I'm not going to be updating anything until after Jan 10th. I've got Damn-I can't-believe-I-have-work-on-Monday-whatever-happened-to-my-vacation Blues.

Also I'm waiting for my new laptop to arrive. This one is pretty much done for.

Umishi chapter 15

Salvaging = Serious Business. Merry Christmas!

Umishi Chapter 15

Umishi chapter 14

New week, new chapter.

Umishi Chapter 14

To Be... chapter 8

Here's the final chapter of To Be... It's about a girl who likes a guy (what a surprise), only problem is her room is really messy. Why the heck this should be a problem I don't know, but the mangaka says it's a problem, so there.

Sleeping Beauty and the Castle of Garbage

I've already decided on my next project, but I haven't started it yet because my laptop keeps messing with me. Oh, and I'm lazy.

Note to self: Extra addition of meat and vegetables are suggested for palatable enhancement.

Umishi chapter 13

Another busy week ahead for me, so I'm getting this out before I get swamped.

Umishi chapter 13

Umishi chapter 12

It's a manga. Whenever anybody screams "At all costs we have to prevent XYZ from happening!!" you just know XYZ is going to happen right away. Anyway...

Umishi chapter 12

I'm working on the last chapter of To Be... now. It's slow going because the last story is so very sexist I have to stop after every page to facepalm for 5 minutes. ~_~

Umishi chapter 11

Nothing much to say about this one, setting up for the next arc.

Umishi Chapter 11

Umishi chapter 10

Not that anybody takes diving advice from a manga, but still, I include this disclaimer: Never dive to unfamiliar depths in unfamiliar waters without at least a buddy diver with you. Rintarou only gets away with it because his diving suit is made of plot armor. A word to the wise is enough.

Umishi chapter 10

Umishi chapter 09

First chapter of volume 2. No more releases this week because I'm going to be pretty busy. But don't worry, I'll still be working on stuff behind the scenes.

Umishi chapter 9

To Be... v2 c3

The last-but-one chapter in the series, this one is a one-shot called Powder Snow. It's a high school love story, which ended up reminding me of many, many incidents in my high school days (we were all young once) and people I hadn't thought about in years. I even dreamt about junior high last night. Buggered if I remember what it was about though.

Powder Snow

Umishi chapter 08

If you've been following Umishi, you may have noticed that next to nothing/zilch/zip/nada has happened so far. Don't worry, the story picks up from volume 2 onwards. In the meantime, enjoy the last chapter of volume 1!

Umishi chapter 8

More suggestions

Kaiji - Okay, it's time to come clean. It's not that I dislike Kaiji. It's inferior to Akagi but it's not a bad show. It's just so very frustrating to watch. Before Kaiji makes a single move he has to spend 10 minutes explaining everything to one of the grunts or to himself, only to have somebody mess things up, every single episode. This is AFTER Tonegawa has spent 15 minutes prattling on, of course. And then there's all that unseemly crying, it's sickening to watch. I've seen less crying in a soap opera, okay? And for all the money on the line there's still more suspense in 5 seconds of Akagi than there is in 20 minutes of Kaiji. I mean, don't you even WANT Kaiji to fail? He got himself into those situations, he can bloody well get himself out of it. Carbuncle on the backside of humanity and all that. AND WTF IS WITH THAT ENDING!?!?

In summary, I'm not going to do it. Sorry to disappoint the fans.

Kitsune no Yomeiri - Based on just one chapter I like the main character and I'd like to see what happens next. The story is straight from Seto no Hanayome, but more coherent. However since it's such a new manga the only scans available are likely to be magazine scans, which I absolutely don't want to handle. Let me know when volume 1 raws are available and I'll take another look at it.

G Senjou Heaven's Door - At first I thought I would do it because there's only a few chapters left and the raws are available... but then I actually read it. I don't like it in the least. I couldn't make it past chapter 2. Maybe it gets interesting later on, but I couldn't work up the urge to read more.

Takaya - It's terrible. It's seriously terrible. Wow. I liked the one-shot, though.

Adesugata Junjou Boy - I haven't found any raws to check this out yet. In my experience gender bending and crossdressing series start out funny and go straight down the drain. But I'll hold off judgment till I can actually read it.

Chousekitan Maze Bakunetsu Jikuu - There's a Maze manga, really? When I find raws I'll check it out.

