I have a question for you Brits.

I'm from North America and I'm planning a trip to the London in the next few months.

Do you need a special extension to plug in the wall for stuff like a laptop?

I ask because I don't want any bad surprises when I get there.

Oh!

Rookies 207 (!Rook207) - Newest chapter of Rookies. As usual, thanks to Deadbeat-Scans for their help on this chapter.

I recommend you all come back sometime tomorrow night at roughly this time.

I want to do another Tetsuya Saruwatari series because he's really one of (if not the) favorite mangaka's.

For those of you who don't know,  Tetsuya Saruwatari is the mangaka that currently works on the Tough series and it's prequel, Koukou Tekken-den Tough that we are currently scanlating. He also has a set of side stories to these two manga's, Oton. We scanlate that as well.

Prior to doing the Tough mangas, Saruwatari was known as the mangaka who created many over-the-top crazy action series. One of his most notable works, a series he was only the artist for, is Riki-Oh. We scanlated that once upon a time.

The point I'm getting at is, I miss doing Saruwatari's old-school, ultra violent stuff. I miss doing his ridiculous mangas with people literally just blowing up and near-invincible protagonists. So I want to do a new series of his and there's just too many to choose.

These are the series I have raws for and would be more than willing to do, so I'm going to list them and I want you to tell me which one I should do:

Bad Police - A series about an ex-biker turned cop who's basically a cocky prick that fights evil in his own way. It's a one volume series, which is good for me because there aren't long-term commitments attached with it. (I haven't scanned the volume yet)

Damned - Saruwatari's series that resembles Riki-Oh the most. You could even call it Riki-Oh in a parallel universe. This is the front-runner because I loved Riki-Oh so much and it's only three volumes. (I've scanned volumes 1-2, just procrastinating for v3)

Dog Soldier - Simplest way of describing it is... Japanese Rambo. The protagonist is called John K. Hiba and does jobs for secret agencies like the CIA where he has to kill dictators & blow shit up. This is the series that got Saruwatari his recognition as an ultra-violent mangaka. (I own v1-3 & haven't scanned any of the volumes yet)

SOUL - It's a street fighting manga where the protagonist offers his opponents a coat full of money if they defeat him. At least, that's what it looks like seeing as I don't speak Japanese. (I own all four volumes, but haven't scanned it yet)

The Hard - If you've read Riki-Oh, then you've probably read the NY Dust short story at the end of volume 12. This is the prototype that eventually led to the creation of The Hard. If you haven't read it, go read it now, we have it on the Online Reader. The Hard is the story of a bounty hunter named Kenji Hado (Nicknamed The Hard) who hunts down bounties to pay his divorce bills. Big guns, huge explosions and lots of Jack Daniels to pass around. Doesn't get much more manly than that, does it? I've scanned volumes 1-4 and own the 13 other volumes.

So let me know what you think.

Have a good one.

Suicide Island 37 (!SI37) - New chap, shit goes down.

Next release in like 2-3 weeks. We're all busy.

Bye!

We're releasing two volumes that were supposed to be released on Christmas, then on New Year's Eve, but we couldn't finish them in time.

That's life, shit happens.

On top of that, we have three pages from Sidonia no Kishi that (for whatever reason) didn't get fixed. Maybe I deleted the changes my accident when I was doing the QC, but they weren't done and they clearly were on the QC file... And I finalized the wrong version of the cover. Sorry! So if you want to download those fixes, I uploaded a new version of Sidonia no Kishi v3 on the bot and I upload the three pages here, so clicky clicky.

For starters!

I Am A Hero v04 (!Hero04) - We started working on I Am A Hero v04 a few months back, but as most of you know the joint between Gantz_Waitingroom pretty much broke down and they released their own version. No problem from me. It's mainly my fault, anyway. The translator who did volumes 1-3 for us, laika, is more interested in other series than this one while the translator who did volume 4, Saber^^, did it as a favor and has since left the group. So in short, I don't have a translator for the series right now. I'd like to continue the series because I think that it's one of the best series we scanlate. But without a translator, I'm basically fucked. So... Yeah.

Jackals v07 (!Jack07) - The final volume of Jackals at last. A big thank you to Nitouryu for doing the majority of the editing on the series, Icedman for typesetting a big chunk of the series, Kuthrow for QCing a big chunk (and for telling us off) and abcd9164 for picking up the translation work for volume 6 & 7. Sorry we couldn't do this faster, but that's life for this group. So now we can chalk another one up as a complete project. Nitouryu says:

.:22·31·13:. «!GGpX» Kuthrow, got anything you wanna say about Jackals? So I can put it on the news post
.:22·50·26:. «@Nitouryu» you can put this from me "One and a half year ago I said we'd finish it by end of 2010. Should have gone into politics!"

