Yes, there will be a chapter this up this week. (Ch. 70 I think)
SFX- Don't mean to leave the 60 of you who want SFX out in the dark, but since I'm behind 3 chapters as of now, I think catching up is no. 1 on my to-do list. More on this in the near future.
Gaah! Once this test hell week is over, I will work my ass off! Allen (if you see this)
For those of you who haven't seen my comments, Red Storm is off the list because SilentSky has been uploading chapters weekly (or something like that). An anon bought me raws though, so if the going gets slow, I'll upload chaps.
I will (hopefully) be around till Ch. 90. This isn't a pinky promise stab a thousand darn needles in my eye if I break it promise, but that's my goal.
And of course, Splicer and Kfnmpah are god-send. Or whatever that phrase is supposed to be. I'm running on like two hours of sleep and overload on chem. Aaand I'm getting side-tracked again. Yeah. Splicer and Kfmnpah are the boss. I would have called it quits long past without them.
Gosh I'm re-reading this string of words and it's all over the place. But then again, this is a blog so..g'night.
Welcome back. Glad your tests are over. Thanks in advance
ReplyDeleteFurthermore if you intend to continue scanlating, might I suggest adopting a nickname ? Rather than using a real name, it will protect you.....etc
ReplyDeleteI considered doing that but I use this account for school, so I didn't want to cause any confusion..
DeleteThanks a lot. Really appreciate it.
ReplyDeleteThis series is my 2nd most sought after manga after One piece.
One more thing: even after we catch up to the Korean releases, please don't expect same-weekend releases anymore. Jin has decided to abandon that frantic rhythm and generate the script in 10-15 page instalments. So we will probably (no promises) keep the weekly pace, but it will be more mid-week than early week as has been the case so far.
ReplyDeleteOther than that, I've already said it over our edit log but… welcome back, Jin!
(And yes, I agree that choosing a nickname that cannot easily be traced back to you is a good idea, specially if you think of making scanlation a hobby in the future.)
Thank you from America! I love this series. The concept, the art, the whole thing. Very original and quite well done. The efforts of all of you who make it possible to read in English are greatly appreciated by myself and many, many others. I've searched extensively to find another possible source but with no luck. Most don't even have the current chapters up in Korean and the few that have translations are 20 or more chapters behind. Your break did however give me the chance to go back and re-read the whole thing again and pick up quite a few subtle details that I otherwise wouldn't have noticed as significant so all is not lost. Thank you for your efforts once again and keep up the great work, all of you who make this possible. :D
ReplyDeletei knew it was a good decision not to delete this site in my bookmark thanks for all your hard work and dont stress about a schedule release just release when you have finished a chapter with your free time
ReplyDeleteM-my blog is on someone's bookmark?
DeleteMygoodnesscallthedoctorit'samiracleeeee
Don't fret. I have it too since I first found your site. I think it was that time where Mangafox and Mangahere were stuck on chapter 59 or 60 for about a week or so.
DeleteThank you for all your effort in translating this awesome series to English. Please take your time, no need to rush things ^_^
ReplyDeleteI'm here thinking that Silent Sky and Friendly Scans are already crossing swords trying to beat each other to Red Storm releases (Silent Sky is currently winning)... your committal to fast releases in case they go slow is bound to add some more stress to their current race... and that alone is a contribution, Jin. After what you did with DICE, I suspect other scanlation groups will take your statements very seriously.
ReplyDeletesilent sky dropped this, so if that what he meant to achieve - its a success. i'm glad he continues with the series, usual one man scanlations just bring chaos to the scan world with the sudden gap with no continuation that the other scanlators just arent willing to bridge because of one guy
ReplyDeleteJin didn't cause Silent Sky to drop this (and actually their homepage still states that they haven't). Silent Sky stopped releasing DICE for some 12 weeks before Lonemanga took it up. Jin started doing this after Lonemanga as a birthday present for a friend and would have stopped long ago if Lonemanga had managed to make regular releases. However, Lonemanga got stuck as well, Jin started beating them at every turn and the gap only grew every week.
DeleteSo blaming her because the other two teams couldn't get their game together is unreasonable at best.
And she is not alone.
the gap caused by rogue releasers confuses a lot of scanlators. if you're gonna continue doing this then that's awesome, but what is a scanlator supposed to do with a 20chapter gap? skipping isn't an options because this loses the readers if then need to travel back and forth to read from start to finish. and most of them already working on max speed, it's not at the level of the flagship flash scan people do for top 10 releases.
DeleteI think the silent sky thing was doomed regardless though, they were behind the lone manga team even before he stepped in. lone manga seem to have taken a "wait and see" hiatus on this as well though, their last release was 2 months ago.
I'm not sure that I understand what you mean.
DeleteThere is no difference between a scanlator and what you call a "rogue releaser". Once a series stalls for a period, everyone who is interested considers the possibility of taking it up. DICE did not belong to Silent Sky, other scanlators only gave them priority for scanlating this because they were doing it in a quick and consistent manner.
