One-Shot: "Detarame Mousouryoku Opera" ("Absurd and Fantastical Opera") by Bisco Hatori

This one-shot took forever to complete!  Everything about it was time consuming!  I'm so glad it's done!  I forgot how difficult Bisco Hatori's works are to translate. Fortunately,  I really like this one-shot so it was a pleasure.

According to Hatori-sensei's blog, this was intended to only be a one-shot, but she liked it so much that it's going to become a 3 chapter short series!  The second chapter is scheduled to release in Lala issue 5, which comes out in Japan on March 24th.  We will, of course, translate the rest of the series.

And now onto the link:  (Zip) (PDF)

My thoughts on this one-shot:

The two main characters remind me of Tamaki and Haruhi, which I expected.  It's hard to come off of 9 years of a story and characters without having some "residue".  I don't mind this, though, because I like Tamaki and Haruhi and their relationship.  The other characters are somewhat new and that's refreshing.  I wanted to map Ouran characters onto them, but in the end, I didn't feel the link.

The magic premise of the story was a little hard to grasp during the translation process. Hopefully, I managed to "decode" things such that it's understandable.  I decided to use "figments" instead of the generic "particles" or "matter" because it seemed to fit in more with the idea of imagination and dreams.  Also, as a former Disney-nut, I love the purple dragon "Figment" and the "Journey Through the Imagination" ride at Disney World.  (The theme song for that ride is very cute and singable -- "Imagination! Imagination! A dream can be a dream come true, with just that spark from me and you.").  Anyhow, to me "figment" seem to be a really good way to convey the idea of the magic.

I have no idea what could come next in the story, other than deal with the corrupt politician...but Bisco Hatori doesn't always do what's expected, so we'll just have to wait and see :).

Next up will be our Valentine's Day one-shot, Magnolia, and the latest one-shot from Nari Kusakawa!

Shiro Lala One-Shot: "Ginsekai no Shoumei" by Akiduki Sorata

Here is Akiduki Sorata's Shiro Lala one-shot "Ginsekai no Shoumei" ("The Snowscape's Emblem").  The image above is a scan of one of the freebie post cards.  The large size image (click on the image to see it larger) can be used as wallpaper on your PC or mobile.

A note about the spelling of "Akiduki".  A few people have asked me about the change in the spelling.  I had been spelling it "Akidzuki" and "Akizuki" is another common spelling.  The mangaka herself began romanizing her name and the titles of her works a few months ago.  Whether right or wrong, she has been consistently spelling her name "Akiduki".  Since that's her preferred spelling, I'm using it.  That is not the proper romanization, but...when using roman letters to generate hiragana and katakana づ is "du", so perhaps that's where she's getting it from.

Moving onto the one-shot!  In my opinion this is the best one-shot from Akiduki-sensei that this group has released.  The characters are interesting and their interaction is nice.  The end, though, leaves much to be desired,  It's very rushed and doesn't fit considering what happened to make the main female lead, Leah, return home.  There should have been more conflict and reflection on Leah's part about leaving home for a second time.  I think this would have worked better as a 50 - 60-page one-shot or a 2 or 3 chapter short series.

Anyhow, onto the links!
Updated:  Included some minor edits from Kotomi :)
Link to "Gensekai no Shoumei":  (Zip) (PDF)

We have one more Shiro Lala that we want to get out immediately -- Toyota Yuu's "The Magician and the Love Potion".   Hopefully, we can get that out this weekend. After that, we will go back to our regular schedule on our series, plus 2 or 3 one-shots a month.  Through Spring 2012, we will be releasing one-shots from Kuro Lala and Shiro Lala, so look out for them!  The next Shiro Lala one-shot will by Sakura Tsukuba's "Sabaki no Mon".  It will be released in early December.