This has been my (personally, not really the group) slowest week in at least a month or two. I attribute it to a variety of things, some of which are fair game for discussion, and some of which really kind of aren't. Suffice it to say, the burnout was fairly short lived, since I'm a very doting parent over WOW!scans... I just kind of boxed myself in with weekly/near weekly deadlines on our joints, raws aren't coming in the mail, Koizumi isn't making progress on the special project I bought to surprise everyone with... It seemed like stuff just wasn't going how I wanted, so I had to take a few days and just step back and recuperate a bit. OverDrive is going to wait another week I think, since once I finish Houkago Play for this week I really need to work on something *I* want to work on - meaning it'll be Anal Angel, OtoBoku, or Mei. I feel bad for OverDrive fans, but if I keep pushing through shit other people want and deprioritizing the stuff I have fun working on I'm going to burn right out again. (Just a side note, one of the stranger things on my list for today was raw providing the new Prunus Girl for a French scanlation group... we've also got Vietnamese groups working from our stuff... kind of cool, and kind of odd in a way)
Also, if you're into porn (who isn't?), you need to go here: http://www.mangatg.com/
Download Market Showgirl, Becoming a Girl by ShindoL, Avatar Trance, and Trans Panic. Thank me later.
Ugh, I felt like I had other shit that needed saying, but I guess it'll keep until I remember what it was, it's late here.
Monday, January 31, 2011
Monday, January 24, 2011
4komas and Joint Projects
So, now that the first chapter of the Houkago Play joint project came out without incident, I thought I'd share my thoughts so far on this and the Imouto wa Shishunki project. It's really interesting to work on the two of them, especially since I started on them both at about the same time, because despite both being 4komas, they require wildly different translation styles. Houkago Play is probably my most literal translations to date, since a lot of it is specific detail reference - ie, not much to do when she asks why the hell a PSP has a stylus in terms of style and prose. Imouto wa Shishunki, on the other hand, is much more what I expected from working with a 4koma - this one is my most liberal translation I've ever done. Preserving the essence of a sexual pun when translating takes... creativity. For example, there's a word in Japanese that can mean both 'son' and 'penis,' while there really aren't any good direct translations that carry the same double meaning. The chapters of Imouto are really short, but it ends up taking me forever, since I sit there and rack my brains for a way to stay faithful to the original and still have the humor carry over. The other fun thing I've gotten from Houkago Play is lots of sites to look up Japanese PSX and PSP shit on, since I'm not much of a gamer in the first place, and the references a lot of times are talking about shit that never got ported over here... yeah, fun...
These two joints are also the first time we've done a joint where I'm doing the translating, everything else so far has been our raws, image editing, qc, etc and the other groups' translation, so it's a bit of a different experience this time. The one thing I've really learned so far is that despite disliking IRC, I am glad as fuck our group uses it, since it's a real pain in the ass to do everything over email.
I told someone I'd share my thoughts on this season's shows (at least the ones that fall inside our shared interest in TG/trap type stuff), so I guess I'll do that now before the season ends up halfway over without me getting around to it.
Kore wa Zombie-kun:
I'm not really sure what to think... this show is such a mash-up of elements, it's kind of hard to figure out what to expect from it. I guess it's supposed to be comedy more than anything else, and it makes me laugh, so I guess it's a success on that front. As far as the trap content goes... I wouldn't claim there is any. The MC getting forced into a skirt in order to access his magical girl powers is pretty amusing, but he isn't passable and only does it out of necessity. I'm going to keep watching this one, because I figure that even the worst case scenario is that this show turns into a somewhat less generic than usual harem comedy.
Hourou Musuko:
Really good adaptation. Really good. I'm still not sure how well it stands on it's own for people that haven't read the manga, since they skipped so much of the beginning and kind of rushed the character introductions, but since I did read the manga, that isn't an issue for me. I'm still not fully on board with how shiny their heads are, but other than that the art style is gorgeous, and fits with the way Shimura draws the manga really well. I'm not very critical of things like seiyuu, but I think they did a pretty good job casting for the adaptation, no one stood out as sounding off, really. The OP sucks. No real way around that one. They cheaped out on the visual side of it, it's really boring and uneventful, and the song itself is somewhat of a failed Spitz knock-off. The ED is ok, and next to that OP, it seems amazing. I'm really disappointed that they only gave this 11 episodes though, I'm anticipating being ticked off at the way they end things, pretty much no matter what they do.
