Tuesday, 10. November 2009, 22:29:33
sahara mizu
Storm in Heaven has returned! And now I get my favourite manga, My Girl. SiH seems to going a good pace, now that god-for-saken joint is over. Props to them for continuing the series. I have 1 complain though. WHY THE HECK WOULD YOU CONVERT AND TRANSLATE JAPANESE CURRENCY IN THE AMERICAN VALUE?! The Japanese currency is known internationally, along with the UK, Canada, and EU! People know or should know what their value is compared to the Japanese currency! It's sadenning I have to read a Japanese scanlation (one that will not get licensed in North America) with American currency.
Monday, 10. August 2009, 20:43:45
sahara mizu, female, manga, my girl
Hey, everyone. It's been long, but I'm finally back to my Opera.com blog. My wordpress blog will still be used, but only for manga reviews as usual.
So, for this post I have a little rant and request. As you may or may not know from my wordpress blog, and other sources, I'm a BIG romance novel/comic fan. Specifically, Japanese manga. I adore stories with one male and one female, either from childhood or complete strangers who go through a dramatic twisted or complicated cycle of life to admit to themselves they love each other. The only aspect of that I dislike greatly is when "tragedy," "smut," or similar comes into the scene. But other than that, I adore all kinds. Pretty much. A particular genre of romance novels I like is the "drama" genre, which leads me to a manga I came across about several months (perhaps a year now) ago. This goes by the name of "My Girl" by Sahara Mizu.
Some background on the author: Sahara Mizu is a pen name of a female author named Yumeka Sumomo (also a pseudonym) for her predominantly Seinen stories. She also goes by two other pen names for two other genres. Sahara Keita for her Shoujo stories and Chikyuya/Sasshi for her Doujinshi work. She also uses the Yumeka Sumomo pen for Shouen Ai stories. Aside from being an author, she is a lovely artist. She is known to have contributed as the artist for the Voices of a Distant Star manga working with the famous anime director Makoto Shinkai. All in all, she may not be known greatly but has the privilege to work with other great people.
That said, I should state that her stories, manly My Girl is one of the best manga I have personally come across. Aside from Naruto (where he meets his father), My Girl was able to make me cry. The story is THAT good, that it can make a grown 20+ year old man cry. Then again, I am a fool to cry over simple matters.
So what is My Girl about? It's about a 23 year old "toy-inventor-maker" Kazama Masamune that finds out he has a child. Here's more from MangaUpdates.During the season of cherry blossoms, his beloved passes away. He happens to meet a little girl outside work and realizes she is his daughter who was raised in secrecy by his lover. The worst spring of his life is transformed into a painful yet vivid spring.
My rant comes into place is to the fact, due to a recent announcement the story has gained much more popularity in Japan. But unfortunately, the manga comes short if we were to talk about the manga scanlation. Out of the three volumes it currently has, only 1 has been done in English. It's true, only 1 volume gets released a year, but overall, the manga and story too is getting a lot of attention as of late in Japan.
So, coming to the end of my post, I have a little request. I'm urging if some people can get together and work on this lovely manga. I would love to read further, but I can't read a single word of Japanese (only understand via audio), so I'm at a ditch. Furthermore, I do know of some Japanese translators, but can't find a single raw chapter online, so I'm in a much bigger hole than a ditch. Not to mention, my Japanese friend isn't into this manga (he is in his teens).
In short, if you know Japanese, or know people that do as well as English, live in Japan or can get access to the Sahara Mizu My Girl raws, please, please, get a group of people together and scanlate it. If you love children, have a wife or planning to get married soon, I'm sure you'll love this dearly as I do. If a group of people or one man does come about, I may even contribute to the purchase of the manga if needed. 10 (300 yen, I believe) bucks per volume is cheap.
Sunday, 5. April 2009, 00:54:32
politics, japanese, anime
I've been pondering this for a while now, or rather since I was a kid. I've seen amazing games by Sony, Sega, Konami, and other developers made but they have never seen the light of mankind on the other side of the earth, meaning they have never been heard of or seen to people living in North America or Europe. This left me curious, why don't these Japanese games ever be made into English for non-Japanese fans?
Aside from the obscene (eroge), even general Final Fantasy or Grand Theft Auto like games don't make it. This brings me to another point as I've noticed in various Japanese cultural media, English is like an enemy to the general Japanese public. For instance, in manga aside from kanji, English is feared, people really don't want to learn it. One particular scene was from Angel Densetsu where for the lack of a word "advertisers" were going to people's homes promoting the learning of English, and the opposition, those whom the "advertisers" where talking to, really didn't want them to sell their products, aka buy the products to learn the language or take interest in the course.
This brings me to another point, unless you grow up in a foreign country, English is never really an interest for Native speakers. I mean, technically, English is useless to learn for Japanese people if they want to work in Japan alone. I can understand that, but still I believe there is more towards this problem, perhaps I don't understand the deep negative meaning towards their "hate" in English, but the lack of English brings a whole bunch of problems for us (people in foreign countries).
We all know games which are developed in Japan have to be translated to English, so there is big demand for translators, but of course, that itself isn't an easy job. Sure, you might get the official script and can use it, but you would need to actually sit next to and play the game while translating, so it's a really tough stance for these fellows. I guess, perhaps that's one of main reasons why RPG games which look better than Final Fantasy, perhaps not visually but story-wise are not seen in other parts of the world, the long complex story (aside from the Pokemon series) is way too much for any translator to keep up with. Similarly, perhaps that's the reason all Yakuza games are not seen in North America or Europe, Yakuza-like games tend to have a long dramatic insert animation which explain the story (which to be honest are more visually stunning than those of GTA), these tend to be almost like a real drama show and maybe just doesn't interest the translators - drama subbing of Japanese media is quite rare. Very little gets done, and usually anything related to manga are worked on (easier to reference something without knowing context than paying attention to every single episode).
I think I'll end it here for now... This is all I can think of today and I may go further later. It's ironic how I answer my own questions through a blog. Feel free to leave any of your thoughts.
Sunday, 7. December 2008, 14:49:13
gundam, japanese, anime
Fear. Fear sure is one scary thing in life that comes in many forms. And to think it would come to such an extent in anime is quite frightening, Here I have given a very brief emotional reactions I had towards the latest Mobile Suit Gundam 00 Season 2 (which is episode 10).Read more...
Wednesday, 26. November 2008, 21:08:28
fansubbing, japanese, eclipse, anime
In continuation from where I left off part one, as I mentioned last time to keep a specific quote in mind as I will explain further the happenings of recent doings by fansubbers. And in case you don't remember the quote, here it is once again, "we are not professional translators, and we are not making our translations available specifically for the american market." Now where to start? Well...Read more...
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