Terrarium in Drawer (Complete)

Whew, finally done. Took a fuckton more time than I'd anticipated, but I suppose it was worth it. Kui Ryoko seems to be a relatively new mangaka, but man, does she ever know how to tell a story. Clean art, original ideas, and a great sense of timing for telling a story or a joke. Definitely one to keep an eye on. Which chapters were your favourite?

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Many Thoughts on Actual Books

First things first, Hikidashi will be completed this weekend. All the lines outside bubbles made this deceptively easy work take a lot more of my time than I'd anticipated. Moving on...

With the year coming to a close, I've realized how little manga I've actually read this year. That's not to say I'm losing interest in this hobby, but putting all those hours in translating manga doesn't exactly make me want to go and read more manga with my remaining time. For the past few years, I've mostly spent that remaining time on vidya but this year, I've rediscovered my love for reading actual books. So while this is primarily a manga blog, I thought maybe writing down my thoughts on 10 interesting books I've read this year might encourage you to not neglect books without pictures *gasp* as I have for a short while. If you're poor and/or don't have a good library near you, this site is your friend. This is a bit of a long post, so congrats to those who can make it through all my drivel. If you guys find it interesting enough, I may do more in the future.

Also, I'm always open to book recommendations, though mostly of the non-fiction variety, so feel free to name some if you wish.　　

Chinggis Khan Volume 4

With the 4th volume, Temuchin becomes Chinggis Khan at last! Two things I want to note about this volume. One is the meaning of the title, "chinggis." Although this manga says it means, "supreme and strong," the matter is more complicated than that as scholars continue to debate it. To quote a section from Ratchnevsky's Genghis Khan: His Life and Legacy:

The word  has been variously interpreted as 'firm', 'strong', 'righteous', 'loyal', 'hard' or 'cruel', depending upon the meaning attributed to the word ching by different Mongol tribes. In general such attributions seek to stress the quality of a 'firm and strong khan' rather than exhibiting any desire to vie with the title of Gurkhan ('Universal Ruler') which had been bestowed on Jamuka. 

An alternative and probably sounder derivation, advanced quite independently by von Ramstedt and Pelliot, is from the Turkic tängiz, 'sea or ocean.' This interpretation is supported by the Mongolian equivalent dalai-yin khan on the seal of the Great Khan and the Turkic formal preamble tailai-nung han in Guyuk Kha'ans letter to Pope Innocent IV. In dalai lama, the Mongolian rendering of the Tibetan lamaistic title, rGyamts'o blama, meaning 'Ruler of the Seas' or 'Ruler of the World', dalai is used as a concept for 'universal' or 'all-embracing'; this is clearly exhibited by the juxtaposition of dalai and yeke ('great') in the Juyongguan Inscription. The title 'Oceanic Ruler' is very old. In Uighur legend Tengiz (Dengiz-khan) is the name of the youngest son of the Uighur Oguz-khan - and, despite Pelliot's phonetic objections, it may even be identified in the name of one of the sons of Attila the Hun. 

Although in Rashid ad-Din's day the Mongols had forgotten the original tradition and the title was simply equated with the Mongolian word ching ('firm' or 'strong'), Rashid uses the wider interpretation of the title when he compares it with the Persian shah-an-shah. Nasir ad-Din also gives Hulegu the title padsha-i jahan ('Universal Ruler'), a non-Islamic title which, as Minorsky comments, must be a rendering of dalai-khan. The Genghiside imperial family retained this tradition into the seventeeth century, when a son of Dayan-khan bore the title erdeni dalai khan.

 There are, of course, more fringe theories on its meaning, such as that it's derived from the Chinese tianzi (Son of Heaven), or a rendering of the Chinese imperial first-person pronoun zhèn (朕). There are also tales in later Mongolian chronicles that it's an onomatopoeic representation of a bird cry, but these are more folklore than actual history.