These two joints are also the first time we've done a joint where I'm doing the translating, everything else so far has been our raws, image editing, qc, etc and the other groups' translation, so it's a bit of a different experience this time. The one thing I've really learned so far is that despite disliking IRC, I am glad as fuck our group uses it, since it's a real pain in the ass to do everything over email.
I told someone I'd share my thoughts on this season's shows (at least the ones that fall inside our shared interest in TG/trap type stuff), so I guess I'll do that now before the season ends up halfway over without me getting around to it.
Kore wa Zombie-kun:
I'm not really sure what to think... this show is such a mash-up of elements, it's kind of hard to figure out what to expect from it. I guess it's supposed to be comedy more than anything else, and it makes me laugh, so I guess it's a success on that front. As far as the trap content goes... I wouldn't claim there is any. The MC getting forced into a skirt in order to access his magical girl powers is pretty amusing, but he isn't passable and only does it out of necessity. I'm going to keep watching this one, because I figure that even the worst case scenario is that this show turns into a somewhat less generic than usual harem comedy.
Hourou Musuko:
Really good adaptation. Really good. I'm still not sure how well it stands on it's own for people that haven't read the manga, since they skipped so much of the beginning and kind of rushed the character introductions, but since I did read the manga, that isn't an issue for me. I'm still not fully on board with how shiny their heads are, but other than that the art style is gorgeous, and fits with the way Shimura draws the manga really well. I'm not very critical of things like seiyuu, but I think they did a pretty good job casting for the adaptation, no one stood out as sounding off, really. The OP sucks. No real way around that one. They cheaped out on the visual side of it, it's really boring and uneventful, and the song itself is somewhat of a failed Spitz knock-off. The ED is ok, and next to that OP, it seems amazing. I'm really disappointed that they only gave this 11 episodes though, I'm anticipating being ticked off at the way they end things, pretty much no matter what they do.
WOW!
>4 hours of sleep friday night due to translation shit
>get up saturday, finish translating, scan shit
>drink last night to make myself take a break from scanlation stuff
>wake up, check irc logs, I was actually still trying to do WOW!scans shit with a fifth of rum in me
I actually really really want to talk about how weird it is working on those two joint 4koma projects in a number of ways, but I'm going to wait until I'm not hung over any more so that the walls of text are at least coherent. But yeah, I'm starting to realize that I don't have many hobbies other than scanlation any more, my free time is all scanlation, all of my minor daily worries are scanlation shit, etc. Not sure whether this is kinda lame or kinda awesome, I guess at least it's something productive, right?
>get up saturday, finish translating, scan shit
>drink last night to make myself take a break from scanlation stuff
>wake up, check irc logs, I was actually still trying to do WOW!scans shit with a fifth of rum in me
I actually really really want to talk about how weird it is working on those two joint 4koma projects in a number of ways, but I'm going to wait until I'm not hung over any more so that the walls of text are at least coherent. But yeah, I'm starting to realize that I don't have many hobbies other than scanlation any more, my free time is all scanlation, all of my minor daily worries are scanlation shit, etc. Not sure whether this is kinda lame or kinda awesome, I guess at least it's something productive, right?
Friday, January 21, 2011
Today's Purchases
Well, I stopped by the anime shop in town on my way home today, and found out that he's going back to online-only and closing down his store. I was just trying to pick up some stuff to fill gaps in manga series that I'm buying (Higurashi 1-5, Bokurano 1), but since he's a nice guy and has pretty damn good prices, I wound up buying a bunch of shit. Pretty happy with the Zodd figure, glad I finally bought it - I've looked at it and decided not to buy it probably five times by now. I also ended up picking up most of Ikigami, Groundwork of Eva part 3, the Amano illustrated version of the Tale of Genji, and some back issues of Megami. All in all a really satisfying (read: expensive) visit, but it really reminds me that I need to make the trip to Ikea to get another figure case and probably another bookshelf.
