I'm not a fan of Sisterism at all, and I'm pretty meh about President and Vice-President, but Wife and Wife was awesome as usual. It's nice to see drama turned down to a minimum once in a while :) Thanks a lot for the translation!

Thank you very much for the translation!

I have to admit that my guesses regarding what would happen in the story were pretty off... Not that I'm complaining, mind you :)

Thank you very much for the translations, especially for Wife and Wife! I simply adore that serie. I did kind of prefer the first two chapters to this one, but this one was still really nice. Looking foward to next chapter :)

I got to say that I feel EXACTLY like Miyako regarding Kazama... Argh. Also, guess I was wrong regarding Semimaru feelings! Ah well...

Thanks for the translation!

Finished King Bounty: Crossroad lately (EXTREMELY good game) so I picked up FFXIII again. I had played about 12 hours when it first came out, got awfully bored of it and dropped it there. After seeing the trailer for FFXIII-2, I decided to try it again. It's... quite a bit better than I remembered. It's actually pretty entertaining now, but the fact that I can now do more than spam "attack" or "ruin" helps considerably. It's by no means the best game ever, but it definitively gets much better after the 15th hour or so.

Currently at chapter 11, so not that much further to go probably. That'll be one less game on my "bought but haven't finished yet" pile, with Dragon Age next to finish and then Mass Effect 2 to begin...

last edited at Feb 3, 2011 12:57AM

While I do agree it's important to know the news, I think it's also important to take them with a grain of salt. The key thing is, you have to be able to spot what is propaganda and what is actual news.

As a benign example, if you have a local event (like an artisan fair or some such), it's ALWAYS going to be a huge success. Numbers are going to be way inflated, or twisted into some half-truth. You might have gone yourself and seen that there might have been very few merchants (and even less potential customers), but it'll be qualified of a grand success.

Or things like a local archery tournament, where you have 22 people that got medals for getting position 1-3 in their category... And then if you dig further you see that there's 22 members total and that they invented categories so that it looks like it was an amazing accomplishment on their part (and get funding so that we support the great archery team).

These kind of things are pretty benign, but unfortunately news tend to be extrapolated the exact same way for major events. So I do keep with the news but with an healthy dose of skepticism :)

"Ultimate" is relative. There is a "final" ending, but it might be rage-worthy for some people, and more than a little disturbing when reading between the lines. I saw it mostly as a positive ending personally, but your mileage may vary :)

During the Anti-Paladin event, there's a waterfall you can reach (After you cross the first river, it's pretty much in a south-east direction). You can enter it after you've completed the Anti-Paladin event once.

It actually wasn't completely unhelpful :) Shamefully enough, I didn't actually know about the Windows IME pad. I still use http://www.saiga-jp.com/kanji_dictionary.html
as my main tool, but the pad is pretty handy for the simpler kanji I don't know (Like 5-6 strokes ones without a radical) since it saves some time.

So thank you for the answer! Regarding the two kanji I was trying to figure out, using a magnifying glass did the trick: It enabled me to see a radicals I couldn't identify before and I did manage to find them in the end. Unfortunately it turned out to be pretty mundane words that didn't really 'enhance' or change anything in the phrase, but... At least I'm unstuck in my translation :)

For all the translators out there, how do you manage to recognize kanji that are written in a different font?

I'm a beginner only starting to learn various kanji, but I can normally at least decipher them with the various radicals and number of strokes. It takes me a looong time to translate a page, but at least my reading seems to be correct in the majority of cases (For example, I translate a few pages of "Linkage", then check your translation to see if I was correct).

My problem is when a different font is used, or that it's in "italic". Like it's sometime used for characters whispering or such things. How are you supposed to recognize the kanji when it becomes little more than a tiny scrunched mess? For example, I'm currently reading through Renai Joshika. It's going very slowly but also smoothly (Plus it's pretty funny and entertaining so far), but there's occasional spots like on page 10 with the yet-unnamed girl talking about her Princess Hunter game that has kanji in a weird font with some characters that are pretty much just illegible blotches. I can still recognize the hiragana and some of the "italic" easy kanjis (Like those for Prince), but I have absolutely no ideas how I can identify those two complex ones at the bottom...

So how do you do it?

I think it's more that she's slowly realizing that she might be like Sumika herself. I might be wrong though; I suppose we'll see in time!

