Tigerstar and Sasha is the last story in manga black-and-white that needed a graphic novel reprint. Considering the turn towards graphic novels in the past several years, the era of Warriors manga is officially dead. No need to be sad, however, considering the excellent graphic novels they’ve released. Still, a part of me is a bit melancholy about it.
Released yesterday, July 8th, Tigerstar and Sasha‘s graphic novel combines the three separate manga, Into the Woods, Escape from the Forest, and Return to the Clans, into one book. With color added, it brings vibrancy to the characters and actions. The original manga were released in 2008 and 2009, meaning it took seventeen-eighteen years for this story to get a refresh. The original manga was written by Dan Jolley with art by Don Hudson, while the graphic novel is colored by Danielle Weires.
The story follows Sasha, second mate of Tigerstar and mother to Hawkfrost and Mothwing, as she goes from kittypet, to rogue, to ship cat, to temporary warrior, back to rogue. It gives much needed context to readers for Hawkfrost and Mothwing’s appearance in arc two, The New Prophecies, and lends more lore to Tigerstar. Not to mention, Sasha is one of the best non-Clan background characters the series gets.
Spoilers for the updated Tigerstar and Sasha’s story are ahead.
As for the covers, I prefer the originals. With softer lighting and color palette, their vibes better fit the whimsy I feel around the Warriors stories (it is highly reminiscent of the old Wayne McLoughlin illustrations). The old covers’ biggest blunder is Hawk not being the correct color in #3, and the graphic novel does fix that. The new cover isn’t bad, just not my preferred style. I love the ivy under their paws the most, especially how some include a lighter green. A weird random choice was changing “&” to “and.” I’m not sure what to make of it, other than the symbol looked cleaner.
If anything, the background and greenery is my favorite part of the colorization of this story. The depth of color looks best on the forest, with bright red mushrooms, and on the skies. Some of my favorite panels included a sunrise or sunset, even the starry night sky was beautiful. Lighting in general is done very well in this revitalization of the story. When shadows play over the cats’ bodies or an entire cat is hidden in shadow, it looks more realistic with color. In comparison to the grayscale of manga, life is breathed into the backgrounds.
As for the cats themselves, well, the fandom has a running joke that the art in this manga wasn’t the best. The anatomy on the cats is somehow lumpy and stiff at the same time, with weirdly sharp angles too. Occasionally, the eyes aren’t looking in the same direction even. In black and white, these oddities were sort of comical and fitting; in color, they’re more obvious and harder to move past. I feel it’s not surprising this was the only manga Hudson worked on. His people, the Twolegs, look great at least.
Weires’ coloring of character pelts is well-done. Though I don’t love how blocky Sasha’s coloring is (why is the WACA team allergic to Sasha being a color point?), I do love how Hawk and Moth’s designs were made more complicated than stripes. Plus, as you can see from the cover, Tigerstar’s design is more accurate than in the manga. The most beautiful coat design, though, is Leopardstar. From a couple simple spots to orange, brown, and red colors with rosette style spots, this redesign embodies everything the RiverClan leader should be. Other characters got an upgrade too, like Rowanpaw, Jaggedtooth, Russetfur, Tallpoppy, Stormfur, and more.
Somehow, though I shouldn’t be surprised, this graphic novel isn’t free from both art and dialogue mistakes. The smallest mistake happens around page 87, where in the original manga, it is clearly nighttime, but in the graphic novel, the sky is light. I can excuse something like that, despite how it breaks the immersion of the story. Luckily, only one typo appears on page 169 on the bottom panel, “… after what I learned about him, abouto his true nature.” The only reason I find this a bit more appalling than the first mistake I point out is because it should’ve been easy to catch. When I looked in the original manga, no typo is present.
The other two mistakes, both involving coloring characters, are ridiculous. Towards the beginning, on page 67, Sasha goes on her first patrol with ShadowClan cats. The graphic novel states she’s with Blackfoot, Russetfur, Jaggedtooth, and Rowanpaw; however, the only cats that are accurate to their description are Russetfur and Blackfoot. Having seen Jaggedtooth (yellow tabby) and Rowanpaw (red tabby) earlier in the story, it should’ve been easy to draw them into this panel. Unfortunately, the two cats with Russetfur and Blackfoot are pale gray and solid brown, not Jaggedtooth or Rowanpaw at all.
These errors are still not as egregious as the mistake regarding Hawk and Moth at the very end of the graphic novel. On page 242, they are somehow swapped for the dialogue. On the right is the coloring for Hawk, yet his dialogue says “Mama, I can’t leave Hawk. I made a promise.” Confused, I checked back in the third manga to see that Moth should’ve been on the right, with Hawk was on the left. I genuinely don’t know how a mistake like this could be made, but it is irritating and careless.
Regardless of color or no color, this story is one I’ve always loved. Sasha is a wonderful character who goes through a unique journey consisting of loss and self-growth. Her Twoleg interactions give more insight into how cats in the Warriors world interact, while her outside perspective to the Clans is unbiased and refreshing. Through her eyes, the Clans can be seen as both good and bad. It’s a story that genuinely makes me feel.
Part of the beauty of the Warriors books is the different modes you can read them. With novels, Super Editions, novellas, field guides, and manga/graphic novels, the content is vast. I don’t know whether I prefer the manga or the graphic novel in this instance, but I do feel complete in the sense that I have both.
Check out the links below to purchase the graphic novel and manga from Amazon:
Warriors: Tigerstar and Sasha: 3 Full-Color Warriors Books in 1
Warriors: Tigerstar & Sasha #1: Into The Woods
Warriors: Tigerstar & Sasha #2: Escape from the Forest
Warriors: Tigerstar & Sasha #3: Return to the Clans
it’s interesting to see how these get colored!! i absolutely looove what they did with Leopardstar, making her more clearly a bengal, hawk and moth also look fantastic!! big fan of the accuracy of the character design for them at least compared to canon interpretations!!
though im also curious how typos even occur!! i thought they’d just extract the lines, chat bubbles and text included, and color underneath of them for the most part, but thats interesting that they at least had to redo the dialogue!! i also see they somewhat tweaked hawk’s expression in the one page you’ve shown him appearing in, im curious why they didn’t tweak it more overall if theres some examples showing they clearly absolutely could’ve!! perhaps time constraints but,, woof LOL
I would love to be able to ask questions about how this process all works. I didn’t even notice Hawk’s tweaked expression until you said that, but you’re right! I wonder how they decide what they’re allowed to fix. All the times the cats’ eyes aren’t looking the same way and they didn’t fix them… strange. But, totally agree on Leopardstar! Might be one of my favorite depictions of her in official canon.