3rd Anniversary Wrap-up! Shiro Lala One-Shot: "Taiyou no Yuki" ("The Sun's Snow") by Yukichi Nakamura

This is the last of the Shiro Lala one-shots that we plan to release. It's a play on a familiar American fairytale :) ("thumpity, thump, thump, thump...") with just a touch of another fairytale invoked by the protagonist's nickname.  Haha! This one-shot took me by surprised considering that this is the same mangaka who gave us that messed up doll shop one-shot in Kuro Lala.  I now look forward to see what Nakamura-sensei come up with next :).

Onto the release!


Link to "Taiyou no Yuki":  (PDF)

With this, we wrap up our 3rd anniversary celebration! We managed to do 18 releases in a month! That's pretty amazing considering the size of our core group.  A big thanks goes out to our translators Jade, Blottyparchment, and Amrai for all their hard work over the past few months on these one-shots.  Also a big thanks to Suzume who did a lot of the cleaning and to Ichigo Stars who tirelessly did most of the redraws for most of the one-shots and series we released this month.  And finally, a huge thanks to Holanio for lending us her typesetting skills and to our newest typesetter Kiruku Naru for pitching in when we really needed help!

Our next one-shot party will occur during the month of October! We will be sharing a bunch of spooky one-shots and short-series for your Halloween enjoyment.  Also, in August we will be focusing on water themed one-shots!  Look forward to it!  July, though, we will be focused on our series!  For now, though, we're taking a little break and we'll be back in about a week with our next release!

"Akagami no Shirayukihime" Chp 34

I'd love to see a clean version of this drawing.  It's too bad when the tankoubon is published, the clean image will be in black-and-white instead of color.  Maybe one day Akidzuki-sensei will bless us with an illustration book so we can see clean versions of the color title pages.

This chapter sets the premise for the present story arc.  Honestly, the medical/pharma stuff doesn't interest me. Rather, I'm more interested in whether Ms. Naki is Izana's love interest.  Haha!  I guess I just want to see what kind of woman Izana ends up with.  I'm rather impatient and I want to get to the heart-to-heart between Izana and Shirayuki and I want some Zen and Shirayuki time...sigh...haha, but well...I guess I have to eat my veggies first before we get to the meat and dessert.

Onto the link!

Link to AnS Chp 34: (PDF) (If the file won't open in your browser, download the file and open it in the latest version of Adobe Acrobat on your PC. Problems have been reported using the Chrome browser.)

Next up! There will be a short lull while we prepare the next batch of releases!

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.

One-Shot: "World End Garden"

Just in time for the end of winter and the beginning of spring is our final winter one-shot, "World End Garden".  Please forgive me, but I couldn't help myself on the credits page.  This was another big undertaking by the group and they all worked very hard to get this out on time.  A big thanks goes out to Suzume and Silver Lunar for getting this one-shot sparkly clean and to Kumiko and Ichigo Stars for doing some miraculous redraws.  I'd also like to thank the mangaka Shiina Dai for such a beautiful and emotionally wide-ranging story and for her lovely drawings.  I will admit that this was one of the most challenging works I've translated in a while, but it's a lovely story in Japanese and I hope I managed to capture that beauty in English.

Links to "World End Garden": (Zip) (PDF)

Speaking of Shiina Dai, this summer we will be translating her short series "Fushigina Maria-Kun" ("Wonderous Maria-kun").  Hahaha, I can't believe I'm putting yet another vampire manga series out into this world, but trust me, you'll like it.  It will be lots of summer fun and it's only 9 chapters long!

Next up are the Aria series! Please look forward to them!