Otakumole is alive

So, Otakumole is back… read Raff’s announcement here: Otakumole is up. The great news is that people can now view the scans with the translations again, yay! The bubble interface is somewhat cute as well. It seems to be hit or miss on whether the Bubbler interface works though, so if you have trouble with your computer or browser, try a different browser or your laptop/phone/tablet instead. I’m still concerned about the possibility that the scans will get deleted again one day. Nothing was ever confirmed about the real reason why the scans were deleted in the first place.

It sounds like the translators will be able to start translating on Otakumole again next week, so I’m going to put my summaries on hold for now. Even though writing summaries takes less time than translations for me, they still take around 1.5 – 2 hours per summary on average, so I rather not spend time writing summaries for the same manga series that I will be translating. I hope to continue translating the following series on Otakumole (unless other people work on chapters before I can finish them): Totsuzen Desu ga, Ashita Kekkon Shimasu; Zettai Toudo; Midara na Nettaigyo; Koi ni Tsuite Hanasou ka; Mephistopheles wa Dare; and Gozen 0-ji ni Kiss Shi ni Kite yo. Yeah… pretty much all the Petit Comic manga that I’ve been summarizing, lol, with the exception of Onegai, Sore o Yamenai de… I’m kind of bored with that manga.

I haven’t decided whether I’ll keep buying Petit Comic magazine going forward. I’m waiting to see how the revamped Otakumole and Raffmanga sites will pan out.

Petit Comic October issue and summary updates

Hello! My Amazon Japan order arrived today with the October issue of Petit Comic magazine, yay! The magazine was just released on September 8th in Japan, so Amazon Japan shipping is very quick. 🙂 I posted a few pics of Totsuzen Desu ga, Ashita Kekkon Shimasu – Chapter 18 to go along with the summary that trans provided.

Cute cover of Nana Ryuu and Asuka

I’ll work on the summaries for the other manga series soon, starting with Zettai Toudo. Please check the Recent Summary Updates section on the right side of the page to see the most current updates. I’m also going to start summarizing two manga from Ane Kei Petit Comic… Mephistopheles wa Dare? and Futsutsukamono Desu ga. Ane Kei Petit Comic is released every other month, so I won’t be posting summaries for them as frequently.

Asa Made Kimi to – Chapter 2 complete

The Chapter 2 scanlation is finished, yay! Here’s a preview of the chapter.

I’ll start working on Mikazuki to Nagareboshi – Chapter 4 next. I won’t set a time frame, but you can go to the main Scanlations page to check on the progress. 🙂

2000 points e-book campaign for honto newcomers

I found this awesome campaign when I checked out honto’s web site today! For anyone who hasn’t purchased an e-book through honto yet, they are running the following campaign this week only:

• Spend 300 – 499 yen and get 300 points
• Spend 500 – 999 yen and get 500 points
• Spend at least 1000 yen and get a whopping 2000 points!

2000 points is unheard of! When I first bought from honto, I think I got 500 points for spending at least 1000 yen and I thought that was a great deal, lol. Points are the same as cash when you use them, so 2000 points is like getting 2000 yen to spend. Please note that most points usually expire the end of the following month, so if you are awarded points in September, you normally have until the end of October to use them or lose them. Here’s an example of how honto’s points and coupons work:

This is my e-book order today:

• Total price before coupons/points: 2236 yen for 7 books
• 30% off coupon for comics: (640 yen)
• Points used: (432 yen)
• Final total price: 1164 yen
• Points earned for order: 100 points

As you can see, I’m only paying around half (1164 yen) of the total price of 2236 yen and I also earned 100 points to use by the end of September. 🙂

Registering at honto is a little tricky, so you can read how to sign up here: Without Restraints. As for reading the e-books, there are readers available for PC, iPhone/iPad, and Android devices. Installing the PC version is a no-brainer, just download from their site and follow the installation instructions. Unfortunately for iPhone/iPad and Android devices, I believe the digital reader is only available for download in their Japan stores. However, there are ways around that! For iPhone/iPad, you need to set up an iTunes Japan account… you can do that by signing up with a different email address from your regular iTunes account. I forgot the exact instructions, but if you Google how to set up another iTunes account, there is plenty of helpful advice available. For Android devices, I downloaded the TunnelBear app (easy-to-use VPN client) to access the Google Play Japan store.

Monthly summaries of Petit Comic magazine

It’s here! 🙂 My order that included the September issue of Petit Comic arrived today, yay! I placed the order last Friday on Amazon Japan and it arrived in three business days… that is so fast. 🙂 I love Petit Comic and follow a lot of the current series in the magazine.

Petit Comic magazine – September 2015

Before Mangalator went down, I was translating five series from Petit Comic: Totsuzen Desu ga, Ashita Kekkon Shimasu; Zettai Toudo, Koi ni Tsuite Hanasou ka; Midara na Nettaigyo; and Onegai, Sore o Yamenai de. I decided to post monthly summaries of the five series, along with a few pictures, for anyone who is interested in keeping up with them.

Please go to the Summaries page to find information on the current list of manga summaries. The main Summaries page will be the launching point for all the individual series. Since I’ll be adding chapter summaries randomly throughout the month, I won’t post every time a new summary is loaded… so please stop by occasionally to check on any updates.

Edited: I added a section on the right to show recent summary updates at a glance with links to the appropriate summary page. 🙂

Mystery chapter revealed!

