What is ab# rebuild, the second Omnipresence?
The same artbook, rebuilt: more pages, new art, re-set text, and the only version most of the world can read.
In 2005, Wani Magazine reissued ABe’s artbook in Japan as yoshitoshi ABe lain illustrations: ab# rebuild an omnipresence in wired, a heavily modified edition, not a reprint. In 2006 it reached the United States from Digital Manga Publishing (hardcover and softcover; the softcover at $24.95), the form in which most English-speaking collectors know it. The rebuild keeps the core, the Layer illustrations, the game art, The Nightmare of Fabrication, now translated, and rearranges almost everything around them.
THE TWO EDITIONS
Same girl, different books1999 · Japan only
The original: hardbound, 128 pages, under a transparent slipcover that carries the title so the cover itself doesn’t have to. Japanese text throughout; the manga bound in untranslated.
2005 Japan · 2006 America
The rebuild: some 150 pages under a dark blue cover lettered “Hello NAVI.” Layer texts re-translated and repositioned, ABe’s photography added, and, in the American edition, a how-to section and pencil drawings the Japanese editions never had.
The verdict
The rebuild is not a strict upgrade. Its Layer texts sit in different positions than the 1999 printing, a typesetting error crept into Layer 11, and purists note the original’s sequencing. But the rebuild is the edition that can actually be read in English, and the one with ABe showing his working. Collectors who can, keep both.
WHAT CHANGED, ITEMIZED
For the shelf recordAdded
New illustrations, a section called “ABe’s EYE in color of things”, a compilation of ABe’s own photographs of the world, and, in the US edition, an exclusive how-to section by ABe with previously unseen pencil drawings.
Changed
Konaka’s texts over the Layer illustrations were re-translated for the rebuild and sometimes sit in completely different positions on the page. Excepting the Layer images, the English edition contains no Japanese text at all.
Kept
The Nightmare of Fabrication (file DC1029) appears in both, translated in the rebuild. The game illustrations and the Layer sequence remain the spine of the book in every edition.