographic: a new logo treatment, the author’s name in a runic-flavoured face, and the book number spelled out, “Book One,” “Book Fifteen.”