In 2007 VIZ Media published Tekkonkinkreet: Black and White (ISBN: 1421518678) which collected and translated, in its entirety, the manga series Tekkonkinkurīto (鉄コン筋クリート) which writer and artist Taiyo Matsumoto had begun in 1993 in the seinen weekly Big Comic Spirits and completed in late 1994. The story is about two boys, Black (Kuro クロ) and White (Shiro シロ) who live on the streets of a convoluted, decaying and vibrant urban island called Treasure Town (Takara Machi 宝町). Treasure Town gives the impression of being constructed of layer upon layer of urban strata – a chaotic confluence of development, adaptation, public and private desire seething with complexity. The word tekkonkinkreet is an amalgam of two altered word; tekken which means reinforced steel and konkurito the loan word for concrete. To quote the slip jacket of the 2007 VIZ Media english translation “Tekkonkinkreet is a play on Japanese words meaning “a concrete structure with an iron frame,” and it suggests the opposing images of concrete cities against the strength of imagination.”
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