Kakushigoto Teaser

>mfw I released something again

Yeah, well, this hardly qualifies as a release, eh. But Kumeta-sensei has a new series in the works, after the demise of Sekkachi in January. We’ll see if this offering does any better. Hopefully this isn’t some kind of nostalgia farewell tour for him, but doesn’t look promising, since the other thing he’s done lately is the “Studio Pulp” greatest hits collection in Le Paradis. A thousand apologies for the screencaps, but couldn’t find real raws, and also don’t have a real redrawer, so as always, suimasen.

>> Get Kakushigoto Preview here <<
[Translator: slyborg Typesetter: slyborg]

So, sasuga Kumeta, the manga title has a double meaning. ‘Kakushigoto’ as 隠し事 means ‘a secret’, written as 描く仕事 means ‘a drawing/illustrating job’. So the last page final panel literally says ‘the kakushigoto was kakushigoto‘. You’d think he’d get tired of this after 20 years, but it’s what the man does, ne.

Ciao for Now

So, just like Berserk, I’m going to be going on indefinite hiatus. I could tell you I’m just too busy, but the truth is that I just don’t have the necessary fire in the belly anymore. This is really a young person’s game. I’ve been keeping the lights on here the last year or more in the hope that we’d get some fresh-faced newcomers to take over the store, but we were always pretty much terrible at recruiting. Maybe it was all the Germans. (I kid, I kid).

The fan translation community is one of the most amazing things on the Internets IMHO, and I’ve been glad to have been a part of it. I’ve also been glad to get to know the people from around the globe that I’ve met and worked with as a result, all of whom have been smart, interesting and in most cases very nice people. That goes for most of you out there that read our sorry offerings as well, and gave us either praise, criticism, or correction. Finally, I’d also like to thank most of all Kōji Kumeta, whose iconoclastic take on Japanese society and life as a whole made such an impression on myself and my colleagues here. We also appreciate his not suing us.

Not that this actually means anything (as proved by Fate Kaleid), but all of the series we had been doing are now fair game, and I honestly hope that Kumeta-sensei’s works continue to get fan translations, since his publisher apparently can’t be assed to do it. I also hope someone will come by to expand the Wiki. I’ll keep checking up on the old blog here for comments, drop us a note if you have any interest.

I should quit while I’m ahead, ne, but it seems fitting to leave you with my translation of Kumeta’s last blog posting for SZS from the final tankōbon volume.

Final Words

Time flies like an arrow. 7 years of serialization went by in a flash. Actually, 20 years as a mangaka went by in a flash.

Peach and chestnut trees take 3 years to bear fruit, persimmons 8 … it wasn’t like The Girl That Leapt Through Time or anything, but that’s kind of how it goes in this business.

♪　3 years for drafts  8 years drawing  9 years for Hata to get brought down a notch  18 years without an anime

In other words, 3 years to do decent rough sketches, 8 years to get to the point of inking them, and then 18 years waiting to have them transformed into an anime. That’s more or less how it usually goes, I thought.

Although I’m basically unemployed, apart from some part-time work doing dialog bubbles,  I’ll never forget the kindness I’ve been shown by everyone I’ve been associated with. Can I keep doing manga for the rest of my life? Can I keep scraping by as a dialog bubble clerk? I don’t know if that KFC on Sado is open, but somehow or other I’m happy. I was able to make it this far as a mediocre artist thanks solely to my brilliant readers. Thank you.

(1) 桃栗3年8年  momokuri san nen kaki hachi nen is a proverb meaning “it takes time to see the fruit of one’s labors”.
(2) It was 40 years between the original serialization of Yasutaka Tsutsui’s novel Toki wo Kakeru Shōjo “The Girl That Leapt Through Time” and the animated film directed by Mamoru Hosoda.

Belated Gifts (SZS 212)

Yaru yo.

