Ikoku Nikki Volume 11 (End)

Well folks, here it is. With this, we have completed Ikoku Nikki in its entirety. All 11 volumes. This volume contains the last four chapters and they’re pretty much exactly the same as the magazine versions. There’s a few screentones added and text got slightly bigger in one or two places but besides that they’re the same, so this wasn’t really a big effort to scanlate. The biggest differences are the cover and a couple nice bonus drawings right at the end.

We’ve worked on this series for about 3 4 years and it’s been a delight the whole time. It’s been a VERY difficult series to translate to make sure we understood everything properly and convey all the complicated speech patterns and character quirks in English. I really appreciate Yamashita-sensei for all her hard work bringing us this series. All the emotional complexity and all the complicated relationships between the characters alive and dead felt so authentic. If anyone was holding out till the end to read through the whole series, you’re in for a ride.

We’ll see what she does next and I’ll maybe think about working on it depending on what it is and what else is going on in my life at the time. Enjoy, everyone!

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

Ikoku Nikki Volume 11 (Ch. 51-54)
Catbox.moe
Mega
Online Reader (Mangadex)

Division Chief Shima Kōsaku Volume 2

Division Chief Shima Kо̄saku Volume 2

Hoo boy here it is, Division Chief Shima Kōsaku Volume 2. This volume was EXTREMELY difficult and hugely mentally exhausting to work on and I’m so glad it’s done. I remember when I first read through the Division Chief series and I got to this part and thought “oh shit when I get to this it’s going to be murder once we get to it”. And it was! Year-and-a-half-ago me was pretty on the ball.

So I gave an overview of the Division Chief arc here when we released volume 1. But Division Chief starts out as a series of one-shots similar to how the beginning of Section Chief started. The difference being that there’s actually way less, averaging around one chapter every 6 months. The first two chapters of this volume are that same sort of thing. But then after that it starts to become a weekly series again. Also the number of pages goes down to 16-ish per chapter rather than fluctuating from 18 to 32 pages per chapter before then. So the volumes starting next volume are about 13 chapters per volume. Also starting in chapter 18 the chapters no longer have the prefix “Series #” and then a roman numeral after the title, they go back to just being called “Step #”. And it starts at Step 18 because it’s the 18th chapter of Division Chief. This continues for the whole rest of the series.

Shima Kо̄saku Current Status Hiatus Chart 2

So now in just a couple short volumes, we’ve made it to the golden age of 1999. Remember 1999? I hope you do if you’re reading this manga about a 50 year old salaryman. Anyhow for those unaware, Japan’s economy was in a massive bubble in the late 80’s and then had a huge recession. This is typically called the bursting of the economic bubble. And that is now what’s examined at this point in the story starting this volume. In fact the Nikkei, the Tokyo Stock Exchange index, has only JUST NOW NEARLY gotten back to the all time high from 1989.

Nikkei Chart

The period after the economic bubble bursting was called the “lost decade” or “lost decades” plural depending on who you ask. The way the Shima Kōsaku series works is it somewhat reflects current events in the real world Japan. So while the Section Chief arc took place during the bubble economy with Japan businesses doing great, Division Chief starts right as its bursting and now we’re at the point in history where there’s been a recession going for years. So anyhow, I hope you’re up for that. When you put it that way it sounds kind of depressing, doesn’t it? It’s really not a depressing story, but the macro-scale real world events are always percolating in the background as Shima goes about his daily life and carrying out whatever role he’s currently serving.

So you’ll notice a difference in the story as it jumps from one-off stories to more of a continuous story again. Some major characters that will be around for a long time are introduced in this volume. Also this volume starts a story arc that lasts until the middle of volume 4 which is about the wine importing industry. As a result this volume was exceedingly mind-numbingly difficult and laborious to translate at times. There’s tons of stuff about the technicalities of winemaking, the wine business, how the grapes are grown, and different roles different people in the business play. All of which is difficult to understand at the best of times and I had to make sure I had all the terminology correct so it would sound familiar to an English speaker. That’s in addition to needing to figure out all the French words. I hope that comes through in the translation, because goddamn is there a lot of research required to make sure I understood and conveyed everything properly.

Anyhow, enjoy, everyone. This volume was a huge undertaking and it’s not gonna get too much easier from here. Until next time.

Oh also if anyone would like to volunteer to help out with checking/editing/cleaning/typesetting any of that for this project, please feel free to email me at kewl0210@gmail.com about it. We could always use more help on this series because of how much gosh-darn stuff there is in every single volume.