Also, we made a volume pack for Jackals v06. (!Jack06)

Btw, I've updated the projects list with some Future Projects of ours. All of those series have been completely scanned and are just missing a translator. With the exception of Horobishi, which we should start working on in late January or early Febuary because the translator has been busy & took a long deserved vacation, and Damned that also needs an editor, all of those series are just missing a translator to get going. Some of those series, like 1 and Sky High 4, are already completely cleaned. Just needs a translator. Sounds like a common theme, doesn't it?

Enjoy.

Welp, happy New Years to all.

First the releases, and then I'll edit the post about the extra stuff.

Like the Christmas release, I had planned to release more stuff today, but alas we couldn't finish it. So it'll be for some other time.

Hotel (!Hotel) - This is a joint with Japanzai, who graciously translated and did some of the editing for this oneshot compilation volume. This ended up being a much bigger pain in the ass that I thought it would be, but oh well, it's done. And it was a lot of fun, too. Two of the stories in this volume are just real bizarro.

Rookies 206 (!Rook206) - The beginning of volume 22. As usual, thanks to the people in Deadbeat-Scans for their help.

Sengoku 29 (!Sen29) - This concludes volume 3. I'll make a volume pack for this and a few other series at some point in January.

Sidonia no Kishi v03 (!Sido03) - Thanks a bunch to Elkin for taking time out of her drawing to finish translating the volume  We might be getting a little more Sido soon, too.

Suicide Island 35-36 (!SI35 !SI36) - Been a little bit of a long time coming. Big thank you to a new cleaner of ours, BlackJack, for doing the redraws for ch36. The translator is still pretty busy with real life stuff, so I don't know when the next chapter will be.

[edit]

Now for the state of the projects. If I don't answer your question, feel free to ask and I'll answer.

I also updated the project page with some probable future projects of ours at some point this year, with the exception of Break Free probably.

À La Carte - The translator who did ch1-3 is gone. Don't think he'll be coming back. So we need a translator to finish ch4 or this one's not gonna be moving any time soon.

DoLL - It all really depends on pnyxtr and how motivated he gets to finish this one up. He doesn't have much time to spend on scanlation-related work anymore, so I don't really know when the next chapter will be.

Full Metal Panic Sigma - Our translator, Avatar, recently mentioned that he's got a new job and real life matters that are more important than translating, but that he'd try to translate v14 by the end of January. Once we get that, though, the release shouldn't be long after.

Holyland - I'm not sure exactly about our translator situation for v16+, but here's hoping I find a way to settle it.

Homunculus - Long story short, translator doesn't have the time right now. Between juggling university, a job & a girlfriend, translations aren't his main focus right now. I spoke to him this week and he's said that he'll try to get some work done on the volume. But like I said, this isn't really his priority right now.

I Am A Hero - I honestly don't know. Although something'll happen sooner or later possibly.

Itaitashii Love - eito, the one doing all the work on this series, is currently addict to Skyrim. ETA unknown.

Jackals - Should be a chapter released within the next week or so.

Keiyaki no Ki - See Itaitashii Love.

Koukou Tekken-den Tough - Okay, here's the deal. For this series, yours truly can translate pretty quickly. Only problem is, I don't have anyone to do the redraws right. xyz is tired of doing these redraws, so he's taking a break from the series to do some other series instead. So in short, if you feel like helping, apply either on IRC or by emailing me. These aren't easy redraws either, so you need to be able to do a certain level of redraws.

Mephisto - Will be active soon enough, believe it or not.

My Street - Closer and closer to getting dropped.

Oton - No new volume, nothing new here.

REAL - I just purchased volume 11 yesterday, literally. It's being shipped my way and will be here in ~10 days or so. Second problem is, I don't have a translator for it now that Molokidan's retired from scanlations. So... Translators, hi!

Rookies - someone2040 from Deadbeat-Scans is pretty busy with work these days, so releases are going to be irregular.

Saru Lock - I gave Death-Toll my raws for volume 5 & scanned volume 6 for them. Once we release ch39-40, we'll be officially dropping the series.

