Here's the volume 1 cover of the (simplified) Chinese version, the one that DistantBlue was missing:



Sorry if it's a little blurry, I don't have a scanner so I had to take a picture with my camera.

Thank you, Sannom and kkg22104!!
So..."4-koma omake" is "Gags en 4 cases"? Aha, makes sense.

Yeah, that translation was a little bit too literal on Kurokawa's part

we don´t have our own version of fma manga since my country is really small, but we do have a british version in our shop so I got first nine volume at home I´ve read first four and I am looking forward reading more. it´s really interesting.

don't ask why but your reaction made me laugh

French version of:
Tome 0 : Flame alchemist. I think it is the same as in english since there is nothing translated on the cover but I put it just in case:
Click to view attachment


Tome 0 : Carnet de croquis
Click to view attachment


Back cover of the tome 12: Roy's (perverted ) song
Click to view attachment


snif why my thumbnails are so little ?

^ Thank you, yunie_89!! ^^ And, I'll update the list on the first post with everyones' awesome reports as soon as I get better connection. Sorry...

QUOTE (yunie_89 @ Aug 27 2009, 03:05 PM)

snif why my thumbnails are so little ?

Because... the thumbnails on your post are resulting by uploading your pics to our board and making them as attachments to your post.
On the other hand, the other pics, for example, pics on kkg22104's post and Sannom's post are not uploaded to our board but elsewhere, then posted as images using those URLs elsewhere and by using [IMG][/IMG] bb codes, then shrunk in size to those thumbnails by our board once posted.
I think, both ways, yours and others', look quite fine. ^^

There's also a Taiwanese edition from Tong Li Comics and a Hong Kong edition from Jade Comics (owned by the legendary Hong Kong comic book artist, Tony Wong Yuk-Long).

This is the version of FMA released in Korea:



Called "Gangchul ui Yeongumsoolsa" or "Alchemist of Steel".

The Swedish cover of volume 1 that Distant Blue posted must be incorrect. Cause it looks the same as the italian one and in Sweden they are published by Bonnier Carlsen not by Panini Comics And it says something in italian on it.


Don't really understand why you would want to know, but I have the swedish volume 18 here:
Click to view attachment

I think they did a really good job translating them into swedish and most of the jokes are either working with direct translation or they came up with a new one. So I thought till I read vol 15 and 16... There were several horrible translations that sometimes didn't make any sense! And some very akward sentences. But they got a grip and did just fine in vol 18. (I should check if the same person is translating all volumes. Interesting...)

They also translate all soundeffects, which is nice, I don't know if they always do that(?). And the little notes beside the panels. And I really like the distinct "voices" they gave Ed and Al.
Yes, even though I generally feel that swedish sounds akward after reading scanlations (not to mention if they would ever dub he anime :S), I will buy them all in swedish.

I hope I was helpful with whatever you want to do with this information!

@MsLinn - Yes, that was informative. Thank you. And, the reason for having this thread is to inform other FMA readers... in many ways..

* For one, not every FMA fans in the countries where English is not their official language know whether there are any FMA manga publications in their language, especially if they are relatively new FMA manga fans. And, when they come to our forum, I, and many of English speaking FMA fans know more or less about FMA publications in Japanese and in English, but we have very few knowledge about FMA publications in other languages, such as, who publishes them, and how far they are in their publications, etc., etc., and hence we can't give out much advise on these, and that's where you guys' info can become very useful. You may not see them posting here, but we get many "silent" viewers, in addition to regular posters on our board, and hopefully these info can be useful to some of these people.

* And, another reason for having this thread and asking FMA fans around the world to post and tell us about the FMA publications in their countries and languages is to increase our understanding about it's popularity and how far wide FMA manga is being accepted. In the case of FMA, IMO this manga is not a typical "shounen" manga, but it also contains many aspects that make readers to somehow getting attracted to this manga series, besides just having good "action scenes," be they cultural, philosophical, mythological aspects, or whatnot, and learning about the existence of FMA publications in all kind of languages is not just interesting, but hopefully it may also give us some better grasp and understanding on the popularity of this manga (like, how and why and such... ^^) when finding out how they are being accepted in which country and what language, what kind of culture, etc., besides Japan and English speaking countries. ... (in this case, IMO, having publications in that language indicates FMA has enough audience/readers in that country, hence, indicating that whatever in the FMA is somehow making it to be attracting enough to the wide enough audience/reader base in that country. ^^)

* Also, on our board we usually talk mainly about Japanese and English publications of FMA, but this thread would provide the place for non-English, non-Japanese speaking FMA fans to talk about, and showcase FMA publications in their language, while giving a good reminder to us English-speaking FMA fans... many of whom otherwise tend to become "English-centric" thinking, like, as if English and Japanese reading FMA fans are the ALL the FMA fans, and these are the ONLY FMA fandom there are, (especially us "ignorant" American fans XDDD) ... that FMA fandom is far more wide-reaching and includes people in many more cultures, customs, languages, etc. etc.


.... these are just a few reasons I can think of at the top of my head, for having this thread. Hope these are good enough for you. ^^

The Italian version has two extra editions:

Fullmetal Alchemist Gold Edition:


It has a bigger format than a normal volume


Fullmetal Alchemist Gold Deluxe Edition:
http://www.paninicomics.it/web/guest/produ...?viewItem=30582

It's bigger and with an extra cover


Both the editions are for collectors so they are quite expensive


And we have volumes 1-22 available (of the normal edition)

I'm surely not the only one who thinks that all the european and asian designs looks sooo much better than Viz's, right? Viz's cover design feels a bit over the top and cartoonish, while these are more clean and subtle.