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

Division Chief Shima Kо̄saku Volume 2 (Ch11-20)
Catbox.moe
Mega
Online Reader (Mangadex)

#DRCL midnight children Volume 3

Here we are, we made it to DRCL volume 3! As usual we’re really focusing on making these the highest quality possible with the physical volume scans and we’re including an uncompressed version of this which is from the scan at 1200dpi.

So this one, much like the last one was a huge hassle to do. I did pretty much every job this time besides typesetting one chapter and doing final checks at the end. This volume contains chapters 15 to 21 and sort of the end of the first “arc” you could maybe call it, though this series doesn’t REALLY have traditional arcs, this volume has some pretty climactic moments. Part of what makes this series difficult is that it at some point started having a sort of “painterly” look where there’s a sort of texture with little white dots in the art. So you need to clean off all the noise from the texture of the page but if you go too far, you lose those dots which are part of the artwork. That’s in addition to tons of double page spreads which need to be joined and lots of redrawing and such.

I was debating whether or not to continue this series because DRCL midnight children has been licensed by Viz, so it may not be worth continuing at this point. Though they’re likely going to do what they do with most series which is release it 2+ years after it comes out in Japan. Volume 1 is set to come out September 19th of this year and I encourage you all to buy it regardless to support the author. I ultimately decided to do this volume at least to finish out the “arc”, but given how much work and how much of my time doing this took up I’m not sure if it’s worth continuing to work on. Let me know what you all think regarding continuing with this series or not. Otherwise I’ll probably just be focusing my time more on translating Shima Kōsaku.

Either way, next volume is scheduled for simply “2024”. So likely it’ll come out in January-March next year. As of now the newest chapter released in the magazine, Grand Jump, is chapter 34. Though keep in mind that from chapters 1 to 21 the chapters were only appearing in every other issue of the magazine, which meant chapters were coming out once per month since Grand Jump is a bi-weekly magazine. But from chapter 22 onward the series started running once every issue but at half length. So the chapters went from being around 28 pages per chapter down to around 13 to 15 pages per chapter. Which means volume 3 is likely to have up to around chapter 33-35-ish. I figure that’s worth mentioning if we choose to keep going.

Meanwhile I’m still working on Division Chief Shima Kōsaku volume 2 which is really hard because it’s full of stuff about the wine industry which takes time to research and understand properly. Though that’s most of the way done now. Next month the last volume of Ikoku Nikki comes out and there’s also going to be a new volume of The JOJOlands and 3-Gatsu no Lion which we’re going to be working on so we’ve got our work cut out for us. Anyhow, enjoy the new volume, everyone!

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

Uncompressed Volume 3

Edit: Apparently a big percentage of the uncompressed pages exported… brokenly. I re-exported it with different color settings and it should be all correct now. Apologies.

#DRCL midnight children Volume 3 (Ch. 15-21)
Mega
Online Reader (Mangadex)

The JOJOLands Ch. 6

And here we are at chapter 6! Uhh more stuff happens. The continuation of what’s basically the first arc of stealing the diamond. Next month The JOJOLands volume 1 finally comes out, so we’ll be doing that scanning the physical volume as we did with Jojolion. It comes out at the same time as the next chapter in Ultra Jump comes out, August 19th, which should have The JOJOLands on the cover. Actually for some reason apparently the volume comes out on August 18th an the next issue of the magazine comes out August 19th. So not QUITE the same day.

So there’s a bunch of other stuff coming up now. We’re working on DRCL midnight children volume 3 which I decided I’m gonna do after debating dropping the series since it’s licensed, though that may be the last one we do.

The last volume of Ikoku Nikki comes out on August 8th so we’ll be doing that, which should finish off that series assuming there isn’t a sequel or bonus chapter/volume or anything.

There hasn’t been any new 3-Gatsu no Lion chapters in Young Animal lately but a new volume of that comes out on August 29th so there’s likely going to be at least one new chapter around then. Also we’re going to do the volume scanlation and those always take a lot of work for 3-Gatsu because of all the changes Umino-sensei makes from magazine to volume.

I’m also working on Division Chief Shima Kōsaku volume 2 which is taking a while because the beginning of Division Chief is just really difficult to translate. There’s a lot of research that needs to be done for a lot of really specific business knowledge so it takes longer than usual. But I’m most of the way done now so that may not take too long.

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

The JOJOLands Ch. 6
Catbox.moe
Mega
Online Reader (Mangadex)

Division Chief Shima Kōsaku Volume 1

Division Chief Shima Kо̄saku Volume 1

Woo baby we made it to Division Chief. For those that are unaware, this is the continuation of the Shima Kōsaku series after Section Chief Shima Kōsaku which we finished a couple months ago. Check out my introduction of the Shima Kōsaku series I wrote back when we started if you haven’t yet. You could consider this “Part 2” much like the parts in Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure. With a new part, the volume numbers start over at 1 and the chapters also start over at 1, but effectively this is volume 18 of the overall “Shima Kōsaku series”.

