Slideshow

I've got an exam coming up, and a lot of work to do in general, so I'm not going to get much done on the manga front this week. Since this is a blog (supposedly) I'm just going to throw up some pictures from who knows how long ago.

This dates back to July. This stuff was good, but I can't afford to drink like this anymore now that I'm back in school. What I wrote down in July was: "It doesn't seem to have much of a nose (my nose is kinda clogged though) but once it hits the mouth, it explodes. Lots of flavors I can't really make out, with a spicy finish that goes gradually oaky." I went to the store this weekend and saw this on the shelf, alongside some new (and even pricier) offerings from High West Distillery. Feels bad man.

Oh, this is from August. It's Akitabare "Koshiki Junzukuri" sake. I have only a vague remembrance of what this tasted like. Was it a "young" sake? Can't remember.

Bought CPM's first volume of Otogi Matsuri on close-out from RightStuf. Saying that they screwed up the tones is an understatement. I laughed and I cried.

Master Grade Zeta Gundam that I'm never going to finish.

Tried natto; it's not bad. Don't know what all the fuss is about.

Lately "local" and "artisanal" spirits have been in vogue. Death's Door Gin is one of them, I suppose, made from Wisconsin wheat. It's a rather sweet gin. Kind of buttery too, whatever that means. Originally I wanted to try these guys's whiskey, which is a "white" whiskey that's not aged on wood. Still haven't gotten my hands on a bottle; totally slipped my mind when I went to the store this weekend. Did notice that they've changed the bottle for the gin, though.

This arrived last week from bk1. So far I'm 3 for 3 for sea shipping. Let's see, I ordered on January 8th. Some stuff got backordered and it didn't ship until the 27th. Arrived March 15th which is about par for the course. Sea shipping isn't all that much cheaper than SAL, though, when you consider that it takes over twice as long.

Maybe I'll talk about the stuff in this pile some other time.

Kabu no Isaki chapter 7

Nothing much to report. The project is moving along. Thanks to Soyokaze for doing the scans.

I've made the decision to stop doing the sound effects in this series, for several reasons. First is, I'm lazy. Second is, they're mostly plane sounds and you know what planes sound like. (Not to mention it's quite easy to find out what these particular planes really sound like.) I do have mixed feelings about leaving them out. I don't want to sound too weeaboo about this, but part of what makes the Japanese language rather suited to manga is its usage of onomatopoeia and related things. So I prefer to transliterate sound effects rather than substituting English equivalents. But at the same time, transliterations can be strange and distracting to readers of English. In this chapter, the Blacknoses go "ohhhh", which I interpret as some sort of hum. And in a later chapter, the Cub goes "bonyoyoyo", which I think you'll agree is pretty weird. To sum up, leaving them out altogether is a way of sidestepping the issues.

Of course, in scanlation nobody handles sfx the same way. It ranges from the hands off treatment (i.e. "learn the kana"), to putting a translation in the border/corner, to full-blown redrawing. Every approach has a drawback, I feel. We don't live in a perfect world, after all.