I have to give a BIG thumbs up for Wulfhammer too! It's the most hilarious game I've played in my entire life and there's "a few" yuri moments in it. Well worth giving it a spin, although the first 15 minutes or so are kinda "eh".

I was re-reading the "Linkage" collection (I love Uso Kurata's stories) and while reading the "Linkage" story proper, I found myself thinking back of the "El Cazador de la Bruja" anime after a few pages. It was the whole "human-made lifeform" thing I suppose, and the girl reminded me of Ellis. A few pages later, the Ellis-like girl gets named "El". Okay...

A few pages afterward, we learn that the doctor is called "Rozenberg". I'm kind of wondering if Rozenberg is a common name in anime/manga (never seen it anywhere else personally) or if it's indeed an El Cazador reference. No, it's not something important, but I'm kind of curious :)

Kidrahs wrote

Oy! I'm late but thanks anyway!

And I'm even more late, but another big thank you from me! :)

Hoshikawa Ginza District 4 is surprisingly good! After part one, I wasn't expecting much at all: The art was pretty but the story didn't seem to make much sense. Part 2 was definitively good, though! Looking foward to see the next few parts!

It's the dreaded extra chapter #2 we've been teased about so long!

Let's see... reads chapter scratches head

Well, okay, I can't really disagree with you guys after all. I did like Extra #1: The story itself was pretty decent, the art was good and the 'atmosphere' fit with the rest of the books.
Although pretty minor, you also at least had a few cameos from the regular cast for what it's worth.

Extra #2 doesn't have any of that... The art is noticeably worse, there's not a single familiar face in sight, there's magical powers and the atmosphere is pretty much completely different. The only thing that's familiar is the cultural festival, but that's not exactly unique to that one school... Is it possible that this is one of the author's older stories created before Sasameki Koto that has simply been tacked on at the end to boost the page count?

Anyway, thanks for translating it for completion sake :)

last edited at Oct 28, 2010 11:44PM

I just finished reading Alice Quartet, and I have to say that I'm a tiny bit torn.

On one hand, there doesn't seem to be any point in reading the "story". There's pretty much nothing happening. There's absolutely no action, little romance and not that much comedy either. It's obviously not educational, and character development is pretty minimal overall. It's probably the only serie I've read where everything goes incredibly well for everyone, and the worst issues that pop up during the entire serie are extremely minor.

On the other hand... I'm not sure why, but every chapter left me with a smile. It's calming and pleasing, somehow. I enjoyed reading the serie, and I felt contended and happy after reading it.

Pretty much all of my favorite manga stories (like "Present" from Uso Kurata, or Hanjuku Joshi, or Mononoke Gakuen for examples) have a point such as touching situations, great character development or good comedy. I also like "Chatting at the Amber Teahouse" which gives out some of the same feeling as Alice Quartet, but that one actually has some storyline progression. It's stupidly slow, yes, but there's some character growth, the beginning of a romance, and important decisions in the characters life. It doesn't feel as "pointless" as Alice Quartet.

The only other really enjoyable 'pointless' serie I've read is the "Yokohama" serie. It's an absolutely amazing, smile-inducing read even though there's very rarely something happening in it.

So while Alice Quartet isn't exactly as amazing as Yokohama, and that I have no idea why I find it enjoyable... Thank you for having translated this enjoyable story :)

Volume 6 spoilers (ie. Not the new one):

Ushio: "I love Sumi-chan and I'm sooo sad! Why am I hurting Sumi-chan so much? I am such an horrible friend!"
Tomoe: "Actually, Sumika loves you too."
Ushio: "She loves me??? Okay! I've decided! I'm going to forget all my angst about hurting her and instead I'm going to tease her along for my own amusement even though it hurts her! I'm so nice and friendly!"

last edited at Oct 27, 2010 11:11PM

Talking about Iono chapter 10, there's a tiny issue on the Reader. Chapter 10 is listed after chapter 11 and 12. If someone is reading through it, they'll suddenly find themselves jumping from chapter 9 to chapter 11, to 12, to 10. It doesn't seem to be a naming error on the reader: the chapter marked as chapter 10 really is chapter 10. It just happens to be placed in the wrong order.

Not that I really want spoilers, but... I hope that the newest volume doesn't leave me feeling like strangling Ushio again!