Whew! Ok here’s this one! There’s no 3-Gatsu next issue so the next one will be June 24th Japan time at the earliest. In the meantime I’ll be working on more of this sorta stuff I’ve been doing.
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 192
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All right, here we are with Shima Kōsaku volume 5! The last one was about 7 weeks ago. But we’re still going at a pretty good pace I’d say. DRCL took up all my time for a while plus the Ikoku Nikki stuff. But now finally I’m all that and now I can relax a bit. Which I probably won’t do anyhow I’ll probably just work on translating something else. Probably the next Shima volume.
Check out my summary here of what this series is about if you haven’t seen it yet.
Ok so uh this volume is made up of the rest of the Kyoto arc. As in most of this series, it’s made up of a lot of episodic events with a few changes in some larger plotlines. A lot of the Shima Kо̄saku series is about examining different types of people and different parts of life. Seeing personal struggles in the world from different perspectives. That’s part of what I really like about it. But as a result there is a LOT of text to translate and a LOT of subject matter that you need to understand well enough to word properly in English. So each of these is a lot of work. I’m sure if you read a lot of manga you can tell a lot of the word bubbles have a lot more text than most other series. The vast majority of the effort with these goes into translating as opposed to something like DRCL which was easy-ish to translate but then took forever to clean and redraw. Anyhow if you’d like to volunteer to help at one of the jobs (cleaning or typesetting or proofreading mainly with this series) out you can feel free to email me kewl0210@gmail.com.
Next volume is one of my favorites because it’s where two of the main characters of the series finally show up. So look forward to that.
Also, we have a new Discord! Come hang out and talk about manga. https://discord.gg/Nw45rfJYZF
Section Chief Shima Kо̄saku Volume 5 (Ch37-46)
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And here we are with volume 9. Like last time, this is the volume versions of all these chapters we original did using magazine raws. They’re slightly upgraded/corrected with some added screentones and stuff but generally speaking they’re pretty similar to the magazine versions. This series isn’t that much work to do these for because the digital raws are generally good quality so the more annoying stuff from physical scanning and manual cleaning isn’t needed. And also there’s just not many changes. The biggest change is the cover, inside cover, and extra page at the end. The volume versions of this series are much easier to do than all the other series we do two versions for. The next chapter is scheduled for next month at the usual time on the 7th Japan time. I’m gonna get back to working on Shima Kosaku v5 now. See ya later!
Also, we have a new Discord! Come hang out and talk about manga. https://discord.gg/fxrmZufp
Ikoku Nikki Volume 9 (Ch. 41-45)
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Here ya go ya’ll. Chapter 46. There was no chapter last month so this is the first one in a bit. There’s another regular chapter next month. Our volume-version scanlation for the new volume, volume 9, is almost done. So that should be released whenever the last couple things get finished. Meanwhile now we’ve finally got DRCL released I can get back to working on Shima Kousaku. Sooo that’s what I’m working on. How are you all doing?
Also, we have a new Discord! Come hang out and talk about manga. https://discord.gg/fxrmZufp
Ikoku Nikki 46
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Ooook, well, finally this is all done. I really hope you all enjoy this because I put a ton of effort into it. This was one of the most difficult single volumes I’ve worked on, when it’s all said and done.
So, for those that don’t know, this is volume 1 of Sakamoto Shinichi’s new series, DRCL midnight children. We did the original pilot one-shot, episode 0, back when it came out in Grand Jump (this volume contains this original one shot now called “episode 0” as well). This is an adaptation of Bram Stoker’s Dracula, though quite a bit is changed and is Sakamoto-sensei’s personal version of it. This is his first new series since Innocent ended back in early 2020 which we scanlated over the course of 8-ish years. As always his artwork is REALLY REALLY detailed and beautiful and the only way to see it properly is from the physical version, since Shueisha’s only digital raws are really low resolution relative to the paper version. Because of that this volume took a REALLY long time and a lot of effort to finish properly. So I really hope you all enjoy it.