So now I gotta explain a little bit about how the series works once it gets to Division Chief.
Originally Shima Kōsaku was just a single one-shot comic about a subsection chief who was told he was about to be promoted as long as he kept his head down and didn’t get into trouble in the next month or so, and then uh, does. This then turned into a number of sequel one-shot stories that came out months apart, then finally it became a regular series that ran weekly in the Kōdansha magazine Weekly Morning.

Then Section Chief Shima Kōsaku ended at 17 volumes which I think was probably just going to be the end of the series. Originally it was a series about sort of a “regular guy” and as the series went on, Shima starts doing more and more impressive things and starts being involved in more and more important aspects of the company that affect more and more people. So the series ends right after he’s finally promoted to Division Chief after refusing being promoted a number of times. Section Chief Shima Kōsaku ended in early 1992. We always include the copyright pages that list which years and issues of the magazine each chapter was published in, as they more or less correspond to that same time in-story. And the character ages in real time.

So then we get to Division Chief. The Division Chief Shima Kōsaku series started out as not a regular series, but a bunch of one shots that were just called “Shima Kōsaku One-Shot Series” and this volume includes most of those. They were serialized irregularly and were sort of just “bonus chapters” of Section Chief at first rather than starting into long story arcs. Also because they were irregularly serialized, the year they were published was far apart. After Section Chief had been running weekly for years, so having around 45 chapters a year, now we were getting about one Division Chief chapter every 6 months or so on average as Hirokane-sensei was for the most part moving on to other series. Volume 1 here includes chapters that ran in the magazine from 1992, 1993, 1994, and 1995. The actual volume came out in mid-1995. As a result the chapters are called things like “Series (1) (Part 1)” rather than “Step #” like they were before, but this ends in the middle of volume 2 and they just start being called “Step #” again for the chapter number. A “series” is a single isolated story that ran 1-5 issues of the magazine in a row before a long break. Ultimately Division Chief starts to become more of a “normal series” in the middle of volume 2 when it started being regularly serialized every issue of Weekly Morning at the start of 1999. So the first two volumes kind of zoom through a bunch of years at once, just showing a couple little events each year or two, before it slowing down again to being weekly from 1999 onward (Later on it starts running every other issue as Hirokane-sensei is also working on his other series Tasogare Ryuuseigun at the same time).

Here’s a hiatus chart I made to give you a visualization of the whole thing.
Shima Kо̄saku Current Status Hiatus Chart

I also made one of these charts of the prequels though I don’t plan on working on those for now.

So as you can see, we’re really still not all that far into the series overall despite having worked on it since September 2021. This is the equivalent of volume 18 of the overall series and the newest one out in Japan right now that came out a few weeks ago would be volume 86. Plus there’s also 21 seemingly-canon volumes of prequels which we could maybe work on at some point if we feel like it. Also there’s a bunch of non-canon spinoffs. So don’t expect us to get all the way to the end, let alone all the way to the end and also the prequels, as that would take uhhh a really long time. Even if we came out with one volume a month it would take around 6 years to do just the “main series”. I really need to properly balance my priorities of doing free fan projects as a hobby with the rest of my life. I’m doing all the translating, raw providing and usually nearly all of the typesetting and some cleaning on each of these. And they’re full of business jargon and real-life events and cultural references and all sorts of things on top of the usual needing to make the characters sound in-character and speech natural. So it’s a lot, don’t expect it to follow any sort of fixed schedule. I really love this series, it’s super-unique unlike anything else I’ve read and examines so many complicated aspects of life, whenever I work on it I want to do more, but it really takes a lot of time and energy. But I’m gonna keep working on Division Chief for now, which is a total of 13 volumes long.

Anyhow, enjoy. Everyone go tell all your (adult) friends about the series and get them to read it. Until next time.

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

Division Chief Shima Kо̄saku Volume 1 (Ch1-10)
Mega
Online Reader (Mangadex)

The JOJOLands Ch. 5

Here ya go everyone, chapter 5. We’re moving right along. Uh, I can’t think of much else to say here. The next chapter comes out the 19th Japan time next month, same time as usual. Right now I’m otherwise just working on more Shima as usual.

Enjoy the chapter, all!

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

The JOJOLands Ch. 5
Catbox.moe
Mega
Online Reader (Mangadex)

Ikoku Nikki Ch. 54 (End)

Well folks, here it is, the final chapter of Ikoku Nikki. It’s a really great conclusion and send-off for the series and I really loved this series from beginning to end. I’m so glad we were able to do the whole thing and bring it to everyone out there reading our translations. And translating this series was a serious challenge, it required every skill and every bit of wisdom I gained from over 15 years of translating to be able to figure out some parts of this and it sound as good as it does in Japanese (Or at least sorta close). So everyone, go tell all your friends to check out this series, it’s really incredible. I’ve certainly never read something quite like it.

