Ikoku Nikki Ch. 50

Whew. Well folks, finally, at chapter 50, after about 5 years of serialization, we have finally come full circle and the timeline has reached the events of chapter 1. Something I’m sure plenty of us forgot about completely that chapter 1 takes place when Asa is in her third year of high school. But man we’ve come a long way, haven’t we, with this series?

Anyhow, there seems to be no chapter next month, but volume 10 is coming out in February 2023. So there’ll probably be a chapter the following month. At the moment I’m in the middle of translating Shima volume 12, so look forward to all that, ya’ll. Happy holidays.

Also check out the new one-off series of short stories we just finished, Gishi Sanjinden! It’s awesome and took forever to finish.

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

Ikoku Nikki 50
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Section Chief Shima Kōsaku Volume 11

Section Chief Shima Kо̄saku Volume 11

Hey everybody, we’re back with volume 11. This volume took a bit longer than the last couple because we did uh… Three 3-Gatsu no Lion chapters, an Ikoku Nikki chapter, and a whole volume of DRCL in between. Which really took a lot out of me to be honest, that DRCL volume. Compared to that, translating this volume where we there’s long sections about consulting companies and foreign aid and inter-company deal making around building factories was downright easy. Anyhow I’m glad to be back on doing this series and I’m thankful to all those that helped out. A lot of these projects are mainly just me doing all or most of the jobs so it can be a bit exhausting. Like I mentioned in some of the other posts here about Shima, I dunno how long a lot of these volumes will end up taking me since there’s no limit to how fast we could potentially do these since the series is already out in Japanese. I basically need to find my own personal equilibrium where I’m making progress on this but not going so overboard that I get burnt out or I’m neglecting some other part of my life. It can be tricky at times.

I should give a warning that this story does get a bit dark at times and one of the darker events happens in this volume, so be warned. This volume also takes place entirely in the Philippines, and has a lot more story talking about what it was like there in the early 90’s and Japan’s relationship with them. Anyhow, enjoy, everyone! Tell other folks about this series if you like it, I think it’s really something unique and unlike anything else I’ve ever read. I hope we can grow the English-speaking fandom somewhat.

Check out my summary here of what this series is about if you haven’t seen it yet.

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

Section Chief Shima Kо̄saku Volume 11 (Ch99-109)
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3-Gatsu no Lion (March Comes in Like a Lion) 197


Image Source: 壱

Ooookay, here we are at this month’s 3-Gatsu no Lion chapter! We’re now back to the Kiriyama/Nikaidou/Shimada story. I hope you all enjoy! See you next month for the next one, probably.

We’re pretty far along with Shima Kōsaku v11 and we’re trying to get that done soonish. Though we had so many things in a row with working on that and DRCL I’m trying not to over-extend myself working on this stuff in all my free time.

If you didn’t see before we released our finished version of volume 16 with all the various changes and extras and updates here.

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

3-Gatsu no Lion 197
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#DRCL midnight children Volume 2

Ok, so here is DRCL volume 2! This one was also a huge slog! I spent several hours a day on this almost every day for 3 weeks to get this finished! I had some help which I really appreciate but I ended up needing to do the majority of it myself and this was a huge, massively time consuming task. Thanks to PronouncedSmith for doing a bunch of redrawing of the last two chapters, Luigi for doing most of the typesetting, and them plus Su Shi and Ai for helping check and edit (Which was itself a huge task). I’m really hoping I can get more help by the time the next volume comes out or I may not be able to continue this project. Even after speeding up a lot after figuring out a good workflow from doing volume 1, this still took forever mainly due to all the redrawing, double-page spread joining, and getting the whites white and blacks black and all that to make it look good.

As last time, this is scanned at 1200dpi of the physical raw and manually has all the redraws and page joins and everything done. That’s on top of translating and typesetting and all that. So we have an uncompressed version that’s really huge (5.2GB) and the more compressed version which is still pretty big which is what goes on Mangadex due to filesize limitations there which is more like 500MB.

