The folks at Stone Bridge Press are set to make some old school fans happy as well as their wallets as the publisher has announced plans to bring the original Mobile Suit Gundam trilogy of novels back into print in 2012. The company previous released it as single volume back in 2004 but it has been out of print for quite a few years and fetches quite the price on auction sites and elsewhere for the few copies that float around. The company made the announcement via Twitter and even made the note to people to stop pirating it because it is coming back, saying, “StoneBridgePub #bakaBT Please do NOT post/rip pages from Tomino’s MOBILE SUIT GUNDAM. New print edition coming early 2012!”
The re-release is planned for April with 520 pages and 24 illustrations for $15.95, which is only a buck more than it ran for back in 2004.
Called “a cornerstone of anime SF,” Japan’s Gundam franchise that began in 1979 now boasts a worldwide cult of devotees. In the Gundam universe, the Earth Federation battles rebellious off-world colonies, and “Newtype” warriors with evolved mentalities pilot gargantuan suits of high-tech armor. This novelization presents creator and director Yoshiyuki Tomino’s unvarnished vision for his own core series with richer characterizations and a shocking ending. These novels were originally published in Japanese in late 1979 to coincide with the end of the TV series and the theatrical release of the first compilation movie. They were quite controversial when they first appeared in English translation in 1990.
Yoshiyuki Tomino is one of Japan’s best known sci-fi animation directors and the author of numerous fiction and non-fiction books. Since working on the Tetsuwan Atomu (“Astro Boy”) series in 1964, he has directed or created some of Japan’s top robot and fantasy-themed works for television, theaters, and the original video anime market. Best known for the hugely popular Gundam TV shows, most recently he has attracted attention for his works Brain Powerd (1998), Turn A Gundam (1999) and Overman King Gainer (2002).
[Source: Crunchyroll]
