Zanguard (81diver Spinoff)

Ok, NOW we’re really truly fully 100% done with 81diver. This is a sort of side-story to the series that was released under a different title, simply “Zanguard”, and all chapters are compiled in this one volume. It’s a short series of chapters about Kirino and his alter-ego, the sorta Kamen Rider ripoff character called Zanguard who protects Akihabara. Herein he actually DOES protect Akihabara. These chapters were done every once in a while over a few years. There’s four chapters in total and they appeared in Young Jump Mantaro 2007, Monthly Young Jump December 2008, Monthly Young Jump July 2010, and Miracle Jump No.2, respectively.

Anyhow I wanted to get this done for the sake of completion because it’s technically part of 81diver. It’s a fun little bunch of side stories that have little to do with the main story of 81diver. But it is still more of the sorta fun you can expect out of Shibata’s manga. Some of the series’ characters do show up in it. It’s not really anything essential to the main story but it’s a fun quick read and I hope you all enjoy it.

Zanguard Ch1-4
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81diver Volume 34-35

…Did I do it? Am I really done? Really?
Wow. Man. It’s been a long time but I’m finally done. This series is totally scanlated at 35 volumes. I don’t have any cool chart here like I had with the Jojo novel The Book, but to give you a timeframe of this, I started in February 2015 and was originally just going to translate this series with Mangatopia doing the rest. At first it was going fine because I had to take a break for a few months because I had no time to do this project on top of finishing college and applying for jobs, and working on other projects (Which were uh, the Toriko manga, the Gintama manga, the Toriko anime, the JJBA novel The Book, the JJBA novel Over Heaven, the Jojolion manga, Omoni Naitemasu, the Hito Hitori Futari manga, the Kingdom anime, the Billy Bat manga, and the 3-Gatsu no Lion manga.) And then when I came back to do more, Mangatopia basically didn’t want to/have the resources to work on it anymore (Not sure why entirely, I think the people who had been working on it had left), so I took a break for around a year to try to get some of those way-too-many other projects done.

After that, I tried to do the project with a couple of other groups which ultimately only got… I think about a volume and a half between the two of them, promising they were going to start getting through it regularly, which they never did. I don’t hold it against them, and I appreciate the little work they did, but it’s really frustrating when you’re counting on people to do something and they don’t live up to their promises, basically leaving you to spend a huge amount of your own time to do it yourself or else it doesn’t get done. Meanwhile I finished up to the half way point of the series, the end of volume 18 of 35 by October 2015, going on and off doing like 2 a month then taking a month off doing other stuff. Then I took a break to do the rest of 3-Gatsu no Lion, and then in July of 2016 we finally decided to just pick the series up ourselves, and it was mostly me and high8sky doing it alone. Me translating through and doing final checks/edits, and she cleaning and typesetting on her own. Then she was unable to work for most of this year because of a health issue with pain in her hand if she used the computer too much, so I mostly had to do the scanning, translating, cleaning, redrawing, typesetting myself. Which, I do not recommend. Huldra also helped out a lot, doing a couple chapters of cleaning and typesetting per volume despite not having much experience, and gave me a lot of much-needed moral support. It may feel satisfying to do all that yourself, but it eats up all your time. No matter how much you’re able to automate and how fast you make your tools, it’s still at least an hour per chapter per job, and we did that for 14 volumes in the last 8 months. And really you shouldn’t be spending all that time on a hobby. But basically it was that, or let this drag out for years more. I was only able to do that after almost every other project we’ve been working on is done. And I had to put a few other things on break to do that. But now, I finally caught up with or finished all the projects I’d started back in college.

Anyhow, from here I’m gonna probably get a few smaller things done. We might do the one-volume spinoff manga Zanguard, too. But I’m probably gonna try to not overload myself like I did working with all my after-work free time on this and The Book to finally get those done after years of them being put on the back-burner. Innocent should get done soon. I might do some of the extra comics for 3-Gatsu no Lion that were in the fanbooks, and some of the staff also wanted to do volume releases of the Kishibe Rohan one-shots, so we may do that too. But otherwise I’m taking a bit of a break and not gonna work on these projects EVERY DAY like I’d been for the last while.