I ended up having to do quite a lot of the tasks myself. And the difficulty in this series and in Sakamoto Shinichi’s other series is that there’s a LOT of detail in the artwork which could easily be messed up if it’s not cleaned properly and there’s also a LOT of redraws to do. So this took a lot of time researching the original novel for the translations to make sure it’s authentic to how Dracula by Bram Stoker sounds, any direct lines or references to the original novel need to match it. Then on top of that is scanning the raw in high resolution, cropping all 247 pages, leveling it and manually burning the dark colors so detail isn’t lost, doing tons of redraws and joining double-page spreads, and then typesetting and checking everything. All while keeping the files at high resolution which makes everything a lot slower so we can release it without having to compress it much. It’s a process which requires multiple passes of the whole 247 page volume.
Anyhow, because of that I’m really burnt out on working on this and I’m not sure if I can continue working on this series. It really took up about half of my free time for about two months now. It’s just mentally exhausting to have this much work to do on your own and no one else volunteered. So I’ll see how I feel about it when volume 2 comes out. As usual we’re only doing volume versions of this series because I don’t have time to work on the magazine version which looks way, way worse because of how badly Shueisha compresses their digital manga making them look blurry and awful. So I just wanna get that out of the way upfront, though I am really proud of how this turned out. If someone wants to volunteer to help, specifically we’d need help related to cleaning and redrawing, you can email me to discuss it at kewl0210@gmail.com. Volume 2 is slated to come out in “Autumn 2022” so that could be any time from September to November, it usually comes out on the 19th of the month.
So all that said, I hope everyone checks it out! It’s a great series and I’m excited to see where it goes from here regardless of anything else. We’re working on a bunch more stuff which hopefully gets done soon.
Also, if you want it, I made a super-high-res uncompressed version where we don’t scale it down at the end for file-size reasons. Keep in mind the “regular” version is already huge, it’s 2560px tall. This version would be the totally uncompressed version from the 1200dpi scan which results in pages 8580px tall. They don’t allow filesizes this big on Mangadex but I figured I’d put it here if someone would prefer that.
Uncompressed Volume 1
Also, we have a new Discord! Come hang out and talk about manga. https://discord.gg/Nw45rfJYZF
#DRCL midnight children Volume 1 (Ch. 1-7 + episode 0)
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And here we are, at last, at the conclusion of this story arc. Chapter 191! The next chapter is scheduled for May 27th Japan time so we’ll see you then.
At the moment I’m working on finishing DRCL v1 which took WAY longer to do than I expected because of the huge effort it takes to clean and redraw. But now it’s finally almost done so it’ll probably be out one of these days. Also I’m working on Shima Kosaku volume 5. Also if it’s not already obvious there was no Ikoku Nikki chapter this month, but there is one next month. Also volume 9 is coming out soon so we’re going to do a volume version of the series for that at some point, though that’s not the highest priority.
I just moved into a new apartment so a lot of my time in the last month was spent packing and unpacking and figuring out what I needed to buy and fixing all these little issues that came up, but I think finally that’s all settled and I can get back into doing regular work on this stuff. Mostly I wanna get more Shima Kosaku done, but I’ll probably take some breaks from that to do some smaller things.
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 191
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Ooooookay, and here is Shima volume 4! I think it’s been around a month since the last volume. So it’s all going at a pretty good pace I’d say!
Check out my summary here of what this series is about if you haven’t seen it yet.
Uh, so a lot goes on in this volume. It’s kind of hard to think of much to say in these posts because it’s like an entire couple of story arcs. Seriously a lot happens, I keep translating these chapters and thinking “How is all this just one chapter?” The series has multiple plot threads going at any given time and it jumps between them. This volume has a lot of conclusions to some of the ones started in the first 3, but it also starts a bunch more. And in the grand scheme of the Section Chief arc there’s still a ton that hasn’t even gotten started. But I hope you all like this one! I dunno what pace we’re gonna end up getting these out yet. But if folks want to join and help out with it you can always email me at kewl0210@gmail.com.
