Happy Shiro Lala One-Shot: "Bride on Loan" by Ririko Tsujita

I know I said the next one-shot would be gloomy and hella messed up, but things got out of order, and this one-shot is ready to be released instead.  This is actually a good thing because I wanted to break up the gloom.

This is a short light-hearted one-shot.  Since Ririko Tsujita is a new mangaka for me, I had a hard time with her writing style.  I'd like to thank Amrai for the helping me with the translation.  Tsujita-sensei, apparently, doesn't like letting people know who's talking and what specifically they are talking about...sigh...well...I guess this one-shot was a learning experience for me :).

Anyhow...here's on the release!

Link to "Bride on Loan": (PDF)

Next up will be the messed up one-shot from Kuro Lala.  It's called "Sabaku no Requiem" (The Desert's Requiem).  It should be out tomorrow night PST.

Pika Ichi Chapter 4 -- Love, Hate, and General Frustration...

Here is "Pika Ichi" chapter 4.  I continue to like the main characters, Tarou and Hanako, and the side characters; Manaka, Dr. Murase, and Ibuki (introduced in this chapter), but the general story suffers from poor execution.  I was ready to throw up my hands and quit the series after about 10-pages into translating this chapter, until after banging my head on my desk a few times and then breaking into hysterical laughter, it all became clear.  I'm taking the bullying aspect of this story way too seriously and I'm probably ultra-sensitive because at the time I started the translation, the bullying induced suicides were all over the news in the US.  So I adjusted my point of view and began to think of the bullying as a "McGuffin" and the student mob as a mob of brainless zombies.  As a story about a handful of students and a brave doctor facing the zombie apocalypse, things made sense to me and I could focus on the aspects of the story I like, which would be the character development and the lovely artwork.  The second hurdle was doing something about some of the flat or just plain bad dialog.  So I will inform you now, for the most part I translated the chapter faithfully, but I did punch up some of the dialog to bring it up to high school level and to speed up and maintain the pacing.

I will continue onto chapter 5 because I want to know more about the characters.  How did they get this way?  What's motivating them? And how will they change?  But...it will be a chapter by chapter commitment and, so, I'll face the question of whether to continue after looking at chapter 5.  I really wish, though, that the chapters weren't so freaking long!!!  UGH!!!  I'd much rather have fat "Magnolia" chapters!  Magnolia!!!!  UGH, the pain of waiting is almost too much!!!

Here are the links!

Links to "Pika Ichi" chapter 4:  (Zip) (PDF)

Anyhow, give the chapter a read and let me know what you think about it.  If a lot of you want to try something new, I will gladly oblige.  There are 4 replacement series on my mind that I would love to give a try and one is already in preparation :).  And, oh, by the way, take the survey in the upper right corner of this blog!