All that said, it’s finally done. And it’s a huge weight off my shoulders. Not only because it means I don’t need to work on it anymore, but also it means everyone can enjoy this entire series.
I really love this series. There are parts where it’s a bit awkward but on the whole it’s got great emotion, relatable characters that are all really passionate, great strategy and realistic depiction of what shogi is like, it keeps things exciting, and its visual style is so unique it’s really memorable. Check out some of the author’s other series. I think the Air Master anime at least has an official release (Though the manga isn’t in English anywhere, and it’s a huge 28 volume series), and there are groups doing the Yo-kai Bancho and Kaiten One series he’s doing now. I’ve read most of both of those, they’re pretty good, worth reading and are chocked full of Shibata-sensei’s style, though I like 81diver more. I’m really hoping you all recommend it to people and let more people know about it, because it really is something I think is unique. And it’s one of the things you don’t see anything else but in the medium of manga with how wonderfully weird and unique it is. I hope you all enjoy it!

81diver Volume 34 ch354-365
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81diver Volume 35 ch365-375
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81diver Volume 32-33


Image Source: 遊馬

Ok, and with this, there’s finally just 2 volumes left. So the next release will probably be the last one unless I feel like releasing V34 on its own for some reason.
And that means we’re almost done and after me working on this every day for 9 months, and before that every day for a few months at a time going back to February of 2012, it’ll finally be done, and I can relax a bit and spend time on other stuff, finally having no huge backlog projects to do.

I dunno how obvious it is to the casual audience, but the Dragonball-Z-like battle in the basement is meant to be analagous of a shogi game.
There are characters of various “power levels” which is indicative of how powerful the shogi pieces are. Johns Lee, Minta, and Minaguchi Yuki are major pieces like the Kaku and Hi. Hashi Kakeo, Mamushi, and the assassins are middle-level pieces. Hapita is a fu, a minor piece but nontheless essential. Some characters are “dropped in” once they leave whatever else they were doing. Some characters “trade sides” like Hashi Kakeo. Some are “promoted” with the Zanguard armor to become more powerful. The blowing up of the support beams of the building is analogous of breaking through an opponent’s defensive castle, etc. That in addition to the various twists and turns resulting in leads being gained or lost.

81diver Volume 32 ch332-342
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81diver Volume 33 ch343-353
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81diver Volume 30-31


Image Source: 丸子

K here’s the next two.
It’s slightly easier if we release 2 together at once since it’s less time making release posts and we can do the final checks and such all at once. So we may do that for now on. There’s only 4 volumes left. We’re ALMOST THERE. And after we are I’m gonna get SO much sleep. Also this is the 3rd release of the day again somehow.

81diver Volume 30 ch310-320
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81diver Volume 31 ch321-331
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81diver Volume 25


Image Source: 胃駅

And here we have volume 25.
Ok, so in case you didn’t see my last post, I’ve been focusing really hard on getting 81diver done in the last 8 months or so. Everythings translated, scanned, and cleaned, and just needs to be typeset and checked now. I’ll be focusing mostly on that until the series is done, which hopefully shouldn’t take too long. Though I need to balance that with Gintama, Sensei no Shiroi Uso, and JoJolion. It’s gotten really difficult because we ended up having a lot less help than expected, so I’m doing most of it on my own. But most jobs are now done and typesetting for this series isn’t too difficult because there’s not much text. And I really want to get this series done because we’ve been doing it for 6 years now, and if you haven’t heard, there’s been nothing but difficulties getting it done. So I’d really like for this project to be finished and I can finally free up my time to do other non-scanlation things a bit more after spending the last several years getting caught up on projects by doing them with myself and one or two other people.

There’s 10 volumes to go after this one. Starting next volume we’re switching from public raws to volumes I scanned, because the public raws get really bad after volume 25.

81diver Volume 25 ch255-264
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81diver Volume 24


Image Source: 胃駅

And here we are with volume 24.
Sorry there was such a gap between this volume and the last one. BUT I’m pleased to say after working on this series in all my free time for the past several months now, we’re ALMOST done. Everything’s been translated, scanned, and cleaned (Minus the last 100 pages or so I’m gonna try to get done today/tomorrow). All the way to the end of the last volume, 35. It just needs to be typeset. I’d been working my way through the end of the series while the rest of the staff was working on 24-25. But now that I’m about done cleaning I’ll be able to typeset and QC the volumes right in a row and release them in what should be a pretty frequent basis.

It’s been 6 years since I started working on this series and I’d really like to get it finished soon. It’s taken so long because I’ve been balancing this with a lot of other projects, and usually there just hasn’t been staff that consistently works on it. But now it’s nearly finished, and I’ll be really glad when it is, because it’ll free up my schedule a whole lot. At that point all our projects will be caught up with finally (Besides long-term ones we started after the series ended like Sensei or Takeshi).

Meanwhile we’re working on Innocent Rouge V8, more Sensei no Shiroi Uso, and the new Neko ga Nishi Mukya comes out in a couple days. And Gintama every week. So a lot’s going on! I hope you enjoy this one.

81diver Volume 24 ch244-254
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