Project-H kickstarter for Vanilla Essence by Yamatogawa

This is taking so fucking lonnnng.

Farther your from LA, the farther the mail man has to go. Specially if you have a 300$ pledge. At least your name is in the artbook. TT___TT I'm not.

lul, didn't realize I was getting my name in the book. I haven't even seen much of the physical beyond whats been posted in here.

Sorry to sound like a broken record, but has anyone here received their orders from the PH kickstarter? I saw their last post about shipping everything out by Thanksgiving (long shot, I know), and it's been a couple weeks since then but nothing. At this point I just hope I'll get my order before the new year.

For what it's worth, I ordered the bundle w/ all Yamatogawa books printed to the new "spec" (i.e. Fakku quality, not the 2nd edition reprints).

I got it last week.
https://www.fakku.net/forums/hentai-manga-doujinshi-discussion/project-h-kickstarter-for-vanilla-essence-by-yamatogawa/page/5#4653522

I am with you haven't received anything indicating it shipped.

I am going to wait till about Jan 5, 2017 before I message asking for an update.

I am sad. I haven't received my book or shipping confirmation or anything, and I saw they were selling copies in person back in July at Anime Expo. The original shipment date via the Kickstarter was July 2016, almost 6 months ago. I won't be backing another Project-H Kickstarter.

RIP.
Still interesting to see tho.

They ran a pretty successful campaign but the staff behind has been shitting itself (not new for kickstarter, just google Kickstarter disasters and you should see some big failures). Hell, the whole debacle about the copyright issues was fucking stupid and any competent management can spot that before it turns out to be a problem.

On the other hand, your campaign had a hard time and only when all books where made available on the first goal did you manage to make it a success, however, this came way too late for it and you missed the second tier by a pretty wide margin. the project had several issues from the start and I'm not the only one saying this, sadly. Promising locked items before they are even unlocked is a really bad mistake, sticking to the first goal is much safer until you can add more.
One issue I'll bring up is also the lack of kickstarter-only items. This is not an obligation but this works to incite people from backing the project instead of waiting for it to come out and buy it on release.
However, aside for not really communicating much on kickstarter, the handling of the project had no fault, it went so good in fact, that you managed to ship the books ahead of schedule, at least for those who don't get a signed copy of the book.

On another project, there's Maliki, a french comic artist, and surely a NoName for many here.
Well he did his own crowdfunding for a book. tiers where simple, three versions of the book, normal, collector, and super collector.
Unlocked items were little shit items: a badge, some post-cards, a furokishi, a cel, etc... And those were included within each tiers as they unlocked, no exception.
Main goal was not money but backer number (a thousand to be exact), so this one doesn't have money count, however i did some math, excluding late time backers who have been given a temporary occasion to get the collector version only.


For the numbers:
Fakku: 499 backers, 60021$
Project-H: 1211 backers, 105 734$
Maliki: 8527+ backers, 272900+€
Ok, hentai is a niche market, I get it, it's very harsh to compare to a french comic, but take into account english projects have much more of a public available, french isn't spoken in as many parts of the world.

In the end, Fakku and project-H are two side of a pretty imperfect coin. The latter had a successful campaign but fails to deliver on its promises, the former ran a rather unsuccessful campaign (not bad ending, but downer ending considering the goal of having Toshio Maeda redraw the manga to remove censor didn't happen) but actually delivered sooner that expected (now, considering Toshio Maeda didn't redraw the manga, one may never know how long it could have taken for the first volume to come, had the second tier been unlocked).

At least Fakku has still possibilities for more successful kickstarter projects, while Project-H, with their mistake and mismanagement, shot itself in the foot.

For next project, I assume that'll be La Blue Girl, you still got those skateboard decks available? That could be some nice stuff to propose for backers of that peculiar project. But let's wait for Urotsukidoji to finish it's run.

Thought I'd post a status update, but after sending them a message via Kickstarter yesterday I (finally) received a shipping confirmation this afternoon. Not sure if that got the gears moving or what, but at least it's finally moving. I've never had problems ordering stuff directly through the PH website, but after this I'm loathe to support anymore of their Kickstarters.

I can only imagine how difficult they are to manage, but it seems like more projects end up as debacles on Kickstarter than anything else.

Will ask here as well. Did anyone here whose backed the pure vanilla tier of higher received their 4 other bookmarks?

Agreed 100%, and we learned a lot from our first Kickstarter. Future FAKKU Kickstarters will be more straightforward.

