U.S. covers vs. Japanese

I'm sure this has been brought up somewhere already, but why the vast disparity in coolness between the covers of American editions of SW novels and the Japanese editions? I mean, look at the covers for the NJO books. We get pictures that are at times so weird and abstract that we don't even know which character is being portrayed, and they get awesome-looking art that makes almost every SW character look like a supermodel. What gives?

 

The Japanese didn't get cover artists who try and be "artsy"

 

Yup, thats why I love the Japanese covers, they are just Perfect!, and yet the american covers continue to be "artsy"

 

I like the Japanese covers better. They remind me of really old sci-fi novel covers. If Del Rey re-released the NJO with Japanese covers, I would actually buy them instead of borrowing them from my friend.

 

I agree.... once I saw the Japanese covers in an Insider issue I thought "Well this sucks... These are so much better than ours!" The only covers I really like are the ones for the Greg Keyes books, like the one with Nen Yim on the front. But the others are really bad.

 

I much prefer the US covers actually. They look different in a nice way, rather than the obnoxious movie-poster Japanese ones. Seriously, lets put every single character who appears in the book in a row! That'll make a great cover! It just doesn't do it for me. Oh, and

 

Japanese all the way. The actually use pre existing visual source material for their covers.

 

Right on, ner vod.

 

So why is it, Q_M, that we are apparently the only sci-fi nerds who don't care for anime/manga/Japanese art in general? It seems to be quite popular, yet we hold out against it.

 

I don't like the Japanese covers that much. They are a lot of hot pink in them. I don't equate SW with hot pink.

And everyone looks like they are 20 years old. It's ridiculous. Mara always looks like Luke's 14 year old daughter. Han looks like he did in ANH. Leia always looks like a guy. It is just weird.

And they all wear some sort of dark grey janitorial suit, except Mara, who apprently visits even Hoth with tank tops.

 

Heyyyyy, T_F and I agree? That can't be right. The universe will be ending in 5, 4, 3, 2, . . .

But I just realized -- those character lineups in the new banner are probably from some Japanese cover, aren't they? AAAAAARRRRRRGGGGGGHHHHH! IT'S EVERYWHERE!!

 

You're not. I rather liked many of the NJO covers here in America, though I did find some of the Japanese ones to work better than a few of ours. I do think that in general the Japanese covers did a better job keeping a consistent look for the characters throughout, but I liked every hardback cover and most of the paperback covers (though I didn't care for the paperbacks in the latter half of the NJO as much... the weird painting on FH and the crappy photomanips on Traitor and DJ being the main ones).

I don't dislike the Japanese covers in any way. In the case of FH, I like them much better - not least because we actually had a decent depiction of Danni Quee, rather than the terrible one on the front of the American version.

I just happen to like ours better for the most part.

Betrayal might change that, though... I just wish they'd get a better look for Jacen. The design, I love. Just not his face...

- Keralys

 

Yeah, that seems to be the main argument -- the pictures of the characters are so nice. I'll grant you that, they are. They'd make great reference artwork to stick in the back of the book. But they make really lousy covers.

 

The thing I like better about ours, I think, is that rather than simply depicting the people, they depict actual events, the people doing things.

That's one reason I love the design of Betrayal. Too bad about the actual image of Jacen... *sigh*

- Keralys

 

About the only Star Wars covers I have disliked are the covers that Bantam produced. They're all so flat and boring.

 

Because we both retain a modicum of sanity?

In most cases, I prefer the composition of the American to the Japanese, though I'll admit that the character art itself is quite good.

Still, nothing beats Wedge on the cover of Rebel Dream.

 

I have to say that for the most part, I like the Japanese covers better (at least the ones I've seen). I guess it's just a personal preference.

 

Thing is, the Japanese covers aren't anime/manga/Japanese style art at in the least. I despise all things Japanese, but the covers of those books are great, because they're original, good quality art rather than the crappy impressionistic photshop/CGI jobs that Del Rey seems so fond of.

 

While the J covers will show people and objects A covers never will, they share a colour theme too similar with each cover, have people that stare straight at you, and as has been noted, never age.

 

That's why I like Rebel Dream/Rebel Stand.

 

I personally love both Japanese and American covers, and think that they both have their strongsuites. The Japanese covers make great eye-candy. The American covers make good covers.

It just depends on what you want wrapped around your book spine: a stellar piece of art that makes a decent cover, or a decent enough piece of art that makes a great cover. Both work for me.

 

I like the japanese covers much better, I mean c'mon Jaina would be smoking hot if she was real! And I wouldn't kick Mara out of bed for eatin' crackers either!

 

Yes. And they picked what is probably Jacen's worst picture from all the NJO ones (which is "down" all the way to about an 8 on a scale of 1 to 10, but still! grr!) and Anakin looks almost exactly like my brother's best friend.

The Japanese covers are nicer to look at, but the American covers feel more like Star Wars... so it's all good, IMHO.

 

Anakin, Jacen, Jaina and Tahiri look like older versions of some of my siblings.

 

The Japanese covers are AMAZING. The best American covers (outside of the art books), IMO, date all the way back to the Thrawn trilogy and even some of the much-maligned KJA works. At least those texts had good art on the cover. The Japanese covers, meanwhile, are frequently perfect and incredibly cool. I would consider re-buying the entire NJO if they simply released them with just the Japanese covers in the US. That's how good I think their cover artists are.