"Furou Kyoudai" Chapter 4

Here we are at chapter 4. These last two chapters have a story arc. This chapter makes me think that this series could have continued further than 5 chapters. It's kind disappointing when you consider the potential of the Furou twins and their predicament. I imagine some of the potential story material was used for the series after this one called "Unknown".

And now onto the release!

"Furou Kyoudai" Chapter 3

First! a bit of business! New items and books have been added to the Omari's Sister Store.  Please take a look and see if there are goodies you want to add to your collection. (LINK)

Also exciting announcements were made in earlier posts.  Check them out then squeal with joy.
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And now comes the march to finish "Furou Kyoudai".  All the chapters in the main story are complete, but I'm gonna do daily releases like what was done for KKZoo.

This is an interesting chapter. The Furou twins confront the appearance of incest in their relationship. Their solution is not perfect, but takes care of their main problem.  Haha!

This time Jade translated the chapter. Kudos to her for a great translation! Also thanks to Noir Schist for typesetting. It was nice only having to do the final image editing and a little cleaning (Aki and Kumiko took care of most of it).

Onto the release:

Crazy Good Announcements that will make you Crap Yourself!!!

It's been a crazy-good week for Omari's Sister. Japan smiles upon us! Without further ado, here are the announcements!

1. "Yukarism" is resuming in Betsuhana Issue 6 (4/26/2013)!!!
2. "Hakamori Majo Bianca" is now a series and has been resumed in the latest issue of Aria magazine!!!
3. Special Lala -- "Ane Lala" will be released in June!!! Ane Lala is advertised as "A Lala for grown-up girls"!!! Preliminary artist list: Masami Tsuda, Bisco Hatori, Tomo Matsumoto, Nari Kusakawa, Masami Mario,...etc.
4. "The Hana to Yume" will be reborn as "The Hana". The first issue will be release on 4/25/2013. Artist List: Hisaya Nakajo, Maki Minami, Mai Nishikata, Haruki Okada, Tsutsumi Kakeru, Touya Tobina, ...etc. Furoku will be an Illustration Collection feature works by Hisaya Nakajo, Shiina Dai, Morie Satoshi,... etc. This is edition is being called "The Kiss Edition"!!!

Other stuff you may not have known:

• "Wild Wing" is now a series in Lala DX. We are working on it!

Anyhow! I'm reworking the schedule, so look for an update soon!

Furou Kyoudai and Rex Fabula Banners are Needed

To celebrate the acceleration of these two series, it would be great to have some wonderful banners to go with the releases. Here are the Requirements:

Height: Up to 350-px
Width: 1250-px
File Formats: PSD (preferred with separate text layer), JPEG, PNG

Here are some images to get you started (click on the image to download full-size image):

"Kemono Kingdom: Zoo" Chapter 15

One more chapter left! Chapter 16 and the prologue will be released together tomorrow or Tuesday.

In this chapter we come down to the big Lion vs. King Lion showdown. The fight climaxes in typical "Kemono Kingdom: Zoo" fashion which made me extremely happy.

Well, let's get on with the release!

"Kemono Kingdom: Zoo" Chapter 13

There are now three chapters left! In this chapter we finally meet Lion's family and Tiger. Looking back, I now wonder whether those other lions were Lion's mother and sisters all along.  Haha! Anyhow...tiger...yeah...he's a bit troublesome. The way he's described reminds me of actually trying to see a tiger at the San Diego Zoo or Safari Park. In my many visits to both places, I have yet to see a tiger. They are always well hidden from visitors' eyes. I wonder if this is the case at other zoos. Anyhow, things continue to go sideways in this chapter T_T.  Yeah... well... anyhow... this photo will look even cuter to you after you read the chapter:

Onto the release!

Thank you for Taking the Oneshot Survey!

Thanks to all of you who gave us your input on your favorite mangaka. It looks like my instincts are on track and we are well on the way to preparing a nice selection of oneshots for the 4th anniversary of Omari's Sister and the rest of 2013.