The second thing I want to mention is that while the Naimans were a Turkic group, distinct from the Mongols in central Mongolia and Tungusic peoples in Eastern Mongolia and Manchuria, they were still primarily pastoral nomads and it's highly unlikely that their style of combat differed all that much from all of the horse-riding warriors across the Eurasian steppe. Or to put it simply, they did NOT use war chariots. I don't know where Yokoyama got that idea, or maybe he wanted to add them because they looked cool, but to think that the very people whose entire society changed once horses were domesticated to a point as to accommodate human riders, would build an extremely expensive yet less effective tool of war that had been abandoned by even the sedentary civilizations for almost a thousand years prior to the 13th century is just absurd.

That's all for now. The last volume will come before the end of the year, and it should be a fun ride since it's all about the Mongols taking on the world. I'm also going to be busy trying to wrap up loose-ends on my other projects before the new year so please don't ask me about a certain other manga, which has only just begun a new arc and could be delayed a chapter or two.

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Terrarium in Drawer (last updated Nov. 15)

Yes, yes, I know already have a ton of things to do and am starting to overextend myself, but I really wanted to take a breather from some of the more serious stuff I was doing with just a fun, goofy work, which is why I decided to pick this up. Terrarium in Drawer, a 1-volume collection of oneshots by Kui Ryoko, a relatively new mangaka. I only heard about it a week ago because it was nominated for the Manga Taishou award. Maybe doing this can draw in some more interest and get groups to pick up her other works

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Sangokushi v41: Guan Yu's Oversight

Wasn't planning on doing another whole volume release, but things ended up turning out that way, though I'll probably release v42 chapter by chapter. There's two things I want to point out in this volume. In the rainstorm chapter, the soldier who stole the hat says he was trying to keep the family armour safe, whereas in the original novel, it was a state-issued armour. Although a seemingly minor change, you can theorize some interesting explanations for why it was made (by Yoshikawa?). Since Lu Meng's problem concerns one's duties to the state vs. one's duties to the self, if the armour was indeed issued by the state, then on some level, you can make the argument that the soldier had a duty to the state to keep his armour in good shape. Thus, Lu Meng's reasoning for deciding to execute the poor soldier is rather weakened... Or at least, that what I think. The other thing I want to mention is that in the original novel, the mass desertions don't begin until Guan Yu marches for Jingzhou, which will be covered in the next volume. This change is more obvious why, as when you read the novel, it's rather baffling why Guan Yu decided to press on the attack with his injured forces instead of waiting longer to at least hear back from Ma Liang and Yi Ji. In the Yokoyama/Yoshikawa version (again, I'm not sure who's responsible for the change), the problem of desertion makes it more understandable why Guan Yu would act so hastily.

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Chinggis and Philip

Well, I (Happyscans is blameless) took a break last month, but here's this month's release of Chinggis Khan. Only 2 more volumes to go, so we'll probably finish it off by Christmas. If you've read Ratchnevsky's Genghis Khan, His Life and Legacy as I've recommended before, you'll find the sequence of events from Jamuka's election as Gurkhan to the campaigns against Tartars, Merkits, and Naimans in the Secret History of Mongols (which Yokoyama follows) pretty interesting. I get the feeling that a possible reason for the skewed order may be to make the anti-mongol/Kereit alliance look more like aggressors without a proper casus belli. In any case, I liked how Yokoyama gave more detail on Jamuka's actions and whereabouts. Makes it a lot easier to follow than the Secret History.

New Historie is also out, hurray! I've never heard of the shorter sarissa thing in any account for the Battle of Chaeronea, so if that's a thing that Iwaaki himself came up with, I'd have to say it's a pretty cool addition as I think the battle makes even more sense that way. Also, if you're interested at all in Greek hoplite warfare, A Storm of Spears by Christopher Matthew is a MUST. READ. It'll be interesting to see how military historians in the coming years will either adopt or argue against Matthews' exhaustive arguments. My bet is on the decline of literal othismos and overarm-supporters once the older generation of academics retire. V.D. Hanson can get rekt for all I care.

