The World God Only Knows

[larethian]

Anyone read the newest chapter yet? On that note, why did a new translation group start on this series when RHS has been doing it since the beginning and doing it well?

they are idiots and RHS has declared war on them.

[ben1234]

It's sad how people can get so worked up over things like other people working on the same stuff as them.

[larethian]

Ben, you understand nothing. It's actually an unwritten code of honor in the scantalation community. What you need to look at is their intention. It's understandable if the original releases are lousy in quality or they are slow or irregular. But that's not the case here. What is MangaFirst trying to accomplish by releasing merely one day earlier than RHS and with a lower quality? What they are doing is to try to gain fame by 'working' on a project done by a famous group. It's a lot of wasted effort, and because of the effort put into scantalating manga, that's why people get upset by things like that, because a lot of effort has gone into releasing a chapter (I cannot reiterate this enough). Thus the code of honor was established to avoid wasting all that effort. The new group could be using their manpower to scantalate another great manga that's not yet scantalated, and there are plenty of unscantalated gems out there. They will be welcome to compete if the original group's releases are lousy in quality or they are slow or irregular.

So, don't comment on why people get worked up until you are doing some work yourself.

[hobogunner]

Woah...Lare....I agree with you, but I doubt this will be resolved until the fans speak up.

And, Ben, to slightly reiterate Lare, it's an unspoken honor system, unless the release of a group is crap, it is an unspoken rule to not take it. Like, if someone went and re-released another translation of something I translated, I'd be outright pissed.

Also, there is about 5 hours of work put into a release. At least. (From my few experiences.)

[larethian]

Woah...Lare....I agree with you, but I doubt this will be resolved until the fans speak up.

And, Ben, to slightly reiterate Lare, it's an unspoken honor system, unless the release of a group is crap, it is an unspoken rule to not take it. Like, if someone went and re-released another translation of something I translated, I'd be outright pissed.

Also, there is about 5 hours of work put into a release. At least. (From my few experiences.)

It's actually more than 5 man hours. Unless you are counting hours where all the activities are taking place in parallel for speed releases. Cleaning and typesetting can be a pain with some series. Even though I'm not a cleaner, when I look at some of the really high quality scantalations by some groups and compare them to the raws, I'm always impressed by the effort they took in cleaning, redrawing and typesetting, the worst kinds (I think) being non-bubbled text overlaying the hard to redraw graphics. It won't be obvious to the general public unless they read the raws too. Scantalation is pretty much an art by itself.

EDIT:
And it's not like I'm really worked up or anything. I just want to sound 'worked up' in order to make an important impression.

[hobogunner]

Yeah, I assume everything's parallel because that's how we decided to do it. When I start translating, I tell the cleaner and he gets to work, then when he's prepped, I send him my translation.....it generally happens within 10 hours. (Could be faster, but I'm lazy.)

I honestly have never really compared base raws with cleaned images......though, I must agree scanning / cleaning is quite insane of an art.....certainly one that I will never get into.

[ainsoph9]

Wow. I really opened up a can of worms...lare, while I agree with what you are saying, I would not be so harsh on ben. He has a legitimate point. When people get that worked up on things like this, one should question whether the work becomes about being a fan and spreading the word about the manga or about one's own pride and sense of self-satisfaction. Personally, as a translator, I prefer people letting me know what they are doing with what I am working on so that I can get a feel of whether they will be doing the novel a service or not. However, if I see that they are doing well, I could not care less. At the same time, it can be hard to separate one's feelings from the manga, novel, etc. So, I wonder if it is worth the time and effort declaring war on a group over the internet over such a thing when it takes away precious resources that made one's own group what it was in the first place. This is me just musing here over things, so I do not have any answers, but I would appreciate to read more on this from you guys.

[larethian]

With regards to the war, I've only read it in one of the release posts, and also read some 'retaliatory' posts on MangaFirst. As to the details on how it is 'carried out', what it entails, and whether it is really been 'carried out', I do not know. So I apologize for bringing that up and let's drop the war talk in case it gets blown up into myth proportions.