Our plan is to release complete collections of oneshots from our favorite mangaka. This means we will do our own versions of oneshots that may have already been released along with some that have never been released in English. I know some of you don't like that, and I invite you not to read oneshots you've already read if it bothers you that much (In other words, please don't send me nasty-grams. They will fall upon deaf ears and I will ban you from commenting and blacklist your e-mail address.). However, I feel that we have good reasons do our own versions.  Here are some of them:

• Many of the older oneshots are not easily available on the internet because the group closed and the group's website is gone.
• The closure of Mega Uploads disappeared a lot of oneshots.
• Some groups do not allow non-English retranslations, and we have partners who want to translate particular oneshot into their own language.
• Some of the oneshots will be done from the tankoubon instead of a the magazine = high quality images!
• I've never read any of these oneshots completely.
• It would be weird have an incomplete of set of oneshots.
• I truly love the work this group produces and we should do whatever beautiful thing we like :3
• To hell with the unspoken "no duplication rule" amongst shoujo groups.

We wouldn't be releasing our own version of oneshots unless we felt we had some value to offer. Still, if you don't like repeats, then feel free to ignore the oneshots you've already read.

Moving on... I have all of the issues of Lala, Lala DX, Lala Specials, Hana to Yume,  and The Hana to Yume released since July 2007 (they occupy a room in my house).  I spent several days collecting the raws for all of the oneshots from our favorite mangaka. Our collection will be extensive and this project will never be completed :3.  Haha! That means it will be an ongoing project as mangaka continue to create.

Our first focus will be on relatively new favorites Nao Tsukiji and Mika Kajiyama. Then in June we will turn our attention to Hakusensha's mangaka.

JManga/JManga7 is Shutting Down

I imagine this is irrelevant news to most of you since JManga didn't really serve this blog's demographic well.  But just so you know, JManga/JManga7 is closing. If you were a user, please make sure to read the info on this webpage to make sure whatever money you have sitting in JManga gets returned to you:
http://www.jmanga.com/urgent-message

I browsed JManga only a little. Until recently, there weren't any titles I wanted to read. They kept promising an iOS app, so I held off on purchases waiting for that promised iOS app.  Sorry, but I don't pay money just to keep something open if they don't sell what I want how I want it. I hear the cries from the anti-piracy folks, but buying something you don't want only causes the seller to stock more of what you don't want. Beside that, piracy didn't bring down JManga. JManga brought itself down.

I could go into all the various reasons for JManga's demise, but I think the most glaring reason relevant to this audience is that there was nothing to read on JManga. And the shoujo they did have was translated no better than what you could get for free from a crappy scanlation group. Sorry, but I don't pay good money for crap. It's sends the message that crap is okay and consumers won't see any improvement. Heck, I don't read crappy free scanlations because I don't want to encourage the group by giving their websites hits.

Anyhow, my major concern is whether this has hurt the chances of seeing more legitimate ways of reading the manga we want and actually being able to get some money to the creators we adore. I don't understand why this is so hard. The only way to combat piracy is to make the content available at a reasonable price. It won't stop piracy completely because there are those people who are pirates by nature, but it will stop the casual pirates who just want a legit way to get unavailable content.

New thoughts on scanlation:
I don't believe scanlation does anything to help or hurt the manga business. As far as I'm concerned, the two are completely disconnected.  There simply isn't enough English translated manga available for sell for scanlation to affect sales one way or another. I do believe scanlation raises awareness about creators and series, but I no longer believe it leads to series actually getting licensed. I believe a different calculus is used for licensing decisions. Unfortunately, until more manga is made available for purchase, scanlation is the only way you'll get a wide selection of titles. I think it's stupid to make a moral argument about how scanlation is taking money away from creators/licensors who aren't selling anything and have no intention of selling anything.  No selling = no buying!!! It's as simple as that. And telling people to ignore what exists and it available is completely unreasonable. Turn those people into customers by selling them something.

"Kemono Kingdom" Chapter 9

First of all, thanks to all of the supporters of this series. Your encouragement fuels me :3. I will do my best to finish this series with care.

Marching down the chapters, here's chapter 9 of "Kemono Kingdom: Zoo". This chapter centers around Barbary Sheep's tween anxiety. Barbary Sheep is adorable and I wouldn't mind having a BSheep doll or plushy. Underlying this whole story is a discussion of Eagle and Lion's relationship, which will continue into chapter 10.  After chapter 10 we finally move into a story arc and things turn very dramatic (but still with humor).

We are driving through chapters as quickly as possible. I anticipate finishing the series before the end of the month.

Onto the release!

Please Boycott MangaFox and Other Manga Aggregators

Update 3/08/2013 --

Mangafox was cooperating with us, but this week, Mangafox still won't remove our releases after 2 requests this week...

