R is for Rocket

Here's the manga done by two big-names I mentioned in the summer post. R is for Rocket, a collection of sci-fi short stories originally written by Ray Bradbury himself and adapted as a manga by Hagio Moto! A lovely combination that really should require no introduction if you're a fan of sci-fi or manga. The anthology contains 8 short stories, including "The Lake," which incidentally was Bradbury's very first short story that he sold at the age of 22 for $13.75 (which would be around $230 in today's standards if the internet's not lying to me). Overall, the selection's quite good, as the volume starts and ends very strong, as well as allowing Hagio to work with a range of emotions. Gotta love that fantastic old-school shoujo panelling.

Just to note, the two stories Come into my Cellar (alternatively known as Boys! Raise Giant Mushrooms in Your Cellar!) and Jack-in-the-Box deviate from the original stories slightly due to Hagio's genderbending of the main characters. But all the stories are quite faithful and do justice to the original stories. To keep in line with this, I myself did very little "translating" and used Bradbury's prose and dialogue whenever possible. It's a bit of a shame HappyScans and I couldn't get this out a bit earlier to time the release better with Bradbury's unfortunate passing, but nevertheless, I hope this release will encourage some of you to go and read some more of both Bradbury and Hagio's stories (go buy A Drunken Dream, people).


P.S. Thank you to the guy who suggested minus.com. I'm in the middle of uploading all my stuff there.


Download:
R is for Rocket:   Click Here

Sangokushi v29 (last updated Aug 1)

Time for v29! You know, I can't help but wonder why Romance of the Three Kingdoms has so many instances of armies sallying out from their city walls to meet their attackers when ancient Chinese warfare was marked by advanced siege warfare. Seems rather strange to just give up the defender's advantage. The only possible rational explanations I can come up with is that maybe some of the cities either don't have decent-enough walls or enough granaries to last a long-term siege. In that case, trying to settle things quickly with an open field battle might be unexpectedly less risky. But who knows?

RIP.

Poor Lu Su... He sure gets the shaft in his fictional depictions in contrast to his historical self.

Ara ara~ But I'm just an old Chinese warlord...

Don't make me ground you.

Wish there was a picture of this rock someone on the internet.

Wah! What're we gonna do on the bed?

Technically, you gave her away.

Download:
Sangokushi c168:   Sendspace
Sangokushi c169:   Sendspace
Sangokushi c170:   Sendspace
Sangokushi c171:   Sendspace
Sangokushi c172:   Sendspace
Sangokushi c173:   Sendspace
Sangokushi c174:   Sendspace
Sangokushi c175:   Sendspace

Mud

Here's a oneshot that I thought might be good to do before moving onto the next volume of Sangokushi. It's a quirky little romance involving femdom by Yamashita Tomoko called Mud. To be shamefully honest, I actually did not know about Yamashita at all until Arpad gave me the raws for this. Her artstyle's quite clean and lovely, so I'm definitely gonna keep more of an eye on her from now on. It's a short but fun read so I hope you guys enjoy it.

Download:
Mud:   Mediafire

4 out of 5

Chapter 167 is out, bringing volume 28 to a close. Only one more general to go before we complete the 5 Tiger Generals collectibles set! The other thing I want to mention is the deal with Wei Yan. You may or may not remember, but he technically appeared in the manga way back in volume 23 in p46-49.

The reasons as to why Yokoyama left him unnamed at this point isn't too hard to theorize if you're already aware of Wei Yan's fate, but Zhuge Liang's objection at the last chapter of volume 28 comes across as painfully even more bullshit if you keep Wei Yan's earlier appearance in mind. Not only did Wei Yan already try to help Liu Bei in this past incident, but Zhuge Liang also had no problem at all with Liu Bei rewarding Gong Zhi for his betrayal of Wuling's governor Jin Xuan in chapter 165 (Zhang Fei Captures Wuling). Of course, like many other events, Zhuge Liang's remark is purely fictional to spice up the story, but I just felt I had to point it out because Wei Yan seems to get a bad rep. Poor Wei Yan.

Download:
Sangokushi v28:   Mediafire
Sangokushi c167:   Mediafire

Alabaster Chapter 1

Here's a new project by HappyScans and I that I forgot to mention in the future releases post a couple weeks back. Alabaster, a manga by the god himself, Tezuka Osamu. I've always wanted to translate a Tezuka manga, and if possible, to do 1 light-hearted story and 1 dark story of his. Alabaster then, was a natural choice for the latter, considering it's one of his earliest and darkest attempts (published at around the time of Book of Human Insects). Tezuka himself states in the afterword that he was quite depressed at writing such a nihilistic story with so many detestable characters. To give a short premise, Alabaster follows the lives of two characters who plot their revenge against a world that's shunned them for their appearances alone.


We're only releasing the first chapter today, and the next time we release, it'll be for the full first volume. Since the story's only 2 volumes long, we should be able to get it done by summer's end. As for the light-hearted Tezuka manga I plan to do, I'll keep that a secret for now since I don't know how long it'll be before I actually get to it.

Download:
Alabaster v01 c01:   Mediafire

Tomorrow's Joe v10 (last updated July 26)

Since Joe's finally back to his usual self (or is he?), there's no reason for HappyScans, Arles, or me to delay either. Tomorrow's Joe has a lot of memorable scenes, but this volume especially has one of those moments that'll stick in my head forever. So look forward to the great volume we've got coming up. Here's the first two chapters for now.

Poor Noriko.

Japanese Jughead.

Download:
Tomorrow's Joe v10 Parts 1&2:   Mediafire
Tomorrow's Joe v10 Part 3:   Mediafire
Tomorrow's Joe v10 Part 4:   Mediafire

Sangokushi v28 (last updated July 12)

Time to start Sangokushi v28! Two things I want to mention for now. One is about Liu Xian, as pictured above. If you can make out the chinese characters written on the flag, you'll notice that it actually reads Liu Yan, who's actually an entirely different person (never depicted in this manga, but was the administrator of Dong commandery). Now don't start blaming Yokoyama or even Yoshikawa Eiji for this, because the one responsible for this is actually is the Ming-dynasty historian/scholar Li Zhi. In his edition, he changed Liu Xian to Liu Yan for some reason, and this change made its way into Yoshikawa Eiji's translation, and from there to this manga. Of course, it doesn't really matter too much considering Liu Xian was purely a fictional character, but it's still interesting if you're RotK fan. In any case, I went with Luo Guangzhong's version, so he'll be called Liu Xian in this English translation.

The other thing I want to mention is something I forgot to say back when I released v27. As the above picture shows, there's a couple characters in Sangokushi that go through rather "drastic" changes if they don't appear for many, many volumes. Wang Yun and Cao Hong are the other ones I can recall from the top of my head. That's it for now, expect a chapter every other day until v31 is done!

Page 39 confused me because I thought the guy above was Xing Daorong until I noticed the goatee difference.

Such a kid, that Zhang Fei.

All jokes about Zhao Zilong's supposed homosexuality aside, widow's chastity was a big issue in Han-China, though probably not carried out in practice too often.

I feel a little sorry for Jin Xuan. Dying a perhaps futile death but "honourable" death is common throughout history but spin it the other way, and your subject becomes a selfish stubborn man who values idealistic nonsense over the very real lives of many.

What's a story without the archetypical badass-old man?

Download:
Sangokushi c161:   Mediafire
Sangokushi c162:   Mediafire
Sangokushi c163:   Mediafire
Sangokushi c164:   Mediafire
Sangokushi c165:   Mediafire
Sangokushi c166:   Mediafire