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Maneater/Tetsunagi Oni (half done)

I was planning to do more frequent and regular releases, but my life schedule is forcing me to do short bursts of releases instead. So here's chapter 6-11 of Maneater, which finishes up Maneater but only marks the half-way point of the re-released edition of Tetsunagi-Oni which includes both Maneater and Testunagi-Oni for a ~380 page volume as I mentioned before. Although I'm doing this oneshot collection more of as a showcase of Takahashi's art style since many of its stories, although amusing if you like black humour, aren't particularly impressive, there are a few chapters that I like the more I read them. In Maneater, even though I think the titular chapter "Maneater" will no doubt be most people's favourite, the above-pictured "Who's Being Hanged" is the real silent creeper for me due to its possible implications, whether intended by Takahashi or not.

In the second-half, Testunagi-Oni, I have a feeling either Takahashi himself or his usual readers responded most favourably to the titular chapter "Tetsunagi-Oni," hence the collection's title, but "My Father's Face" is by far more chilling for its social commentary. You'll see what I mean when I get to it.

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66.666666666666666666666666666666666%

I bring you a batch release of chapters 258-265, which finishes off volume 40 meaning....... I'm now 66.666666infinity6666% done with Sangokushi! It's pretty incredible to think I've now done 40 Sangokushi volumes, which is already longer than most manga series. If I don't pick up any more new projects and keep up a pace of about 1.5 volumes/month (definitely doable), I'll actually be able to wrap this series up by the end of next year. That all depends on if I can resist the temptation of picking up a whole bunch of shorter projects, but I'll try my best to give a good final spurt on the final third of this journey since I'd hate it if life handed me the short stick and I had to die with this regret hanging over my mind.

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Chaeronea at last!

I wasn't expecting to see Chaeronea so soon (I was thinking maybe 2 more chapters before the battle) but thank god we're finally here!

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Battles at Han River

Chapter 257 marks the end of this volume. It's straight-off to the 40s now! (once I get the new Historie chapter out)

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Sangokushi v39 (last updated Sept. 6)

I originally planned to finish this volume by the end of August, but I guess I'm now starting this volume at the end of August. Oh well. I'll be doing v39-40 before I get the 3rd volume of Chinggis Khan out, so enjoy Shu's Hanzhong campaign.

In the novel, there's only mention of Huang Zhong shooting an arrow as an underhanded way of drawing Xiahou Yuan into attacking. So by having both sides shoot, we do see some Shu-bias.

Flashes of Changban.

It's rather odd to see Xu Huang act so impatiently, since he's always been the cool-headed general until now who had to restrain others like Cao Hong. I suppose he was too eager to make up for his failure at attacking Zhao Zilong's camps in the previous chapter.

The Brewitt-Taylor translation says Kongming used a "bomb" as a signal. Fire arrow's probably the more believable method for communication at night.

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Chinggis Khan Volume 2

Happyscans and I bring you the second of five volumes in Yokoyama's Chinggis Khan! If you've read the Secret Histories, then you might find Yokoyama's slight changes to the tale interesting. I won't touch them on it now as I'll save that for the end. In any case, enjoy Temuchin's ongoing tribulations!

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Takahashi Yousuke's Maneater (last updated Sept. 13)

It's a rarity when you find artists who can grab your attention in an instant even as you're skimming through different manga. Takahashi Yousuke is definitely that sort of artist for me. Although he's an old-timer who made his debut all the way back in '77, I only found about him relatively recently, after hearing that he's adored by (and influenced) guys like Fujita Kazuhiro and Hirano Kouta. And man, no wonder why. His line-work is really something. There's something so seductive about the curves made out by his pen. Same sort of quality that drew me to Hellsing's art. I'll try to do a more in-depth analysis of his artwork in my next some thoughts post, so I'll stop gushing about him for now.

I'm working off the raws of his oneshot collection titled Tetsunagi Oni, but it's actually a reprint-edition which includes both Maneater ('97) and Tetsunagi Oni ('00), which are both oneshot collections. I'll be splitting it for the release so it'll be less confusing for the people who manage scanlation databases. Some of the stories are regrettably "flat" but I want to try and raise more interest in his art. Plus, I realized I've been doing only historical stuff as of late so I thought it'd be a good project to do while doing more Chinggis (v2 coming shortly) and Sangokushi (resuming this week). Release pace will be 1~2 chapters per week. There's 23 chapters in total for this 380-page 2 volume.

