Okay soooo here it is, the rest! I mentioned this in the last Kokou no Hito post but there wasn’t much left and now it’s all done. These all got done quickly because I cleaned and redrew all the way to the end at the beginning of December and then spent the next few weeks typesetting. Also because they just don’t have a lot of text so it’s less work overall on a per-volume basis. After that we were just waiting for all the QCers to check it, and they all got finished together at the same time. So here it is, our last release for the year, most likely. And also the end of this series. I’m really glad we got it all done. I really like this series and I think 7 months from beginning to end for a fix-up, refresh, type dealie is a good amount. It’s not so much that it dragged on and on for something that’s not a new series but also not so short that we’re not sure it was all the best quality we could make it. I hope you all enjoyed. And if anyone was waiting until we were done to read it all, go right ahead.

(Oh I should mention, some of the chapter titles are different from the old scanlations because I was scanlating from the magazine version originally for a lot of volumes 14-17 because the volumes weren’t out yet. And then Sakamoto-sensei changed the titles in the the volumes. For a few they changed just because I thought a different word or phrase made a better translation.)

I’ve been focusing mainly on this the last month or so to get it all the way to the end. Now I’m gonna get back to Shima volume 12 and we’re working on The JOJOLands v5. I have a couple other ideas of new projects to work on but I’m trying not to spend too much time doing scanlating. A lot of these projects, I’m doing most of it on my own so I don’t want to overload myself. But it feels good to get a project done like this. I’ve thought about doing other “refresh projects” too but every one of them would take longer than Kokou no Hito given this series is fairly low on text so I dunno if I wanna jump into that right now. Anyhow, I’ll be doing something. I hope you all enjoy the series and you have a happy new year.

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

Kokou no Hito Volume 14 (Ch. 133-142)
Mega
Online Reader (Mangadex)

Kokou no Hito Volume 15 (Ch. 143-152)
Mega
Online Reader (Mangadex)

Kokou no Hito Volume 16 (Ch. 153-162)
Mega
Online Reader (Mangadex)

Kokou no Hito Volume 17 (Ch. 163-170)
Mega
Online Reader (Mangadex)

Okay, here’s volume 13. We’re honestly pretty close to the end now. It’s probably obvious reading it but a lot of pages have no text at all and a lot that do have text have not much. Sakamoto-sensei really comes into his style of expressing things very purely with visuals here at a more extreme level than he did earlier on where it was just an occasional panel or page and now it’s more than half of them. Also I’m including all of the color pages here which I think weren’t included in all the old releases. I still had them then but I think they sometimes included them and sometimes just sort of ignored them and didn’t put them in the release. These are all from when I bought the physical Young Jump magazines at the time because there was no digital version. Also this is the last volume that was originally done by OMFGG scans, which stopped responding to me and existing at a group all together shortly after they released volume 13. So past this point we’re doing a fixed up version of the bunch of volumes done by Easy-Going Scans.

This is the point in the story where Buntarō has finally established a happy home life where he’s not escaping to mountains to get away from the misery of the rest of his life but then he’s being pulled in the opposite direction of finally getting his chance to climb K2 which has been his life’s goal up to that point. He’s dealing with the inner conflict of passion VS family. Or maybe one “home” VS another “home”. Or two different identities. The identity that wants to feel free and experience all these powerful things on mountains and an identity wanting to be with people and form emotional connections with them. I made sure every time it’s in the background I typeset the “Climb the number one mountain in the world” sign which kind of looms as this symbol of his “passion” identity and past self from when he was totally alone.

So our scanlation of this series, or “fix-up” or “re-scanlation”, is almost done. I mentioned in previous posts I went ahead and cleaned/typeset all the way to the end because it was easier due to the lack of text. Now I’m almost done typesetting, too. I’m in the middle of volume 17 now, which is the last one. Mainly I’m just waiting on the QC team to check these over and we’ll be all done. I’m not gonna rush them to do it but I wanted to get my part done and then I can go back to working on other stuff. But volumes 14, 15, and 16 are being checked now, and I’ll probably finish typesetting volume 17 sometime in the next few days, so the rest of the series will probably be released in not *too* long. Once I finish typesetting v17 I’m gonna go back to translating Shima volume 12. Besides that, we also have the new 3-Gatsu no Lion chapter this week and we’re working on The JOJOLands volume 5. So I’ll definitely continue to be busy for a bit. I hope you all enjoy!

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

Kokou no Hito Volume 13 (Ch. 123-132)
Mega
Online Reader (Mangadex)

BWAM here’s volume 12. A lot of big events happen in this volume and it starts setting up for the final arc which we get into next volume. As usual this volume has lots of great art and a lot of memorable scenes as Mori/Katō Buntarō starts to really change as a person and overcome some of the biggest personal obstacles he’s had up to this point.