Oh also a live action movie of Ikoku Nikki was announced. That ought to be cool.

As usual we’ll do a volume version of volume 11 when that comes out. It’s scheduled for August 8th. And if Yamashita-sensei does any sort of extra chapters or a sequel or a spinoff or anything like that we’ll definitely try to do those as well, if we can.

Otherwise I’m still working on Division Chief Shima Kōsaku volume 1, that’s most of the way done now. I hope we can have that done in the relatively near future.

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

Ikoku Nikki 54
Catbox.moe
Mega
Online Reader (Mangadex)

3-Gatsu no Lion (March Comes in Like a Lion) 201

And here we are again! It’s been a while hasn’t it? The last 3-Gatsu chapter was in February, I think. Anyhow here’s a new chapter continuing where we left off. Volume 17 is scheduled for August 29th, which we’ll do a scanlation of once it’s out (But it’ll take a while if the last volume is any guide.)

Anyhow I’m working on Division Chief Shima Kōsaku volume 1 still. But like I said in previous posts I’m not trying to work on this series every spare moment I have plus this volume is pretty difficult. The next and last Ikkoku Nikki chapter comes out in about two weeks. And uhhh that’s it for now! Enjoy all.

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

3-Gatsu no Lion 201
Catbox.moe
Mega
Online Reader (Mangadex)

The JOJOLands Ch. 4

Ok, so here is chapter 4! This probably finishes up what will comprise of volume 1 eventually. Lots more exciting heist stuff in this one. Anyhow, uh, next chapter comes out the 19th Japan time next month.

Meanwhile the next 3-Gatsu no Lion is set for May 25th Japan time and the next, and seemingly last, chapter of Ikkoku Nikki is coming out June 8th Japan time. Besides that, check out the Toriko extra thing we just released. I’m now back to working on Division Chief Shima Kōsaku volume 1, which is a pretty difficult volume. I’m sort of doing it on and off cause I kinda need a break now that we finished all of Section Chief. But I’ll get through it eventually.

Enjoy the chapter, ya’ll!

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

The JOJOLands Ch. 4
Catbox.moe
Mega
Online Reader (Mangadex)

Toriko Volume 29.5 Ending

Toriko Volume 29.5 Ending

Hey so just for funsies I decided to scanlate this. This is a sort of extra Toriko chapter that was in the third data book they called “Volume 29.5” which came out alongside volume 30 back in June 2014.

About a year ago we finished the end of Seikimatsu Leader Den Takeshi and the original 2002 Toriko one-shot. This was one of the couple of other odds and ends I wanted to do at some point which are pretty short but still take like, a good week or so of work. This apparently has no official release like the regular Toriko series does, so I figured this would be good quick project. I only found out this even existed when I was looking through my manga a year or so ago.

Volume 29.5 is a fanbook/data book. So for the most part it’s a big encyclopedia summary of the story and characters introduced up to that point. This came out right when the Gourmet World arc was starting so sort of the theme is “Everything up to the end of the Human World arc”. Those encyclopedia parts are really not worth the effort to scanlate as they have tons of text and don’t really have any new material, so we’re only doing the “ending” which is the last section of the book (plus some color pages from the start of the book). It contains an extra chapter drawn by Shimabukuro-sensei that originally ran in one of the first issues of Saikyou Jump when that magazine started back in 2012 and then took two and a half years before it was compiled in any sort of book. Then in addition to that, there’s a little extra manga about Shimabuu written by Mizumoto Akitsugu, the author of the Saikyou Jump Toirko spinoff gag manga “Gourmet Gakuen Toriko”. And also the 4-panel New Year’s manga they’d done for Toriko up to that point. So it’s a little grab-bag of stuff. I mainly did this for the chapter by Shimabukuro-sensei which is functionally an extra one-off Toriko chapter. Also Takeshi is in it!

Anyhow, the plan is at some point to maybe do the 2008 Toriko one-shot which was the fine-tuned pilot chapter of Toriko (sort of a remake of the 2002 one-shot) before the series started. I dunno when, but at some point! I think that’s the only Shimabukuro Mitsutoshi manga left I plan to work on as of now. Otherwise, I’m working on Division Chief Shima Kōsaku volume 1 and The Jojolands chapter 4 comes out next week. Anyhow, enjoy everyone!

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

Toriko Volume 29.5 Ending
Catbox.moe
Mega
Online Reader (Mangadex)