Well, it's been a hot minute hasn't it?

First off, sorry to anyone who was reading Itoshi Koishi. I really have no excuses to offer other than I burned myself out. As much as I liked ItoKoi, the redrawing was just too much and got to be very un-fun for me. I was also just spending way too much of my free time on it, feeling like I owed it to the readers to crank chapters out as fast as I could. I don't think this excuses dropping it with no notice like I did, but it should at least give a little more context into what happened.

But that's enough of the failures of the past.

I only picked up KoeDasanai because it is a much lighter workload in general than any of the other series I've worked on. The chapters are short and the amount of redrawing is far less (it still has its fair share, but it's not every single page like ItoKoi was). This leads to being able to finish chapters much more reasonably for just me doing the work. I ended up timing myself while I worked on chapter 42, and in total it took somewhere between 7-8 hours of work to finish (I often got distracted by streams I had playing off to the side while I worked, so the time is a bit inaccurate). If most chapters only need 7-8 hours of work, then I'm optimistic I won't burn out so quickly.

In an effort to not burn myself out, here's my current game plan:

• Only work on scanlation for 5-20 hours a week, and never go over 20. This averages out to <1-3 hours a day, which I feel is sustainable.
• At most, upload 1 chapter per week. This will allow me to build a buffer and take more time off if I need to.
• Work with my therapist to reduce the feelings of guilt and obligation should they start to flare up again.
• If I end up having to drop the series, make a friggin announcement this time.

So that's where I'm at with that.

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On another note, I've updated the donation page. Before, I was using a very hacked-up version of electrum-payserver to manage generating requests and all that, but it kept breaking in very random and unintelligible ways. Instead, I decided to just write myself a script to update a static html page with the most recent unused address. There is a slight chance that multiple people may use the same address, but since I have it set to update every 5 minutes, I feel that chance is sufficiently low. I mean, to be fair I did just slap the QR code straight to the wallet for a few chapters when I was working on BokuWata, so I've done worse. Point being, it should be functional and unbreakable now... I hope.

I think that'll do it for this update.

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First off, I'm extremely sorry. I have honestly no excuse why it's taken over a month to get chapter 7 of Itoshi Koishi out. Between stress from work/life and the correlated depressive episodes I've been dealing with, my motivation and ability to translate has been hindered severely. Honestly, my situation hasn't improved, but the guilt of taking so long is starting to get unbearable. I'm forcing myself to work on it again, so progress is being made, but at a horrible pace.

At this point, I have 6 more pages to translate, and then I'll have to work on editing. If I recall correctly, I haven't worked too far ahead on editing, so that'll take a few days more after the translation is done. In the unlikely event that I can push myself out of the bad headspace and create motivation from nothing, I'd guess it could be done by Friday. It's a tentative and very far-fetched goal, but it's my current goal nonetheless.

Again, many apologies for taking so long on chapter 7. It's been eating at me since I uploaded the last one, but when I have issues holding focus on easy things, there's almost no chance that I'm going to be able to comprehend what's on the pages.

As a final note, I'd still like to push out chapter 1 of BokuWata, but progress on that has halted completely. It's on the backburner, but it eats at me less than ItoKoi does.

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Progress on chapter 5 is going well. I took a few days off to relax, and so I took it easy today getting back into the swing of things. Chapter 5 is 26 pages (24 not counting the bonus pages), and so far I've translated 8 pages, edited 5. Assuming I can keep my focus for longer tomorrow, I can probably have most of the translation done at least. In short, Chapter 5 is on track for a release next week, assuming no road bumps.

Looking ahead from Chapter 5, there will be two sets of bonus chapters – a 5.1 with some short vignettes (10 pages), and a designated 5.5 which will include the tankoubon extras (~16 pages). Those will probably be roughly a week apart each, possibly sooner depending on scheduling stuff.

In response to the drama on MangaDex regarding the will of Takemiya-sensei, I've taken a few days to think the situation over. My decision is to continue translating the series so long as I get no formal complaints from Takemiya-sensei or an affiliated party. My reasoning behind this is as follows:

• After actually reading the Japanese portion of her Twitter bio, Takemiya-sensei uses “画像” (pictures, portraits, images), not say “漫画” (manga) or “作品” (works). This leads me to believe that she's more specifically talking about the sketches and/or teaser images she posts to Twitter and not necessarily an overarching, outright ban on fan translations.
• Other of Takemiya-sensei's works have already been translated in full and are still available on MangaDex. At bare minimum, this would indicate that there is no active policing of the supposed “no fan translations” rule
• Far more people have reached out to me to express their desire to see the series continue than have people who want me to quit until explicit permission is given
• Personally, I love this series and I want to keep translating it. If I ask for permission and am explicitly told “no,” then I will respect that decision. The translation would then stop and I'd remove everything I've uploaded to MD.
• Asking for permission after I've already done 1-2 chapters seems rather... hollow and pointless? Sort of an “in for a penny, in for a pound” situation.

Are they all good reasons? Probably not, but I tend to hope that giving the series some momentum in a previously ignored market without any compensation for the work put in would at least garner some sympathy?

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Chapter 1 of BokuWata progresses slowly. Ultimately, I feel like I should have been done with it by now, but between not feeling mentally healthy for a few days and all the vocabulary I don't know, I haven't been motivated to work on it. At this point, I am about 50% of the way done, so hopefully it won't take too much longer... I've been doing the editing as I go when I need to take a break from translating, so it's almost entirely dependant on how long I can hold my focus and motivation with translating.

In other news, I have found a new series to start in on once BokuWata gets wrapped up. I'm hesitant to make any official or big announcements about it, but it is a yuri series that is currently 2 volumes behind and hasn't had a new translation posted in 9 months. I'm very much looking forward to it, and I hope you all are as well.

