Kenjugs Posts
Hey guys,
Genericremix here - some of you might recognize my username from some interviews I did with community contributors to anime/manga/ero scanlation a while ago. Well, now I'm coming back with a brand-new, very interesting interview I did with none other than the former founder of Phoenix Syndicate himself, Tech! In this interview, Tech exposes a lot of neat behind-the-scenes tidbits with regards to scanlation, ruminates on what it takes to be a more productive scanlation team, and much more.
You can find the interview here: http://4playeranimecast.moe/interview-with-tech-phoenix-syndicate-shikimaya/
We are also having a FAKKU codes giveaway courtesy of Tech/SHIKIMAYA! Get free codes for titles like Bestiary 3, Working Fire Valk, and more! Find out about the giveaway in the interview link above.
Please let me know if you have any comments or questions.
Genericremix here - some of you might recognize my username from some interviews I did with community contributors to anime/manga/ero scanlation a while ago. Well, now I'm coming back with a brand-new, very interesting interview I did with none other than the former founder of Phoenix Syndicate himself, Tech! In this interview, Tech exposes a lot of neat behind-the-scenes tidbits with regards to scanlation, ruminates on what it takes to be a more productive scanlation team, and much more.
You can find the interview here: http://4playeranimecast.moe/interview-with-tech-phoenix-syndicate-shikimaya/
We are also having a FAKKU codes giveaway courtesy of Tech/SHIKIMAYA! Get free codes for titles like Bestiary 3, Working Fire Valk, and more! Find out about the giveaway in the interview link above.
Please let me know if you have any comments or questions.
Hey guys - some of you may know me from the interviews of community scanlators I posted here. Well this time, a slightly different interview is coming up. Following up after a series of exciting announcements here on FAKKU, here's a slightly more in-depth look into things. Enjoy!
Again, the interview is available in its entirety here. This and previous interviews (some not hentai-related!) are also available on 4playeranimecast.moe.
Just a couple of weeks ago, FAKKU – one of the more well-known hentai online aggregation and digital/physical merchandise sites – decided to create a subscription program based on English h-magazine translations that would be released at the same time as the Japanese version.
Although the market itself may be currently small, this marks a very significant step towards bridging the demands of the overseas fan community and the resources of the Japanese publishers. As such, I immediately requested an interview with the man at the center of the storm, Jacob Grady. He graciously accepted despite his extremely busy schedule at a time of expansion, and a huge shout-out goes to him for sparing some of his time to answer these questions.
In this interview, I focus mainly on the business model FAKKU is aiming for as well as the digital transition of Japanese publishers and the future of aggregation. But enough of my chatter – here it is!
Is this the “end of the line” for FAKKU? That is, do you see FAKKU using essentially the same business model 5 years from now – digital simultaneous release of translations with physical merchandise (including h-magazine volumes) as novelty goods on the side?
This is only the beginning. We will be expanding the content we provide through the subscription while simultaneously publishing more and more books. I expect us to eventually branch out into games and anime sometime in the future. FAKKU has always been about more than just hentai.
Speaking in a bigger context, is this a viable (if not optimal given the resources) end-game model for the Japanese manga industry? A couple of the big-name publisher-distributors in Japan (Shueisha, Kodansha, etc.) have started to create mobile apps and projects based on free or “freemium” access to their manga. Do they regard this as an inevitability? How does it reconcile with their very public hatred of potential digital piracy? Will the increased number of eyeballs on them be worth it?
I think companies that embrace the current situation of the industry outside of Japan will succeed. Customers want to be able to read manga and watch anime at the same time people in Japan do, whichever model achieves that first (freemium, subscription, etc) will win. I don’t necessarily think a service needs to be freemium to succeed – the reason we read scanlations is not because we don’t want to pay, it’s because there is no way to read it legally and without a delay.
With regards to the hesitance of Japanese publishers to put stuff abroad and at a cost more comprehensible to Western readers, there have been (understandably) complaints directed towards everything under the Sun – niche market with a lack of good data or even profitable audience for small-scale ventures since the mid-2000s (e.g.: Oricon only included manga sales since 2008), restrictive international publishing issues and/or outsourcing problems (which would be exacerbated for hentai), digital piracy, a perceived conservative Japanese publishing culture, and more. What were the top two biggest problems you faced in convincing publishers to agree to this project?