This was originally intended to be a quickie package of Oya’s tank retypeset and some TL Notes in time for Valentine’s Day. Then I discovered that the available tank raws were actually missing two pages from this chapter; fortunately GreenTea still had the five year old magazine scans. Then I actually read these originals and started to discover some mistakes … lots of mistakes … actually, our original release of this chapter was kind of bad. As in please throw it away and do not look at it again, because it contains a number of howlers that we lacked the skills to avoid in those pre-Umin days. So this ended up being pretty much a redo from scratch apart from the clean and type layers, and hence missed the target date by a country mile. Anyway, pretty much lived up (or down) to our group motto here, honto ni sumimasen, sumimasen…

As it happens, and as usual with Kumeta-sensei, the Valentine’s Day custom of chocolate-giving (as adapted by the Japanese) was just an excuse to launch into the topic of 下克上 gekokujō, awkwardly translated by the EDICT dictionary as “juniors dominating seniors; retainer supplanting his lord.” I chose to go with “social upheaval” as, particularly during the Edo period shogunate’s rigid social/class structure, any idea of people bucking the status quo was considered a major violation of social norms. As you of course know by now from reading our many TL Notes on the topic, the Japanese language is notable for specific linguistic patterns specifically used to signal one’s understanding and conformance to these social norms, mostly involving automatic respect/status given to those either older or of higher social class than oneself. The entire chapter dialogs reflect this, but I will just discuss one example, our release picture of Chiri. The “yaru yo” she says in Japanese uses the ‘do’ verb 遣る which is used to mean “to give” when giving to an inferior, most commonly an animal; for example  zanpan o inu ni yaru “I’m giving the leftovers to the dog.” Not using respect speech with a teacher would be rude enough, but Chiri’s “Here.” would be closer to “I’m letting you have this (not that you deserve it) you loser!” Itoshiki-sensei is of course all too aware of her skills with the shovel to take offense…

>> Get SZS 212 here <<
>> Mirror <<
TL Notes
[Translator: slyborg TLC/Proof: pseu Typesetters: Oyashiro, slyborg]

We here at Suimasen of course hold our readers in the highest regard, and proffer our poor attempt at translation with all humility. Please accept it!

So, I hope I didn’t discourage Moy Moe from taking up the great cause here; you see, we’re dead and it makes scanlation a slow business. I don’t usually read other translations because I don’t want to be biased, but I liked that chapter and was curious what they made of it. I actually think they did a fine job, apart from, you know, getting Nami’s name wrong … which I’m sure was a simple mistake, but given the specific importance in this manga of the character names, it was too much for me to avoid pointing out. I’d actually be happy to joint with a group with staff and time to finish SZS, having it with a couple of volumes untranslated still fills me with despair…

Fate Kaleid Batch Links Updated

また読んでね！

In the never-ending struggle against the forces of automated copyright trolling, those of us that want others to have nice things must be eternally vigilant. TL;DR – Project page now has updated links including the batches of the original series (of which Suimasen only did the last 4 chapters), as well as batch for 2wei. Names are slightly obfuscated to make the bot herders work harder, but no promises, eh.

Still would like to re-master the series, was working off old-school small format magraws in the dark ages of five years ago, and some of the chapters, particularly ch. 9 were off some heinous black and white Share raws. Or maybe Kadokawa will finally license the thing for English translation. It’s like they hate money…

Nyantastic (SZS 231v2)

Our Lady of Bizarre Lyrics

Alrighty, first of the leftover Oyashiro tank re-edits. He originally did these approximately two years ago, which gives you some idea of how long we’ve been dead. Our original release of the original magazine version was in April 2011, this was one of the chapters animated in the BD extra released January 2012. Yes, it’s been 3 years since SZS got its last animated release.

I started with this one because the tank extra was a papercraft page with almost no text. Then I decided to put up the TL Notes on the wiki, having forgotten that this one had Kumeta in rare form, with not one, but two Despair Lists and a panel of background references to boot. I know that there are approximately zero people that actually read the TL Notes, but we do these things not because they are popular, but because we are enormous weebs that thrive on suffering.

This also happens to be one of the most difficult to translate chapters in the series, being essentially sound puns in Japanese the whole way. Umin just left the “nyan/nan” thing stand, the anime sub by [gg] tried to make a rhyme in English and made it even less comprehensible IMHO.

>> Get SZS 231 here <<
>> Mirror <<
TL Notes
[Translator: Umin Typesetter: Oyashiro Proofreader: slyborg]