Whew, ok well we finally have made it to a fully completed volume of The JOJOLands. This took a whole ton of effort to get everything as good as it could be and I am now totally exhausted.
For those that are unfamiliar, volumes of Jojo typically come out several months after their chapters come out. Usually around 2 or 3 volumes a year, generally containing 4 or 5 chapters. For all of our releases we’re scanning the physical raws which are the highest quality and resolution raw source, which takes a while to manually clean and redraw compared to the digital ones. That’s in addition to the fact that it has to be scanned and it’s about 200 pages all at once. Typically these volumes have more image data on the tops and bottoms of the pages and a little bit cut from the sides of the pages relative to the magazine version and also include any changes Araki-sensei decided to make after the release of the magazine versions. They also include the cover and extra pages between the chapters with little drawings. They’re generally considered the “definitive” or “archival” versions of the manga. At least until some sort of kanzenban/collector’s edition comes out. They also look slightly different from the digital versions due to how Shuueisha compresses their images. For some reason they tend to sorta blur them in a weird specific way that makes white dots on dark fields look sorta “more prominent” (It’s sorta hard to explain just through text). For these we’re using larger pixel dimensions for The JOJOLands than we did with JoJolion. These are 2560 pixels tall, whereas our JoJolion ones were 1400 pixel tall. So they’re a higher resolution than those were with the tradeoff of having a bit larger file size (Regardless both versions are way way higher res than the digital versions).
The next The JOJOLands chapter is slated to come out on the 19th Japan time, so only a few days from now. There’s also a new 3-Gatsu no Lion chapter coming out next week and we’re working on scanlating 3-Gatsu no Lion volume 17 as well. I’m also working on Division Chief Shima Kōsaku volume 3 and I’m somewhere a little past the half way point in translating that right now. Between Jojo, 3-Gatsu, and DRCL volumes all coming out around the same time it’s taken up a lot of my time so Shima is taking a bit longer. Also a lot of these Shima chapters are really hard because of all the discussion about the wine industry. Anyhow, I hope you enjoy, everyone.
Also, we have a new Discord! Come hang out and talk about manga. https://discord.gg/Nw45rfJYZF
The JOJOLands Volume 1 (Ch. 1-4)
Mega
Online Reader (Mangadex)