To Be... v2 c2

This week's chapter is a Jou-kun special! It's also the last chapter of To Be... proper. The last two chapters are one-shots.

To Be... chapter 6

Umishi chapter 07

Scanslation has gotten pretty difficult of late, because the piece of trash mouse I bought to replace my old piece of trash mouse is getting increasingly unmanageable. It goes down when I tell it to go up, clicks when I haven't told it to, moves further than I ask it to... Well, what'd I expect for $6?

Umishi chapter 7
EDIT: Whoa, I just realized the majority of my posts are incredibly whiny. How shameful, especially when my life is going so well. I'll do better from now on.

Umishi chapter 06

I've been having the most incredible week (in a bad way). You know this chapter's been ready since Monday and I just haven't been able to release it? I won't believe it's released until I actually hit the send button and it works. Here goes nothing!

Umishi chapter 6. That took TWO days!

To Be... v2 c1

Uploadjockey is being a cow tonight, so we're going with zSHARE instead.

To Be... chapter 5.
Chapter 5

Umishi chapter 05

Actually I'd hoped to be releasing To Be... tonight, but I underestimated the amount of work the chapter needed, and now my neck hurts so I'm going to bed.

Take this chapter of Umishi that I was saving for later instead, and To Be... will be ready when To Be... is ready.

Umishi Chapter 5

Umishi chapter 04

Rintarou's still being Rintarou as only Rintarou can be.

Umishi Chapter 4

Umishi chapter 03

You can read more about Nitrogen narcosis here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nitrogen_narcosis

It sounds like fun, except for, you know, the whole dying thing.

Also if anyone can shed some light on why they called Rintarou's dive a jackknife when all he did was jump into the water, I'd be grateful.

Umishi Chapter 3

To Be... c04

The last volume in chapter 1 of To Be...

Chapter 4
FileFactory

And even though Hikari's story continues in chapter 1, personally I think vol. 1 would have been a nice place to end it. Happily ever after and all that. But anyway, the author decided to go on so as a scanslator I'll go on as well. Look for vol 2 c.1 around this time next week, God willing!

My laptop screen is on the fritz. Stop blinking like that, you're giving me a headache. =_=

Umishi chapter 02

Umishi Chapter 2

You can read more about real-life salvaging and salvage companies here:
http://www.boatingsafety.com/salvage.htm
http://www.safesea.com/boating_info/salvage/anderson/intro.html

The first one is more of a general overview, the second one is all about the legal aspects and stuff, really detailed. Not like you need to understand everything about salvage to enjoy this manga, but it helps.

To Be... c03

This manga has the fastest pace I've ever seen in a shoujo manga. It's only been two chapters and they're already in the 2nd year. I would have liked it to have gone into greater detail about life in a beauty school, but at least I can't fault it for slow pacing.

To Be... chapter 3

EDIT: Filefactory here, Easy-share here.

Umishi p. 38

Replace page 38 with this one.

Umishi chapter 01

Today we start another series, Wa ga na wa Umishi, by Yoichi Komori & Yuji Takemura. The story goes something like this.

Rintarou is a novice diver who just finished his training. His father dies and leaves him 1.5 billion yen [not 150 million] in debt and their rundown salvage business. Thing is, Rintarou hates his father and HATES the salvage business. What happens now?

More or less. It's really good except for one thing: Sawa-chan's 'yaranaika' jumpsuit is KILLING me!!!!

Umishi chapter 1

EDIT: Just realized a mistake I made. On page 38, the debt is supposed to be 1.5 billion yen (14,844,297.53 USD), not 150 million yen. To tell the truth the amount was niggling at my mind all along because it looked too small. What a million dollars or two between family, and all that, so I did the math again. I'll release a fix page when I get home from work.

Your suggestions

When I started this whole thing, I asked for suggestions of manga to scanslate and I've gotten a pretty positive response so far. As promised I've checked out most of the titles I got and I'm here to present my report. I will point out, though, that just because a manga is fun to read doesn't mean it's fun to scanslate. Keep that in mind.

Me and the Devil Blues: Wow, this is surprisingly good. It's been a while since I read something this good. But I don't want to do it. Yup, just like that.

No Side: As I said, I plan to do this as soon as I can get some raws. I own the books in Japanese so it doesn't matter whether they're French raws, Spanish raws, Chinese raws, whatever.

