Collecting Takahashi: Editions and First Printings
Which Japanese editions exist, which English ones are complete, and where the traps are: the collector’s map of this shelf.
Japanese first printings across all three series are identified the way this Library documents elsewhere: by the colophon printing statement in the back of the book, not by the cover, which rarely changes between printings. The English editions, by contrast, wear their histories openly, if you know the tells. This page collects them.
THE TRAPS AND THE TELLS
One per series, plus the exhibition discsUrusei Yatsura: The Incomplete English Run
The 1990s Viz edition stops at roughly Japanese volume 11, with chapters missing inside what it does cover. The complete English text is the 17-volume omnibus (2019–23), based on the shinsoban, whose 2006–08 Japanese printings are themselves the distinct set, with new Takahashi covers and tribute art.
Ranma: Thirty-Six Is Complete
Viz’s flipped graphic novels span 36 volumes because of regrouping, not omission; everything in them is mirrored, including the reprints of 2004. The unflipped text begins with the 2-in-1 edition of 2014.
Inuyasha: The Flip Point
English volumes 1–37 read left-to-right; 38–56 read right-to-left, from July 2009. Check orientation before assuming a mixed set is wrong, and before paying a premium for a “uniform” one.
The Epilogue’s Only Home
In Japanese book form, “Since Then” (2013) is collected in volume 30 of the wideban. Anthology appearances aside, that is the shelf copy.
The Exhibition Box
The It’s a Rumic World box set (January 29, 2010) is the home release of the three 2008 specials, Ranma’s Nightmare! Incense of Spring Sleep, Inuyasha’s Black Tessaiga and Urusei Yatsura’s Obstacle Course Swim Meet, and was sold with a figure of Lum.