The biggest problem we faced was convincing publishers and artists that there was a market outside of Japan. We had to show them that there were people who wanted to support what they were doing. Once we were able to do that, the rest was easy. In the United States we have had to convince people that the content was worth paying for, and we’ve tackled that by making incredibly high quality books and digital releases. The quality of our releases in some cases is even better than what is available in Japan.
In the past couple of years, there have been much more severe crackdowns on community sites and aggregation sites. Was this a major driving factor behind FAKKU’s decision to become “semi-legitimate”? Or did you have a much more proactive stance before a lot of these incidents started to happen?
Yes – that was one of the driving factors that led us to where we are today. I always wanted to work with companies in Japan to make their content available in English but never had the means to reach out to them. What kicked everything off was receiving a takedown notice (and accompanying legal threat) from the largest hentai publisher in Japan. That opened the door to working together. Before that we had been working with many different publishers outside of Japan, but hadn’t had the opportunity to do something on our own.
Like it or not, FAKKU is now competing for a part of the audience that wants to read Comic X-Eros’/Comic Kairakuten’s manga alongside fan translators who may offer it for free with an unknown time tradeoff. However, you are staying as a general aggregation site while offering premium “simul-release” services to just those artists/publishers you have a deal with. What is your current personal view on digital piracy of these manga and the fan translation community? Does it differ from FAKKU’s general objectives? Does FAKKU plan on aggressively extending to as many places as possible to eventually create a unified, premium-only service, or will subscriptions stay as a time-saving alternative product to fan translation + free aggregate sites?
Before the end of 2015, we will be removing all scanlations from FAKKU. After that, the website will be entirely based off of licensed content. Until then, we are focused on our current offerings, which are Comic Kairakuten and Comic X-Eros. We will absolutely expand from there to pick up more magazines and increase the value of having a FAKKU subscription. I no longer consider us as a competitor to other scanlation websites, especially since we plan to remove all unlicensed content from FAKKU by the end of the year.
What percent of FAKKU’s employees have remote jobs? If there are a significant number of remote jobs, how do you deal with decentralization in such a recent and volatile field?
We’re about 50/50 with remote/local employees and in total I think we have 15 full-time employees. Doing something like this would not have been possible 5-10 years ago, but today it is incredibly easy to work back and forth with our partners in Japan and our team members around the world. So we haven’t ran into any problems there.
With regards to the effect of more effectively globalizing sales for Japanese artists that have a contract with you (and potentially other similar companies), do you believe that this will have an overall healthier effect on the industry? The people you have premium-only access to, understandably, are artists who will make a profit (even if at the start people might buy whatever’s on the site) off of the sales. What is your opinion on potentially increasing this inequality in a niche area that is already extremely top-heavy?
What we are doing has already had a hugely positive impact on the industry in and outside of Japan. You are already seeing other publishers attempt to match the quality of our releases and offer the things we do (high quality DRM free downloads, uncensored art, etc etc). Inside Japan, the artists get to see what is popular and what people are supporting in English, which influences what they choose to work on. And we are able to bring artists over from Japan to meet their fans here.
One of the important parts of the magazines we are simul-publishing is that we are not favoring any artists over any others. We have decided to translate the entire magazine and offer it as a package, so all the artists inside (popular artists, newcomers, etc) get equal visibility.
Although these international projects and subscriptions may increase the ratio of people who will pay for the product, it may not have a significant effect on the actual numbers of the audience, which are still small. Does FAKKU and the companies it has contracts with plan on doing anything beyond word-of-mouth and reaching out to other niche communities (such as speedrunning), or are you guys more or less set on waiting for a cultural/generational shift?
We are focused on convincing users who are already fans of hentai that we have created a service worth paying for. And we can do that by showing them how involved the artists are and by offering something that they can’t get anywhere else. Once we’ve convinced them we’ll start thinking about new customers.
Do you think that centralization/aggregation is healthy for the fan community/readers at large? Should organizations that exist now (e.g.: ANN, private torrenting sites, popular content creators) work towards centralization?
I actually do think it’s healthy for the community. Scanlation and fansubbing rose to popularity because the demand was not being met outside of Japan. Really people just want to read and watch things right away because they are fans, the majority of people aren’t reading scanlations to hurt the companies in Japan. Once a service is created that gives customers what they want they will absolutely support it (Crunchyroll and FAKKU are a good example).
