Here we are, we made it to DRCL volume 3! As usual we’re really focusing on making these the highest quality possible with the physical volume scans and we’re including an uncompressed version of this which is from the scan at 1200dpi.
So this one, much like the last one was a huge hassle to do. I did pretty much every job this time besides typesetting one chapter and doing final checks at the end. This volume contains chapters 15 to 21 and sort of the end of the first “arc” you could maybe call it, though this series doesn’t REALLY have traditional arcs, this volume has some pretty climactic moments. Part of what makes this series difficult is that it at some point started having a sort of “painterly” look where there’s a sort of texture with little white dots in the art. So you need to clean off all the noise from the texture of the page but if you go too far, you lose those dots which are part of the artwork. That’s in addition to tons of double page spreads which need to be joined and lots of redrawing and such.
I was debating whether or not to continue this series because DRCL midnight children has been licensed by Viz, so it may not be worth continuing at this point. Though they’re likely going to do what they do with most series which is release it 2+ years after it comes out in Japan. Volume 1 is set to come out September 19th of this year and I encourage you all to buy it regardless to support the author. I ultimately decided to do this volume at least to finish out the “arc”, but given how much work and how much of my time doing this took up I’m not sure if it’s worth continuing to work on. Let me know what you all think regarding continuing with this series or not. Otherwise I’ll probably just be focusing my time more on translating Shima Kōsaku.
Either way, next volume is scheduled for simply “2024”. So likely it’ll come out in January-March next year. As of now the newest chapter released in the magazine, Grand Jump, is chapter 34. Though keep in mind that from chapters 1 to 21 the chapters were only appearing in every other issue of the magazine, which meant chapters were coming out once per month since Grand Jump is a bi-weekly magazine. But from chapter 22 onward the series started running once every issue but at half length. So the chapters went from being around 28 pages per chapter down to around 13 to 15 pages per chapter. Which means volume 3 is likely to have up to around chapter 33-35-ish. I figure that’s worth mentioning if we choose to keep going.
Meanwhile I’m still working on Division Chief Shima Kōsaku volume 2 which is really hard because it’s full of stuff about the wine industry which takes time to research and understand properly. Though that’s most of the way done now. Next month the last volume of Ikoku Nikki comes out and there’s also going to be a new volume of The JOJOlands and 3-Gatsu no Lion which we’re going to be working on so we’ve got our work cut out for us. Anyhow, enjoy the new volume, everyone!
Also, we have a Discord! Come hang out and talk about manga. https://discord.gg/Nw45rfJYZF
Edit: Apparently a big percentage of the uncompressed pages exported… brokenly. I re-exported it with different color settings and it should be all correct now. Apologies.
#DRCL midnight children Volume 3 (Ch. 15-21)
Mega
Online Reader (Mangadex)