Soba-Scans

Velvet Kiss Chapter 30

LD — Wed, 22 Feb 2012 03:13:35 +0000

We’re back with the latest chapter of Velvet Kiss! After the revelations we’ve witnessed recently, our characters are going to need to decide how they’ll come to terms with this new information. Is there any hope on the horizon?

It’s a bit of a relief to say this, but we’re now caught up with the Japanese version of Velvet Kiss. The new issue of Comic Vitaman will come out at the end of the month, so we hope to have the next chapter out in early March. Please try not to needle us about it too much, as we’ve got several other things happening in the beginning of March that will keep us pretty busy. We’re in a bit of a transition period as we’re trying to get a few projects finished and see how much room that leaves us for new stuff. Ciao!

Ring x Mama Round 37

LD — Sat, 18 Feb 2012 01:21:51 +0000

Ring x Mama returns with the first chapter of Volume 5! Ryoma has taken on some new responsibilities on top of his management duties, and there’s hardly a free moment in the day as he attends to all his charges. But as they say, work hard, play hard…

There’s even another cameo in the chapter for the keen observer. Apart from our mysterious masked visitor, that is. We’ll see you for the next round!

Velvet Kiss Chapters 28 and 29

LD — Wed, 15 Feb 2012 04:07:22 +0000

We hope you’re having an enjoyable (or at least tolerable) Valentine’s Day, everybody! We thought we’d mark the occasion by doing a double release of Velvet Kiss. With chapter 29 especially, we really start to see this story transcend its genre and reach new levels of emotional depth. It’s the sort of material that makes us feel very lucky that we stumbled into this whole series in the first place.

Chapter 28:

Chapter 29:

In the spirit of the holiday, we would suggest saving chapter 29 for tomorrow, but it’s up to you! We’ll see you next time.

Makunouchi Deluxe – Series complete!

LD — Sun, 12 Feb 2012 05:46:16 +0000

The day has arrived! With this, the final chapter of Makunouchi Deluxe, the series is now completely translated into English! What ultimate fate awaits our beloved characters in Makunouchi? You’ll have to read and find out!

Chapter 27:

Volume 3:

We’ve been at this gig for over two years now, but believe it or not, this is the first series that we’ve started and finished. We hope to add a couple more items to that list pretty soon, but for now it feels great to have this one completed. Projects like this can be easy to start but deceptively difficult to finish. There were plenty of lessons to be learned along the way which might be something worth exploring in a postmortem if anyone would be interested in reading it.

As the translator, this was a series I was very personally fond of and my goal was to bring the same level of enjoyment I had with it to an English-speaking audience. As a story, it’s a bit of a slow burn but if you’ve been reading it then you know that it ends very strong. It never did get quite the reception I was hoping for, but it seems like the people who did read it liked it a lot. If you’ve been waiting for the series to be completed before diving in, stop by again and drop us a line if you enjoyed it.

Thanks to Tyaeth once more for being able to jump in and get these last chapters edited, and to all of the other editors who have contributed their part to this series. While it’s a little sad to leave the world of Makunouchi, there are plenty of other stories yet to be told, and we hope you’ll stick with us for more good stuff in the future!

Velvet Kiss Chapter 27 – Breakdown

LD — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 00:44:51 +0000

Things were looking pretty grim at the end of last chapter. Nowhere to go but up from here, right? We’d all better hope so…

Also, we have a few things that we wanted to bring up regarding the project. As many of you are aware, the first two volumes of Velvet Kiss are now officially licensed in English. We’re going to cease distribution of our scanlated versions of volumes 1 and 2 at this point. There’s two main reasons why:

First, we have no interest in getting wrapped up in any legal dust-ups. We’re just people doing this in our spare time, and it’s not worth getting into any kind of conflict about this.

Second, it’s our position at Soba-scans that once the official English version is available, we want it to be as successful as possible. We’ve been scanlating this series because we like it so much, and we feel it has a crossover appeal that transcends the traditional limits of h-manga. As we said in last chapter’s release, the most important person in all of this is Harumi Chihiro, and we want her to be able to benefit from putting out such an outstanding series. So on our part, this will amount to removing what amounts to our “competing” digital version and, once more information about the licensed version is known, promoting the new version.