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To be up front with it, I've hit a low point recently. Between not sleeping well for like a week and really feeling the effects of quarantine hard, I haven't had the mental energy needed to work through translation stuff. I've felt guilty about it, which makes me feel bad, which demotivates me, which makes me not work... It's a vicious cycle. If you follow any of my personal social media accounts, you'd know I've been filling the hole in my soul with various yuri manga which, although enjoyable, has been bad. I've read 13 different yuri series in the past 5 days and followed two new mangaka on Twitter... Totally healthy...

But anyway! Update on Chapter 8... I've finished the translation on the actual chapter (save for like 2 panels) and all that's left to do is the afterword and the thanks page. The afterword is, well, wordy and will probably take a full day to knock out. The thanks page won't be too terrible, except for all the kanji for names (kill me). I stand by that after I'm done with chapter 8, I'll be releasing my own chapter 1, however past that is a big unknown now because...

The group that had seemingly abandoned Kagitsuki Terrarium put out a new chapter within the past week or so. I assume this means that they'll be getting back to releasing that? Honestly, it's for the best. I was very excited to start working on that series, but as I had mentioned before, the level of redrawing that the series deserves is not one that I could do myself. I'll still be reading that on my own time, and who knows, if they seem to drop it again, maybe I'll crank out a chapter or two to keep the momentum going.

In any case, I'll be keeping an eye out for more series to pick up from here on out, and when I've made a decision on a new series, I'll announce it here.

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I spent some time yesterday editing the first few pages of chapter 7 to help me relax after some stressful times. This morning I had too much going on to set up a stream, so possibly tomorrow morning I'll set one up to try to finish the last 9 pages or so. There are only 2 sections that I worry will take a lot of time, so honestly I'm pretty confident that I can be done with chapter 7 tomorrow morning, assuming nothing terrible happens.

As for chapter 8, translation progress is slow. Lots of fairly dense text, lots of uncommon topics and specialized words, and a lot more pages to get through. Of the remaining 10 pages, 3 are going to be quick and easy, the rest are going to take a few hours each to look up kanji and piece sentences together. I'm still aiming for one page per day, but I have no idea how much longer I will be able to keep that pace up.

In other general news, I've started actually studying again using Hirasawa-sensei's Kagitsuki Terrarium and Renshuu. I'm having a wonderful time reading through and throwing any vocab I don't know into a study list, and then having the site quiz me on them. It will absolutely come in handy when I decide to pick it up. I think today I read up to page 28 or so of the first volume, so I'm making good progress. I'm excited to see how much faster and easier the translation for the first chapter will go thanks to all the studying I'll have done by the time I've wrapped up with BokuWata and moved onto that.

I'm considering trying to find a redrawer for Kagitsuki Terrarium since that series deserves that level of quality, but I loathe the idea of working on a team with someone else's schedule. I like how I do things now, where I don't have to worry about deadlines and can have fun doing what I do. I do not ever want translating manga to feel like a chore again, so I'm incredibly apprehensive about the idea of having other people rely on me and whatnot.

In any case, I'm very sad to be nearly done with BokuWata, but I'm very excited to start translating Kagitsuki Terrarium (which I nearly call “Kagitsuki Aquarium” about every time I type it for some reason...)

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I mentioned on a tumblr post yesterday that I was going to be waiting to start the editing on chapter 7 and instead starting the translation for chapter 8. Since chapter 8 is back with the random medical jargon, progress has come to a grinding halt. At the end of the first day, I've only accomplished translating 3/14 pages in this chapter. Honestly, that is still very great progress (back in February I could only do 1 page per day), but coming off of the “6 pages a day” string I had last week, 3 seems a little lackluster.

Since I am still very much ahead of schedule for chapter 7, I will be taking at least one more day to work on chapter 8. At this point, I plan to start editing on Monday morning, but that is a very tentative plan. Regardless, once I start editing, the chapter should be released within 3 days. I can't imagine that the editing will take too long since most of the dialog is short text bubbles. If the Monday plan works out, then chapter 7 will be out by Wednesday.

Looking further ahead into the future, I will be releasing my own translation of chapter 1 after I've finished chapter 8. I will probably take my time with that chapter since that will not be new content. I think I've mentioned this before, but when I start a series, I always check which scanlation group(s) did the majority of the series. Since there's usually more than one way to translate and interpret languages, it's usually less confusing to have a consistent interpretation or style of writing (i.e. using honorifics, creative liberties with word choice, and so on ). I'm going to make it a point to give others that option, since that is what I'd choose if I were someone new to the series.

Plus I've noticed a few errors in the currently-available chapter 1, so it'd be nice to clear those up as well.

In any case, I'm starting to talk about nothing, so that will be all for now. We're getting close to the end of BokuWata, and then I'll have to find a new series to entertain myself with (probably Kagitsuki Terrarium, because I love Hirasawa-sensei).

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Series Agnostic

• #general – General posts about whatever, probably not overly important
• #announcement – For important announcements, i.e. starting/dropping projects
• #release – For chapter releases
• #jokes – For all the stupid crap I do

Series Specific

• #BokuWata – Boku ga Watashi ni Naru tame ni
• #ItoshiKoishi – Itoshi Koishi
• #KoeDasenai – A Girl Who Can't Speak Thinks “She is Too Kind”

I've decided to move my future announcements and updates to my own website and away from tumblr. Why? Well, tumblr is a hellsite, mostly. Plus, this way my posts will be accessible through the Fediverse, so everyone can be notified on their preferred social media platform.

It's ad-free, distraction-free, and I have the freedom to do whatever I want with it. Plus, basically nobody pays attention to my notes anyways, so it doesn't really matter.

I will probably still crosspost certain posts to tumblr, but henceforth, this is home.

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