WHEW, here’s volume 5! Now we’re well into the real meat of the manga. The speech at the start of chapter 52 here is one of the highlights of the series. It feels like it’s where Buntarō really feels like he’s got firm opinions about his life and how he’s living it that he lets the reader in on. And now we’ve finally got underway with the Northern Alps All-Mountain Ridge Traversal.

This volume was a bunch easier because the amount of text is letting up and the amount of sound effects and fonts is going down. So hopefully these don’t take too long. There’s still 12 more volumes to go now. These don’t take a lot of focused concentration but they do take a lot of hours regardless to get the whole volume done. And we’ve got a few people quality checking now which helps. I’d really prefer this “spruce up” of this series didn’t end up taking many months, because it’s taking up my time for everything else I wanna do. But the hardest volumes are behind us now.

In the meantime, we just released a bunch of stuff and I’m still working on Shima volume 10. Gonna try to really focus on that now that this is done.

Also, we have a Discord! Come hang out and talk about manga. https://discord.gg/Nw45rfJYZF

Kokou no Hito Volume 5 (Ch. 43-52)
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Ook, here’s volume 4! We have finally finished the beginning arc of the manga and we’re into “Part 2” or the first timeskip or the start of the “K2 Simulation Training Arc” whatever you wanna call it. This is also the last volume where Takano Hiroshi is the writer. After this point it’s all Sakamoto-sensei.

A lot of folks feel like this is where the manga “really starts”, and I agree it’s way different from the beginning to the point of feeling like a totally different manga, I do think the beginning is good in its own right even though it lacks the sort of atmosphere we get when he’s out of school. It also really establishes Mori Buntarō’s mindset and how he’s shaped from being younger to getting to the state he’s in. So I hope you all enjoyed that! Past this point there’s way fewer sound effects which makes it easier to typeset and there’s less text in general, though still way more than there is in the 2nd half of the series. So hopefully these volumes take a bit less time to do. We’ve been doing this project for around 2 months now and it’s probably gonna take a longer than I was hoping but it’s still going pretty well. I’m still going though every single line and a couple people are checking it and helping me improve it. That’s in addition to re-scanning, re-cleaning, re-redrawing, and re-typesetting everything.

Besides that, we’re working on Shima volume 10 and there are new The JOJOLands and 3-Gatsu no Lion chapters coming out later this month. So look forward to all that.

Also, we have a Discord! Come hang out and talk about manga. https://discord.gg/Nw45rfJYZF

Kokou no Hito Volume 4 (Ch. 32-42)
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And here’s volume 3! This pretty much finishes off the first arc/part of the story. There’s sort of a denouement in the first chapter of volume 4 but after that, the story changes quite a bit. And that arc continues until the middle of volume 9. And starting in volume 4 there’s a lot less text and way fewer sound effects so it should take less time to typeset. Though I still have to go through the entire translation and make corrections/improvements which takes some time. Though there’s still plenty of text compared to the last few volumes, at which point the amount goes WAY down. Also this volume does not have Nabeta Yoshio as the story writer and it’s only Takano Hiroshi. Hiroshi leaves as well at some point in volume 4 at which point Sakamoto Shinichi is the artist and only writer. So yeah, as it goes on these should take less time to do. There’s still 14 more. I’m gonna try to keep them coming out somewhat steadily but it’ll probably take a few months to do them all. I hope you enjoy! This volume I think is where the series really starts hitting its stride and feels special.

Also, we have a Discord! Come hang out and talk about manga. https://discord.gg/Nw45rfJYZF

Kokou no Hito Volume 3 (Ch. 21-31)
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Hey everybody, so here’s volume 2 of this! If you want to hear more about the background of this project I explained it all in detail in the post about volume 1. I spent the last couple weeks scanning the ENTIRE rest of this series, which took quite a bit. Then I cleaned/redrew/typeset volume 2. I mentioned this in earlier posts, but volumes 1-4 of this series feel basically like a different series than the entire rest of the series because the writer changed. Though it still continues the general themes regarding Mori/Katō Buntarō as a character starting from this first arc where he’s in high school. Mainly the redrawing and typesetting is MUCH more intensive here because there’s just way more text.

Scanning the other volumes was a strong reminder because half the pages in volumes 15-17 don’t have any text at all and the other half have 1-3 lines per page in all but a few. Also the number of sound effects go down from tons of them in volumes 1-3, to very few in 4-7, to none around volume 9. All that, plus having less text and having translated them when I had more experience, will make the later volumes take way less time to do. So I’m trying to get the first few volumes done fairly quickly. The drop-off in labor needed per volume is pretty steep. That said I’m also doing Shima Kōsaku so I’m going to also be dividing my time with that.

Kokou no Hito Volume 2 (Ch. 10-20)
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