We know that this is likely to be received with a bit of trepidation, to put it mildly. One frequent argument we hear is that our scanlated version is the only one that will be available in a particular person’s country or language. But quite honestly, we can’t expose ourselves to risk just because there’s some parts of the globe where the series is not licensed yet. And more importantly, the success of the English version will very likely play a large role in whether there will be further translations and licensing in other languages. And of course there are also some people who want everything immediately and for free, but that’s never been what we’re about.

With that established, our current plan is to continue scanlating what will eventually become volume 4 until it gets licensed. Of course that’s subject to change depending on what happens in the future. As always, we appreciate your support, but we’ll request that if you leave a comment, please don’t just complain or point people towards other web sites where people can download what we’ve removed. We want to cultivate a positive atmosphere of anticipation for the official version, so we’ll have more about that coming up in the future.

Mashiro-iro Symphony!

Ziggy — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 03:36:40 +0000

Hey everyone! We have a new doujinshi to share with you all that’s been translated by Yumeko-chan and Conan from 4dawgz. He did a great job editing this so quickly for us, so be sure to send him your thanks! Yumeko-chan was very upset when she saw no Mashiro-iro Symphony doujinshi on Fakku, so took it upon herself to translate something.

Inui-san’s fantasies get herself in trouble, but her wild imagination of the current situation certainly doesn’t help! The doujin is pretty cute and certainly provides a couple laughs, so be sure to check it out!

The Secret Devil-chan! Chapter 7

Ziggy — Sun, 05 Feb 2012 04:12:32 +0000

Hey Soba-fans! I know this is way over due and many of you have been very patiently waiting for us to release this – so without further ado~

You guys might notice the big bold writing in the beginning of the chapter that it states that Volume 1′s tank will be available December 20, 2011. We are in the process of receiving that, so we do intend to release the tank version with the higher quality pages in the future. Something else that we intend to do with the series is place it in LD’s hands so that we’re able to keep up at a more regular pace with the series. This series requires a lot of attention, and I hope it shows through with all the effort put into it with the team. Voo has been my savior in editing it for me while I handle other things regarding the site, and every time he finishes a chapter I feel like I owe him a kiss! The next chapter of Devil-chan will begin what starts Volume 2 in the series, and we intend to continuing forth with the series. In any case, we hope you enjoy!

Makunouchi Deluxe Chapter 26

LD — Sat, 04 Feb 2012 05:51:42 +0000

It’s time for the penultimate chapter in this excellent Manabe Joji series. Makunouchi has become even more dangerous than usual lately and our heroes are in unquestionably dire straits. As the final hour draws near, who could possibly act as our savior?!

Thanks go to Tyaeth for being able to step in and edit this chapter. The final chapter is coming next! We’re going to try our best to have it out as soon as possible, so keep an eye on the site!

Velvet Kiss Chapter 26 – Despair

LD — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 23:52:33 +0000

There was much in the way of upheaval in the previous chapter of Velvet Kiss, and the various characters in our story are going to need a little time to react to it. As you might be able to guess from the title, things aren’t going too well. Don’t get too depressed, though, as there’s still much of the story left to be told!

Also, to address something that people have brought up recently, we are indeed aware that the first two volumes have now been licensed in English. Currently we’re not in a position to say how this will affect the project in the future. We’re sorry if this sounds vague but it depends on several factors that aren’t clear at the moment. But in the end, there’s one person who deserves everyone’s support the most and that’s Harumi Chihiro. Once you’re able to support her by buying her works outside of Japan, we strongly encourage you to do so. By most accounts it’s a bit of a hard living being a mangaka, and she deserves as much success as she can get for making such a captivating work.

Koimoku Chapter 10

LD — Sun, 29 Jan 2012 20:24:18 +0000

You may recall that Inamine was, well, a tad upset over matters of ownership in the last chapter. Sometimes the best response to adversity is a good ol’ fashioned bender, no matter how much you regret it tomorrow morning!

It’s been a bit of a trip working on an Im Dal-Young series. It seems like our blog readers are polite enough to enjoy it on its own merit, but if you venture out into the wooly lands of the internet there’s much in the way of grumbling that he does too many series at a time. But despite all the grand proclamations of marked distaste, quite a lot of people seem to read just about everything he puts out. There’s worse things in life than to be widely read, folks!

At first the OZMA character seemed to be a bit of a rib at that common criticism, but I kind of wonder if it isn’t a reference to Hwang Mi-Ri (who I admittedly know almost nothing about). Perhaps it’s something different altogether, as it becomes more difficult to identify oblique references the further you get away from the cultural environment that a work was created in. Maybe we’ll learn more soon!