I have scanlated quite a few chapters elsewhere and I believe a three-month rule is good enough: if you fail to release the series you do after that period, you cannot blame anyone for taking it up. There's nothing "rogue" about scanlating a series that is stalled, any more than there is for scanlation as a whole. Sure, it may do some good to announce your intention to do it to the other group, but that's by no means necessary.
And Lonemanga isn't in a "wait and see hiatus", they don't have a cleaner or typesetter for this series and their translator was drafted into the South Korean army. It would have stalled with or without Jin.
Max speed? Well, what was "max" for those groups was clearly not good enough, because DICE is a weekly and thus anything less than weekly releases causes the backlog to grow. We're a three-person team and have been able to either catch up to South Korea or to keep the backlog manageable. We did the whole of chapter 62 (a 56-page chapter) in one day.
It's the height of nonsense to blame Jin because she created a 20-chapter gap for Silent Sky and Lonemanga: Silent Sky is a major, established operation with lots of staff and we are midgets, if they had really wanted to put up a fight for this series, they should have done it much earlier than now. They certainly did it for Red Storm, and Jin has even abandoned her plans to do it because their releases are very quick now. Ditto for Lonemanga.
And in any case, why complaining? It's thanks to Jin that we even know what happens in season two. If she drops it, she will have contributed to this series much more than Lonemanga, and for another group it will mean a much smaller backlog to go through than would have been the case if she had not stepped in to do this. It's win-win for everyone.
I can't help but think that since we're all doing this illegally, there are no "rules to the game", persay. And since most scanslating groups start because of fans' demand for new chapters, I figure if you can cater, you're legit (in the illegal sense I suppose..).
DeleteAlso, the pressure for large scanslating groups to have all the chapters is just caused by the need for professionalism. But honestly, 1) I personally don't care whether a scanslating group is professional or not, as long as the job gets done.
2) If a group needs to be professional because it's for-profit, then they should be diverting more time and effort into the project. I mean, if I was going to put up ads on this blog, I'd try to give more since I'm making money off of it.
TLDR; I love you, you love me, and we're all doing this illegally~
splicer, by rogue I meant someone with no other series and/or commitments to the project. they come in, post what they wanted and walk away, leaving the background in confusion as to what's next. not that he/she doing anything wrong. we're all in the grey here anyway.
Deletejin - yeah, a lot of the high quality groups usually take their time more than they should on some releases. I remember egs' release of noblesse a while ago, like a formula1 tire change team, top quality at no time at all. it could be like that but most cannot have top effort for all their series, especially if that would mean less series (but faster prep time).
it's awesome that you've stepped up to the project and I love what youre doing, after all I'm not with the scanlators involved and here to read, not vent out. it may be a bit playing the devils advocate here, but I'm just saying that if you drop this now then there would be a long long period until anyone catches up to where you're at (unless a new party steps in), and the scan hiatus loses interest on the series overall, which is a shame. if you're no longer doing the series then at least drop it off at some other scanlation's doorstep ;)
I'm sorry, but you're making assumptions here. While it is true that this is Jin's only translation work, and I don't know about Kfnmpah, I am translating three manga series and administering another scanlation group in addition to my work here. Describing our activity as lacking in commitment and sowing confusion in the scanlation scene is disregarding us just because we are small and scanlate only one series. There are dozens of groups just like us, and some like VisTrans are made up of only one person.
DeleteAnd by saying that "high-quality" groups (I am a little stung here, because Kfnmpah goes the extra mile redrawing this and I don't think my cleaning and typesetting are too shabby, either) take more time than they should to do some series, you're essentially admitting that they are biting off more than they can chew. Personally, I never take up a series if I know I won't be able to translate it at least as fast as it is released in Japan, and make every effort to assemble a team that can also work at the same pace. So it's the other groups that need to improve their planning, or else shut up and not complain if a smaller group that is more focused starts doing a series faster than they. I know I wouldn't blame anyone other than myself if one of my series were snatched away by a faster group.
Choosing less series but releasing faster is as valid an option as the opposite. It's the option I prefer, in fact. What EGS and others do is their problem only.
Personally, I think that if other groups think they need to catch up to a team that took a series from them and later dropped it, they are excessively perfectionist about this. The group I work with has had no problem at all starting again in a series after a gap. Groups that think that way probably are more concerned about the completion of their work than about getting it to readers. I cannot fault them for that, but they again have no right to complain.
Finally, I am at a loss to understand what you mean by dropping a series at another scanlation group's doorstep. If Jin decides to stop, she will announce it here and that should be good enough. Once it is dropped, it ceases to be her problem and the other groups will race to the golden pot, first come, first served. What should she do, pick another group at random and ask them if they are interested? Nonsense.
@anon- I can see where you're going, but what strikes me as odd is that I'd drop off DICE at another group's doorstep. DICE isn't mine (I mean, if it was I wouldn't be constantly stressed about legalities) so I don't get to roll the dice (haha...sorry) to decide who picks it up. It's all up to whether fans are willing to devote their time for the entire community.
DeleteChapter 70 is in the reader now, and Jin might release it later today here as well.
ReplyDelete