Soba-Scans

Mystery! Dark arts! Action! Vengeance! All this and more in the sixth chapter of Gaiakitan, the final chapter of Volume 1. And, though I’m sure this news will be greeted with much gnashing of teeth, it will be the last chapter that we’ll release. Read on for a little more info.

Chapter 6: JPEG | PDF

In our recent announcement about Velvet Kiss licensing, I mentioned that we need to change what we do if we aim to try and do this stuff professionally. If we want a bunch of different publishers to try and work with us, we can’t tell them “we’ll keep putting out your stuff for free until you hire us.” I know this is not exactly the most receptive audience to make this point to, but speaking personally, I’d rather work to blend scanlation into the official licensed world if the opportunity seems at all feasible (more on this in a few days). As with many of the other projects I’ve worked on, I’d be happy to pick it up again if it gets licensed.

It’s sad to see it go, of course, as there’s more of the story to be told. But I thought it would be better to be firm as to whether we were working on it or not rather than string readers along for a long time by staying uncertain. If another group does try to pick this project up, my advice would be that you’re going to need an extremely good translator. In order to do this series correctly, you have to be able to understand the archaic form of Japanese it’s written in, and then adapt it using tone-appropriate English dialog, which is something that’s pretty rare to see in writers that work for free. Personally, I feel like I didn’t really do it justice – not because the original dialog is some sort of Shakespearean masterwork, but because producing solid medieval-sounding dialog is pretty challenging for someone of my age and background. It’s very easy to identify and parody bad examples of this style, but certainly not easy to do it well.

Anyway, that’s enough rambling on my part. We hope you’ve enjoyed volume 1, and we hope that in the future we’ll be able to bring you more series like this in a way that will have the support of the authors. Take care!

Swords a’swingin’ and ninjas locked in deadly contention in this latest chapter of Gaiakitan. Something goes bump in the night…

Chapter 5: JPEG | PDF

The series is a bit of a slow burn, but hopefully at this point the characters and setting are established enough to make it a bit more compelling to the reader. As always, the dialog is a much different style than I’m used to working in, and some lines I’m proud of while others feel like they’re just the least bad option I can think of. I haven’t gotten very far in chapter 6′s translation yet, so it may be a little bit before I can get to it. We’ll see you for the volume 1 finale next time!

Inamine’s journey through the manga industry continues in this, the latest chapter in our ongoing collaboration with FTH-Scans. We begin to see a certain pattern emerge when he meets someone new. Swimmin’ with the sharks, that lad is…

Speaking of Koimoku, I stumbled across kind of an interesting article on Comic Valkyrie’s twitter the other day. I may pop up a translation here in the next few days.

Also, apparently Im Dal-Young started a new series in another magazine to replace Re:Birth. I haven’t read it yet but it’s a little funny to think of all the keyboards that are surely buckling under furious mashing as the English-speaking internet explodes in righteous indignation. Especially the poor “!” key, that guy is gonna get a workout. If only there were a manga about an author that made lots of manga…

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!

Our Warring States-peroid epic continues in its third chapter, as Kirigakure reluctantly meets Yukimura once more. In my opinion, this is where the story really starts to begin.

Chapter 3: Mediafire | PDF

In this chapter we’re introduced to one of the big concepts in this series, the idea of “inscriptions.” It took me a little while to decide on that particular terminology. The Japanese word “刻紋” or “kokumon” doesn’t really have a tidy English phrase to accompany it. It kind of amounts to “engraving” or “engraved crest” but both of those phrases didn’t really sound right to me. I kind of liked the idea of “rune” but that amounted to a bit too much of a Western fantasy term. One aspect of the concept that’s difficult to get across in translation is that the character written for each inscription has a distinct meaning to it. I’ve tried to fold it into the dialog where necessary instead of cluttering up the pages with translation notes.

Also, it looks like Depositfiles is no longer going to be functional for us, so we’re down to only Mediafire right now. We hope this doesn’t restrict anybody depending on whatever part of the world you’re in.