What is your ideal scenario for FAKKU one year down the road in terms of becoming an agency?
Ideally we’ll continue as we have been, slowly growing and releasing more and more content. I could not be happy with where we are at right now.
Thanks for the interview! Any shoutouts, callouts, plugs, etc.?
Buy some books! https://www.fakku.net/books
Follow us on:
http://www.facebook.com/4playeranimecast
http://www.twitter.com/4ppanimecast
http://twitch.tv/4playeranimecast
Again, the interview is available in its entirety here. This and previous interviews (some not hentai-related!) are also available on 4playeranimecast.moe.
Just a couple of weeks ago, FAKKU – one of the more well-known hentai online aggregation and digital/physical merchandise sites – decided to create a subscription program based on English h-magazine translations that would be released at the same time as the Japanese version.
Although the market itself may be currently small, this marks a very significant step towards bridging the demands of the overseas fan community and the resources of the Japanese publishers. As such, I immediately requested an interview with the man at the center of the storm, Jacob Grady. He graciously accepted despite his extremely busy schedule at a time of expansion, and a huge shout-out goes to him for sparing some of his time to answer these questions.
In this interview, I focus mainly on the business model FAKKU is aiming for as well as the digital transition of Japanese publishers and the future of aggregation. But enough of my chatter – here it is!
—–
Is this the “end of the line” for FAKKU? That is, do you see FAKKU using essentially the same business model 5 years from now – digital simultaneous release of translations with physical merchandise (including h-magazine volumes) as novelty goods on the side?
This is only the beginning. We will be expanding the content we provide through the subscription while simultaneously publishing more and more books. I expect us to eventually branch out into games and anime sometime in the future. FAKKU has always been about more than just hentai.
Speaking in a bigger context, is this a viable (if not optimal given the resources) end-game model for the Japanese manga industry? A couple of the big-name publisher-distributors in Japan (Shueisha, Kodansha, etc.) have started to create mobile apps and projects based on free or “freemium” access to their manga. Do they regard this as an inevitability? How does it reconcile with their very public hatred of potential digital piracy? Will the increased number of eyeballs on them be worth it?
I think companies that embrace the current situation of the industry outside of Japan will succeed. Customers want to be able to read manga and watch anime at the same time people in Japan do, whichever model achieves that first (freemium, subscription, etc) will win. I don’t necessarily think a service needs to be freemium to succeed – the reason we read scanlations is not because we don’t want to pay, it’s because there is no way to read it legally and without a delay.
With regards to the hesitance of Japanese publishers to put stuff abroad and at a cost more comprehensible to Western readers, there have been (understandably) complaints directed towards everything under the Sun – niche market with a lack of good data or even profitable audience for small-scale ventures since the mid-2000s (e.g.: Oricon only included manga sales since 2008), restrictive international publishing issues and/or outsourcing problems (which would be exacerbated for hentai), digital piracy, a perceived conservative Japanese publishing culture, and more. What were the top two biggest problems you faced in convincing publishers to agree to this project?
The biggest problem we faced was convincing publishers and artists that there was a market outside of Japan. We had to show them that there were people who wanted to support what they were doing. Once we were able to do that, the rest was easy. In the United States we have had to convince people that the content was worth paying for, and we’ve tackled that by making incredibly high quality books and digital releases. The quality of our releases in some cases is even better than what is available in Japan.
In the past couple of years, there have been much more severe crackdowns on community sites and aggregation sites. Was this a major driving factor behind FAKKU’s decision to become “semi-legitimate”? Or did you have a much more proactive stance before a lot of these incidents started to happen?
Yes – that was one of the driving factors that led us to where we are today. I always wanted to work with companies in Japan to make their content available in English but never had the means to reach out to them. What kicked everything off was receiving a takedown notice (and accompanying legal threat) from the largest hentai publisher in Japan. That opened the door to working together. Before that we had been working with many different publishers outside of Japan, but hadn’t had the opportunity to do something on our own.
Like it or not, FAKKU is now competing for a part of the audience that wants to read Comic X-Eros’/Comic Kairakuten’s manga alongside fan translators who may offer it for free with an unknown time tradeoff. However, you are staying as a general aggregation site while offering premium “simul-release” services to just those artists/publishers you have a deal with. What is your current personal view on digital piracy of these manga and the fan translation community? Does it differ from FAKKU’s general objectives? Does FAKKU plan on aggressively extending to as many places as possible to eventually create a unified, premium-only service, or will subscriptions stay as a time-saving alternative product to fan translation + free aggregate sites?