P S. His earlier art is actually more experimental in line-work, but I'm a fan of both his old and new styles.

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Some Thoughts About Webtoons and Panelling

The dominant players in the Korean webtoon market: Naver (left) and Daum (right)

This time for my Some Thoughts series, I'll take a break a from the usual post about a specific work or author and instead talk generally about a medium known as webtoons, or as I like to call them, "mobile comics." For those of you who've never heard of webtoons, they're basically Korean webcomics. The language barrier has kept much of it closed off from Westerners, like how manga used to be back in the 80s, but I've noted they've begun to gain some fans overseas through fan-translations of works like Tower of God, Noblesse, or Annarasumanara. Now, you might be thinking, "Well, that's hardly a distinct medium. It's just the term Koreans use for webcomics, which itself is a sub-medium of comics." And yes, that is true, but there's an aspect in this "sub-medium" that makes them distinct to most Western webcomics, which I've already alluded to in my first sentence.

More Iwaaki Goodness

As mentioned a few posts ago, Iwaaki's Snow Ridge, Sword Dance is now out. Much thanks go out to Illuminati-Manga for scanning, cleaning, typesetting and QC'ing. This 300-page volume is just two long oneshots joined together. Here's a short synopsis I wrote for illuminati-manga (my apologies beforehand if it sounds more pretentious than it needs to be):

The closing stages of Sengoku (Warring States) Japan. A setting commonly explored in Japanese manga through vivid scenes of gory battles, samurai, and feats of bravery, honour, and loyalty. Iwaaki Hitoshi dares to go against the popular grain by not focusing on the 3 famous unifiers, but by depicting stories of a society in transition. Rapidly changing cultural norms and class expectations pit the old versus the young, the war-weary versus the war-mongers, and the parochial versus the foward-thinking. The first story, "Snow Ridge," explores the changing role of samurai and provinces while the second story, "Sword Dance," deals with kendo's early evolution from warfare to art.

I personally preferred the first story, but both are quite good as Iwaaki nicely reinforces the themes of both stories consistently through the various character and plot conflicts.

In addition, last month's chapter of Historie is now finally out as well. The next chapter will come in August. I also included the untranslated the two page coverage of the upcoming live-action film of Iwaaki's Parasyte, just in case there's anyone interested and can read Japanese.

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Chinggis Khan v1

Chinggis, Genghis, Dschingis, Чингисm, 成吉思汗, チンギス... However you spell it, unless you're historically clueless or have never played a Civilization game in your life, you know who Chinggis Khan is. And if I were to ask you who he was, you'd probably answer somewhere along the lines, "The Mongolian dude who created a huge-ass empire and killed a bunch of people." Sadly, very few know any more than that. It's rather unfortunate that for a guy so important in world history, people don't seem to know anything about him other than the extent of land that he and his Mongols conquered, and the number of inhabitants of those very lands they killed. 

In fact, when you take a look at the image above showing the Mongolian Empire at the deaths of Chinggis Khan and his grandson, Khubilai Khan, you'll realize that the bulk of the Empire was actually expanded by his successors. By dwarfing all empires before it, the Mongolian Empire seems to have paradoxically dwarfed the true story of Chinggis Khan. His rise from poverty to become the supreme khan of the Mongolian steppe. 

This is why Happyscans and I bring you the first of five volumes in Mitsuteru Yokoyama's biographical manga of Chinggis Khan. Not only is it mostly faithful to the account as given by The Secret History of the Mongols, but 4 of its 5 volumes are dedicated to his struggle to become the Khan. So if you're looking for a story about how the Mongols terrorized the world, then you're out of luck. This is the timeless account of a man fighting against the circumstances he was born under, to achieve more than world ever expected him to.