My only beef is that I nicely asked MF to remove our work. If any mangaka asked us to stop translating their work, we would stop. It's common courtesy. All they have to do is stop uploading our work and remove our work when we ask. MF has plenty of "contributors" that willingly upload their own work. They don't need our work.
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MangaFox has shut the part of their forum that allows scanlation groups to request takedowns of their materials.  MangaFox, also, removed take down privileges from their moderators. (more info) After doing this, the owner of MangaFox, NOEZ, has been reposting materials that groups have specifically asked to be removed.  MangaFox clearly has no respect for scanlation groups or manga in general.  It clear to me that it is MangaFox's intent to suck English translated manga dry and when it's dead, move on to the next victim.  I realize that MangaFox makes it easy to read a wide variety of manga series and I realize that this group's existence enables MangaFox.  However, it was never my intention to enrich anybody else but the creators of the series we translate.  This leaves me in a difficult place because I want to give unknown artist and unknown titles exposure, continue having fun discussing manga with fans, and create wonderful translations, but at the same time, I can't stop parasites like MangaFox.

New Series Announcements

These 3 series wrap up our Spring and Summer new Series Announcements! They, along with the other 3 projects we've announce, will start this month or in April as we complete "Furou Kyoudai" and "Kemono Kingdom: Zoo". We've already begun working on these series and they have enough support within the group, so they've got momentum.

 "LLLL" is 1 volume (4 chapter) supernatural series.

"Nanatsu no Kururi" is a 2 volume series from josei magazine "Itan". I'm still trying to decide whether to release in on OS or Bakeneko's Lair.

"Gensou Kajin" is a 2 volume short series that I've been lusting after for a while, but I've kept on the back burner because it's challenging in every way. But I think it's worth the time and effort, and I look forward to working on it (I imagine this will mainly be a Kuroneko003 production since I can't bring myself to ask anyone else in the group to share the pain.)

We've also got some oneshot compilations lined up for our June/July 4th anniversary party (Take the survey to help us prioritize the oneshot release schedule). W00t! And that wraps up plans for the next 6 months! And this nearly completes our transition to being a short series/oneshot group ("Magnolia" and "Pochamani" will be our only indefinite series going forward.) If you'd like volunteer for Omari's Sister to help us get these series and oneshots out, please see our recruitment notice (LINK)

"The Ghost Apartment Manager" Chapter 11

 

Series News! "The Ghost Apartment Manager" is ending in April at 29 chapters (6 volumes) So... I guess we will be accelerating the series. The second to last chapter is a tear jerker T_T.

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Finally! Another chapter of "The Ghost Apartment Manager"! And like the broken record that I am with this series, I'm sorry for the long wait. It'll become easier to regularly release chapters of this series after we finish some of our other series. This series is still ongoing, so we won't be accelerating it.

This chapter wraps up the Crook arc (maybe...??? Yes, yes, I'm not being fair again) and begins Tatsumi's arc. I really like Crook and I wish the story could have spent more time explaining his rise and how and why he fell so low that he ended up killing himself. Is he just naturally moody, or were there more factors.  But... I suppose that would be a whole other manga series.

Tatsumi... usually hyper people like him and their hyper dogs annoying the crap out of me. I hope there's more to Tatsumi than hyper. I guess we'll find out.  Also this chapter starts to introduce a new character that we'll find out more about in chapter 12.  Actually, chapter 12 starts a big expansion in the story, so get ready for some changes and new intrigue. I will try my best to get chapter 12 out in April.  Haha! 

On to the release!

Not Happening New Project Announcement: "Boukyaku no Shirushi to Hime"

Sorry folks. Basically the effort to do this short series fell apart.  It's too cute (in a very juvenile sense) and the amount of effort needed to put into can't be justified in the face of other projects. We're very burnt out on difficult redraws. Hopefully a shoujo group that skews towards a younger audience will pick this series up. If you are interested, a one person "group" translated chapter 1.

No worries though, we've got "Megane no Incubus" and "Kurogane Girl" coming at you very soon :). We're also resuming "Wild Wing" and we've got two short Mika Kajiyama projects, in addition to "Ore to Atashi no Kareshi-sama" coming soon. Hopefully this basket of goodies will make up for the disappointment.

Now that we've got a translator working on it, I can announce this new project:

"Boukyaku no Shirushi to Hime" (literally "Decapitated Head of Forgetfulness and the Princess" -- we'll work on a better title translation) -- It's two volumes volumes long and we will be releasing it monthly starting this month ("Fushigi no Maria-kun" allowing, of course.)