Americanization

A friend of mine sent me a link to an amusing image the other day. It's the cover art for the first volume of the American release of the Moyashimon manga, which is, one might say, drastically different from the Japanese version. See if you can tell which one is the original and which one is the American version. You get just one guess:

Okay, fine, obviously the US version has the English on it. But you'll notice that the cover art is strikingly different as well. Like I told my husband, my first reaction to this was "WHUT," but I got over it pretty quickly and now I actually think it's kind of amusing and charming. And considering that the subject matter of the manga was such that I figured it would never gain a foothold in the US, I feel like Del Rey can pretty much do whatever they please to the superficial cover artwork, as long as the content inside remains faithful. I've just pre-ordered the book, by the way, and I can't wait to be able to read it (I own the first six volumes in Japanese and it's kind of a difficult read, what with all the biological terminology and such).