Kokou no Hito (The Climber) Volume 10

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Aand we’re done with volume 10! Now after about five and a half months since the first release, we’re into the double digits. There’s 7 volumes to go now. We’re definitely getting there! So at this point we’re a good ways into the small story arc between the Northern Alps Traversal arc and the final big arc which is the K2 arc. Generally speaking there’s less text from here on out besides a few wordy chapters. So because of that it SHOULD *IN THEORY* take less time to do. I’m really trying to prevent this side project where we redo old stuff to take that long. Then I can move onto some other project maybe. The last chapter with any sound effects is the beginning of volume 11. But there’s still plenty of double page spreads to join and lots of redraws to do so it’s not MUCH easier. Still gonna take a lot of work, but I’m working on it.

Besides this, we’ve got Jojo coming up and I started on Shima volume 11 but haven’t gotten too far yet. Enjoy, everyone!

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

Kokou no Hito Volume 10 (Ch. 93-102)
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Kokou no Hito (The Climber) Volume 9

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Ooookay, and now with this we are past the half way point of the series. 9 volumes done and 8 to go. This volume also finishes off the end of the K2 Simulation Training Northern Alps All-Mountain Ridge Traversal arc. So quite a lot is concluded here. And then it gets well into the next arc about Mori Buntarō working on Mount Fuji and introduces Takemura and all sorts of stuff. So this is another good one! I’m really glad we’ve made it this far. It’s taken about 5 months from the first release to this point (And we were working on volume 1 for a couple weeks at that point). So we’re making pretty good time, given the hardest stuff is in the beginning. We’re nearly at the point where Sakamoto-sensei stops using sound-effects. There’s fewer and fewer until volume 11 which has the last one (Unless I missed one somewhere). Once we’re at that point, getting these done should be a little faster. I’m pretty happy about the pace this is given it’s a “fix-up project” and not doing a series from scratch. Once this project’s all done I can probably pick up another project we’d be doing from scratch.

Anyhow, check it out!

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

Kokou no Hito Volume 9 (Ch. 83-92)
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Division Chief Shima Kōsaku Volume 11

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Division Chief Shima Kо̄saku Volume 11

Whew, ok! This time we finished in less than a month and a half so I’m pretty happy about that. This series is hard folks, I hope ya’ll are enjoying it. For this volume we head straight now into the next (and last) major arc of the Division Chief series, which is Shima’s time as Senior Managing Director at the Hatsushiba Sales Center in Hakata, Fukuoka. It’s got all sorts of stuff about working at a sales center and what life is like in Fukuoka around 2001. It’s got a lot of great stuff, I hope ya’ll enjoy it.

Believe it or not we’re now nearing the end of the Division Chief arc. We started on Division Chief in April of 2023 so it’s been about a year and a half to get 11 volumes done which is pretty good, imho, given we’re doing this and a bunch of other projects and also I don’t get paid for this shit. Also it has tons of text, different fields of subject matter, and every volume is over 220 pages long. But man it feels good to have gotten this far. I really do love this series. We’re 28 volumes into the overall series now, I think. We got the first volume out in September of 2021 so now this project is over 3 years old. Time sure flies, huh? Anyhow I’m gonna keep going as long as I feel like I can spare the time to work on it.

The last two volumes of Division Chief are pretty great ones where all the many plotlines across Division Chief, which came out over the course of nearly a decade. Well, except for the stuff that gets resolved in later parts of the manga. But quite a lot is concluded in those two final volumes and they’re some of the best in the series, so look forward to them! There’s been no Jojo or 3-Gatsu no Lion this month, and the next Jojo chapter is in late November on the 19th Japan time, so we should be doing that around then. The next 3-Gatsu no Lion chapter is sometime in the future, no idea when. And I’m in the middle of working on Kokou no Hito volume 9 now. We’re getting through that series pretty fast but that’s mainly because I’m only editing the translation rather than redoing it from scratch. I’m hoping I can finish that series sometime in the beginning of 2025. Anyhow, see ya later!

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

Division Chief Shima Kо̄saku Volume 11 (Ch125-137)
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Kokou no Hito (The Climber) Volume 8

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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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Kokou no Hito (The Climber) Volume 7

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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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Kokou no Hito (The Climber) Volume 6

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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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The JOJOLands Ch. 19

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Here’s chapter 19, folks! The battle in the hospital continues.
There’s no new The JOJOLands next month. There’s a message at the end of this chapter saying as much. The next chapter will be out on November 19th Japan time. There’s another Jojo magazine coming out so possibly Araki-sensei will be writing another one-shot of some sort for that or maybe he’s just taking a break.

Anyhow, we just released The JOJOLands volume 4 and Division Chief Shima Kōsaku volume 10. I’m in the middle of Kokou no Hito volume 6 and just started translating Shima volume 11. So that’s what we got going on! Go check all this stuff out! They take forever and I’m exhausted!

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

The JOJOLands Ch. 19
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Division Chief Shima Kōsaku Volume 10

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Division Chief Shima Kо̄saku Volume 10

Ok, here we are, volume 10. This one took about two months because I’ve had a lot of things going on in life besides scanlating and couldn’t really focus much on this volume until the past two and a half weeks. But anyhow, this one’s a great one and it has so much going on in it. With this volume we finally, finally reach the end of the record industry arc which started way back in volume 4. It also finishes up a whole bunch of other stuff. It’s a volume where a lot changes and we head into the final arc of the Division Chief series. We’ve got just 3 volumes left now. It feels kinda crazy we’ve come this far. But man these volumes are hard. There’s just so much in each of them.

Besides that, we have The JOJOLands this week and I’m working on Kokou no Hito volume 6. Kokou no Hito is cleaned and I’m working on typesetting it and fixing up the translation now. And then I’ll be starting up on Division Chief volume 11. As usual I’m constantly trying to figure out what is a good balance between not feeling like I’m “falling behind” on these projects and not overloading myself since I’m doing most of the work on all of these.

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

Division Chief Shima Kо̄saku Volume 10 (Ch112-124)
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The JOJOLands Volume 4

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Aaand here is volume 4, folks! Man, volume 4 already? It feels like it wasn’t that long ago when the series just started. Like usual, this is a higher quality version of the magazine version done by scanning the physical volumes. There’s like a couple tiny details and screentones and stuff added and a few pictures in between the chapters but besides that it’s pretty much the same (Besides the standard higher resolution and more image data on top and bottom and slightly less on one side). Also they added Charming Man to the intro pages where the characters are introduced.

The next volume is just scheduled for “winter” of this year. That should contain up to chapter 20 probably. And only up to 18 are released so far. So that means maybe December or January I’m guessing. Right now I’m in the middle of working on Kokou no Hito volume 6 and I’m trying to get Shima volume 10 done which has been taking a while, but I’m finally most of the way done on that. I’ve had a bunch of stressful stuff going on IRL which has made it harder to get through all this stuff quickly. But yeah I’m gonna keep going on it steadily. I kind of need to decide how much I’m going to take breaks while also making sure everything gets finished.

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

The JOJOLands Volume 4 (Ch. 13-16)
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Kokou no Hito (The Climber) Volume 5

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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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