Before the end of 2015, we will be removing all scanlations from FAKKU. After that, the website will be entirely based off of licensed content. Until then, we are focused on our current offerings, which are Comic Kairakuten and Comic X-Eros. We will absolutely expand from there to pick up more magazines and increase the value of having a FAKKU subscription. I no longer consider us as a competitor to other scanlation websites, especially since we plan to remove all unlicensed content from FAKKU by the end of the year.
What percent of FAKKU’s employees have remote jobs? If there are a significant number of remote jobs, how do you deal with decentralization in such a recent and volatile field?
We’re about 50/50 with remote/local employees and in total I think we have 15 full-time employees. Doing something like this would not have been possible 5-10 years ago, but today it is incredibly easy to work back and forth with our partners in Japan and our team members around the world. So we haven’t ran into any problems there.
With regards to the effect of more effectively globalizing sales for Japanese artists that have a contract with you (and potentially other similar companies), do you believe that this will have an overall healthier effect on the industry? The people you have premium-only access to, understandably, are artists who will make a profit (even if at the start people might buy whatever’s on the site) off of the sales. What is your opinion on potentially increasing this inequality in a niche area that is already extremely top-heavy?
What we are doing has already had a hugely positive impact on the industry in and outside of Japan. You are already seeing other publishers attempt to match the quality of our releases and offer the things we do (high quality DRM free downloads, uncensored art, etc etc). Inside Japan, the artists get to see what is popular and what people are supporting in English, which influences what they choose to work on. And we are able to bring artists over from Japan to meet their fans here.
One of the important parts of the magazines we are simul-publishing is that we are not favoring any artists over any others. We have decided to translate the entire magazine and offer it as a package, so all the artists inside (popular artists, newcomers, etc) get equal visibility.
Although these international projects and subscriptions may increase the ratio of people who will pay for the product, it may not have a significant effect on the actual numbers of the audience, which are still small. Does FAKKU and the companies it has contracts with plan on doing anything beyond word-of-mouth and reaching out to other niche communities (such as speedrunning), or are you guys more or less set on waiting for a cultural/generational shift?
We are focused on convincing users who are already fans of hentai that we have created a service worth paying for. And we can do that by showing them how involved the artists are and by offering something that they can’t get anywhere else. Once we’ve convinced them we’ll start thinking about new customers.
Do you think that centralization/aggregation is healthy for the fan community/readers at large? Should organizations that exist now (e.g.: ANN, private torrenting sites, popular content creators) work towards centralization?
I actually do think it’s healthy for the community. Scanlation and fansubbing rose to popularity because the demand was not being met outside of Japan. Really people just want to read and watch things right away because they are fans, the majority of people aren’t reading scanlations to hurt the companies in Japan. Once a service is created that gives customers what they want they will absolutely support it (Crunchyroll and FAKKU are a good example).
What is your ideal scenario for FAKKU one year down the road in terms of becoming an agency?
Ideally we’ll continue as we have been, slowly growing and releasing more and more content. I could not be happy with where we are at right now.
Thanks for the interview! Any shoutouts, callouts, plugs, etc.?
Buy some books! https://www.fakku.net/books
-----
Follow us on:
http://www.facebook.com/4playeranimecast
http://www.twitter.com/4ppanimecast
http://twitch.tv/4playeranimecast
Hey guys, thank you so, so much for your positive inputs on the previous interview. I've been wanting to release this interview for a while but something something excuses. The pace of these releases will pick up from now on, so look forward to some great new content from the minds of the people who bring you these translations!
Again, the interview is available in its entirety here. This and previous interviews (some not hentai-related!) are also available on 4playeranimecast.com. Enjoy!
For this interview, I had a great, lengthy discussion with a translator that’s been churning out work after work for the community at large for over a decade. Although based strictly around a commission model of translation unlike many other translation groups today, SaHa has maintained a prolific volume of quality works in English for readers to enjoy over on its blog. Sayo – the founder of the group – was gracious enough to tell us more about the experiences through the years.
What got SaHa started? What is the daily life of a commission-based translator like? What does he think of the online fan community now and the rise of aggregate manga-reading sites? For the answers to these questions and more, read on!
