Okay, volume 54! We’ve got 8 volume versions left. I wrote a recap of what’s going on with this project here. God I remember what I was going through when I was working on these back in like 2013-2014, I was doing way too many projects every week back then. I would have like 3-4 weekly projects and monthly JoJolion and a bunch of other long-term do-whenever projects I was doing in all my spare time besides then. I went through this whole thing multiple times now so I was hopefully able to catch every little mistake we made the first time around. This volume contains the Sakamoto-Mutsu meeting/flashback arc, that weird art style essay manga chapter, the Etekichi Kozou monkey dude story involving Kondou’s childhood arc, the time-stop arc, and that gag chapter about Street Fighter-style special techniques. As usual it’s also in higher resolution and has all the extras translated and all that. Holy shit a lot of work went into each of these. Probably way more than it’s worth to just have a fixed up version of something we already released, but well it’s already done and now I just gotta check and finalize 8 more.

I was thinking about what we wanna do after this, given we’re nearly done with this project of redoing the Jump Raw chapters which was for volumes 46-71. After that, Volumes 33-35 and 72-77 could be like *slightly* redone with higher resolution and fixed fonts and we can add in any SFX we didn’t do. Those were all ones we did around 2019 so that would basically be it, it wouldn’t take too long, maybe a couple days of work on each. We’d use the same automations for cleaning and stuff and transfer everything over but some stuff would need to be redone manually. Beyond that, Volumes 36-45 would then require more work where I’d have to check through all the old translations because I did them so long ago. The first ones were done only a year or so after we made this group (Some of V36-ish was done with Shounen Jump scans and then fixed up for volume versions already but they resolution isn’t at the 2560px height we’re using now and doesn’t have the fonts updated). All that would take a little longer each volume but would be another thing we COULD do if I felt like it. But we’re getting into really low-return, being a super perfectionist stuff here. And then if we did all that we could then work on going further back to completely new volumes from scratch for volumes 24-32, and we’d just work backwards like we’ve been doing. The official Viz releases end at V23 so I wouldn’t go earlier than V24, there’s really no point, I think those versions are good enough even if they’re not amazing. Of course doing any volumes from scratch would take WAY longer than fixing up any of these ones, each one would take like 3 weeks of work or something around that. Which I’m not so sure is worth doing for 9 volumes tbh.

My thinking right now is I don’t really wanna spend all my free time forever trying to make this series perfect, I started working on the series I September of 2009 to give you all some perspective here. So basically I’m focusing on just finishing up the other 8 volumes we got left for now. But then I’ll probably slowly work on some of those other things every once in a while. Even if I only did one or two pre-V33 chapters a month we’d still get a volume done every once in a while. And sometimes it’s fun to revisit stuff like that I haven’t read since I was like, a senior in high school. But also I could use that time to just work on a *totally new* series. I could probably translate quite a few entire series faster than I could translate Gintama Volumes 24 to 32. But I dunno, we’ll see where life goes. So yeah that’s it for now. I guess I’ll start working on Volume 53? Nothing much else happening until the next Jojo chapter/volume come out.

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

Gintama Volume 54 (Ch477-486)
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Okay, we made it to volume 55! We’ve got 9 volume versions left. I wrote a recap of what’s going on with this project here. So now we’re past the Shogun Assassination arc, which means now every volume has a lot more text generally speaking and they’re made up of shorter gag arcs and semi-serious arcs. This one contains chapter 487 which I think was never animated in the anime? I heard somewhere it wasn’t, I haven’t checked personally. It also contains the Saitou Shimaru arc and the Aizen Kou/Love Potion arc.

Because these last bunch of volumes have a lot of text it takes me longer to check them, and a lot of this I’m just doing on my own. One other person is helping but that’s it. So it’s a lot of dull work, it’s a really long slog, and it’s not particularly rewarding to spot typos and tiny translation mistakes or rewording lines I translated back in 2014 or so. But ya know I wanna get this done and there’s not a ton left now. All the cleaning and redrawing and all that are done. Now I’m reading through every line in English and Japanese and making sure it all looks good. Hopefully I caught all the typos. Oh also this volume had a popularity poll results announcement, one where in the magazine it only had like the top 15 or so, but in the volume it had all the rest of it, which took forever to do in addition to the rest of the extras for this volume. I hope somebody somewhere reads all that at least once, cause god, I’m getting a headache just remembering doing that a couple months ago.