Uncompressed Volume 2

The next volume comes out in Spring 2023! I’ll see what the heck is going on in my life at that point. I just really can’t dedicate nearly a month of my time doing every job on each of these.

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

#DRCL midnight children Volume 2 (Ch. 8-14)
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Ikoku Nikki Ch. 49

Oookay here we are with this month’s Ikoku Nikki! It’s a good one, hope you enjoy. Feels like it’s continuing its examination of the major themes of the story that have been building up for a while. There should be a regular chapter next issue where Ikoku Nikki has the opening color pages.

DRCL volume 2 is finally almost done. I’ve basically just been working on that every day for the past 3 weeks or so. And I’ve translated some of Shima volume 11 but mostly I’ve been prioritizing DRCL so that’s probably not gonna be done for a little while. 3-Gatsu no Lion isn’t in the upcoming Young Animal issue so the next chapter of that is probably in the following issue. I’m gonna feel good once DRCL is done because that’s just been a huge headache and every step has been a slog. Ok, well, enjoy this chapter, folks!

Also check out the new one-off series of short stories we just finished, Gishi Sanjinden! It’s awesome and took forever to finish.

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

Ikoku Nikki 49
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3-Gatsu no Lion (March Comes in Like a Lion) 196


Image Source: Shiro021

Okay! Here’s the next one! This is the first time 3-Gatsu has been in two issues in a row in a while.
I’m working on DRCL volume 2 right now which is turning into a massive headache and just destroying any free time I thought I might be getting in the second half of October. So anyhow I’m gonna go back to that now.
The next 3-Gatsu no Lion chapter will be… either next issue of Young Animal or the one after. So either November 11th or 25th. We’ll see!!

Edit: The Young Animal site updated and looks like there’s no chapter in next issue. So likely the next 3-Gatsu no Lion chapter will be in the issue that comes out the 25th Japan time. Unless it gets delayed again.

If you didn’t see before we released our finished version of volume 16 with all the various changes and extras and updates here.

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

3-Gatsu no Lion 196
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3-Gatsu no Lion (March Comes in Like a Lion) 195


Image Source: 嵐

Woo it’s been a while huh? 3-Gatsu was on hiatus because Umino-sensei was sick last month. But here’s a new chapter for you all. It’s more of Akari’s big adventure! Lots of fun as usual. There’s no new chapter next issue of Young Animal but the next chapter will PROBABLY be in the following issue coming out around the 10th of November, unless something else changes.

Edit: Apparently the next chapter is in next issue coming out on October 28th Japan time. It took them a while to update their website and it wasn’t mentioned in the digital magazine.

If you didn’t see before we released our finished version of volume 16 with all the various changes and extras and updates here.

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

3-Gatsu no Lion 195
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Section Chief Shima Kōsaku Volume 10

Section Chief Shima Kо̄saku Volume 10

Whew, we finally make it to the double digits. Here is Shima volume 10, everyone. After now over a year of work we’re at volume 10 of the 17 volumes of this part. Really I’m quite proud of this, it’s been tons and ton of work translating this and getting the project constantly moving. When you’re doing a big project like this where it can potentially take years and years if you don’t keep up a decent pace it can be hard to be motivated. It’s such a long journey to try to do a series this long and you need to work on it pretty regularly if you want to get it each release finished and in a releasable state at a quality level you’re proud of. And we got this done on top of Gishi Sanjinden and Ikoku Nikki this month which was a huge challenge (Go check those out if you haven’t yet, they’re great). For this I had to basically finish one task and immediately start on another for the past several weeks. It’s been exhausting.

But all that considered, we’ve finally made it to the Philippines. The Philippines arc in Section Chief goes for a pretty long time and it’s an interesting look at a totally different country with a different culture and different economic standards. This arc goes for a while and a lot happens, so I hope you all enjoy it. I feel like I keep saying “A lot happens” in every one of these posts but I guess when you release a whole volume at once that’s always the case. And generally I want people to get an idea of the story from reading it rather than me summarizing things and spoiling them too much in these posts.

