Kentou Ankokuden Cestvs XI

We're on a roll at the moment, here's chapter XI of Cestvs a whole day earlier than I'd intended.

This time we get dark political scheming set to the backdrop of a bathroom encounter.

Next up should be Survival.

Read Online | Download

Survival Ch. 4

So here's another chapter of Survival and, in a bizarre twist of fate, it's not even been a month yet!

In the chapter there's mention of a Daily Life Chronicles. I've no idea if this is actually a real book or not, I tried searching for the title but didn't find anything meaningful. It sort of feels like it should be a real thing, but eh, it's not a major point anyway.

Next up will be Cestvs.

Read Online | Download

Getter Robo Devolution: Uchuu Saigo no 3-punkan Ch. 0

So here's something new, and a bit different. This is Getter Robo Devolution: Uchuu Saigo no 3-punkan (which is translated wonderfully to Getter Robo Devolution: The Last 3 Minutes for Universe in the manga). It's essentially a remake of sorts of the original Getter Robo series, by the pair behind Kurogane no Linebarrel and the latest Ultraman. Whether or not it's any good remains to be seen (I must admit I'm sceptical) but we shall see. It's fairly newly serialized; at present there's just two more chapters out in Japan.

This chapter is a (really short) sort of teaser release they had for it, though it does set the tone somewhat.

The quality of the release itself is fairly crap. It's from public magazine scans and I'm not one to spend too long on editing (especially as this was just something I took up on a whim while finishing up the next chapter of Survival). I'll fix it up from volume scans when they're released.

This'll probably be another slow burner for me which I release when I feel like a break from my other projects. Survival should be up tomorrow at any rate.

Read Online | Download

Kentou Ankokuden Cestvs Ch. X

I'd intended to get this chapter up yesterday but sort of got stalled on it; in part because I was tired from work, in part because I'd made a few mistakes in my translation.

Despite having probably butchered the translation, it's a chapter which I really enjoyed. I think it's fairly rare to see the sort of extended imagery used in the chapter (at least in manga), even if the use of walls for such imagery is perhaps a tad blasé.

At any rate, enjoy chapter X of Cestvs. Next up will be Survival.

Read Online | Download

Somali to Mori no Kami-sama Ch. 2

So here it is, chapter two of Somali. In it we take a break from the city and enjoy a brief rest by the river.

After the 60 page slog of Saibou it was a nice (and easy) change of pace to do a mere 20 or so pages with this release (especially without having to look up a million and one technical terms). I'm hoping to be able to get releases out quicker now. Or maybe I'll go start something else long and painful...

Anyway, next up should be Cestvs X.

Read Online | Download

Hataraku Saibou Ch. 1

Well I know I said I'd get Somali out next but, true to form I decided that, rather than get out a nice, simple 20 page chapter, I'd kill myself off with a torturous 60 page thing.

Read Online | Download

Survival Ch. 3

And here at last is chapter three of Survival, in which a poor bird meets a rather unfortunate fate. Hopefully future releases for this won't take quite as long...

In related news the first volume of Survival: Shounen S no Kiroku, a modern remake of the series is due out this month. I'm tempted to try and get a hold of a copy and do double releases, as I feel it'd be cool to compare the two versions, but we shall see.

While looking on Amazon Japan I also saw a that the third volume of Heavenly Island is due out February 8th, so a little under a month from the time of writing! I doubt I'll be able to get scans of it immediately, but with any luck I'll be able to get releases going again around the start of March.

Next up though should be Somali. Chapter X of Cestvs and chapter four of Survival are also in the works. The first chapter of my final series is still coming along too, but probably won't be out for a while yet.

Read Online | Download

Kentou Ankokuden Cestvs Ch. I-IX

For a while now I've been making mention of another series which I've been working on, and, after several weeks of on and off work, I'm at last able to present the first nine chapters of Kentou Ankokuden Cestvs (in English it works out as something along the lines of Cestvs - The Legend of Boxing in the Dark Ages). This is a series which I've been interested in for a while, especially as it's one of the few manga series set in Rome, and I'm very much a classicist at heart.

Set in the time of Nero it follows a young slave-boxer called Cestvs as he tries to fight his way to freedom. It's sort of dumb in a lot of ways (it often stretches the definition of what boxing is) but it's amusing to me nonetheless. There's 15 volumes as well as an ongoing sequel so there's plenty to look forward to!

The manga's author, Shizuya Wazarai is a relatively unknown figure. A school friend of Kentaro Miura (of Berserk fame), his only other original series is a fairly amusing three volume title called Blaster Knuckle, about a former boxer fighting vampire/werewolf KKK members. Other than that Cestvs (and its ongoing sequel) have seemingly been all he's worked on.

Now it might be asked why I bothered to release nine chapters at once. Aside from a gross sense of masochism on my behalf, the reason is that the first volume (of eight chapters) has actually been previously scanlated. Unfortunately the original work is, at least in my opinion, rather poor. So much so that I decided it'd be best to just re-do it all (feel free to compare my version of the first volume to the original scans!). Given that I've always found redone versions of already uploaded chapters to be a bit of a tease, I also went through chapter IX just to have something new as well. It was probably more effort than it was worth but hey, it's done now.

A couple of points should probably be made about the translation itself. I stuck with calling the main character Cestvs (with the v) as that's seemingly how the author romanized it (it's dumb but I guess he wanted to be authentic). Throughout the series itself there are a fair few footnotes, as well as the end of volume notes on historical facts about Rome, which I opted not to translate. For one I found them to rather needless (it's easy enough after all to search for information on the historical facts involved), plus it would've made things rather messy to include it all. I also left all the chapter numbers in as Roman numerals, in part because that was how it was in the Japanese text, in part because I quite like it anyway.

All that text aside, Cestvs is something I hope to get through in a fairly timely fashion, but as ever we shall see. Next up should hopefully be the long awaited next chapter of Survival. I sort of stalled on it while doing Cestvs and there's one bit of editing which is causing me nightmares but it should be done soon! After that will be the next chapter of Somali. There's one other series I'm working on but it's long and a real pain to do, so it probably won't pop up any time soon. I don't think I've ever really stuck to what I've said in these posts though, so it'll probably end up being something completely unintended instead! For now at least though, enjoy Cestvs.

Read Online | Download