Anyhow, besides this I’m working on DRCL volume 1. I’ve been going back and forth with this and that. And basically just trying to balance these projects with the rest of my other life obligations. We don’t really have any particular set schedule for coming out with volumes of Shima but we’ll play it by ear and see how it goes. Speaking of which Hirokane-sensei announced that the new part of Shima Kōsaku that’s starting will be called “Outside Director Shima Kōsaku”. So that’s pretty cool. Even though we’re working on the part of this series from the 80’s and early 90’s it’s still going and is still a major influential series a lot of people talk about. I really hope getting it out in English like this can gain it some more interest.
Also, we have a new Discord! Come hang out and talk about manga. https://discord.gg/Nw45rfJYZF
Section Chief Shima Kо̄saku Volume 4 (Ch28-36)
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Here’s 190! I think we’re nearing the end of this match now. I really like it, it’s been a great examination of Nikaidou’s inner life as a character.
Well we just released a bunch of stuff back to back the last three days. Go check it out everyone. I’m pretty exhausted from it but now I’m going back to working on volume 1 of DRCL and volume 4 of Shima Kosaku until those are done, which will take some time. The next 3-Gatsu chapter won’t be in the next issue so it’ll probably come out around this time next month.
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 190
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Ooookay! And now finally, he we are, the last one of these releases. For those that haven’t been keeping track, we’ve been making our way through the volumes redoing the magazine versions with better raws over the course of the last few years now because we didn’t have the resources to do it when the volumes had just come out. Though we did previously do volumes 1-2 at one point, this is an updated version that improves those releases and brings the quality up to the level of our other Jojolion volume releases. This version has the best versions of the color pages I could find with and without the insert texts from the magazine, all the pages are properly sized so the single pages are the same width, all the sound effects are typeset, all the text is updated to our current typesetting style, and I also went through the translation and tried to improve it where that was possible. Generally speaking that just involved trying to make the phrasing sound more natural and fixing a couple super-minor mistakes from back in 2014 when we first did these. They use the same cleans as last time though as those were already good.
With that, I think we’re all done with JoJolion. It’s been a verrrry long journey. We did 27 volumes in both magazine and volume versions (The first 8 chapters were only ever done with volume versions but the rest we did twice. But technically we redid those again in this release. And I think we’ve technically released chapter 9 three times now if you count the magazine one.) And now I think the work is finally complete. We may go back and fix something if a mistake or something is found, but otherwise I think that’s it. We’re not gonna do something like re-release chapters with textless high-res versions of color pages from new art books or redo everything if some sorta collector’s edition with better quality paper comes out. I think for those things it’s better to just encourage people to seek out the artbooks/re-releases on their own rather than re-update releases years after the fact for something like that. Otherwise we’re spending tons and tons of time just re-doing stuff when we could be doing something new. And I think everyone’s pretty happy with what we’ve put out now. I hope you all enjoy it, JoJolion is a great series!
We’ll see you in Part 9, whenever that starts!
Also, we have a new Discord! Come hang out and talk about manga. https://discord.gg/fxrmZufp
JoJolion Volume 1 (Ch1-5)
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JoJolion Volume 2 (Ch6-9)
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Whew! Here’s 45, I’m beat. Ya know this series is seriously hard to translate and I hope reading this folks can kinda see why. It’s a lot of wading through a lot of conversations about abstract nebulous ideas and trying to make sense of them in a language that doesn’t require noting the subject or topic of the sentence. Especially with in-media-res conversations and when word bubbles are just stuck on a page with no clues as to who’s saying what. You need to a ton of careful parsing to find the common thread of the theme or the unsaid-ideas in order to be able to understand what’s actually going on in order to create anything like a coherent translation. Also this had nearly the most text of any chapter in this series. I’m exhausted! I hope ya’ll enjoy it because it’s definitely a good chapter. See ya same-ish time next month.
Also, we have a new Discord! Come hang out and talk about manga. https://discord.gg/fxrmZufp
Ikoku Nikki 45
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