Winterpause

We’re hibernating, please continue to wait warmly.

Snow falling on cedars… err… burr oaks

Where P=0 (Root Paradise Ch. 23/24)

If I ever open a bar / math tutoring place, this is what I will name it.

And thus Kumeta’s heartwarming tale of a pimp and his girl concludes at last. Had kind of a longish TL Note that I decided to insert here – the school Natsuki is attending in the final chapter, Futatsubashi University, is a reference to Hitotsubashi University, a prestigious university specializing in the social sciences in Tokyo. Hitotsu is a counting word meaning “one”, futatsu means “two”.

>> Root Paradise Ch. 23 <<
[Translator: slyborg Cleaner/Typesetter: Rayleigh Proofreader: tabv]

>> Root Paradise Ch. 24 <<
[Translator: slyborg Cleaner/Typesetter: Rayleigh Proofreader: tabv]

So this probably represents some kind of dubious all-time record in the annals of scanlation for the completion of a manga by its original group. We took 7 1/2 years, almost to the day, to complete the translation of this masterpiece. That’s an average of nearly 4 months a chapter, and even more impressive, it took 3 times longer than the manga originally ran in serialization! Many hands carried the inert carcass of this manga towards the finish line over the years, but special mention to our intrepid translator Kasu, who got us started on the thing and then dropped it halfway because “it isn’t very good”, and to our friend tabv from Kicchiri who insisted we finish it, and mostly Rayleigh, who did most of the hard work of cleaning and typesetting the last third of the chapters. The Internets will never forget you. For my part, I wanted the group to finish something, anything from end to end apart from shorts, and this was the closest thing we had in the hopper. So now my life is complete, and I can resume grinding crystals in Granblue Fantasy as God intended.

The Cabaret Root Paradise was Kumeta-sensei’s second series, and originally ran concurrently with Southern Ice from 1993-1994. It clearly represents very early work by Kumeta, and was mostly interesting to me as a bit of a snapshot of early-90s Japan as the bubble economy collapsed and Japan was beginning its long period of economic stagnation. It also is the first example of the simplified line work that would become his mature style in Katte ni Kaizou and reach its final form in SZS. Other than that, well, Kasu was right. It has its moments, but it was clearly an attempt by Kumeta to put up a quasi-ecchi to pander to a certain demographic (probably his editors) and I feel thoughout that his heart wasn’t really in it.

My general plan is to carry 2 more titles than I actually have staff for, and since this is currently Rayleigh and myself, that means Oedo Unplugged, FIJC, and a manga to be named later. It would be nice to tackle something else out of the Kumeta back catalog, but Kicchiri is doing a better job there than we did, so I’m leaving this to them tanomu onegaishimasu. I have a sports manga, another kimono manga, and this kind of odd seinen romantic drama as potential candidates, I’ll take votes on this later. Also, moar staff always needed, enter the ancient world of IRC as per usual and ring us up. No, we won’t switch to Discord because fuck Discord, IRC will be around long after that’s as forgotten as ICQ.

Hope everyone is having a good start to 2018, and as always – please wait warmly.

 

Baby Diver (Oedo!! Un❤️pluged! Ch. 7)

Babies rock! Actually, they mostly scream a lot and piss themselves… now that I think about it, pretty much like most rockers…

So, we’ve been busy,  &c. “They say we’re lazy, but it takes all our time…”

>> Get Oedo!! Unpluged Ch. 7 here <<
[Translator: slyborg  Clean: Rayleigh Typesetter: slyborg Proof: Rayleigh, tabv]

Now that we’ve got the band together, girls get warmed up with some baby rescuing. Who doesn’t like a cute baby… especially a cute baby that can somehow climb a temple bell tower in 30 seconds…

A Bell Is A Cup Until It Is Struck (Root Paradise Ch. 22)

USA! USA! USAMIMI!

Suddenly, sports! We all know how Japan vs. America turned out the first two times…

>> Root Paradise Ch. 22 <<
[Translator: slyborg Cleaner/Typesetter: Rayleigh Proofreader: tabv]

USA means “rabbit” in Japanese, so Americans naturally should have rabbit ears. Rabbits are also famous for eating their own shit, so the analogy might be more accurate than at first appears.

 

Vampire Weekend (Oedo!! Un❤️pluged! Ch. 6)

By popular demand

I probably should have saved this one for Halloween.

>> Get Oedo!! Unpluged Ch. 6 here <<
[Translator: slyborg  Clean: Rayleigh Typesetter: slyborg Proof: tabv]

The classic portrayal of the vampire, Bram Stoker’s Dracula, dates from 1897. While similar stories first became popular in the early to mid 19th century, it is unlikely these would have been known during the Tenpou era. Japan’s affection for the cryptid seems to date from the 1950s, probably thanks to the dissemination of Hollywood portrayals of the Dracula story.

The Japanese word for the Western vampire,  kyuuketsuki is derived from the reading of the kanji version of the word – 吸血鬼, literally ‘blood-sucking demon’.