Projects

Tuesday, December 17, 2024

Life was easier back then (they say)

Okay, so... I don't wanna jinx it. Every single damn time we talked about future projects and shit we always, and I mean always ended up falling behind or simply delaying things until someone else picked them up. Like... wanting things is not enough so we shouldn't be making bold promises, that's the philosophy(problem free).

With that said, I think we'll finally going to finish The Story of My Village by Akira Oze. My confidence in saying this is that translating it was a bit hard and there are certain notes that should be made almost every chapter so it's a lot of work, but when you have a reliable and willing translator that asks for this project? Yeah, I'm really confident right now and with a great tlc I'm hoping we finish this in 2025 (or at least most of it). Now if we had an extra ts...


Anywho, here we go with the second volume 

The Story of My Village ch. 12

Sunday, December 1, 2024

Labels

Dangerous manga for dangerous humans. Been a while since the last EVOL and I just remembered we had a few minor typos and shit to fix for ch 16... Oh well, next week.

EVOL ch. 17



And something we haven't done in a while... a double dose. Here's pip3's favorite chapter of this anthology (so far)

Won't She Speak Well, That Girl Who Woke Up From a Dream ch. 06

Monday, November 25, 2024

Stranger than fiction

I really vibe with this one, underneath the more humorous first layer, this chapter has some good depth to it. 

Won't She Speak Well, That Girl Who Woke Up From a Dream ch. 05

Sunday, November 3, 2024

Monday, October 28, 2024

What does night have to do with sleep?

Gotta love the horns. It's such a good idea. The volume will be compiled late because I'll need to replace a few pages, don't worry they're minor changes that won't really impact the story like a "hey" instead of "he" or a sfx that needs to be changed.

EVOL ch. 16 

Sunday, October 13, 2024

A gentle breeze around the knees

And we're back. Hope everyone had fun with Himeanole.


Well that was a wonderful collection of short stories. This last one was on the shorter side, like the 3rd one, but the length was perfectly fine here while with the other I feel like there was room left for more. Great endings on all of them though.

So I guess that's that and now we know Kyoko Okazaki is excellent at creating incredible oneshots, too. The thematic link between the five chapters makes you think she did them one after the other instead of over the course of almost 2 years. Hard to pick a favorite because that first one really floored me when I first read it and the fourth one was amazing, maybe it's between those two but I feel very strongly about the second one, too, some days I think it's just as good.

End of The World ch. 5

And

End of The World (complete)

Sunday, September 8, 2024

Can't teach an old dog new tricks

Heard you was looking for dark and depressing👀 

Won't She Speak Well, That Girl Who Woke Up From a Dream ch 03


So.. yeah. We're gonna be on a bit of a break right now, around a month... unless a typesetter magically drops from the sky. Though you might see something before that that has our paws on it👀

Monday, September 2, 2024

Why Do Good Girls Like Bad Guys?

it's ironic. 



Man, this collection of oneshots is soo so so good. 


Swimming the same deep water as you is hard

The shallow drowned lose less than we






Sunday, August 18, 2024

Monday, July 29, 2024

Kintsugi

New project time✌ 
Natsujikei Miyazaki is in my opinion one of the most interesting fresh mangaka that made their debut the previous decade along with the likes of Keigo Shinzou, Tsuchika Nishimura or Youko Komori (hope she comes back to doing manga again). I've only read News of Transformations a couple of years back and I really loved her style, it's a wonderful collection of surreal short stories. By the way, Glacier Bay Books is publishing this one in english, it's a collection of 33 eight page shorts so consider nabbing that one, it's a joy seeing this publisher continue to grow with each year.
As for the project we'll be taking on... apparently the first two chapters were scanlated into english 5 years ago😅 I had no idea because nobody updated MU about it. Well, anyway, they were commissioned so I doubt anyone was gonna finish it and I think our translation and especially our editing is better for this first one😁 so maybe wait until we finish the second one before venturing forward.