With regards to the antagonistic reaction talk, well, I don't like to mention this, but I have a humble business of a modest scale, and I got reminded of the time when it finally worked out for me, and people started saying that I'm lucky and all the winds were in my favor, not knowing the things I had to go through and do to make it work (and how little manga/anime I watched during those few years). *sigh* I'm not trying to be overly harsh, but my point is, one is only qualified to question that when one is in their shoes. It's all about wasted effort, similar to reinventing wheels. Just ask Vaelis how much time he spends in cleaning and typesetting Bakuman, Magico, TWGOK, Beelzebub, and Kagami no Kuni weekly (And I really think that aside from proofing, translation is actually one the most effortless activities in scantalating manga; they are quite different from light novels).

And like I said, the most important thing, above everything, is to question the intention of MangaFirst (or any such groups for that matter): What is it that they are trying to accomplish? The opening post in MangaFirst's TWGOK thread already claimed that they are in a race. How would one interpret that I wonder? And to reiterate my point about the code of honor, it would not have been observed for so long by nearly all the groups if it's not something useful and meaningful other than just pride alone.

I quite frankly doubt that MangaFirst is adding any value to the community at all, when they could have spent their manpower in picking up dropped series, or other unscantalated titles. Again, the point of wasted effort.

[YoakeNoHikari]

Translation is like 1/5 of the effort that goes into manga.

From experience, the translation is the quickest, even if it's extremely well done.

[Doraneko]

On one hand I agree with the rationale behind the unspoken code of honour. On the other hand, as much as I find the situation disappointing, I don't think I am at any position to criticize the new group.

People scanlate for a variety of reasons: for promoting a certain work they love, for practising a foreign language, for e-peen... Regardless, they owe nothing to other scanlators, just like they owe nothing to leechers.

With the act of scanlation being illegal and arbitrary by nature, no one can ever force a certain universal ideal, like promoting manga as a whole, onto all scanlators. Of course it will be great if every group adopts the code of honour voluntarily. But there is nothing to bind them to follow whatever code the community agrees to.

The only parties scanlators owe to are the original artists. What if there is a hypothetical artist who loves to see his work widely read in the English community and wouldn't mind seeing multiple scanlations? What if there is a hypothetical artist who is ready to sue whoever scanlates his works to hell regardless of their intention? (It is useful to note that having altruistic intentions doesn't make an illegal act magically become legal.)

At the end of the day, no one in the fandom is on a moral high ground to point their fingers at the others. No matter how noble or how ugly a certain scanlator's intention is deemed to be by the community, only the original artists have the capacity to make the judgement.

As leechers, our enjoyment is no more than a negligible by-product in the whole chain and it bears little inherent value. I am certainly unhappy like many. But I don't think there is anything more that I can do, except maybe notifying the original artists to send a few C&Ds to all scanlation groups related, or lobbying the local publishers for quicker localizations.

[ainsoph9]

But I don't think there is anything more that I can do, except maybe notifying the original artists to send a few C&Ds to all scanlation groups related, or lobbying the local publishers for quicker localizations.

The former will get many people to hate you, and the latter may buy you friends, but it most likely will not help overall unless your new-found "friends" join the band wagon.

[Doraneko]

The former will get many people to hate you, and the latter may buy you friends, but it most likely will not help overall unless your new-found "friends" join the band wagon.

Well I was only trying to get the point across. Do you honestly believe that I will bother to do those things?

My point remains valid however.

[ainsoph9]

No, I do not.

Getting BOT, what are people's impressions of the latest chapter outside of the whole "war" now?

[b0mb3r]

At the current moment I like God's current character development and how things aren't following his "game" plan. This kind of moment of weakness and expression show how human he is. At the same time it could lower his badassery by making him more human than god.

[Mystes]

Actually, MangaFirst isn't the only one who decides to do a manga taken by another scanlator. There are others.

It's understandable if the original releases are lousy in quality or they are slow or irregular. But that's not the case here. What is MangaFirst trying to accomplish by releasing merely one day earlier than RHS and with a lower quality?

What happened is probably that when someone used that argument, it opened up a whole lot of holes and breaches in the 'Scanlation code/convention/whatever of honor'. Now, there's the argument: "We'll do it faster so we decided to take that project". Same thing, just that the hole got wider.

For example, let's take history. Back in Rome, there was only 2 consuls, and they can't be it two years in a row. However, when onnly ONE decided to extend his mandate,just a bit, others thought "Oh, if he does that, why can't I do it too?" and at the end, the Republic got smacked down. The comparison is perhaps pretty different, but it just means that a code, once breached just a little bit, well...