P.S. Progress will be one volume per month, so it should be done by the end of the year. If you're looking for actual books to read on the subject, as I mentioned in the translator's foreword, I recommend Ratchnevsky's "Genghis Khan: His Life and Legacy" and Onon's translation of "The Secret History of the Mongols." You can find an online copy of the latter here.

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Zhang Fei's Cunning

Volume 38 is finally done and uploaded, with the missing pages 17 and 52 added in. I gotta really pay attention to those mistakes... I know things are really heating up in the story, but I'm gonna be alternating Sangokushi with a new project I'm starting this month, the first volume of which should be out in 2 weeks or so. So expect v39 in August.

P.S. There was a Historie chapter for June. I just haven't gotten to it yet. I will this week though.

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Sangokushi v38 (last updated July 3)

Time for v38. You're in for one entertaining volume full of Wei-Shu clashes.

It's nice to see Cao Hong learning from his past blunders, but it is odd to see Zhange He being so reckless. There was a brief clash between him and Ma Chao (after he took shelter with Zhang Lu of Hanzhong) in which he defeated Ma Chao so perhaps his overconfidence stemmed from that event.

Liu Bei might seem foolish for doubting his own brother, but I certainly think it's understandable. He's been burned  by Zhang Fei's drinking habits before and it never hurts to be too cautious.

Honestly, the most impressive thing about this battle isn't Zhang Fei's strategy but how easily Wei Yan was able to locate and ambush the ambushers, without tipping off Zhang He.

Like they have any choice in the matter... Still, these were the few opportunities that smart peasants throughout history could exploit to rise through the ranks, like with the local shepherd who became a noble for his help to the Christian Iberians at the Battle of Las Navas de Tolosa.

Classic Kongming.

The question is... If the flames engulfed the mountain, how did Huang Zhong and Yan Yan manage to not get fucked over? And how did they manage to actually capture the base and make use of its supplies, rather than having it all get burnt to a crisp?

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Historie v08

I haven't been inactive for the past two weeks for no reason. Yuki no Touge is translated and just waiting to be typeset by Illuminati-manga, and Historie v08 is done! As I've mentioned before, the volume chapters don't correspond in number to the magazine chapters because some of the shorter ones get merged into one, but volume 8 covers the magazine chapters 71-80. Much thanks go out to AMS for cleaning the volume and joining the double pages for me. I'm just sorry it took me half a year to actually get around to typesetting this volume. Well, enjoy Iwaaki-fans!

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Black Knight Story

Well, I took about a whole week and a half longer than planned, but here's the full volume of Black Knight Story. I really apologize for the untranslated extra bits containing info on Tiger and M4 Sherman variations as well as sexy Nazi uniforms, but it really was far more work than I was willing to put into (I kept having to google every term to see what they were actually called in English so I said to hell with this). But honestly, if you're interested in that, you're far better off picking up an actual book on the subject than reading some poor translations of a guy who can't even distinguish between a Panther and a Tiger. In any case, I hope this is enough to satisfy that original guy who requested this project. Finally, I can start working on Yuki no Touge...

P.S. Page 125 (which technically should be p123 in my filename order) is missing from the raws. It's not that I forgot to include it.

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Clash Between Wei and Wu

Chapters 240-241 are done, bringing this volume to a close. Despite the volume's title, Cao Cao's invasion this time fizzled out rather anticlimactically, which is rather odd since the book listed his force at 400,000. Of course, the numbers are probably much exaggerated but even if they were half or even a quarter of that, the lack of will to push forward strongly seems rather odd. As I noted before, Cao Cao didn't even seem to make any plans on countering Wu's navy this time, which is their true strength and must be dealt with for any successful Southern invasion, something that the founder of the Sui dynasty understood very well. In any case, fans of war needn't be disappointed since Liu Bei's Hanzhong-campaign which starts next volume will be quite entertaining. On a side note, Jin Yi's ancestor Jin Midi, mentioned briefly in chapter 241 is a rather interesting character, as he was the son of a Xiongnu prince, who became a Han servant after his father was killed during the great Han-Xiongnu war. Despite his Xiongnu origins, he was fiercely loyal to the emperor, even killing his own son for flirting with one of the emperor's lady-in-waiting. Also interesting is that Jin Midi was claimed to be ancestor of the ruling Kim dynasty of Silla, a southeastern Korean kingdom. This link is controversial at best, though there definitely are linguistic and cultural similarities between early Mongolian/Tungusic and Koreans (not that any of these categories had distinct boundaries back then). Nonetheless, it is significant that the kings of Silla deliberately wanted themselves linked to Jin Midi, in the same way kings and emperors throughout history forged/faked dynastic links for legitimacy or some other political implication.