Sunday, July 21, 2024

Expand your horizons, snowflakes

Kaneko is just really good, period. (comma and period)
But like, if you look at the way he developed this story and his characters and how the three character centric flashbacks chapter were and how he waited until now for the Sakura one and just... the guy knows storytelling. It's true for every medium, but if you draw inspiration from a wide range of things then your own work will be rich. I just really like EVOL and that's all I can say about it, his visual storytelling is off the charts, I love this dude and I'm reminded that he said that when he watches a movie that people from abroad watched and liked he feels a kind of kinship towards them like we're all friends. Atsushi Kaneko is cute like that.



EVOL ch. 014

In other news, why haven't you watched The Crow? It gets a bit hollywood towards the end but the aesthetics, the atmosphere, the soundtrack... it's all so amazing. If you're tasteless then go to the store and buy some taste before watching it. This was back when Hollywood didn't just fuck up all adaptations like it was their pride (the comic book is good too but the movie is better).



Dream the crow black dream

Sunday, July 14, 2024

The Famicom is not the NES

Summer break... when you're a kid, it's the best time and yet...

Sadly, this is a shorter chapter, I wish Okazaki had a couple more pages to work with but oh well.


End of The World ch. 3 


Our condolences to the kids that had a Dreamcast instead of one of the actually cool consoles.




Monday, July 8, 2024

I'm not mad. I get mad but I'm not mad.

And there we have it. Time for JUSTICE

EVOL ch. 13



And of course

The Story of My Village ch. 10 

And that's the end of vol. 1, I'll compile the volume in a few days.


Sunday, June 30, 2024

Some motherfuckers always tryin' to ice skate uphill

Lestat or Dracula? Alucard or D? Count Von Count or Father Sang-hyun?

Vampyre fiction has been around for about 200 years, before Bram Stoker, and they seem to always be cool, be it in horror stories, action stories or even something like Vampire's Kiss. So of course Kyoko Okazaki had to try her hand at one of these stories.

(yes, page 057 is missing but it's just a blank page that says "“And to my victims…” ; sorry, we'll include it once we finish the volume)



A drop of ink may make a million think.

End of The World ch. 2


Monday, June 24, 2024

Story of The Eye

It's time. It is time... to see how Kyoko Okazaki handles a oneshot as opposed to a serialization (spoiler alert it's brilliant). It's been a while since we last worked on something by her, huh? I've honestly been curious about her skill at the short story so I'm really excited by this project. She's quite obviously channeling some Godard here, his New Wave period, you can see stains of Breathless and even Pierrot The Fool. There are 5 stories in this collection but I haven't had the chance to read beyond the first yet, if they're anywhere near this one in terms of quality then...well, what can I say, another great book from Kyoko Okazaki.

Massive thanks to Jawsh for the raws.

End of The World ch. 1




The evil is here... 

EVOL ch. 12


Monday, June 17, 2024

RockCom

And there we have it, another wrap. Rock was a lot of fun to read and she used certain concepts in it that were later expanded in Helter Skelter. The ending doesn't quite have the bite that her work usually does but it's very fitting here. 

Kyoko Okazaki has 6 works translated into english and we did 3 of them. That's pretty cool. 

Rock ch. 15

and

Rock (complete)



Friday, May 31, 2024

Five Years Later

Time flies when you're having fun, right? Technically the group was created a couple of weeks or a month or so before the 31st of May but that date should be when we redid the first 2 chapters that our fearless leader(-kun) put out solo and then a new one as a group and then kept a (somewhat) consistent schedule of releasing a new chapter every weekend. Speaking of which, here's a word from our sponsor, the one and only pip3 aka Bernd-Scans founder and chief:

These last couple of weeks, with our 5th anniversary approaching, I’ve been thinking about something to write up for the occasion. Something that ideally wouldn't be hollow self-flattery, wasting everybody's time.

The thing is, this hobby doesn't provide much in the way of interesting stories or anecdotes. What it boils down to is a bunch of people from all over sweating it out in front of their computers for hours at a time, each fulfilling their own roles, out of their own motivations, to make Bernd-Scans happen. What we have in common is, I think, a passion for manga. Manga that are intriguing, if a little unorthodox. And as far as I’m concerned, that's cool. 


A big thanks to everybody that has contributed over the years💖. Here's to five more!