Wadatsumi (or something?): Speaking of Chinese raws, I can't read Chinese. If you want me to check something out it has to be in English or Japanese. Heck, if I could read Chinese I wouldn't be here right now. I'd be out there buying up every issue of Oriental Heroes and taking a month off work to read them all, ni hao!

Say Hello to Black Jack - There's no denying it's an excellent manga, but... I hate hospitals and medical dramas so I don't see myself working on this. You should've seen the look on my face when I was reading the operating scenes. When it got to the second chapter with the old man, urrgggghhhh...delete.

Jigoku Sensei Nube - Not bad, but not interesting enough to justify 31 volumes of work. I don't have that kind of stamina yet. And the whole occult thing is a bit....

Rainbow - The content is too raw and messy and depressing for me. I couldn't even make it through the first chapter. Just violence and sadism doesn't necessarily make for a good manga.

Jaja Uma Grooming Up! - After 3 volumes I still can't quite make up my mind. Hmm... I might need to read a little more, but I don't really want to. That's a bad sign, isn't it?

Shindou - Ho-hummm... Give me Nodame Cantabile any day.

Wind Mill - It's from the same mangaka as Yakitate Japan so I was expecting something good but I was rather disappointed. Come to think of it, I've read a lot of manga about baseball but not a single one to date has been able to make me care about or understand the game.

If you're having DL problems

Seems Uploadjockey comes with issues of its own. If you can't dl To Be...

Try one of these for chapter 1:
Rapidshare
Easy-Share

And for chapter 2:
File Factory

I really should get my own webpage.

To Be... c02

If you have any experience at all reading shoujo, you should have been able to figure out the entire story just by reading chapter 1 of To Be... However, in case you didn't:

Reuploaded: To Be... chapter 02
Also on Z-share

I forgot to mention this last time, but Hikari is supposed to be speaking with a Fukuoka accent. They're trying to make her out to be some sort of country hick, with all the stereotypes involved. Since I don't know what a country hick is supposed to sound like (does "y'all" go on every line or every other line?") I decided to skip translating that to avoid making a mess of it. But keep it in mind.

About the other manga I said I was working on, since I'm editing it now I guess I can say what it is: Wa ga na wa Umishi. It starts out a bit slow but the cast grew on me pretty quickly. Even Sawa-chan. Chapter 1 in a couple of days, God willing.

Just saving Manick's words of wisdom, don't mind me.

If you really truly want to do a project, it shouldn't matter if anyone else is doing it. If your desires are so shallow that you'd stop simply because your version isn't being read by as many people, then why do it in the first place?

Look out for chapter 2 of To Be... either tomorrow or on Friday.

Typo fix

Geh! Nobody told me I'd made such an outrageous mistake on page 47 of the latest release. Does this mean you don't care about quality? I would do well to remember that in future.

To Be... c01

I always wanted to scanslate a shoujo series, and this is only 2 volumes long so I hope to be done soon. The title is "To Be..." and the story goes something like this:

In order to become a beautician, Hikari Takaya moves to Tokyo with her high-school sweetheart. But life at beauty school is completely different from what she expected. A love story about the dreams and romance of youth. Author: Sakurayama Kazumi.

I used to be quite the shoujo reader a few years ago, but then I quickly realized that most of them are just recycling the same stories and cliches over and over again. The few good ones are really good, but you have to sift through a lot of chaff to get to it. Of course every manga "genre" has its share of poor series, but I think it's only shoujo that has fully 90% of its titles being next to terrible. I wish I could say that "To Be..." was one of the rare exceptions, but... well, I'll let you make up your own minds:

To Be... chapter 01

Trickster c09 [final]

At long last we come to the end of Trickster. Actually I'm surprised a single volume took me so long to finish, so I pledge to do better next time (not!). I really enjoyed working on this because it's easy to translate and easy to edit, and I loved the girl's evil facial expressions. I'd like to that think no one's stupid enough to fall for tricks like that IRL, but people are full of surprises.

Trickster c09

For those who can't download from Rapidshare, I discovered that Lurk (#lurk @ irc.irchighway.net) has all the Otaku no Musume-san and Trickster I've done so far.

As for my next projects, I have two lined up. One shoujo, one shounen/seinen (i.e. a shounen that just happened to run in a seinen magazine but would do just as well in Shounen Sunday/Jump/Magazine). I'm not going to name them yet because I haven't gotten that far and I think it's annoying when people "claim" projects too early and then keep people waiting while they take their sweet time churning out the first chapter. So it'll be ready when it's ready, yah?

