Oooookay, here we ware, we’ve made it to volume 5! God this manga is so exhausting. Uhhh I think I’ve said that in every post but it’s true. A lot of very in-depth business stuff in this volume. Though the end is a bit more action-oriented and is a bit less difficult to translate.

So this volume concludes what you might call “Part 1 of the Record Industry Arc”. Which continues for a while past here. This also is the volume where we finish what came out in the 90’s. The last chapter of this volume, which Shima was on the cover of Morning magazine, was the last chapter that came out in 1999 (Though just for the magazine, the actual volume came out in 2000). Next volume starts with the first chapter that came out in 2000. But also quite fittingly, this story is about events that happen in December and then New Year’s Eve and the first few days of January, which is just about where we’re releasing it now! I thought that was kinda cool how we coincided like that. So we’re now translating what came out exactly 24 years ago.

Anyway, these volumes are a lot of work, this one is 223 pages long plus the extra pages from the bunkobans, zenshuus, and magazines. You might’ve noticed that there’s more chapters-per-volume recently, that’s because the length of each chapter went down from like 20-35 pages to being always 18 pages when Shima became a regular weekly series and not an irregular one. But also I recently noticed that after a certain point the number of pages per volume goes down. The ones we’re doing now are all around 220-ish pages long but after the end of the Managing Director arc, which is about 16 volumes from now, the length of the volumes goes down to like 185 pages. So you could maybe figure for that into any mental math you’re doing if you’re wondering how long it would take us to do the whole rest of the series. Though for now I’m just sorta playing it by ear and trying to just focus on one volume at a time and I may stop at some point if it doesn’t feel worth it for me to continue for any reason.

Otherwise, this should probably be our last release of the year, I hope you all enjoyed what we got out this year and you’re all enjoying yourselves in the holidays. We’re working on The JOJOLands volume 2 scanlation now, that should be done… at some point. There was no new 3-Gatsu no Lion chapter in last week’s Young Animal issue after all and there’s none in the next issue either so we’re waiting to see if there’ll be one in the FOLLOWING issue which comes out January 25th Japan time. And the next The JOJOLands chapter is set to come out on January 18th Japan time. Until then, see ya!

If anyone would like to volunteer to help out with checking/editing/cleaning/typesetting any of that for this project, please feel free to email me at kewl0210@gmail.com about it. We could always use more help on this series because of how much gosh-darn stuff there is in every single volume.

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

Division Chief Shima Kо̄saku Volume 5 (Ch47-59)
Catbox.moe
Mega
Online Reader (Mangadex)