Anyhow, there’s new 3-Gatsu and The JOJOLands coming out soon. I’m working on more Executive Director Shima as well. I have to take breaks between these Gintama volumes because it’s just like torture doing lots of it in a row. Anyhow, enjoy folks. We’re almost there!

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

Gintama Volume 55 (Ch487-496)
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Okay, we made it to volume 56! We’ve got 10 volume versions left. I wrote a recap of what’s going on with this project here. This volume is the one where the Shougn Assassination Arc starts and it also has a bunch of gag chapters in it. Because now we’re back to the regular arcs before the series became a bit lighter in text, there’s more stuff to check so I’ve been putting it off. And working on Shima and other stuff the last few weeks. But all that’s left in the last 10 redo volumes is to check them over and fix any mistakes we can catch. This is mostly comedy chapters but also includes a few serious arcs and some kinda-jokey but kinda-serious sort-of-important-to-the-overall-plot arcs.

Anyhow, there’s not much work left ultimately. Each of these volumes takes a few hours to check and finalize maybe, and it’s just me and Teppy doing it. So I’ll try to get one done every week or two, something like that, unless something really takes up all my time and I can’t for a while. But I’d like to finish this project of doing volume versions of all the Gintama releases done with only magazine raws in the near future. Once it’s done we may do volume 32 or release some of the other volumes in higher resolution where we just transfer things over, maybe also redo the sound effects, or something like that. I dunno it kinda depends on my mood at the time. We’ll see! I do think I generally prefer working on new manga though rather than doing this perfectionist, making all my old stuff perfect stuff.

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

Gintama Volume 56 (Ch497-506)
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Here we are, the next one, volume 57! We’ve got 11 volume versions left. I wrote a recap of what’s going on with this project here. This volume is the middle part of the Shogun Assassination arc, which is basically the 2nd half of 56, then all of 57 and 58. This one is the climax of Zenzou’s story in the arc and also the beginning of the fight with Takasugi and Kamui.

Like I said in the last post, everything is done but checking over the remaining volumes. Me and Teppy are working on that. These last couple didn’t take very long because this part of the story is very action-heavy. From the first half of 56 and earlier there’s a lot more text because it’s largely more of the comedy arcs.

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

Gintama Volume 57 (Ch507-515)
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Hey, we’ve made it to volume 58! We’ve got 12 volume versions left. I wrote a recap of what’s going on with this project here. This volume is the last volume of the Shogun Assassination arc, it’s the one with the big Gin VS Takasugi fight with a bunch of Shouka Sonjuku-era flashbacks.

So today I finished translating and typesetting the last of the extras. And as I mentioned in the last post, we finished all the cleaning/redrawing a few weeks ago. So all that’s left for the remaining 12 volumes is to check them over and finalize them. So I’m hoping to get these all out pretty soon and get back to doing some other projects. Once I’m done with these I’ll probably at some point scan the other 9 volumes of Gintama after Viz stopped (Their last volume is volume 23) and I’ll try to get one of those done every once in a while, but it’s not gonna be my primary focus for months like this project has been. I’m probably mainly gonna go back to trying to finish Managing Director Shima Kousaku immediately after at least.

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

Gintama Volume 58 (Ch516-524)
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Hey, here’s the next one of these, volume 59. We’ve got 13 volume versions left. I wrote a recap of what’s going on with this project here. This volume is the one right after the Shogun Assassination arc ends and the beginning of the Farewell, Shinsengumi Arc.

I mentioned this in the last few posts but we finished cleaning and redrawing all the remaining volumes and I’m working now on translating the rest of the extras and then checking through the volumes to see if we can spot any mistakes or anything we think we can improve over the original versions. I already made all the major changes I wanted to do so besides that we’re just gonna have a couple people giving these a once-over and releasing them. So the remaining ones should hopefully be done in not too long. Translating the extras is kind of dull work because it’s mostly translating Sorachi-sensei’s long jokey rants that take up whole pages of text but I’m getting it done. Right now I’m in the middle of volume 55 working backwards, so there’s like 9 and a half volumes of extras left to do and I’m finishing one every few days. Once they’re all done we’ll probably end up releasing the remaining volumes pretty quickly.

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

Gintama Volume 59 (Ch525-533)
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Here’s 60! We’ve got 14 volume versions left. I wrote a recap of what’s going on with this project here. This volume is mostly the latter part of the Farewell, Shinsengumi Arc where they’re rescuing Kondou from Kokujou Island.

