Here is chapter 6 of miman ren’ai. Hope you all enjoy!

Chapter 06: MH

I thought about just letting it go, but this keeps nagging me: “I WILL finish the series; but I WON’T cop any more flak for “stealing” a series I may or may not have started!!”
This is another ridiculously long post, but luckily for everyone, I have discovered the wonders of the more tag in wordpress.
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Let the domain expire… >.<;;
All is good now, though…

In the “excitement” yesterday, I never posted the links for the Chocotto Sister stuff. This is the links for the individual chapters, if you want the whole of volume 8 in one rar, you’ll have to grab it from our irc channel.

ch 55: MH
ch 56: MH
ch 57: MH
ch 58: MH
ch 59: MH
ch 60: MH
ch 61: MH
ch 62: MH
ch 63: MH
ch 64: MH
ch 65: MH
ch 66: MH
ch 67: MH
ch 68: MH
ch 69: MH
ch 70: MH

I just wanted to share my thoughts about this issue of people picking up projects that others are working on. I wanted to address some things said in the comments of the other blog post:

1 - The “speed-subs vs archival quality” argument: On the anime side of things, this might be a little more applicable than in manga. There’s way less anime to sub than with manga, so you’re going to have a lot of overlap. It’s still not totally applicable, though… Just go ask someone whose favorite show was picked up by one of the aforementioned speed-sub groups, and then no other respectable group wanted to put the effort in to redoing the show. Koharu Biyori, anyone?

2 - The “we didn’t realize anyone was working on it” argument: Bull… Any idiot could open mangaupdates to see if something they are going to work on is already being done… If it happened that you did check, started working on something, then find out someone else was already working on it, it might be a different story. We were working on one called Pixy Gale that nobody had touched for so long, then right before releasing chapter 1, I found out someone else already had it on their “upcoming releases” page. After going and talking to one of their team, we decided not to release it. You know why? Because our time would be better spent working on something nobody else is doing! I really can’t fault the guys who released Chocotto Sister, I guess, though it’s still a little murky. It would have been nice for them to come and say “Hey, this dude is from Kotonoha and we’re going to finish up their work on it”, then I wouldn’t have bothered working on it any more. It’s not like us working on it was a total mystery or anything. The whole “busting out a batch to get it done” thing was, but we have been clearly working on Chocotto Sister for long enough that they could have come and dropped us a line. For the record, I went to Kotonoha to try and ask for a joint on it before I picked it up, and one of the ops there told me he didn’t know of any plans to get it done otherwise. It had been hundreds of days since anyone had posted a release of it, too.

3 - The “I like my translation better” argument: Sorry, I’m not buying this one. If that were the case, you’d redo the whole frickin’ thing rather than just dropping out what you think are gonna be the next chapters. And of course you are going to think your translation is better, you’re the one doing it… Still, to actually go to some group’s site and explain away why you took their project by using this line kinda makes you look like a tool, even if you do tack on “but that’s just a style preference”. But I guess that’s just my style preference.

4 - The “It’s all about finishing the series, screw pride” - If you really thought this way, it would seem you would go to the group who is doing it and offer to do a joint on it. Now if you actually go to the group and they say “screw you, pal!”, then all bets are off at that point. You did what you should do and they turned you away. Tell me, what is the actual point of picking up a project and working on it if some jerk (nothing personal) is going to latch on to it once it shows that it might be popular in order to gain some form of “instant success”? Screw pride, indeed… If your supposed reason for scanlating manga is “for the fans”, then you should go out and find something that nobody is working on and do that. Then when it catches on, people will say “Who are these cool guys doing something we’ve never seen before? Let’s go check them out”. It’ll grow your e-peen a lot more in the long run, don’t worry about that.

I could go on and on forever about this, and yeah, I know I’m overreacting a bit. Hence the title of the last blog post. It’s not about pride, it’s about common sense. So now what I would have to do is read through that other release of Cherry x Cherry and decide if we should continue it or not. I don’t want to do that! That means I will have to look at it, say “Yeah, this release sucks… I’m going to continue it”, thereby flipping those guys the bird and basically declaring publicly that I think they suck. Who the hell am I to do that? I’m doing this stuff because I like the projects and wanna do a good job on them, not because I want to prove who is better. Not to mention what a tremendous waste of time it would be for all parties involved. So the short of it is, we will probably not continue Cherry x Cherry. I will release the omake from volume 1 and just call it a day. If I get the time and motivation (not a likely combo), I might do the volume 2 stuff when my copy of it arrives, since I already ordered it, but it’s definitely going to be on the back burner.

