So expect a release soon (as soon as I talk to the right people.) Sorry it took so long. I’ve been busy with school starting amongst other things (I admit, Blazblue is also a culprit.)

I’m finally done with the first chapter of this manga. It took me quite a while, mainly because I was busy doing other things like work and games. And I was lazy. But I finally did it.
Here it is: Chapter 1

I still have to apologize for page 8 (although, it does sound better than it did before.) Also, some of the English, at least for the parts where they speak in broken sentences, is kinda odd. Maybe I’ll get better at finding better English equivalents the more that I do this.

In other news, I’m no longer in Japan. I’m back in the States. Started playing BlazBlue recently. Will probably start playing Mana Khemia 2 pretty soon.

Ive been sitting around doing nothing lately besides work. I haven’t even been playing games. God, I’m so lazy. So, I decided to start another translation project.. with hopefully more success than the last one (which did eventually get translated by someone else.)

The name of the manga is Ai wa noroi no nihon ningyou which translate to: Ai is a cursed Japanese doll, or something like that. As the title suggests, it’s about a cursed doll named Ai. Mostly revolving around her interactions with her owner, who is a figure otaku (aka, to the extent of making clothes for the figures and that kind of thing.) It’s a comedy (with a side of ecchi.)

I’m currently in the middle of translating the first chapter. The quality of the scans are kinda … meh, so it’s makes reading some of the kanji really hard. The lines are kinda blurry. It’s also my first time translating something, so that’s also a problem. About that… I’m sure that at least some of my translations are a little off…especially page 7. That was a doozy. So be prepared if you do plan on reading it >.>

One of my favorite doujin artists is a fellow by the name of Urotan (うろたん). I recently came across his latest doujin on FAKKU, a Strike Witches hentai book by the name of Milkie Strike. It pretty much embodies two of Urotan’s three loves (loli and bukkake, the third unrepresented one being big breasts).

This project is really reminding me how many kanji I really don’t know. I think I’ve had to look up almost every kanji used (thank god for Jim Breen’s website and the multi-radical section.) I think looking up the kanji took more time than the actually translating.

The other problem is, even though I probably do have enough grammar skills to translate the title, my vocabulary leaves something to be desired…. Well, by something I mean a lot of somethings… My vocabulary plainly sucks. At least, while doing this, I should learn lots of new words (probably not the best words to learn, but whatever.) As a result, my translations are probably somewhat off, at least for the beginning monologue.

Anyway, I’m not sure what I should do with this once I’m done. I probably suck at editing, so the likelihood of me editing the translated text into the doujin is pretty slim. Maybe I’ll just upload the RAW + a rtf file with the translations somewhere on this site. I shouldn’t really worry about it right now, since it’s obviously going to take a while going at the rate I’m going at..

No seriously, who makes a manga about some guy who masturbates in the girl’s bathroom. I’m not sure what to think about Onani Master Kurosawa. I can’t even guess what’s going to happen in this manga (beyond what’s provided in the synopsis.) The only hint the synopsis gives is that he gets caught (probably in the second chapter since it didn’t happen in the first one.)

The thing that strikes me about this manga is the art style. It’s very sketchy. By sketchy, I don’t mean perverse or anything like that. The way the panels are shaded reminds me of sketches. It’s actually something I’d expect to see on an artist’s website, not on a commercial product. Not saying that the style is bad, it’s actually quite good.

The main character is interesting (not counting the whole masturbation thing.) He seems to think he is above everyone else, which is very obvious given his hateful internal monologues. For some reason, the way he acts reminds me of Light Yagami. Even similar facial motions.

I have no idea how this manga is going to turn out, but I’ll definitely be reading more of it. You can find the manga at Hidoi~! Translators.

Apparently, it was, according to ANN at least.

The Executive Committee of the Harvey Awards and Baltimore Comic-Con have announced the nominees for the 2008 Harvey Awards. Yasuko Kobayashi and Kazasa Sumita’s Witchblade Takeru manga (Top Cow/Image) earned a nomination in the Best American Edition of Foreign Material category.

I’m not really familiar with this award. Perhaps its more of a remark about how good the localization is, regardless of the original material? I doubt it, though, since awards are judged by comic artists. Of all the manga to get nominated, I don’t see why Witchblade was one of them… I read the first volume (kinda quickly, though) and didn’t find it particularly special or interesting, tough the art was nice (I think?)

Anyway, since I actually have more time on my hands, I might as well re-read it. I don’t remember a single thing from the manga XD

When I first say this manga, I was actually confused about who was the artist. This may be hard to believe, but I had originally thought that the artist was Asu Tsubaki, the mangaka of He is my Master. Yea, I know. It doesn’t take a very close inspection to see how wrong I was. The art styles are nothing alike.

After my misconception was… annihilated, I started looking into the manga some more. Thus I found out that Last Uniform was indeed not an ecchi book. (Come on, “last uniform”? What other kind of book could it be.)

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Ok, I’ll admit one thing straight up. The only reason I became interested in this manga was because of the cover. I couldn’t resist such a cute looking picture. To be perfectly honest, not only did I have no interest in this title before, but I had never even heard of it before seeing it on a ‘recent arrival’ list. I guess I should count myself to be very lucky since the manga is at least decent. Therefore, no lesson learned

I decided for this one that I would go with a little of a different style than my other impressions. It’s a bit more formatted this time so I hope that whoever reads it will enjoy. Many bothans died to give you this information, y’know.

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I just happened to stumble upon this interesting series today. I’ll spare making up my own synopsis and just copypasta from the mangaupdates page.

All Yoriko could remember from the night before was the red blood, the red moon and an exceedingly bewitching red eye… The next day during class, being on the verge of remembering leaves her in a sickened state and her classmate Kirin suggests she take a nap in the nurse’s office. When Yoriko arrives she notices nobody is around so she decides to make use of the empty bed. While resting, the absent nurse returns to the office to finish the job she had failed the night before: suck Yoriko clean of blood. In the middle of the struggle, Kirin comes to save poor Yoriko from the demon nurse. Turns out Kirin and her brother Koryu are ‘oni’.

I’ve only read two of the available volumes thus far. This is one weird little manga. Sure, the fact that Yoriko has some magic ability that allows her to be awesome is standard shounen fair.

One of the things that makes this manga nice is the art. The mangaka for this one is Kuromasa Shisei (黒柾 志西). It doesn’t seem like he’s done that much else in terms of manga except for some contributions for Comic Rin. That’s too bad, too, since he has a really interesting art style. He has a way of making the characters look very … disturbed. There’s also a fair amount of fanservice

Oni Gokko is currently being scanslated by NEET Scanslations. So far, they’ve released 22 chapters. You can download them from here.

I’m ashamed to say this, but I’ve basically watched none of the “new” Spring 2007 anime, besides Gurren Lagann, that is. Since Spring started, I’ve watched 12 episodes of Gurren Lagann, one episode of Hitohira and one episode of Murder Princess. Yea, pretty pathetic. I do sort of plan on fixing it. I’m really looking at Lucky Star right now.

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Seven Seas Entertainment apparently caved in from the pressure from some very vocal anime fans and canceled Nymphet. Forumers at the Anime News Network forums seem to believe that their discussion about the title brought on this decision. Their discussion mainly focused on how it would change the perception of manga and anime in the United States (ok, most of it had to do with whether the content of the manga was “wrong” or not.)

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It’s a big shame that manga costs so much here. It’s easy to become jealous of our friends across the ocean. I mean, ￥560 per volume? Totally unfair compared to our normal price of $10 per volume. At least, that is the brick and mortar store price. On the Interweb, it’s much easier to get manga more appropriately priced.