Ultra Heaven - Keiichi Koike

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[Revilenigma]

Ultra Heaven






Scanned, Cleaned and Proofread by Ikkyusan
Translation by Gottheim
Typesetting by Revil







Scanned, Cleaned by Ikkyusan
Proofread/qc by Ikkyusan and Gottheim
Translated by Gottheim and anonymous
Typeset by Revil, Ikkyusan and morten







Scanned by Ikkyusan
Proofread/qc by Ikkyusan and Gottheim
Translated by Gottheim
Cleaned by Ikkyusan, morten
Typeset by Revil, Ikkyusan


Summary huh? Well it's about a hallucinating druggie in a Transmetropolitan like world where drugs are legal.

[mono]

nice work. looks interesting. thanks

[Revilenigma]

Call me crazy but I think this is the next Homunculus. Also I'm adding a 1600px version for casuals.

[krizzx]

Was this a done with Evil-Genius? I thought it was kind of odd that your releases came out within a day of each other for a manga that had never been scanlated before. Was that just coincidence?

[Revilenigma]

Was that just coincidence?

Funny enough yes...

[mono]

i know which one il be reading though ;)

[morten]

Second volume finished, you can also get it as torrent now:

[morten]

Volume 3 is finished. We may have to wait till 2011/12 for volume 4. New Ultra Heaven volumes only come out every 1-2 years...

We will release some oneshots by Koike soon enough. Please check them out as well...

[gutzfr]

thanks a lot for your work on this manga read the first volume and can't wait to see more

[goldencalf]

Soo... did any of you try reading Ultra Heaven with this:

i think this manga deserves it.  

[FuktLogik]

Soo... did any of you try reading Ultra Heaven with this:

i think this manga deserves it.  

Acid sucks.

[goldencalf]

why don't you elaborate? posting 1 vague line on the subject makes you no different from retards or trolls.

my experience with lsd was highly amusing, i don't have much comparison to other drugs though. (weed doesn't count)



BTW, i dunno if you guys are aware of this or not, but art style of Ultra Heaven is heavily inspired by a french comic book artist known as Moebius.
And i mean it. if someone showed me certain UH pics before i read it, i'd swear it's a work of Moebius.

similiarities are present on various levels:
-drawing style, shading technique
-technology designs with lots of round forms and triangles, (kinda retro sci-fi),geometric stars etc
-a characteristic choice of angles for pannels and pace
-commonly depicting motion in a very static manner (running people frozen above ground etc)
-the recurring motif of floating/flying/falling people
etc

Maybe these don't seem all that unique, but you can trust me on this.
Apparently Jean Giraud (Moebius) is pretty popular in Japan, he even co-wrote one manga (it's rather mediocre from what i heard)

that said, all the spectacular drug fx are Koike's own invention and i don't ever recall any comic of moebius even half as trippy as UH.
Not to mention that quality Koike's drawings and attention to details is extremely impressive.
especially considering it's a manga that nobody fucking knows about...

[Ikkyusan]

Exactly, man! Moebius's works definitely inspired Koike. I wouldn't be surprised if they know each other. I may add the works of Druillet to Koike's inspirations, another french comic book artist form the same era (along with Enki Bilal). Almost all Druillet's comic books have this kind of 'broken' panels, completely destructuring the layout. Eye candy! But not only ^^
The joint work between Moebius and Jiro Taniguchi you were talking about is called "Icare". It's not mediocre, but there's nothing particular to it... Known and undevelopped subject...

especially considering it's a manga that nobody fucking knows about...

Yeah, it's a shame. I can say that us French are lucky : UH is published in France and that's how I knew about it. But we can also see the fact that it's unknown in a good way : it avoids the artist to be full of himself and thus making crappy work. I don't know if his fame has increased and if it's related but the 3rd volume's artwork and narration is less impressive than the 2 previous.

And acid sucks only if you stumble on bad product. I haven't tried lsd yet, mainly because a trip lasts something like 12 hours... A bit too long for me. I think the effects are similar to those of mushrooms (even if each kind of mushroom has its particular effects). Now, eating shrooms was indeed a pretty good experience ^^.

[FuktLogik]

why don't you elaborate? posting 1 vague line on the subject makes you no different from retards or trolls.

my experience with lsd was highly amusing, i don't have much comparison to other drugs though. (weed doesn't count)

Let's flip the coin instead and have you tell me why it doesn't suck.

[w0nka]

I can't thank you enough for posting this: I haven't enjoyed a manga this much in a very long time.

Is anyone seeing more links to volume 2 in the volume 3 section, though?

[goldencalf]

^ if you check them you can see that they actually link to Vol 3.

Let's flip the coin instead and have you tell me why it doesn't suck.

before we flip any coins let's have you prove that your posts don't suck and that you're worthy of having a proper discussion with.

in case you forgot, YOU are the guy who felt the urge to come here and share your precious opinion on subject of acid.
and yet you can't be arsed to present any arguments. how the fuck am i supposed to take you seriously?

[Ennoah Ballard]

I don't know if his fame has increased and if it's related but the 3rd volume's artwork and narration is less impressive than the 2 previous.

I can agree with you a bit about the narration and story in volume 3. A lot of it was about people meditating and gaining psychic powers in the simulated reality world. Compared to the previous two vlumes , volume 3 felt more familiar and less ground-breaking.  That said, it's only because Ultraheaven is so exceptional that such tiny criticisms can be made. Each volume of Ultraheaven so far has felt somewhat episodic anyway. I mean, none of the questions about hte main character possibly being abducted and medically observed while under the influence of Ultraheaven have ben brought up again as far as I can remember, so it seems likely that volume 4 might be about something completely different again.

[Revilenigma]

http://tumblr.samehat.com/post/9376297187/ultra-heaven-by-koike-keiichi-tattoo-from

[crazyankan]

Creapy tattoo. But still much better than tribals and butterflies :P

[Redcat74]

such trippy artwork...

[MrPeruna]

Quite excellent, one of the rare manga that deals with drug use, even if not very realistically. Glorious artwork.