So, I talked about this in the last couple posts, but at this point we’re down to the point in the manga where there’s VERY little text compared to early on. It sort of gets less and less as the series goes on and just occasionally has a wordy chapter or two then goes back to chapters where half the pages have no text. Because of that, there’s way less to do in these later volumes, so I’m trying to get this series finished up soon. I finished cleaning and redrawing the whole rest of the series to the end of volume 17. Volume 13 is typeset and being checked and I’ve typeset the beginning of volume 14. Besides the occasional wordy chapters where I need to double check every sentence, most chapters don’t take very long. Some of these take literally 10 minutes, though some take like an hour or two. At this point we have 48 chapters left to release. So I’m trying to get through a lot while I have some free time right now. As usual I’m trying to balance “I want to get this done” with “I don’t want to burn myself out and use all my free time working.” But I don’t think there’s all that many total man-hours of work left so I’m really trying to get it all done.

Meanwhile, we have Jojo this week. Volume 5 is also coming out so we’ll be working on that. And also there’s a new 3-Gatsu no Lion chapter coming out later this month, and I’m working on Shima a little while I have some spare time (I’m mostly trying to finish Kokou no Hito before I get back and finish Division Chief Volume 12). So look forward to all that! Enjoy, folks!

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

Kokou no Hito Volume 12 (Ch. 113-122)
Mega
Online Reader (Mangadex)

Hey everybody! So here’s volume 11. At this point the manga is becoming more and more minimalist. This volume has one chapter that has no text at all. And we’re now at the point where there’s no more sound effects, and it switches to only using visual metaphors. There’s a FEW in this volume but I’m pretty sure this is where the last ones in the series are.

So, given that there’s not a lot left, I’m trying to see if I can sort of push to get through the rest of the series fairly soon. Right now I’m in the middle of cleaning and redrawing volume 16 out of 17. Then theoretically typesetting shouldn’t take too long since there isn’t a lot of text and at this point it shouldn’t need so many corrections because I had a little more experience at this point. Not that there’s many mistakes in these, for the most part they’re the sort of little misses you’d just notice after going over it an extra time. The other textual changes are mainly making it sound more natural or flow better. But anyhow, given there’s not a lot left I figured it might be a good idea to try to just really focus on this a bit and see if I can get to the end soon rather than draw it out doing one every 2-3 weeks. So for now I’m cleaning ahead till I get to the end and typesetting enough so the QCers have something to check while I’m working ahead. Though we’ll see what happens. Sometimes when I do this sorta thing, like I did with Takeshi a couple years ago, I got kinda burnt out. But at this point there’s 6 volumes left and I only need to clean about 3 and a half so it shouldn’t be too bad.

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

Kokou no Hito Volume 11 (Ch. 103-112)
Mega
Online Reader (Mangadex)

Aand we’re done with volume 10! Now after about five and a half months since the first release, we’re into the double digits. There’s 7 volumes to go now. We’re definitely getting there! So at this point we’re a good ways into the small story arc between the Northern Alps Traversal arc and the final big arc which is the K2 arc. Generally speaking there’s less text from here on out besides a few wordy chapters. So because of that it SHOULD *IN THEORY* take less time to do. I’m really trying to prevent this side project where we redo old stuff to take that long. Then I can move onto some other project maybe. The last chapter with any sound effects is the beginning of volume 11. But there’s still plenty of double page spreads to join and lots of redraws to do so it’s not MUCH easier. Still gonna take a lot of work, but I’m working on it.

Besides this, we’ve got Jojo coming up and I started on Shima volume 11 but haven’t gotten too far yet. Enjoy, everyone!

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

Kokou no Hito Volume 10 (Ch. 93-102)
Mega
Online Reader (Mangadex)

Ooookay, and now with this we are past the half way point of the series. 9 volumes done and 8 to go. This volume also finishes off the end of the K2 Simulation Training Northern Alps All-Mountain Ridge Traversal arc. So quite a lot is concluded here. And then it gets well into the next arc about Mori Buntarō working on Mount Fuji and introduces Takemura and all sorts of stuff. So this is another good one! I’m really glad we’ve made it this far. It’s taken about 5 months from the first release to this point (And we were working on volume 1 for a couple weeks at that point). So we’re making pretty good time, given the hardest stuff is in the beginning. We’re nearly at the point where Sakamoto-sensei stops using sound-effects. There’s fewer and fewer until volume 11 which has the last one (Unless I missed one somewhere). Once we’re at that point, getting these done should be a little faster. I’m pretty happy about the pace this is given it’s a “fix-up project” and not doing a series from scratch. Once this project’s all done I can probably pick up another project we’d be doing from scratch.

Anyhow, check it out!