Here is the scanlation of Otonari wa 1-ken de 2-do Oishii, Chapter 7 (final chapter)! I translated all but one chapter on Mangalator, so Ceecile sent me the raws for Chapter 7 (thanks Ceecile!). I wasn’t planning to finish it so fast, but the pages were really easy to clean and there was very little dialogue to translate. 🙂 However, please don’t get used to this kind of quick turnaround, lol, because most manga take a lot more time to scanlate.

Anyway, please enjoy the final chapter of this series. It was a quick story, but cute… plus both guys are ikemen. 😉 Thanks again to Ceecile for providing the raws!

Edited: Oops, I didn’t mean to include the entire chapter in this post, but I got a little excited about releasing it, lol. I just fixed it, so only a few pages are shown here. You can find the entire chapter under Scanlations – Otonari wa 1-ken de 2-do Oishii.

I guess it’s goodbye… to Mangalator

Well, I’m sure most of the frequent readers of Mangalator/Otakumole are now aware that Raff was forced to pull the scans from the site. She didn’t give a clear explanation on why she had to pull them, but it definitely doesn’t sound like it was something she wanted to do. Raff was kind enough to keep the translations intact (at least for now), so I am really trying to save as many of my translations as I can before they disappear for good. I should have worked harder when the site first came back up a few weeks ago, but I got busy translating chapters again, lol. Oh well, I will do my best now.

A quick update on the Asa Made Kimi to – Chapter 2 scanlation status… I started to translate and typeset the chapter over the weekend, but then this whole situation with Mangalator hit on Sunday afternoon so I got sidetracked with the impact from that. Ceecile was kind enough to share scans for a couple of manga series that I was translating there, so I will be scanlating them (two different chapters) as well. I’m actually putting Asa Made Kimi to – Chapter 2 on hold for a few days, while I finish one of the chapters. I won’t spoil the surprise on which chapter it is, though. 😉 So, the scanlation order is:

1. Mystery Chapter
2. Asa Made Kimi to – Chapter 2
3. Mikazuki to Nagareboshi – Chapter 4
4. Asa Made Kimi to – Chapter 3 (final chapter)
5. Hatsukoi wa Kanawanai – Chapter 1 (another Yamada Komomo manga)

I think this will keep me busy for a while, lol. Although now that I will no longer be translating on Mangalator, I will have more time again (well, once I finish saving my Mangalator translations), so hopefully I can speed up the process a bit.

Asa Made Kimi to – Chapter 2 status

Hello… I finally got done cleaning the pages for Chapter 2 yesterday, so I will start on the translations and typesetting. Unfortunately my initial goal of 2 – 3 weeks per chapter will have to be revised to 3 – 4 weeks per chapter, so basically I’ll try to release one chapter per month. I’ll post updates on the Scanlations page, so please go there if you are curious about the current status.

I’m sorry that I cannot work any faster on my scanlation projects, but I keep pretty busy with Mangalator (although I still plan to cut down on manga there once the current series end), two scanlation groups (freelance work for a Spanish fansub and dedicated work for a wonderful group who is just starting out), and otome game scripts. And now that Mangalator is back up (as Otakumole), I’ve been slowly copying my completed translations to text files.

I also bought a digital piano… couldn’t afford an upright one, plus not enough space. I used to take lessons as a kid, so I wanted to learn to play again. So anyway, between work, housework, homework (my son, not mine, lol), translation projects, and now piano practice, my free time to work on scanlations is pretty limited.

Signs of life

Well, after almost one week of no updates, it appears that the former Mangalator is showing a small sign of life… the site admin’s FB page was finally updated with this image. At first people were confused and thought the FB page was hacked, but someone found this message in the source code: “I’m going back. Stay tuned!”. A bit clever. 😉

I am glad that it appears there will be a Mangalator, version 2, or whatever it will be called. However, short of the admin not being able to access the internet for the whole week, I think it would have been nice if he/she had provided an update sooner which would have alleviated a lot of drama. People were upset and arguing on FB about the possible reasons for the site disappearing. Since no one seems to know what really happened, other than the site owner, I’ll just go with the thought that he/she was incapable of providing a status update for whatever reason.

As for the new or revised site, I’m taking a wait-and-see approach… will the site provide only raw scans and no translations? If there is translation capability, what about the translations from Mangalator? Were they saved? Will they be available on the new site? I really hope so, because a lot of hours went into those translations. If none of the translations were saved and the new site is set up the same way, then I’m probably going to focus on just a couple of josei series, instead of all 11 manga series that I was working on at Mangalator. I’ll let the young, eager translators compete over who can translate manga faster, lol. Going on vacation for 16 days and the site disappearing for a week made me realize how much of my free time I was spending there… it was too much.

Back from vacation

I just got back from vacation a couple of days ago, so I’m planning to start on Chapter 2 of Asa Made Kimi to. 🙂 I wasn’t able to get online much during my vacation because we had spotty internet and cell service during the first half of our vacation and then the second half, we were too busy sightseeing. I managed to translate a few chapters on Mangalator, but that’s it… I even resorted to using my phone to translate sometimes, lol.

I’m going to try and stick to the 2 – 3 week timeframe for scanlating the chapter, but I am a little busy with assisting two groups with translations as well as script translation for an otome game. However, Mangalator is down right now, so that actually helps me since I’m usually busy translating manga there.  I hope it does come back online so people can enjoy reading the manga that the translators work so hard on there, but for now, I’ll use the break to work on other things.

Thanks for your patience on waiting for the next chapter release of Asa Made Kimi to. I wish I had more free time during the day to work on the manga, but as it stands now, I don’t have enough free time to even play the otome games that I have… and I really want to play them, lol.