There’s not much to update since the last one, basically we’re just working on these a little every day in hopes to get this project done in not too long. We managed to find some way to automate some more busy work so I’m hoping maybe we get them all cleaned by the end of the month. There’s like 6 and a half volumes left to go through and clean and fix the typsetting and all that. I’m behind on translating the extras but we’re releasing them when they’re done and checked. And I’m working on Shima and other stuff when I have time amongst all this.

Mangadex is down right now, I’ll upload it there once it’s back up.

Edit: It’s up on Mangadex now, too.

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

Gintama Volume 60 (Ch534-542)
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Ok so here’s these two, 61 and 62! We’ve got 15 volume versions left. I wrote a recap of what’s going on with this project here. So working backwards like we’ve been doing, volume 62 is some stuff about Utsuro and setting up for the final arc(s) against him as he eliminates some of the other factions to become the most powerful person/organization/entity and the main cast going to Rakuyou. 61 is the end of the rescuing Kondou from Kokujou Island arc and it’s where Utsuro is first introduced basically (He’s in like a few pages of volume 60). It’s also the end of the Nobume and Sasaki Isaburou’s big story arc.

So, I’ve been spending way too much time on this project but we’ve got volumes 46 and then 55-60 fully cleaned and redrawn as of this morning. There’s only 8 volumes left to clean and redraw left, and that’s the vast majority of the work on this series. That’s including fixing the text in the transfer from the magazine chapters and fixing the edges of the pages which are different in the physicals VS digitals, adding in sound effects, fixing any mistakes I notice, and all that. So mainly I’ve been focusing on getting all those done rather than doing the extras and getting them released. But we’ve gotten all the way to the start of the Shogun Assassination Arc done so I’m gonna try to focus on extras for a while. Also the 8 volumes that are left to clean are full of gag chapters so they have a lot of text so they take longer. There’s more text and also more redraws per page. I’m trying to also check through all the text in these as well and fix any mistakes or awkwardness if I run into it but that’s on top of all this other stuff so I don’t have a ton of time to spare to also do that and I haven’t run into very much of it. So yeah, I’m happy with the progress we made on this, it no longer seems like something we’ll “never finish” I’m pretty sure we’ll finish just I’m not gonna be rushing through it as much as I have since November. I’ll be trying to get more extras translated and finalize everything and get those cleaned volumes out sometime soon and I’m also trying to get the rest of this Shima volume translated that I’ve already been working on for like 2 months now.

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

Gintama Volume 61 (Ch543-551)
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Gintama Volume 62 (Ch552-551)
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Here’s 63.! We’ve got 17 volume versions left. I wrote a recap of what’s going on with this project here. This volume is mainly about Katsura, Sakamoto, and Gin fighting the three big Harusame division captains Neptune Shoukaku, Uranus Hankai, and Pluto Batou. This is also the one with the Pakuyasa in it.

Ok well anyhow nothing really changed from a few days ago when we released the last one. As usual I’m trying to fix any mistakes we didn’t catch the first time or make improvements when I do these, and there were a couple in this volume, but I only have so much time and we only have one person checking them. I’ve got a few more that are mostly done except translating the extras and at least a *little* of every volume is done but it’s still like 2-3 days of work each volume. I’m gonna be taking some breaks because of how mind-numbing this is, but I do really wanna get this project done in not *too* long given it’s really just “better version of a thing we did before” and I wanna get back to doing projects of stuff we haven’t already translated.

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

Gintama Volume 63 (Ch562-571)
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And here’s 64. We’ve got 18 volume versions left. I wrote a recap of what’s going on with this project here. This volume is the one where the Joui Four finally reunite. Also it’s got Kamui’s fight against Umibouzu and Kagura. It has the rest of the Kouka flashback/backstory, too.

I’ve been working on this stuff a lot in hopes of eventually finishing this before I die. So far, in addition to what we’ve released, we’ve cleaned/redrawn everything in volume 60-63. I still have to do the extras for all those though. It really takes a while and it’s pretty tedious but doing some of it every day is working. I still have to do the vast majority of volumes 46-59 though which is still a ton. I probably will need to take some breaks though. My head is melting from spending so many hours going through these. The typesetting and translations are all done but I do need to adjust the text somewhat, do the inline sound-effects, and clean and redraw everything and fix the edges of the pages which differ from the digital and physical raws as an artifact of the automation process by lining up the physical raws with upscaled digital ones.

Meanwhile, there’s another 3-Gatsu no Lion in a couple weeks. I’m translating Shima volume 6 too. Anyhow I hope you all enjoy these. The Gintama Yoshiwara in Flames movie is coming out soon, anyone seeing that?

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

Gintama Volume 64 (Ch572-580)
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