Two chapters. And now there's one more release till the end of the volume. Oops.

But yeah, you pretty much have to read this one.

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You wouldn't know it from the pace we've been going, but this is still the same volume that started with a certain someone falling from the sky. And it still ain't over.

I've really appreciated all the words of support and offers to help, guys. But I'm confident we can go right to the end. The next update will come in two weeks. I sometimes tweet status updates, so you can check that out in the sidebar or just follow me.

Ten volume stories can take their toll, even ones as consistently rewarding as BOYS. I'm very fondly remembering the days of the ol' horror one-shots ...

Just one chapter for now. And one more release left in volume eight!

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Thanks for hanging in there, guys. Should have more free time over Easter.

1. JManga
2. Wanted: cover artist
3. Security scare

1. JManga is dead. You might remember it as the reason I took down Ochiai’s A FALSIFIED ROMANCE and Ito’s VOICES IN THE DARK from this website. I’ll wait and see what happens to JManga’s licenses before I consider putting them back up.

I wish there were some way of finding out how many copies of either title were sold, how many of those sales came from people familiar with the title through our scanlation, and how many people would have checked it out on JManga but for the fact that they’d already read our scanlation. Alas.

As for continuing with FALSIFIED ROMANCE, it’ll be something to consider after finishing BOYS. But as you can probably tell, keeping up with scanlating has been kind of tough for me lately.

2. I’m still looking for a cover artist to work with on a self published novella. It’ll require minimal illustration and be mostly solid typesetting and design. If you’re interested, email me your portfolio at daniel dot lau dot writes at gmail, and we’ll talk payment and schedule.

3. A few Chrome users were telling me that they were getting reports of malware coming from this site. I contacted my host and that issue seems to be resolved now.

And that means new BOYS ON THE RUN this weekend!

That the otaku will blow a gasket over drawing a towel on one panel of a naked 12 year-old-girl (in Shadow Star) but don’t seem to care about the lumpy, semi-translated dialog done on entire series is inexplicable. The story’s the thing, and what hurts the story in a comic book more than bad dialog? But I’ve come to the conclusion that they like that sort of raw translation. In fact, they aren’t even shy about saying so, as I discovered in my futile discussions with them on the online forums. It was one of the reasons I dropped my work on the DH books I was still doing after the sale–I lost interested in putting so much effort into the translations when it was simply going to be criticized and disliked. I mean…why bother? I spent nearly a week doing the rewrite for the issue of Shadow Star (NaruTaru) where Shiina first goes to the Banda Academy, trying to bring alive this new world of young girls, voicing the new characters, trying to make it all sound fluid and natural and real…and what did I get? Complaints from fans who had read scanslations of that chapter that I’d gone too far from the original. (I especially enjoyed their assumption that the amateur translator of the scanslations had got it “right,” and we, therefore, must be wrong.)

I’m sorry, but letting a lumpy, semi-translated script get published just so the neo-otaku can pretend they read Japanese is NOT satisfactory to me. As I’ve ranted about on seemingly endless occasions, a translation should bring the story alive to the reader in their native language in the same way the original worked for the Japanese readers. THAT is a proper translation, to provide the new reader with a seamless storytelling experience that provokes the same emotions and responses. The best translations should be invisible. But what the neo-otaku want now is a slightly prettified transliteration, hence the popularity of scanslations. Okay, if that’s what they want, fine. “The customer is always right.” So enjoy, folks…but why expect me to get involved? It reminds me of the fans who boggled at the fact I would not jump into the full-blown production of the $10 books. They could not grasp that it’s not “all about the money” for everyone. I don’t want to be Wal-Mart, I never wanted to be. If I can’t produce work that meets my standards, then I’d rather quit. “But you’d sell more books! You’d make more money!” Yeah, but would I enjoy my job punching out McManga? No. So what’s the point?

source

RIP.

BOYS ON THE RUN is back and going right to the end.

So apparently stories are meant to have peaks and valleys so the audience doesn't get bored or exhausted. BOYS doesn't really do valleys.

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Good to have you back, and let us know what you think of the direction Mr. Hanazawa is taking this in. If I remember correctly, there are only 24 chapters left.

Merry Christmas from Robin and myself. This one goes out to anyone who could do with a little more under their tree.

Also just a little warning that this one is really NSFFamily. Best read in a cool, dry place.

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We kind of slaved over this, so we'll be taking a rather long break. BOYS ON THE RUN will be back in mid-January at the earliest!

(I wrote this while I was still in Japan. I’m not sure if I ever believed it, but maybe it’ll amuse somebody.)

I don’t hear much about Cool Japan these days, the effort to market Japan as a cultural superpower. Maybe it failed. But I haven’t heard anyone make the claim that it was doomed from the very start. It was. “Cool Japan”, two words that just don’t go together. The term itself is fundamentally oxymoronic. That sentence should prove that when it comes to uncool, I know what I’m talking about.

Let’s face it, Japan is one of the lamest countries on earth. Shall we count the ways?

1) This is a small, compact country. The land is small, the people are small, and the portions are small. And small is not cool. Cool is excess, doing whatever you want wherever you want in whatever quantities you want. Japan is a country of limits, where you try and make the most out of what little you have.

