This review has been copied over from my review of the manga on MAL. PSA: Yen Press has officially licensed this manga. You can buy each individual chapter digitally for 1.99 or you can buy all three paperback/electronic volumes. If you consider yourself a Baccano fan do yourself a favor and buy the first five chapters Vol 1 of the manga right now. Ill get to the rest of the manga in a second for now all you need to know is that its the most faithful visual adaptation of The Rolling Bootlegs to date but we need to establish this first: the first five chapters are essential reading. Why you ask? The first five chapters provide fans with a neverseenbefore miniarc: the 1927 San Gennaro arc. This is all completely new information accompanied by a brandnew character revolving around the kidnapping of a certain character and others efforts to find him. Devoted fans of the Martillos or the Gandor brothers will especially be pleased by this arc but I imagine so would any fan. Its a treat. And referenced in the 22nd LN volume What of chapters 622? Like I said earlier the remaining seventeen chapters are an adaptation of the first Baccano light novel The Rolling Bootlegs you know the events of November 1930 that were covered in the 2007 anime. Yes I know. For longtime fans of the series 1930 is old hat. We know the plot backwards and forwards and backwards again and you have every right to wonder why bother shelling out money for a story youre already familiar with not to mention a story thats already been adapted into a visual medium. The most compelling reason is this: it is the most faithful visual adaptation of The Rolling Bootlegs we have had to date. The 2007 anime is marvelous but as an adaptation it is not entirely faithful that is to say accurate to the source material. In the case of TRB the anime fiddled with the chain of events and changed some scenes while leaving others out entirely and marginalizing quite a few relevant characters in the process. I cannot tell you how unequivocally overjoyed I was to see some of my favorite scenes in the novel scenes that had been changed/left out in the anime spring to life visually after years of bemoaning the absence of a faithful adaptation. God it was gratifying. Not to mention we got to see what certain characters looked like for the first time e.g. Nicola Veld a partial drawing of Firos mother with one quite significant revelation in particular that being the alchemist Ennis devoured preTRB. The mangas illustrator Shinta Fujimoto is a selfprofessed major fan of the series and if you didnt know that he was a fan beforehand youd likely come to suspect it when reading the manga. He puts small personable details into characters drawn in the background and the backgrounds themselves details that he didnt have to go to the trouble of illustrating but did so anyway. His respect and care for the material pours out of every panel not to mention that his art is very very nice. If youre still on the fence about the manga as a whole buy at least the first five chapters and proceed from there. The manga is a labor of Fujimotos love he had his own manga to work on as well and he made every effort to produce something of excellent quality both artwise and detailwise Narita himself notes that the manga was what motivated him to churn out 1935D and gleefully acknowledged Fujimotos extra background details. I can only hope that Young Gangan decides to eventually approve future manga adaptations of the novel certainly Ch.22 was billed as the final chapter of the manga but technically it was just the final chapter of the 1930 adaptation and the manga sold fairly well. Narita at one point tweeted that no final decision on potential future adaptations had been made...well well see. Fujimoto was a little burnt out while making the Baccano manga and hes starting a new manga soon so...keep your expectations tempered. Theres also a heckuva bonus image on the last page of Ch.22 which has delighted every single fan Ive spoken to about it thus far so keep an eye out