#DRCL midnight children Volume 1

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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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3-Gatsu no Lion (March Comes in Like a Lion) 191

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Image Source: IceGlock

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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Section Chief Shima Kōsaku Volume 4

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Section Chief Shima Kо̄saku Volume 4

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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3-Gatsu no Lion (March Comes in Like a Lion) 190

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Image Source: 嵐

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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JoJolion Volumes 1-2 (Version 2)

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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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Ikoku Nikki Ch. 45

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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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Section Chief Shima Kōsaku Volume 3

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Section Chief Shima Kо̄saku Volume 3

Whew! Here it is, y’all! Volume 3 of Section Chief Shima Kо̄saku! If you didn’t see the volume 1 post I did a whole rundown of the history of this series and what it’s about and all sorts of stuff like that. Check it out here if you haven’t yet.

This took a while because I was doing Takeshi every day which took ALL of my time, and after that I was kinda burnt out and needed to focus on some non-manga stuff for a while. I’d like to try to get these out faster but this series has quite a lot of text and requires a lot of thought to make sure it flows like normal English. That and I probably over-did it with Takeshi and I need to take more time away from fan translating. The “Section Chief Arc”, if you wanna call it that, is 17 volumes long. So it may take some time but we’ll get through all of it eventually.

Anyhow currently I’m working on more Shima, the new versions of volumes 1-2 of JoJolion are almost done they’re just having the typesetting checked/revised by one of our typesetters when they have time but everything else is done. Also volume 1 of DRCL Midnight Children has FINALLY come out after the series has been going for like a year and a half. So we’re working on that, but that’s another big project I gotta find time for among everything else I got goin’ on. So yeah, there’s lots to look forward to.

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

Section Chief Shima Kо̄saku Volume 3 (Ch18-27)
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3-Gatsu no Lion (March Comes in Like a Lion) 189

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Image Source: Usagi

189! Some good stuff in this chapter. More perspective on the psychology of Kiriyama and Nikaidou. The next chapter is next issue, so see you in a couple weeks! Also Shima Kosaku v3 is almost done so we should have that out soon.

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://t.co/DgwRJE06j9?amp=1

3-Gatsu no Lion 189
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Seikimatsu Leader Den Takeshi! Ch. 239-247 (Wide-Ban 13 Complete) (End) & Toriko 2002 One-Shot

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Well… uh… somehow, despite all the odds, and how this series turned out to be a monstrously difficult undertaking which I thought from the start we’d never get to the end… it’s done.

I worked on doing the vast majority of this in the last year and 4 months, but this project started back in November of 2016. So it’s been going over 5 years now. It feels surreal that after all that it’s finally done. Back at the beginning I thought “Well let’s just jump in and see how far we get” but this series is a gag manga with tons and tons of text, making it take an extremely long time to translate and typeset. That’s why we only got the first 3 wide-bans done in the first 4 years, because only from October 2020 on did I have enough time left to work on it seriously every day. And now it’s done!

I’ve talked about this series a lot in these posts and I dunno if I can think of much more to add. And I know doing manga that’ve already ended a while ago aren’t as popular, but seriously it’s awesome. It’s an all-time great comedic manga with lots of heart and lots of fun. I really hope more people check it out now that the whole series has been released. I seriously worked my ass off to get it all done. Thanks a ton to Joeabandonedmine, Pronouncedsmith, Luigi, and Rowan for their work cleaning and typesetting. Doing this huge thing alone would’ve really sucked and I probably would’ve given up a long time ago if that were the case.

Also coincidentally at the same time we finished the original 2002 one-shot of Toriko. By the same author, this ran in a 2002 issue of Shounen Jump before the Barbarian Arc started. Toriko himself appears in that Takeshi chapter that was in the same issue of Jump, which is chapter 210 from wide-ban 12. I wanted to do this for a while, but it’s kind of always been on the back-burner. But since Takeshi is all done we figured we’d do this too. It’s kind of a pilot episode to Toriko and it’s more or less the Galala Crocodile arc but you can tell Shimabukuro-sensei was still refining some things and some bits were taken out/changed/saved for later once it became a series and he had to setup stuff to be happening down the road. There’s ANOTHER Toriko one-shot that was released in Jump in 2007 which is sort of a refinement of this one, doing basically the same story again. We’ll try to do at some point.

SO, with all that said, if you count Toriko, I’ve been working on Shimabukuro Mitsutoshi’s manga from 2008 to now in 2022. Which is uh, like 13 years and change. We did all of Toriko, all of RING, and all of Takeshi. Any new manga he’s doing are likely already licensed and will have official releases (Support those if you can, Toriko already has one.) so I’m probably not gonna work on any other series by him (Though I do wanna do the 2007 Toriko one-shot and the two Takeshi original one-shots at some point.) So in a lot of ways this is the end of an era for me and HWMN. OH, and go check out Toriko if you haven’t yet, it’s a good series.

So, next I have a handful of shorter things I wanna get done in the coming couple months and we’ll be doing more of Shima Kosaku. But this is the last of a big list of manga I wanted to *get to someday*, so maybe I’ll take it easy a bit rather than spend 4+ hours a day working on scanlating. Anyhow, ba-bye! I hope you all enjoy this series!

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

Edit: Some of the links seemingly didn’t get updated from the last post somehow. They should all be fixed.

Seikimatsu Leader Den Takeshi! Wide-Ban 239
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Seikimatsu Leader Den Takeshi! Wide-Ban 240
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Seikimatsu Leader Den Takeshi! Wide-Ban 241
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Seikimatsu Leader Den Takeshi! Wide-Ban 242
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Seikimatsu Leader Den Takeshi! Wide-Ban 243
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Seikimatsu Leader Den Takeshi! Wide-Ban 244
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Seikimatsu Leader Den Takeshi! Wide-Ban 245
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Seikimatsu Leader Den Takeshi! Wide-Ban 246
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Seikimatsu Leader Den Takeshi! Wide-Ban 247
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Seikimatsu Leader Den Takeshi! Wide-Ban 13 (Ch 229-247)
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Toriko 2002 One-Shot
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