And what a better way to celebrate this anniversary than with some new Minetaro Mochizuki since that's where it all started. I've been sitting on the raws for this for... about 3 years and finally, here we are, a small collection of short stories that take places in the same town, it's a recent thing so his art is on point, as for the writing... it's light and funny, particularly the 2nd and 3rd stories but it's nothing on the level of Chiisakobe or Tokyo Kaido (sadly) which, admittedly, is a pretty high bar. Still good though.


Short Bomb! (Minetaro Mochizuki)


Don't know what else to say, five years is a long time and I'm pretty proud of the work we've done, how we evolved and all the stuff we worked on, I genuinely liked all of out projects even if some more than others, I was thinking of making a poll to see everyone's favorite(s) but then I felt like it was a bit self indulgent and... lame.

Here's to more cool manga in the future, in these 5 years there are things we've sat on the raws for due to a lack of staff that other groups have picked up since, hopefully they do a good job, I'm a bit fearful of mtl roaches these days but I'm hopeful for a couple of stuff that we've been interested in doing that they have good people working on them, because seeing other groups work on cool stuff is always great since, well, even with several to a dozen series we've been eyeing getting scanlations, we... still have a huge backlog of stuff we could and would like to work on, so here's hoping we get more staff, particularly a jtl and a ts, but it's somehow really really hard to find people interested in scanlation, I'd like to resume Maiwai sometime this year too but we'd really need a ts.


Keep walking on the wild side and remember Life ist the hell.


 

Sunday, May 26, 2024

Evil comes in many forms

Every panel of EVOL is just so darn perfect. I love this manga so much, beyond words.

 

EVOL ch. 11

And also

EVOL vol. 2


That's a cool line by Rock there.

Rock ch. 14


See you next Sunday Friday

Monday, May 20, 2024

Sunday, May 12, 2024

Monday, March 25, 2024

Why did the ghost cross the road?

... to get to the other side.

About four years ago (whew, time sure flies), D&Q released a very nice and thick collection by an obscure gekiga mangaka that died in her mid 30s, I made a post and urged people to get it because it was a really well curated collection with a fantastic essay at the end in which you learn more about this person and her struggles and her triumphs. There were quite a few stories in there that I thought were really really good and if you ever wanted more...

In Japan, her sole short story collection was titled Flight and had quite a few differences when it came to content so you can check the rest of 'em out here, the highlight for me is hands down "What a Story" but "Story of A Turtle" deserves a mention too.

And now, some more Kuniko Tsurita. Here's the history of this little (sorta) oneshot, I saw that page I just posted earlier and I knew I wanted to read this story, it's in her later style that she didn't get to use much due to her illness (somewhat reminiscent of Yuko's Days from TSIBWASC), thing is... this is an unreleased and unfinished manga so... yeah, it's unfinished, it won't blow your socks off but I think it's still pretty cool and at the end of the day, if you saw that page, wouldn't you want to read it? Might do the other stuff in this collection of unreleased stuff but not in the near future.

The Other Side [Kuniko Tsurita]



And we're back with some more tsomv, might pick up the pace on this one, at least for a bit.

It used to be common sense not to trust the government but folks these days kinda surprise me...

 


The Story of My Village ch 07


Sunday, March 17, 2024

Livin' on the edge

It's cool seeing some of the concepts Okazaki would later use in Helter Skelter show up here first. 

Rock ch. 10

Monday, March 11, 2024

Pooptacular

There's something about the way Okazaki ends her chapters, like that last panel always gets ya.

Rock ch. 09
 

Monday, March 4, 2024

EVOLution of the species

Every.damn.chapter. Even though I should be used to it, I still end up gushing over every chapter of EVOL. Kaneko is doing so much in this series, the world an the characters, all these themes and how he can change gears so effectively for every chapter, and they're all so dense... sure, they've got a high page count but the storytelling is just soooo good, just those first two pages are so effective, Kaneko is truly a master.

EVOL ch. 09



And then there's this bitch. Fuckin' Spica.

Rock ch. 08

Monday, February 12, 2024

Monday, February 5, 2024

Sunday, January 28, 2024

Life in plastic is not so fantastic

We're kicking in high gear right about now. Sorry for the slow releases, chapters might not be big but we're working with shit raws. 

Rock ch. 04