Vas: a critical care patient can still be ambulatory. Just cause they're walking around don't mean they're healthy.

A bit off topic, but I just recently bought a few of their books including Vanilla Essence on a sale.

Buuuut ever since they updated their website, they are now charging a bit of a ridiculous price on their shipping.

Previously after buying one book shipping cost would only be maybe 3 bucks but now they're charging 5 bucks for 1-2 books?

Since I bought three books the shipping cost came out to 9 bucks so even with the sale I still overpaid just because of shipping prices :(

Honestly, I tried to defend Project-H before but now I just feel like they're really screwing with their customers and the fanbase :(

(Also, I pay sales tax which sucks even more when buying from their website, but nothing I can do about that)

(lol, so after looking at maybe 2 or 3 twitter pics a few people were happy that their copy of vanilla essence came in for backing the kickstarter..... but a lot of the other backers were pretty pissed....)

This is all just (wild) speculation on my part, but I think there may be a bit of turmoil going on over at PH between management and the rank-and-file. Between the (uphill) push for higher quality releases and the whole Vanilla Essence Kickstarter fiasco, it seems like whoever's making the final calls on business decisions doesn't really give a shit. That they started selling the regular editions of Vanilla Essence before any of the backers received their LE copies (even if they took longer to print) was a slap in the face.

Also, I'm not sure about PH titles but Rightstuf's big holiday sale had a bunch of Fakku books on sale for something like $13 - a very sweet deal, sans the digital edition.

Yeah, I bought three fakku books that were on sale on Rightstuf and I saved more money and got more books from there than what I paid for on the PH website it's ridiculous.

I don't know if I'm allowed to post a link but a guy posted on PH twitter and he ordered two books, one physical and one digital. He seemed happy with his purchase but when I looked at it I was pretty shocked that even with their 15% discount the shipping came out to 8 bucks even though he only bought one physical book! Sure he paid sales tax like I did but 8 dollars for shipping one books is ridiculous.

I definitely think you're right in that whoever is making the business decisions really doesn't give a shit about the customers, the fanbase, or even hentai in general. Seems like only the Social media workers working their actually care at all, but whoever is on top really doesn't give a shit about the products their selling.

I've read your comment and wrote them a message myself. One day later they sent me my shipping confirmation and some hours after that came the information on kickstarter that they shipped all rewards which means I was one of the last to get my rewards shipped...
Does any other international backer already received his/her books?

So how did the quality of the limited edition turn out? Was it at least worth the wait?

It's not half bad. Paper is as thick as the fakku ones but it not a shit print. Could be worst. They use to be the same quality as tokyopop and viz. News print and smearing ink.

Hi, I'm new here, and to the ero manga scene in general, and have some questions I'm hoping you fine folks can help me answer. So, I missed out on the KS for the Vanilla Essence LE but I'm interested in maybe buying some of Yamatogawa's works from the projecthentai webstore. However, I'm unsure about the quality of the books offered there versus in the KS. Are Power Play! (2nd Edition), How Good Was I? (2nd Edition), Cute Devil Girlfriend (2nd Edition), Boing Boing (2nd Edition), and Aqua Bless (2nd Edition) the same as what was offered as add-ons in the KS or are they different? I don't want the cheaper paper stock print editions, only the higher quality paper editions like Fakku does.

I also notice Aqua Bless does not say 100% Uncensored for the 2nd edition but only Uncensored there. Does the 2nd edition of Aqua Bless omit or obstruct anything of note or is it actually fully uncensored? I'm a big stickler for uncensored content, as it is largely what kept me from reading more ero manga and doujinshi in the past. A big reason I love what Fakku is doing is them getting the original files before censorship from the content creators and I want to support that practice where possible, especially when the print and digital release is of high quality, too.

Also, I'm assuming the Vanilla Essence copy being offered there is only the standard edition, correct? If so, is there any way to still get the LE from them or is it secondary market only at this point?

Finally, are there any other works in the projecthentai shop that have high quality and fully uncensored releases? If so, which ones and what would you recommend? I'm partial to fantasy and demon/oni/monster girl, so stuff like Power Play and Cute Devil Girlfriend are right up my alley.

Thanks in advance to anyone who can help. This community seems like a friendly, tight-knit, and knowledgeable one. Apologies if this is too off topic or not the best place to post these questions; please direct me where to post them in the future if there is a better place, thank you.