A New Day, A New Blog
Well, I'm going to leave this one really simple, since it's pretty much a combination personal/academic/scanlation-industry type of thing, and it's just my own thoughts, which don't really warrant a fancy layout. I'm still not 100% sure where I expect things to go on here, but it'll most likely end up with irregular walls of text, rants, and shit that lots of people won't care about, so no claiming I'm boring or that I didn't warn you. I think tonight I'll bitch about something that really annoys me about the scanlation community, and then we'll see if something slightly less snarky comes to me later.
So, a lot of the time that I'm looking at joint projects and potential new projects for WOW!scans, rather than think about stuff I like or browsing tags on aggregators, I dig around in the community and look for series that are dropped, have gaps, or where the groups are going really slow/using bad raws/otherwise screwing the readers. In my opinion, it's a much better thing to bail out a series that has frustrated readers than it is to pick up some new series and create a new fanbase - you're not only creating the positive feelings in new fans, you're helping to cure that frustration that people get when a series they like ends up screwed up in some way. So, that brings me to my issue... I'm not sure what drives people to do shit sometimes. Take Shiki for example, we almost picked that one up for a while, because two groups were working on it, but the second group had left a gap of several chapters when they started, and the group working in order up towards the gap in scanlations apparently didn't care to put out more than one chapter ever few months. The first group, who knows, maybe they were on their last legs or understaffed. The one that gets me is that second group that picked it up and knowingly left a gap in the scanlations. I saw a thread earlier (which was being trolled, so I backed the fuck out) where some /a/non was working on Usagi Drop scanlations. Leaving a gap of several chapters. The solution isn't to troll him, but really, I don't know what the thought process is when someone decides to do that. Scanlation takes too much effort to not do it for the pleasure of knowing people are enjoying reading your releases - so how does screwing the reader or doing less than your best effort ever make sense? It's almost along the lines of those groups that don't QC (hours of TL and cleaning, just to put out a shitty Engrish scanlation...) or that use ugly, unreadable raws. It seems so counter-intuitive to me, if anyone can explain this kind of shit to me, please do. Dropping stuff, going on hiatus, all of that makes sense; although it can be pretty screwy too, especially when one project is dropped to make room for some shit no one likes, but picking up a series and leaving a hole in the translations is just unfathomable for me. Alright, rambling rant over. More next time.
So, a lot of the time that I'm looking at joint projects and potential new projects for WOW!scans, rather than think about stuff I like or browsing tags on aggregators, I dig around in the community and look for series that are dropped, have gaps, or where the groups are going really slow/using bad raws/otherwise screwing the readers. In my opinion, it's a much better thing to bail out a series that has frustrated readers than it is to pick up some new series and create a new fanbase - you're not only creating the positive feelings in new fans, you're helping to cure that frustration that people get when a series they like ends up screwed up in some way. So, that brings me to my issue... I'm not sure what drives people to do shit sometimes. Take Shiki for example, we almost picked that one up for a while, because two groups were working on it, but the second group had left a gap of several chapters when they started, and the group working in order up towards the gap in scanlations apparently didn't care to put out more than one chapter ever few months. The first group, who knows, maybe they were on their last legs or understaffed. The one that gets me is that second group that picked it up and knowingly left a gap in the scanlations. I saw a thread earlier (which was being trolled, so I backed the fuck out) where some /a/non was working on Usagi Drop scanlations. Leaving a gap of several chapters. The solution isn't to troll him, but really, I don't know what the thought process is when someone decides to do that. Scanlation takes too much effort to not do it for the pleasure of knowing people are enjoying reading your releases - so how does screwing the reader or doing less than your best effort ever make sense? It's almost along the lines of those groups that don't QC (hours of TL and cleaning, just to put out a shitty Engrish scanlation...) or that use ugly, unreadable raws. It seems so counter-intuitive to me, if anyone can explain this kind of shit to me, please do. Dropping stuff, going on hiatus, all of that makes sense; although it can be pretty screwy too, especially when one project is dropped to make room for some shit no one likes, but picking up a series and leaving a hole in the translations is just unfathomable for me. Alright, rambling rant over. More next time.
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