…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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Mega
Direct Download
Online Reader (MangaDex)

81diver Volume 35 ch365-375
Zippyshare
Mega
Direct Download
Online Reader (MangaDex)