Wow, thank you, Tombow, for answering at all, and with such an impressive answer!
Now I know!

I do prefer the traditional black background designs over the grayish tones used by Viz.

Also, one thing I like about at least the Korean and Japanese versions (not sure if others do this as well) is the way they vary the font color of the title in every volume. Volume 1 is red, vol. 2 is green, etc.

They do that with the Swedish versions too It's a nice touch, and sometimes the colour they choose goes so much better with the cover art than the big, bright red and grey lettering that Viz uses.

(Actually, the red/grey "FMA logo font" looks pretty good on the Italian Gold Edition above. Probably because it's smaller and because of the black background.)

Yup, I can confirm that Finnish editions have this too It truly is a nice addition.
And I never was a fan of Viz's use of grey in their volumes, either. The black colour just suits well with the artwork.

And just checking the previous page, wow. France has even omakes as their own little editions? I sure hope these would get released in other countries, too, I would love to have them in my collection!

Okay so I'm in Japan and on a computer that won't let me start a new topic. I figured this was the next best place, but I saw an ad in a subway car for the 26th volume. It had the cover and everything, but not who was on the spine, nor how many chapters was in it. I will describe the cover to you. It was the 5 sacrifices standing in a circle on what looked like prides shadows. It was a really amazing cover and I loved it. I only have a short amount of time to post this, but I thought you'd all love to know

Yeah, we have that cover in here.

*goes into shame corner*
Alright well it was news to me XD

I'm french but I think I can't add my contribution since DinstantBlue and Sannoms' . I think people from France can be happy because Kurokawa is great (although Gunnm's french editor sucks but this is not the right subject).
The french editor also published the two artbooks (as said), the novels but doesn't want to publish the perfect guidebooks. It will publish soon Hero Tales (Juushin enbu).
BTW I'd like to discuss about english (UK and USA) version's of FMA, I hope this doesn't matter or harm the topic, because as someone who doesn't live in Japan or USA I'd like to know how it is for you ^^
Is VIZ only an american editor or is it the editor for people in UK ? Is it true that they don't release omakes or Gaidens ?

<Program Note>

Opened a new thread on "FMA artbok 3" in FMA manga forum, and moved pertinent pots there.

FMA was licensed in Russia by Comix-Art not so long ago, and they published the first volume in January!
Here is the cover

I'm going to buy it in a day or two, and can write a kind of review if anyone's interested

^ Welcome to our board, DrakoDarko! That's a great news, and thank you for sharing the pic of Russian FMA volume book!
Looking forward to reading your review!

I got my grabby hands on the first volume today (payed 7$), so here is the promised review. Never done that before, actually XD

There are several manga publishers in Russia, Comix-Art being the largest one with a variety of popular titles such as Naruto, One Piece, Bleach, Dragonball, X/1999, Claymore, Death Note, Shaman King, Berserk, Love Hina and more. C-A's releases are always of very nice quality, so I'm really glad they are the ones to publish FMA.
Now, getting to the point - that is, the book itself. It's slightly bigger than the Japanese volume (I guess almost all C-A's books are like that), and the colours are somewhat deeper too. I also like the fact that they used the "metal" design of the first Japanese title hieroglyph (with steely colour and screw heads) for the word "Стальной" (fullmetal).

The book has a dust-cover, which isn't a common practice for this publisher - for example, Naruto, Bleach, Claymore, Dragonball, Death Note and some others are simple paperback, with mangaka's comments printed on the inner side of the cover (or not printed at all, especially in the earlier releases). FMA, on the other hand, is lucky to get one with Arakawa's commentary and volume synopsis on the flaps. Inner covers are also translated, images on the spines (Ed's portrait and Cornello) are present as well.

Print quality is pretty decent, images are sharp and clean, black areas are black, white are white and so on. The volume doesn't feature any colour pages, just as the original Japanese edition didn't - they are black-and-white. The binding is solid, so the book isn't going to fall into separate pages anytime soon.

Bonus pages at the end of the volume are translated as well, and there is also a preview of the next volume.

As for translation, I must say that apart from a couple of minor mistakes (in SFX translation mostly) they did a great job here, managing to correctly convey Al's politeness, Ed's rather brash attitude, and speech peculiarities of other characters, and to keep the humour. There are no Japanese honorifics (which makes sense, as they are not in Japan), and C-A also stayed true to their policy of not redrawing sound effects, but mainly putting small captions beside them (as can be seen on the third and fifth photo). I personally don't like this method that much, because sometimes the frames can become too cluttered. But that's just my opinion =) Besides, they do redraw some of the smaller sounds, such as laughter or sighs.
One thing that bugs me as a translator is the fact, that the names of Homunculi are translated and not transcribed. Lust is "Похоть" (meaning "lust" as an actual sin) and Gluttony is "Обжорство" (meaning "gluttony" as a sin too). But it's actually a pretty tricky linguistic question, so I'd better keep my complaints to myself ^^ Though I do wonder how they are going to play out the "GreedLing" joke that way. Well, we'll wait and see.
All in all, it's a very enjoyable high-quality release, a definite "must have" for every Russian FMA fan. I'm really glad that I bought this book and I'm looking forward to getting next volumes!

If you have any questions about Russian edition of FMA (or just any questions at all), I'll be more than happy to answer *v*