Woodo manga, version 1.0
First promotional image from Comic BomBom, April 1983 issue
The Armored Trooper Votoms manga, adapted and drawn by Minoru Nonaka, was originally serialized in Comic BomBom, a monthly manga magazine published by Kodansha. Its target audience was mainly young boys whose passions were ignited by mecha anime and the plastic models that came with it. (As proof of this, the magazine’s mascot was a boy who built anime robot models and then teleported into them, Calvin and Hobbes style.) Other anime titles in the magazine at the time were an ongoing Dunbine adaptation and another for Dougram, which ended the month before Votoms began.
Nonaka’s manga, like all other titles in BomBom, was drawn in a “juvenile style” that made the characters look younger and softer than their anime counterparts. That gave his version of Votoms its own unique flavor and provided us with a different vantage point of the concept. It ran in tandem with the year-long TV broadcast, which meant it had to be highly compressed to finish at the same time. Thus, there are many points where the art and storytelling differ greatly from the paperback version that followed, and some content seen here was never reprinted.
We begin with the Woodo arc, which ran for three issues (May to July) and totaled 95 pages. It kept pace with the TV broadcast, starting about two weeks after Episode 1 and ending about a week before Episode 13.
Paperback editions
The paperback version of the Woodo arc was published on October 18, 1983, five months after it concluded in Comic BomBom. The paperback was 90 pages longer with many added and revised scenes.
Sunrise Super Robot Series edition
This reprint was published May 10, 1999 by Daitosha. Minoru Nonaka added 6 more pages to Woodo and revised others, some with computer-generated art. Volume 1 of this edition combined the Woodo and Kummen arcs into a single book.
KPC edition
B&W, 190 pages
Kodansha, Dec 2003
This is the most recent reprint of Nonaka’s manga, returning to the original format with new cover art and a single revised page.