About the Migawari Project... (long)

First off, I'd like to thank sakuratea for letting me know about the submission of the Migawari scanlation project to various online sites. Quite frankly, I didn't expect that to happen, and I've spent the past few days trying to educate myself about online manga scanlations. (I do read a few titles scanlated online, but I've never looked at the nitty-gritty of things.)


First off, let me state that I'm not on the warpath. I'm still not sure how I feel about this development, but I'm not about to bomb the project or anything like that. (I will admit, I'm *not* happy that it's been put on a paid access site. Quite frankly, that makes me sick.) For those who have followed this blog for a long time, to me, this situation is rather different from what had happened with my FB translations. Mainly, FB had been licensed, and despite clearly stating they weren't to be used to make scanlations, people blatantly did so.

However, shortly after posting the scans and translation for Migawari, I suddenly had images of what had happened with FB going through my mind. Definitely, not a pleasant thought. One of the things I've learned about posting translations over the years is that there's always a chance that someone will steal it. (Even when it's pathetic to steal them and not appropriate either... :/ ) While I could have f-locked the post, that's not something I tend to do on this journal. (On occasion, yes, but not often.) So, eventually, I decided that if it bothered me that much, I should scanlate the chapter myself. Since Migawari's not licensed, scanlating it didn't bother me as much as it would have if it were licensed. (I probably wouldn't have scanlated it if it were.)

The other reason I did so, despite originally not planning on it, was because, if I really wanted people to take an interest in the title, I should put it in a form that's as user-friendly as possible. Let's face it, long posts (sic novel translations) aren't always fun to read, and probably aren't the best way to introduce people to something. They require more effort by the reader compared to manga.

When I released the scanlation, I expected folks on my blog, invisible lurkers here, as well as the occasional searcher might take notice, but I didn't expect it to go much further. (Can we tell when I was last into doing scanlations? ^^; ) Umm, yeah. I was a bit out on that expectation. Even before releasing the second half of the first chapter, I'd begun contemplating splitting Migawari off of this blog onto a 'project only' blog. I wasn't sure how much I'd work on Migawari and wanted to distance the scanlation project a bit from this blog, and I wasn't sure how interested folks on this blog would be in some random title I suddenly took an interest in. (If you've read the title page for the scanlations, you'll see that the scanlator is listed as "Ka-no-ko".) Also, I though it would be nice to have a 'clean' blog that was dedicated to the project and only the project.

(BTW, can anyone try to get the scanlator credit fixed for this series? Or at least have it listed as Ka-no-ko from the next chapter onwards?)


So, what about the project?


Well, because I hadn't expected things to get out onto the intarwebs so soon, I thought I'd have more time to set things up at my leisure. Unfortunately, that's not how things ended up. ^^; As it is, a project-specific blog has been set up at migawari as well as on Dreamwidth. Unlike HakuYou v18's translations, which went up to DW and wasn't announced here after the first few posts, I'm thinking about posting notices about releases along with relevant links / redirects / etc. here for the time being. (I haven't decided whether those posts will be public or f-locked, however.) Posts on the project blog(s) will be made to DW and auto-X-posted to LJ (all public). I don't expect any difference in posts between DW and LJ, but thought that if ever anything should necessitate that I f-lock the journal (not planned or wished for), non-LJ users can subscribe to the DW journal using Open ID and gain access that way. (A function not available on LJ.) Otherwise, if you're an LJ user LJ would be the way to go, while if you're a DW user, then DW. ^_^

For those people who are *only* interested in Migawari, and aren't interested in the other stuffs on this blog (and there's a fair amount of other stuffs at the moment), you're probably better off following the project-specific blog rather than this one. If anything, the posts will be more relevant to you. (I'll get things caught up there in the next while.) For those people who are interested in the other things I do as well as Migawari, I'm afraid you're better off over here with all my rambling. (Not to mention, I'll probably post the occasional interest item that's not project related here like the shitajiki translation.) ^^; Of course, if you're like me and often miss posts anyway, friending both (or all) might increase the probability of actually seeing the posts you're interested in. ^^;;


How long will this project continue?


Well, to be honest, my primary focus has always been translation and not scanlating. That said, there's not that much material out there for Migawari *manga*. So far, there are seven chapters with an eighth due out in... October sometime. (I won't receive it until one month after that.) My current plan is to continue scanlating this series to the end of the first novel (sic ch 8) and then re-evaluate. Eventually, I'll probably switch off the manga and concentrate on translating the light novels. (Assuming my interest remains high enough in this title to work on novel translations.) I understand that there's another scanlation group out there interested in doing this project, and they've indicated via email that they intend to go ahead with it. I wish them the best with their project and look forward to their release.

Should they catch up and overtake me during the upcoming months, I may re-evaluate my plans sooner and concentrate more on novel (and other) translations at that point. Unfortunately, that's something that can only be decided when the time comes and can't be stated definitely at this point.

As of the next chapter, I'll be including a 'credit/disclaimer page' with the files. (Is there anything else I should list on that thing??) Hopefully, that's all that I'll need to add with things, but if I'm missing anything else, please feel free to tell me.


In any case, those people who came here that are only interested in Migawari should probably head over to migawari instead. It'll be getting updated with what's been released to date (nothing new) later tonight. ^_^