Oh, I almost forgot to mention, Sima Yi finally makes his entrance in the story! Hurray ...though he won't reappear for quite some time after this. Oh well, at least he got one line in, though unfortunately disregarded by Cao Cao.

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Die Schwarzen Ritter (last updated May 20)

Time to continue this where I left off at. I have to say, I quite like how this manga is told. Brief narrative that never explains more than what's absolutely necessary, quick plot progression, and an overall dry-approach to war that, despite having its thrills and tragedies, is never hung up on them. Kind of reminds me of the very technical approach of Miyazaki's Otto Carius that also focused less on sentimental human drama.

>my first time playing WoT

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Sangokushi v37 (last updated May 23)

Balls of Steel. My apologies for the inaccurate translation of Gan Ning's line in p24. I just couldn't resist the opportunity. Also, the original book never explicitly mentioned Gan Ning was the first to scale the walls, and this may be another element of Japanese Sengoku-warfare showing up in Yokoyama's manga. The distinction of "first-to-scale-the-walls (ichiban-nori)" was an important honour that samurai fiercely competed over, though such distinctions weren't uncommon in other parts of the world.

Honestly, this line is so unnecessary, since we've seen such instances happen numerous times in this manga alone.

I made a mistake regarding c235's title in the table of contents at the start of the volume. It'll be fixed for the volume release.

A little bit unsure on the translation of this title. I think the simplified Chinese for "General who Oppresses the Enemy with Ferocity" is "Shechong Jiangjun (折冲将军), and Gan Ning was only awarded this title later on in the story. The original book nor SGZ never mentions Gan Ning gaining some other title after this raid with 100 soldiers. However, in this manga, he's given the title Heiryo Shogun (平慮將軍), which I suppose you could loosely translate to the former but it's not really the same thing. Agh, whatever. It doesn't really matter too much, I suppose.

It's interesting to note how Cao Cao didn't even try (or at least, the book makes no mention of it) to build a navy of his own for his Wu campaign this time.

The wonders of taoist sexual practices.

As weird as this incident is, Zuo Ci isn't a fictional character as he's also noted to be an eccentric taoist master in other historical sources. It's interesting to speculate what the real-life Zuo Ci might have actually done.

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Historie and Plans for the Summer

I know it's been a long wait, what with me being pre-occupied with Joe for so long, but here's two chapters of Historie, bringing us back up to the latest release. Next chapter comes out in July (ugh). Still, fellow Iwaaki have something else to look forwards to, since I'll be releasing the tankoban version of v8 this summer and collaborating with illuminati-manga on Yuki no Touge, Tsurugi no Mai.

Stand aside, Koihime Musou

But for the immediate future, as in next week, I'll be starting up Sangokushi as well as finishing Black Knight Story, alternating releases for them. After I've gone through 2 volumes of Sangokushi, I'll finally be starting up some new projects now that I'm done with Joe, hurray! Though then again, working on Joe hasn't exactly stopped me from taking on new projects to the disappointment of many Joe-fans, I'm sure. Still, I've been holding back quite a bit. So from now on, expect me to alternate between 2 volumes of Sangokushi and a new project (1-3 volumes long). It'll be a while before I pick up another long series (by that I mean, ~20 volumes). Probably not until I finish Sangokushi. Not that that's a problem, since many excellent manga with tight stories are short.

On an unrelated note, I finally got around to reading Habibi. If you haven't read it yet, go do so. It's worth it for the art alone (love the panelling), whether or not you like the story.

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