The Little Things in Life Make It All Worthwhile!

Every so often, a series comes around that begs to be released in English, but for whatever reason, never really materialized, at least not in its entirety. A series will lie abandoned for years, with fans of the series just waiting around for someone to pick it up, hoping beyond all hope that it will get an English release someday, and Moyashimon by Masayuki Ishikawa was just one of those series. Despite it having an official release by Del Rey Manga years ago which only saw the first two volumes released, and even a scanlation that also saw the release of the first two volumes, the series has been neglected for years...until now.

Yes, we have decided to pick up Masayuki Ishikawa's masterpiece Moyashimon with the very real intention to complete all 13 volumes. This decision is by no means lightly taken, as this will amount to a vast amount of time and money to finally bring about a completed English version of Moyashimon. But we are absolutely dedicated to that end, and as a show of it, we are very pleased to present the first five chapters for your reading pleasure. And although perhaps this is a series that requires no introduction, having already had two anime adaptations and a live-action drama series adaptation, here's a short summary:

Tadayasu Sawaki has just enrolled into an agricultural university in Tokyo with his long-time friend Kei Yuuki. Although not widely known outside of his friends and family, Tadayasu has the unique ability to see and communicate with microbes, which appear larger and look different to him than normal. This catches the attention of Keizou Itsuki, a professor at the university and an old friend of Tadayasu's grandfather who specializes in microbiology and fermentation. Thus begins Tadayasu's tutelage under Professor Itsuki, aided by his graduate student Haruka Hasegawa, as he attempts to adjust to his new life at the university.

There are a few things that make this manga unlike really anything we've done before. The most obvious is that the chapters in the volumes have retained all of the extra content as when they were originally published in Evening (and later Morning two). This means all of the character bios are in the margins, including the bios for the microbes which identify the various species shown in every chapter. But this also includes all of the editorial comments, recap summaries, advertisements, author comments, and also the fact that every chapter title page has retained the series' title. This means that a huge amount of extra work goes into each chapter, which is one of the things that make this series so challenging to work on.

Speaking of challenging, there was an extremely labor-intensive double page spread in chapter 1 that shows a large portion of the university in the story. This shows a before and after image with all of the overtext, and this shows a before and after image with all of the overtext removed. Suffice it to say, it was insane, but we're pleased with the end result. So pleased that we have also included the version without the overtext in the release of chapter 1 so that you can actually see the school and appreciate all the work that went into it, as well as appreciate Ishikawa's amazing attention to detail, which is one of the things that make this series so amazing.

And there was also one other odd thing about this series. It was originally titled Noudai Monogatari (Tales of an Agricultural University), which is the title that can be seen on the title page of chapter 1. This was changed in chapter 2 to Noudai Monogatari Moyashimon, and then changed again to just simply Moyashimon in chapter 3. Then finally the Moyashimon logo was redesigned in chapter 5, and this is the design which is used for the rest of the series.

So without further ado, we hope you enjoy this truly one of a kind series.

Moyashimon ch. 1: Mediafire, Dropbox
Moyashimon ch. 2: Mediafire, Dropbox
Moyashimon ch. 3: Mediafire, Dropbox
Moyashimon ch. 4: Mediafire, Dropbox
Moyashimon ch. 5: Mediafire, Dropbox