K so this one is all done too! This one gets to the climax of the K2 Simulation Training Ridge Traversal arc. Though there’s still a few more chapters of it in the first half of volume 9. This is 8 our of 17 so we’re now ALMOST half way through the series. I’ve had a bunch of time to do this this month since there’s no Jojo or 3-Gatsu to do. But like I said, it’s still gonna take a while cause I can’t just marathon through these. It becomes sorta mind-numbing at a point when you’ve been doing it for hours a day. And all the redrawing still takes a while every volume.

Shima volume 11 is coming along nicely, I’ve got about 3 chapters in that left to translate now. So that’s what I’m working on at the moment. Hope ya’ll enjoy!

Also, we have a Discord! Come hang out and talk about manga. https://discord.gg/Nw45rfJYZF

Kokou no Hito Volume 8 (Ch. 73-82)
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Whew! So here’s volume 7. This one we got done pretty quickly. We’ve got 10 volumes to go now. As always I’m trying to work on this enough to get it done without taking too long because it’s already translated, but I’ve gotta balance it with other stuff. I’m trying to avoid any issues and do all the redraws and get all the fonts looking good and all that. I kind of don’t like the styles OMFGG chose for the most part. A lot of font choices weren’t great and the text was often not sized right (Usually it was too big and text had a lot of words with hyphens going onto two lines when that wasn’t needed). A lot of the I’m mainly trying to keep this project from being TOO long so I can move onto some other project I haven’t already translated sometime soon. I have a couple ideas for those. Anyhow we’ve already started on volume 8 at this point, too. There’s way fewer sound effects and less overall text at this point in the manga so it SHOULD take less time per volume from here. So I’m aiming for around one every 2-3 weeks, if all goes well.

Meanwhile I’m also doing Shima, and volume 11 is about half way translated now. I kinda feel better doing just these two things rather than juggling four or so projects at once so I feel a bit better. I’ve had a lot of stuff going on outside scanlating this year so it’s good not to do everything at once.

Also, we have a Discord! Come hang out and talk about manga. https://discord.gg/Nw45rfJYZF

Kokou no Hito Volume 7 (Ch. 63-72)
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Okay, here we are, volume 6. Man this is a really good one. I love this series. It’s just got such powerful expression of emotion. You really feel Buntarō here as he’s dealing with the rejection and hazing and competition from his other teammates. We’re now in the middle of the Northern Alps All-Mountain Traversal arc which goes until the beginning of volume 9. It definitely has gotten easier to do these because there’s less text and less redrawing. But there’s still a considerable amount of work in each of these so I don’t think I’m ever going to get to the point where I can bang out like one a week (until maybe the last couple, maybe?). So now we’re a little more than a third of the way through the series and I’m glad we’re making good progress on this but it’ll probably take a few more months at least to finish.

So in the meantime, I’ve done a bunch of cleaning on volume 7. I’ve translated the first like 3 chapters of Shima volume 11. And I’m also trying to get some of the other Gintama volumes scanned. That Gintama project of redoing all the volumes from magazine versions to volume scans is basically on hold until Kokou no Hito is done, but I do want to at least get them all scanned so that initial step is out of the way. And there’s so many of them I need to do it a little at a time. If we have folks volunteering to work on that we can get those out faster but I’m not really counting on it. There’s 26 more volumes to redo so even if one doesn’t take too long the whole project would end up taking six months at a minimum if I focused SOLELY on that, and the end result would be just a somewhat nicer more complete release. In that same amount of time I could probably do a decent sized manga from scratch so I’m mainly just trying to keep it as a side project and I dunno if we’ll ever finish all of it. But yeah I want to at least keep moving on all these things. As usual I’m constantly trying to balance work on this stuff with other things I want to spend my time on.

Also, we have a Discord! Come hang out and talk about manga. https://discord.gg/Nw45rfJYZF

Kokou no Hito Volume 6 (Ch. 53-62)
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WHEW, here’s volume 5! Now we’re well into the real meat of the manga. The speech at the start of chapter 52 here is one of the highlights of the series. It feels like it’s where Buntarō really feels like he’s got firm opinions about his life and how he’s living it that he lets the reader in on. And now we’ve finally got underway with the Northern Alps All-Mountain Ridge Traversal.

This volume was a bunch easier because the amount of text is letting up and the amount of sound effects and fonts is going down. So hopefully these don’t take too long. There’s still 12 more volumes to go now. These don’t take a lot of focused concentration but they do take a lot of hours regardless to get the whole volume done. And we’ve got a few people quality checking now which helps. I’d really prefer this “spruce up” of this series didn’t end up taking many months, because it’s taking up my time for everything else I wanna do. But the hardest volumes are behind us now.

In the meantime, we just released a bunch of stuff and I’m still working on Shima volume 10. Gonna try to really focus on that now that this is done.

Also, we have a Discord! Come hang out and talk about manga. https://discord.gg/Nw45rfJYZF

Kokou no Hito Volume 5 (Ch. 43-52)
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Ook, here’s volume 4! We have finally finished the beginning arc of the manga and we’re into “Part 2” or the first timeskip or the start of the “K2 Simulation Training Arc” whatever you wanna call it. This is also the last volume where Takano Hiroshi is the writer. After this point it’s all Sakamoto-sensei.

A lot of folks feel like this is where the manga “really starts”, and I agree it’s way different from the beginning to the point of feeling like a totally different manga, I do think the beginning is good in its own right even though it lacks the sort of atmosphere we get when he’s out of school. It also really establishes Mori Buntarō’s mindset and how he’s shaped from being younger to getting to the state he’s in. So I hope you all enjoyed that! Past this point there’s way fewer sound effects which makes it easier to typeset and there’s less text in general, though still way more than there is in the 2nd half of the series. So hopefully these volumes take a bit less time to do. We’ve been doing this project for around 2 months now and it’s probably gonna take a longer than I was hoping but it’s still going pretty well. I’m still going though every single line and a couple people are checking it and helping me improve it. That’s in addition to re-scanning, re-cleaning, re-redrawing, and re-typesetting everything.

Besides that, we’re working on Shima volume 10 and there are new The JOJOLands and 3-Gatsu no Lion chapters coming out later this month. So look forward to all that.

Also, we have a Discord! Come hang out and talk about manga. https://discord.gg/Nw45rfJYZF

Kokou no Hito Volume 4 (Ch. 32-42)
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