And we’re now far past the mid-way point of Section Chief Shima Kōsaku, though we’re like… about an 8th of the way through the series as a whole or something. Like I said I’m not making any concrete plans about doing the whole series because that would take thousands of hours and several years but at least reaching the end of “Section Chief” is getting closer and closer and that feels pretty good after so much work, as that’s the story I really wanted to focus on getting out there. Though so long as I pace myself and don’t get burned out I’ll be okay with doing more past that point.

There’s a new 3-Gatsu no Lion chapter coming out later this week for the first time in a while, so won’t be long until then. Look forward to that. Anyhow, enjoy everyone!

Check out my summary here of what this series is about if you haven’t seen it yet.

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

Section Chief Shima Kо̄saku Volume 10 (Ch87-98)
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Ikoku Nikki Ch. 48

Whew! Here’s the first full new chapter in a while of this series. There was no new chapter in the last two months and before that it was a mini “small talk” chapter.
This one’s pretty good! Feels like we never left. There’s a regular chapter next issue as well. See you then!

At the moment we’re working on getting Shima volume 10 done, which is almost there. Might get finished in the next few days depending. And there should be a new 3-Gatsu no Lion chapter coming out next week.

Also check out the new one-off series of short stories we just finished, Gishi Sanjinden! It’s awesome and took forever to finish.

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

Ikoku Nikki 48
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Gishi Sanjinden (Falsified History: An Account of the Sanjin (Mountain People)) by Shino Ura

Ooookaay so finally at long last here this is, the sequel to Yuugai Muzai Gangu (Toys Harmful But Unprohibited). Gishi Sanjinden. We also did one independent one-shot by Shino Ura called Mugen Tengoku last year, which is the last thing Shino Ura has published so far.

This is an anthology of short stories that are really weird and surreal. It’s sort of a sequel to Yuugai Muzai Gangu. Though all the stories are unique there’s a loose connection between all of them. Like little references and sometimes characters from previous ones make cameos. These were originally a collection of webcomics and then they were compiled into tankoubons under the Comic Beam label of the company Enterbrain (They weren’t actually in the magazine Comic Beam though). It’s got all sorts of weird stuff in it. It’s a lot of psychological and logically perplexing stories with a running theme about what’s real and what isn’t. It’s kind of in the style of short stories by Jorge Luis Borges. It’s really good and I hope everybody reads this and Yuugai Muzai Gangu (You don’t really need to read them in any order though). This tankoubon originally came out in 2019 though it contains some one-shots which were published on the author’s website beforehand (like 2016-2018), but they then had changes/additions when they were compiled into a book like this. A couple pages were in color in the webcomic so we included those in this release. You can buy it in Japanese to support the author if you want.

Originally I was going to do this right after Yuugai Muzai Gangu but all sorts of other stuff got in the way. Then when I started it I realized it was going to take WAY longer than Yuugai Muzai Gangu which we did all of in a couple weeks. This collection is a LOT wordier and pretty different but great in different ways. It ended up taking several days to translate each of these chapters besides 3 and 4 which are fairly short. And there was a pretty extensive editing process, a lot more redraws, and that sort of thing too. Honestly I’m quite happy to have this done. I hope everybody checks it out. It doesn’t take too long to read so long as you’re reading it in your native language.

Also this is the last publication by Shino Ura that’s been released besides their webcomics that haven’t been put into tankoubons and one 4-page story that was in an anthology magazine a few years ago. We may do that at some point but I don’t think I wanna scanlate the webcomics. If Shino Ura publishes more works at some point maybe we’ll think about working on them but we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it. The author’s website is here if you wanna check that out. The comics published as books aren’t up there anymore but everything else is.

Oh I also found out recently that one of Shino Ura’s webcomics “Prologue Episode” was published officially in English as one of the one-shots in “Glaeolia 2” by the small-print publisher Glacier Bay Books. Here’s their page for it. Though it seems like it’s out of print now. You can maybe find it somewhere and there’s a form to request they print more.

Well, that’s it. I’m finally putting this out into the world now after like a year and a half of periodically working on it or thinking about working on it. I hope ya’ll like it.

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

Gishi Sanjinden by Shino Ura
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