Shamo - Same thing I told you guys last time, I'm still looking for raws. If you find me raws, I can continue with the magazine scans temporarily. If not, you'll just have to wait for the tankobon. Speaking of tankobon, we'll start working on the tankobon release of volume 26 at some point in January. Maybe in time for a late-January release? I kind of doubt it, but we'll see.

Shonan Jun'ai Gumi - Kuthrow's recently moved & got a new job, so I don't know when the next release is going to be seeing as he's been very busy with real life.

Sidonia no Kishi - Hoping to have a release of volume 2's tankobon shortly. As for v4, it all depends on how badly the translator (Elkin) is getting whipped by her bosses in China.

Suicide Island - See Homunculus. Same translator.

The Life And Times Of An Idiot Section Chief - Nitouryu hasn't had the time to work on much lately, this included.

Tista - Remains stalled until... I dunno.

Wolf Guy - Volume 11 is completely cleaned, but the translator doesn't have the time to translate right now. See a common theme with a lot of our problems?

So here you go.

Merry Christmas

[Edit]

Release time.

Compared to our last few Christmas releases, this one is rather underwhelming with only 39 chapters spread over four volumes. Unfortunately, since our anniversary release we've all had our share of stuff keeping us busy in real life. We're hoping to have our annual "hangover" release in a week or so. If everything goes to plan, and if you know me, it never does, then we should have approximately 4 volumes worth of stuff ready then as well. After that release, I'll make one of my "project status" posts.

First, a big big biiiig thank you to xyz85-mvb9 and Phaedris for doing a lot of the grunt work for these releases. If they hadn't been around, we wouldn't have any releases today. Seriously, none. Zero, nilch. So I owe these two a great deal of gratitude.

Holyland v15 (!Holy15 or !HL15) - Big, big thank you to Laika for translating this volume.

Koukou Tekken-den Tough v16-17 (!Tough16 !Tough17 or !KKT16 !KKT17) - Volume 16 & 17 concludes the Muay-Thai arc of the series, and leads into one of my favorite volumes of the series. If there are some of you who've read the sequel to Koukou Tekken-den Tough, you might recognize someone at the end of v17.

Also, unless someone volunteers to do Koukou Tekken-den Tough's redraws, we'll be taking a small break from it. xyz85-mvb9 has been slaving away at the last four volumes with some help from Phaedris on some redraws.

So if you want to do some redraws on Koukou Tough, PM me or Nitouryu on IRC (Or email me) and we'll give you a test. If you can pass this test, then we can continue the project. And depending on how fast you are, we can possibly get the ball rolling fast because I can translate a full volume of over a weekend. Just saying.

Shiba Inu (!Shiba or !Inu) - This is a collection of oneshots from Masanori Morita, the mangaka of Rookies and Rokudenashi Blues. He is, in my opinion, one of the most overlooked and underrated mangakas around. The two part oneshot named Shiba Inu are superb and I recommend you all download and read.

I hope you enjoy.

Have some happy holidays and stuff. `-')

Happy birthday Illuminati-Manga. We're six years old now and that makes us old enough to be in the first grade now!

Oh, speaking of the first grade... I had a rant a few days ago. If you know me and know what I'm about, then, well, enjoy.