Here, you do not wave your hands in the air like you just don’t care. You might hit someone.

At best, Japan is cute. It’s no contest, Japan is the cutest country on earth. But cute isn’t cool. Cute begs you to love it with big puppy dog eyes. There’s a power in that which is difficult to resist. But it’s not what cool does. Cool doesn’t give a fuck whether you like it or not, or even whether you exist. That’s what makes it so appealing.

2) Japan is polite. Conservative. Japan works late and fucks the least out of all the developed nations. Japan doesn’t dance, and if possible, would prefer not to be asked. If it’s true that white people can’t dance, at least they are having fun trying. Japan didn’t even think to build a dance floor, and now that you mention it, they would really like one but they already used the space to build an apartment complex that can house three hundred. Lame.

Japan gets along. Cool gets ahead.

3) Apparently the objective of Cool Japan was to conquer the world with videogames, cartoons, toys and comic books. These were never going to conquer the world. These are things you turn to when you want to run away from the world. In what universe are any of these cool? Oh wait, they also had the fashion. Harajuku girls, and all that. Fashion that makes a real fashion statement. If that statement is the  holy shit, those crazy Japanese, which really doesn’t need reinforcing.

Meanwhile, they still don’t have a single star who could open a movie around the world, or a single artist who could sell out Madison Square Garden.

They should’ve pushed their food harder, which everyone knows is awesome. Or hi-tech gadgets, they’re pretty cool. Except Japan came unfashionably late to the smartphone party, because they didn’t really get how the rest of the world were using the technology.

4) Which brings us to the most unavoidable cause of Japan’s lameness – Japan is an island nation. A sheltered child that knows embarrassingly little of the outside world. Often mistaken as a progressive futuropolis, Japan is still a country where, depending on where you’re from, we outsiders can either be worshipped for our foreign wizardry, like being over six feet tall and knowing The English, or else dismissed with casual hillbilly racism. The Japanese language actually has a use for the word “foreigner”, a word I’d never used before in my life, because it really does matter on a practical, day-to-day level who is Japanese and who isn’t.

In fact, “foreigner” is more than just an adjective, it’s a a profession here. You can be a professional non-Japanese person in Japan. And the absolute most damning evidence that Japan is fucking lame is that Japanese people will call anything and anyone “cool” just for not being Japanese.

The youth of Japan are often an exception to this. But while young Japanese aren’t always lame, they are rarely cool either. Jaded is cool, up to a point, but these kids are almost nihilistically self-centered. They’d sooner change the cartridge than change the system. They know it’s a game they can’t beat, so they give up before even trying. But they don’t even give up in style, by rioting and breaking shit or flipping the bird and leaving for good (very few Japanese can stand the rarefied air outside their dome for too long). And that’s why there are millions who are satisfied working unskilled part time gigs for the rest of their lives, and a subclass within that who won’t even leave their rooms.

Sexiness. Swagger. Self-reliance. These things are cool, and Japan has none of these. As hard as it is to say as a non-American, these things are America. America is cool. America does whatever the fuck it wants. Even when America is being evil, you have to grudgingly admit that military is fucking badass. Cool America sells itself, it doesn’t even need to be said. And it sure as hell doesn’t need the dang gubmint to help. Cool Japan, ladies and gentlemen, take it from the Japanese government. Could there be anything lamer than having your mum brag to your friends about how cool you are?

They should’ve gone with Safe Japan, and marketed itself as an expensive but luxury place to retire. Or how about Cute Japan, the mascot of which is a fluffy white kitten with an itchy red spot on its back that it can’t reach and needs you to scratch. Lame Japan probably wouldn’t have worked as a slogan, and might even have failed as hard as Cool Japan, but at least it would’ve been true.

Don’t get me wrong, you can decide for yourself just how worthwhile the term Cool is, and how pejorative the term Lame is. And whether either of them translate at all to “good place to live and raise a family”. You can probably read between the lines and see that I actually love living here …

… but then again I am the lamest person I know.

First date time, get your warm and fuzzies on.

Hanazawa writes such good dates that it's a shame most of his stories are about people who have little to no interaction with others.

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We're starting volume seven! I like chapters where characters ride around on trains.

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And here's the corrected volume six, now with Ryu Ando's name spelt correctly. This actually becomes kind of important, so it'd be nice if Batoto (at least) overwrites the old volume 6 with this one.

Oh dear, this one definitely requires the two storey grovel.

The character RYO ANDO in BOYS ON THE RUN is actually named RYU ANDO. Yes, that Ryu, the one that means dragon.

When used as a name it can usually be read either way, and we’re only told how to pronounce it once, which somehow completely slipped me by.

I almost got away with it, too, I think his given name is only mentioned once more throughout the series. Robin will get around to fixing volume 6 when he has time, and I hope all the manga sites that hosting this will be diligent enough to upload the revised versions (not bloody likely).

So once more so you don’t forget it – RYU ANDO.

Famous Andos:

Miki Ando, figure skater

Famous Ryus:

Ryu, shotokan master