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

Kokou no Hito Volume 9 (Ch. 83-92)
Mega
Online Reader (Mangadex)

K so this one is all done too! This one gets to the climax of the K2 Simulation Training Ridge Traversal arc. Though there’s still a few more chapters of it in the first half of volume 9. This is 8 our of 17 so we’re now ALMOST half way through the series. I’ve had a bunch of time to do this this month since there’s no Jojo or 3-Gatsu to do. But like I said, it’s still gonna take a while cause I can’t just marathon through these. It becomes sorta mind-numbing at a point when you’ve been doing it for hours a day. And all the redrawing still takes a while every volume.

Shima volume 11 is coming along nicely, I’ve got about 3 chapters in that left to translate now. So that’s what I’m working on at the moment. Hope ya’ll enjoy!

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

Kokou no Hito Volume 8 (Ch. 73-82)
Mega
Online Reader (Mangadex)

Whew! So here’s volume 7. This one we got done pretty quickly. We’ve got 10 volumes to go now. As always I’m trying to work on this enough to get it done without taking too long because it’s already translated, but I’ve gotta balance it with other stuff. I’m trying to avoid any issues and do all the redraws and get all the fonts looking good and all that. I kind of don’t like the styles OMFGG chose for the most part. A lot of font choices weren’t great and the text was often not sized right (Usually it was too big and text had a lot of words with hyphens going onto two lines when that wasn’t needed). A lot of the I’m mainly trying to keep this project from being TOO long so I can move onto some other project I haven’t already translated sometime soon. I have a couple ideas for those. Anyhow we’ve already started on volume 8 at this point, too. There’s way fewer sound effects and less overall text at this point in the manga so it SHOULD take less time per volume from here. So I’m aiming for around one every 2-3 weeks, if all goes well.

Meanwhile I’m also doing Shima, and volume 11 is about half way translated now. I kinda feel better doing just these two things rather than juggling four or so projects at once so I feel a bit better. I’ve had a lot of stuff going on outside scanlating this year so it’s good not to do everything at once.

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

Kokou no Hito Volume 7 (Ch. 63-72)
Mega
Online Reader (Mangadex)

Okay, here we are, volume 6. Man this is a really good one. I love this series. It’s just got such powerful expression of emotion. You really feel Buntarō here as he’s dealing with the rejection and hazing and competition from his other teammates. We’re now in the middle of the Northern Alps All-Mountain Traversal arc which goes until the beginning of volume 9. It definitely has gotten easier to do these because there’s less text and less redrawing. But there’s still a considerable amount of work in each of these so I don’t think I’m ever going to get to the point where I can bang out like one a week (until maybe the last couple, maybe?). So now we’re a little more than a third of the way through the series and I’m glad we’re making good progress on this but it’ll probably take a few more months at least to finish.

So in the meantime, I’ve done a bunch of cleaning on volume 7. I’ve translated the first like 3 chapters of Shima volume 11. And I’m also trying to get some of the other Gintama volumes scanned. That Gintama project of redoing all the volumes from magazine versions to volume scans is basically on hold until Kokou no Hito is done, but I do want to at least get them all scanned so that initial step is out of the way. And there’s so many of them I need to do it a little at a time. If we have folks volunteering to work on that we can get those out faster but I’m not really counting on it. There’s 26 more volumes to redo so even if one doesn’t take too long the whole project would end up taking six months at a minimum if I focused SOLELY on that, and the end result would be just a somewhat nicer more complete release. In that same amount of time I could probably do a decent sized manga from scratch so I’m mainly just trying to keep it as a side project and I dunno if we’ll ever finish all of it. But yeah I want to at least keep moving on all these things. As usual I’m constantly trying to balance work on this stuff with other things I want to spend my time on.

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

Kokou no Hito Volume 6 (Ch. 53-62)
Mega
Online Reader (Mangadex)

WHEW, here’s volume 5! Now we’re well into the real meat of the manga. The speech at the start of chapter 52 here is one of the highlights of the series. It feels like it’s where Buntarō really feels like he’s got firm opinions about his life and how he’s living it that he lets the reader in on. And now we’ve finally got underway with the Northern Alps All-Mountain Ridge Traversal.

This volume was a bunch easier because the amount of text is letting up and the amount of sound effects and fonts is going down. So hopefully these don’t take too long. There’s still 12 more volumes to go now. These don’t take a lot of focused concentration but they do take a lot of hours regardless to get the whole volume done. And we’ve got a few people quality checking now which helps. I’d really prefer this “spruce up” of this series didn’t end up taking many months, because it’s taking up my time for everything else I wanna do. But the hardest volumes are behind us now.

In the meantime, we just released a bunch of stuff and I’m still working on Shima volume 10. Gonna try to really focus on that now that this is done.

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

Kokou no Hito Volume 5 (Ch. 43-52)
Mega
Online Reader (Mangadex)