Otaku no Musume-san c09

With the release of this chapter, I am officially handing over the Otaku no Musume-san project to the Endless Abyss group. In other words I'm dropping it. What happened is that after I released chapter 7 they sent me a message along the lines of "Waaaah, we wanted to do it, waaah!" (errr, not quite, but you get the picture). Touched by their atrocious sense of timing, I immediately decided to let them have it, from chapter 10 onwards. Yeah sure, I could very well have said "Tough cookies" but in the end the manga gets scanslated and I get the time to do something else, so it all works out in the end.

Incidentally this was all two weeks ago, so I'd like to think plans are far advanced to release 10+ by now. Go bug them at their forums or something. Come to think of it, Endless Abyss is a very unfortunate name for a scanslation group...

Mediafire still won't work, and quite frankly I'm sick of fooling around with that thing. This time I tried to go with Filefactory, but that wouldn't work either. Rapidshare it is: Otaku_no_Musume-san_v01_c09

Re: Working!!

One of the suggestions I got for scanslation early on was a 4-koma manga called Working!!
I decided to check it out over the weekend, but I'm sorry to say it won't be going on my scanslation list. Ever. That's not to say it's a bad manga, btw. Maybe a 6/10? More like 5/10? It hovers between okay to meh, usually leaning towards the meh side. I read the scanslations first and thought they were at fault for making the manga seem so bleh (they certainly didn't help at all), but actually it's nearly as unfunny in the original Japanese. Also accurate translation is an essential part of getting the joke across in 4-koma manga, but translating gags is a MAJOR pain in the nether-regions, and it doesn't help when the gag isn't that funny to begin with. So now you know.

(Btw, don't think I'm going to post detailed explanations for deciding/not-deciding to scanslate anything. This is a one-time service.)

Trickster c08

The last-but-one chapter of Trickster. Poor Norio just can't catch a break.

http://rapidshare.com/files/151061649/Trickster_c08_By_Request_.zip.html

Btw, about Rapidshare and MediaFire, unfortunately Mediafire gives me no end of trouble when I try to upload files to it, so I've given up. Sorry.

Otaku no Musume-san c08

Here goes chapter 8. I sympathize with Kanau-chan, poor thing. But when I was in fourth-grade I didn't know a thing about ecchi stuff. "Daddy why does that lady have all her clothes off?" Kids of today aren't kids any more, tut tut.

http://rapidshare.com/files/150360031/Otaku_no_Musume-san_v01_c08_By_Request_.zip.html

While I'm at it, I've been re-reading Hajime no Ippo (for the 50th time), and the referee is totally cheating for Ippo! He fell down 3 times again Vorg and the referee let him keep going each time! Everyone else falls once, maybe twice and he calls the match on the spot. Cheat! Cheat!!!

Err, but I won't complain if you cheat Miyata. I hate that punk.

Trickster c07

Barka da Sallah!

http://rapidshare.com/files/149612640/Trickster_c07_By_Request_.zip.html

To the Anonymous who had problems with rapidshare, here's a MediaFire link for Otaku no Musume-san: http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?n52dd2mncjo

Re: School of Water Business. Not my sort of thing at all, sorry.

Otaku no Musume-san c07

After this I'm going to work on finishing the last 3 chapters of Trickster before doing more OnM.

http://rapidshare.com/files/148787716/Otaku_no_Musume-san_v01_c07_By_Request_.zip.html

EDIT: Is Blogspot cutting off the end of the link for anyone? I hate blogger. This is the full link:
http://rapidshare.com/files/148787716/Otaku_no_Musume-san_v01_
c07_By_Request_.zip.html

Trickster c06

I'm trying to settle into a weekly or bi-weekly release schedule, so enjoy the blitz while it lasts!

Chapter 6, for your reading pleasure:
http://rapidshare.com/files/147812740/Trickster_c06_By_Request_.zip.html
Mirror
Read online (Mangahelpers)

Trickster c05

We celebrate the arrival of my new mouse with Chapter 5 of Trickster!
http://rapidshare.com/files/147158670/Trickster_c05_By_Request_.zip.html
Mirror
Read online (Mangahelpers)

And here's the rapidshare link for Chapter 4.
http://rapidshare.com/files/147156301/Trickster_c04_By_Request_.zip.html

Otaku no Musume-san

So I've been reading Otaku no Musume-san to see if I want to do it but...it's kinda lame, isn't it? More than kinda, it really is lame. Are you guys sure you want to read this? If you are, I'll do it but... it's seriously lame.