.:22·02·35:. «!GGpX-Sleep» Man. I had to do this "Exam" today at work.
.:22·02·42:. «!GGpX-Sleep» Biggest fucking bullshit I've ever seen.
.:22·03·09:. «!GGpX-Sleep» it's like they take a test, build it like it was catered to fucking six year olds, give it to grown men & women and tell 'em, take this shit seriously.
.:22·03·15:. «!GGpX-Sleep» GO FUCK YOURSELF, THAT'S IMPOSSIBLE.
.:22·03·33:. «@Kuthrow» lol
.:22·03·52:. «!GGpX-Sleep» It's an internet test where you need to read about your workplace environment
.:22·04·02:. «!GGpX-Sleep» then write the test
.:22·04·28:. «!GGpX-Sleep» reading about your workplace environment, you're given a sort of guide through a maze of cartoon characters
.:22·04·48:. «!GGpX-Sleep» that were all poorly drawn and look all sketchy & geeky as fuck
.:22·05·10:. «!GGpX-Sleep» all the while you're thinking, someone was seriously paid to do this? And write this up? With tax money?
.:22·05·13:. «!GGpX-Sleep» Fuuuuuuuck you.
.:22·05·27:. «!GGpX-Sleep» Then comes to test, I barely read anything because I'm thinking about how fucking awful the whole thing is
.:22·05·43:. «!GGpX-Sleep» and it isn't even a god damn test, it's a survey asking how you liked reading through the "guide"
.:22·05·48:. «!GGpX-Sleep» Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck youuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu.
.:22·05·50:. «@Kuthrow» lol
.:22·06·17:. «!GGpX-Sleep» You make me waste 2 & a half fucking hours on this fucking thing and you're not even gonna test me on it? You're just gonna ask me my fucking opinion? You cocksuckers?
.:22·07·00:. «!GGpX-Sleep» And the worst thing about this "exam"? They ask you questions about so and so, then they want you to grade it. 1 being shit basically, and 5 being great.
.:22·07·14:. «!GGpX-Sleep» then they follow it up with a "Comments" box right under it.
.:22·07·24:. «!GGpX-Sleep» There's 50 questions.
.:22·07·37:. «!GGpX-Sleep» So I figure, the comments are optional, if you want to add something.
.:22·07·51:. «!GGpX-Sleep» So I answer all 50 questions, press confirm
.:22·08·06:. «!GGpX-Sleep» and it tells me the form is "incomplete, fields missing"
.:22·08·15:. «!GGpX-Sleep» And the comment boxes were all flagged.
.:22·08·26:. «!GGpX-Sleep» I have to comment about how shitty this thing was.
.:22·08·34:. «!GGpX-Sleep» God damn, what a motherfucking pain in the ass.
.:22·09·26:. «!GGpX-Sleep» /rant
.:22·10·21:. «!GGpX-Sleep» I feel better already.

While I was writing this post, the doorbell rang and I got my order from amazon.ca - A bunch of manga I had ordered a few days ago + a Canadian Weather Trivia Calendar that my uncle wanted for Christmas. Seriously, that's what he wanted for Christmas.

So yeah, it's been a glorious day so far. So now for the releases. Today we're releasing a total of 53 chapters of various series.

That's almost like a mini Christmas release, cocksucker.

A big, big thank you to xyz85-mvb9 who's going through some tough times these days for a lot of the work he's done on these releases. He did a big chunk of the work to make sure we could get a lot of this out. So if you see him on IRC, please thank him. Don't thank me, thank him.

A La Carte ch3 (!ALC 3) - The third chapter from the À LA Carte volume. There's one chapter left, but we don't have a translation for it. I don't know how long it'll be until it's released - if it's released.

Boku to Issho 41-49 (End) (!Boku04) - Good news, 9 new chapters of Boku to Issho! The bad news, it's the end of the series. Easily the funniest series we've ever done. Many, many laugh out loud silly moments. This was a real fun series. Big time thank you to BindeR for typesetting the series & Molokidan for having translated it moons ago.

DoLL ch12 (!DoLL12) - Thanks pxyxtr & arpad for their work as usual! If you want to thank them, they're usually in #mangascreener

Heavy and Pop (!HNP) - Oneshot from Itaitashii Love.

Holyland 136-140 (!HL14 or !Holy14) - 5 chaps of Holyland! Seriously! The beginning of the final arc of the series, shit is starting to get serious! A release specifically for the ladies. Because the Latvian wants to him a 'lil some-somethin' on the side very desperately.

Jackals 46-47 (!Jackals46 !Jackals47) - The conclusion of volume 6 with a nice little cliff hanger.

Keyaki no Ki ch01 (!Keyaki01) - A oneshot by Jiro Taniguchi. A big thank you to eito for scanning & translating this. There'll be more to come over time. Read it from Left to Right!

Koukou Tekken-den Tough v14-15 (!Koukou14 !Koukou15) - The conclusion of the Kiba-Kiibo fight, a big plot-twist in a way and a new challenger appears! Big thank you to xyz85-mvb9 for doing all of the editing!

Rookies ch201-205 (!Rookies21, I also made a volume pack for v20, !Rookies20) - Just read this. If you thought the Cardinals were drama whores, you ain't seen nothin' yet. Okay, I'm exaggerating a little. Still read it.

Sengoku 28 (!Sen28) - The war continues!

Small and Lovely (!SNL) - Oneshot from Itaitashii Love.

Suicide Island ch34 (!Island34) - How about some deer hunting?

The First Time (!TFT) - Oneshot from Itaitashii Love.

The Silent Radiance I (!Radiance1) - Oneshot from Itaitashii Love.

The Silent Radiance II (!Radiance2) - Oneshot from Itaitashii Love. Btw, big thank you to eito for all of the oneshots we're releasing today. They're his work.

All releases are available on the online reader, click here.

More on what's to come later today, stay tuned!