What are the Bastard!! Complete Editions?
Between December 2000 and December 2009, Shueisha reissued Bastard!! as the Complete Edition: nine large, thick volumes (the third runs to some 340 pages) that re-collect the series in a kanzenban-style format. The headline fact is the artwork. For volume 1, Hagiwara updated his own art: backgrounds improved, screentones rebuilt, some characters redrawn to match his mature style. For volume 2 he went further and redrew the book outright. From volume 3 onward the art is the original magazine art, presented in the larger format. It is the only manga edition of its era where a flagship Jump author systematically repainted his debut, and it makes the Complete Edition the connoisseur’s text: the story of volume 1 as the artist of volume 20 wished he had drawn it.
The Complete Edition also became the world’s text: Viz Media’s English edition is based on it, so English readers met the redrawn Bastard!! first (see the English page). Japan got one more format in 2014, when Shueisha issued a nine-volume bunkoban pocket edition, May to September, the portable paperback line in which Jump keeps its classics in print. No Complete Edition exists for the chapters after the original volume 19’s material; the Ultra Jump-era art has never been re-collected in a revised edition.