2 hours later: Okay, I take back what I said. It's not half bad once you get past the first 5 chapters. Alright, I should have the rest of vol 1 translated by tomorrow if all goes well.

I dropped my mouse and it broke like the cheap trash that it is. So no more releases until I buy a new one, probably this weekend.

The Kaiji issue is settled: I'm not going to be working on that because a lot of other people plan to. Instead I'm going to give Otaku no Musume-san the once-over this weekend, see if it's the sort of thing I can work with.

Until then!

Trickster c04

Rapidshare just wouldn't behave tonight, or I'd have upped this earlier. I'll upload a Rapidshare version later. Enjoy!

http://www.filefactory.com/file/2d7a89/n/Trickster_c04_By_Request_zip
Mirror
Read online (Mangahelpers)

Oh, that reminds me. I hear some scanslation groups are currently working on Kaiji and planning to release soon. If anyone can confirm/deny this rumour I'd be most grateful. It would save me a lot of time.

Trickster c03

Done with chapter 3. I won't have much time to edit this week so 4 onwards may have to wait for next weekend.

http://rapidshare.com/files/145168467/Trickster_c03_By_Request_.zip.html
Mirror
Read online (Mangahelpers)

Trickster c02

That's it for chapter 2. Chapter 3 is pretty short so I'll try and get that out by the end of the weekend.

http://rapidshare.com/files/144941172/Trickster_c02_By_Request_.zip.html
Mirror
Read online (Mangahelpers)

I'm still raw-hunting for most of the other stuff people want to see.

Trickster c01

And chapter 1 is done too. It takes so long to edit and yet reading it takes barely 3 seconds... Editing is a tough job.

http://rapidshare.com/files/143729047/Trickster_c01_By_Request_.zip.html
Mirror
Read online (Mangahelpers)

I seem to have come down with a cold so I'll resume work on chapter 2 (my personal fave) later this week.

Trickster c00

Trickster Prologue finally done. I'd do chapter 1 tonight as well, but my back hurts. I need a better chair. =_=.

http://rapidshare.com/files/143188645/Trickster_c00.zip.html

Results from 4chan

After polling /a/ I ended up with the following serious candidates for future scanslation:
Cooking Papa
Kaiji
Saikyou Densetsu Kurosawa
Working!!
Takaya
Otaku no Musume-san
Trickster
Gakuen Utopia Manabi Straight
Maker Hikoshiki Hatsune Mix
(plus a few other titles I need to investigate more deeply)
As I mentioned yesterday I'm already working on Trickster, and when I'm done with that I have one or two other titles I want to tackle before getting to 4chan's list. That's why I'm anxious to correct any impression I may have left that I'm jumping on Kaiji or any other title right away. Anyone who wants to do any of those titles is more than welcome to do so, just drop me a line so I don't get started.

For Kaiji at least, since I seems to have raised so many hopes, I'm aiming to get the first 13 volumes (first "arc") done. Not going to promise anything more than that.

Trickster translation is going well but I don't see the point in making daily progress reports. I'll make the next blog entry once I'm done editing the prologue and first chapter.

First post

Note: I'm not taking any suggestions any more, so please don't add any

We'll save the introductions for later.

I'm going to post manga links for manga I scanslate here in this here blog. Right now I'm working on Trickster by Aro Hiroshi, which is a little bit funny, a little bit ecchi and a little bit sad (imho).

I've got up to chapter 4 translated, and if all goes well I'll be done with translating the whole thing by tomorrow evening, knock on wood. I can't give an ETA on when the finished product will be ready, but look out for it sometime next week.

I've already got a list of projects I'm going to be working on for a while, but I'll hear requests if you have any. Just don't expect anything.
Requirements
- Not licensed
- Not being actively scanslated (last release over 6 months ago)
- Not hentai
- Not too much nudity (I'll know it when I see it)
- No guro
- No other gross stuff

I'll be able to better consider the project if you include a link to raws or at least a few sample pages. Stay tuned for more news later.