What is the Kenshin kanzenban?
The complete edition: the whole manga re-cut into 22 larger volumes, with every cover drawn again.
Between July 4, 2006 and May 2, 2007, Shueisha reissued Kenshin as a kanzenban, a complete edition, at two volumes a month. The books are A5, noticeably larger than the pocket-sized Jump Comics originals, and the story is re-divided so the arcs break where they should. Most visibly, Watsuki drew all 22 covers from scratch: stark ink portraits with one colour accent, a second, sterner design language for the same story.
The kanzenban is also where the lost pieces came home. The one-shot Yahiko no Sakabatō, published in Jump after the series ended and left out of the tankōbon, and the short story Haru ni Sakura (Cherry Blossoms in Spring) are both collected here, in the final volume.
THE TWO VOLUMES 14
One story, two designsTankōbon 14 (1997)
Shishio’s bandaged face in full painted colour, sold to a reader in the middle of the Kyoto arc.
Kanzenban 14 (2006)
The same antagonist re-drawn in ink and a single wash of blue: the complete edition treats every cover as a portrait sitting, not a poster.
FOR THE SHELF
Identifying the editionThe colophon tells
Kanzenban volume 1’s colophon records a first printing issued July 9, 2006, for a July 4 release: Japanese books print the issue date, not the street date, a distinction this archive’s first-printing page explains.
The companion
The edition closed with its own guidebook, Kenshin Kaiden, on June 4, 2007.