The whole Chocotto Sister matter was just one of those “Well, damn it” moments. I had spent the whole 3 day weekend last week working morning to night on it, and this whole weekend, too. Nobody told me to do it, I didn’t tell anyone that I was doing it because I wanted it to be a surprise, so it’s just one of those things. I just wish I’d known about it beforehand, because I sure as heck would not have put that effort in to doing it if I had. Oh well, what can you do?

And finally… Yes, I see the thread on 4chan… No, I’m not the one (or ones, who knows?) who keeps complaining there. I did bitch right at the beginning, but I flew off the handle without bothering to get all the facts straight. We were mere minutes away from releasing that huge batch of chapters, and I had no clue about the release of volume 7 by them a few days earlier. I thought it was just some group out of nowhere swooping in and I just bitterly tossed some anger their way, but by the time I learned what had really happened, someone had already replied to my post. Yep, I suck. Sorry for being such a douche there, I’ll look before I leap next time. Now, I can’t say that no one else from MBT is posting in it, but I’m pretty sure the other guys wouldn’t bother. Just an FYI, though… Saint October was never translated by MBT, we were just helping out the groups who wanted to do it. None of the translators at MBT were interested in it… Trust me, I tried to convince them. As I’ve always said, if someone is willing to translate it, we’re willing to help out.

Opposing viewpoints will be deleted on sight!! Just kidding…

Well, fuck me running… I thought I’d do a cool thing and slave my ass off all week to knock out the rest of Chocotto Sister since it looked like Geisha had fallen apart.
So I’m about 20 minutes away from releasing the stuff, and someone tells me that somebody released volume 8 on 4chan just now… And they had released volume 7 a couple of days ago… SHIT!!! Way to go guys! Why not work on something that NOBODY is working on, rather than something that 2 different groups were releasing…
Guess you showed us…
Anyway, I’ll be damned if I’m not releasing the stuff now that I, suspiria, thaeagle, and jiji have busted our humps on it… Just go to mangahelpers and watch for them, I’ll update this post later.

I’m thinking I should just do a complete project and release it all at once, so vultures won’t swoop in and steal them… Goodbye, Cherry x Cherry!

Here’s the stuff I had hoped to get out last weekend… This weekend, I worked on many things, but they are in various stages right now, so I don’t know when they will release.

Cherry x Cherry 05: MH
Shiroi Gekkou 07: MH
Love Club 05: MH

Here’s a status update, since we couldn’t release anything this weekend like I’d hoped:
Cherry x Cherry 5: TLC
Hiiragi Love Club 5: QC
Shiroi Gekkou 7: QC

So there’s a couple things waiting in lala land for the QC guy to appear (and since he is busy with exams, that’s not going to be any time soon, I’m afraid).

In other news, I thought about dredging up Tanpo, an old project that we haven’t done for ages, and now I remember why. The raws are too terrible. As I’ve learned more japanese since the last time I looked at it, I am able to “guess” at some things that I had no clue on before. Long story short, to be able to work on it, I’m going to have to get better scans of it. I have a physical copy of volume 2 due to a shipping error from amazon.jp, but that doesn’t do me any good for right now. If, on the off chance, someone has the physical books and are willing to scan them, I will work on it. Otherwise, I will buy the books and do it myself at some point.
Also, if anyone happens across volume scans of Miman Ren’ai, Love Club, or Cherry x Cherry vol 2, let me know. I look for them occasionally, but I missed the Cherry x Cherry vol 1 when it was floating around, so my skills are not to be trusted.

Here is miman ren’ai chapter 5. Tomoe-chan is just so darn cute!

Gonna mention that we are looking for an additional translation checker, and failing that, just somebody who knows japanese really well that would hang around our channel and answer our dumb questions (mostly from me). If you can help, check us out on our IRC channel at #mbt@irc.rizon.net.

Chapter 05: DDL

Alrighty, here is chapter 6 of Shiroi Gekkou. Expect the next Miman Ren’ai chapter within a few days.

Also, we’re looking for someone additional to QC our releases. Drop the channel or leave a message at the forum if you’re interested.

Chapter 06: Mangahelpers