SaHa’s most recent series involve Seishokuki (Inamitsu Shinji), The Great Escape (Ozaki Miray), and My Family Passion (Yasuhara Tsukasa).
OK, so first question - just tell me a bit about yourself, what you do, how you got here, and any hobbies that you have.
Hello, I am Sayo of SaHa, the manga/doujin translation group. I started off doing translation in my final year of university after some of my more advanced Japanese courses got cancelled due to a lack of students. I decided to take a stab at translating some very basic doujins at the time (which I believe were all of the Negima doujins by Gust). This allowed me to slowly build up my kanji vocabulary. When I started out, it probably took me like 10 hours to get through 1 doujin - it was pretty rough at first.
Eventually, a guy called "Numbus" caught wind of me and offered to start paying me for translations, so I started doing work for him. Later on, I saw that that was going nowhere, so I struck out on my own and opened the blog - which is where I still am to this day.
Those radical searches, eh? What do you rely on now for translating?
When I started out, radical searches were definitely what I had to rely on. And obviously, a dictionary. Eventually, I got my hands on an OCR which sped things up a bit. Nowadays, I've built up enough of a vocabulary that I don't need to rely on OCRs or anything like that quite as much - maybe for scientific words that I've never encountered before like diseases and junk like that.
Ah, ok. Back on topic, what exactly did you mean by “going nowhere” with Numbus earlier on?
Oh, with Numbus? Basically, it got to a point where he was sitting on something like 100 unreleased doujins, and he'd hold them back out of spite for the fanbase.
Also, we were in talks to potentially get a legit business going with the Japanese artists to start releasing paid manga in English. But I later found out that his intention was to essentially let me do all the legwork and he'd just sit back, take the translations, and make the money off them.
That is extremely...unfortunate.
It’s also worth mentioning that Numbus was paying next to nothing for the translations, so it got to a point where either working for him or working via commission for others was not even an option worth weighing.
Basically, Numbus would take anything I sent him, but it would always be a flat fee regardless of page count. He even wanted to pay that same flat fee for 200 page books, which was just lol. So I just stopped giving him large books. I did the average doujin stuff, which was maybe 20 pages each.
A natural consequence.
Ya. I don't really like going on the attack or anything, but Numbus was not a swell guy.
Eventually, I decided to contact one of the few people actually releasing legit manga, which was Simon from Icarus comics. After some back and forth discussions, I started working for him. So I did a couple dozen books for Icarus, until Simon fell ill and dropped off the face of the planet.
:( An unfortunate part of working like this over the internet, and in a field like this too.
Ya. After that, I just kept going with my commission work on SaHa. And most recently, I was contacted by Jacob to work with Fakku, and that's essentially where I'm at now.
Was the business idea that you worked on with Numbus sort of like what Fakku is doing now?
Pretty much exactly what Fakku is doing now, yes.
When did your communications with Numbus begin?
When did my communications with Numbus begin? That would have been 2004. He caught onto me pretty quick if I recall correctly. I was maybe two months into doing translations when he contacted me through HongFire, which was where I would release my translations at the time.
About the recent development, do you mind sharing more details on your current contract with Fakku, or is it something still in the works?
It's barely begun, but it's in motion. I don't think I'm allowed to go into any specifics about what it involves, though. Suffice it to say, it's translation work.
Then just one last question about this before we move on - is it on a greater or smaller scale than what you have going currently for commissions? For comparison, would the amount of Fakku-related work be greater than what you're doing currently for commissions?
Hmm... lol. I'm afraid that answering that may reveal too much. It's essentially a full-time job. I will still be doing commissions when I have the time, though. The thing is, it's not just me working on it, so I've gotta juggle contacts with other people and stuff.
Ahh, all right. I'm fine with keeping it a juicy secret for now. But in any case, I'm sure that a lot of people will be anticipating the announcement :D.
It's fairly exciting stuff.
Haha, excellent. Ok, so could you briefly go over some hobbies that you do outside of scanlation, if you don't mind me poking into your personal life a bit?
I'm a reasonably heavy gamer, though I feel like it's gotten to the point where I have a lot of difficulty getting around to playing all the games I buy. Steam is a curse...my pile of shame is quite shameful. Nowadays, I mostly play League of Legends, though.
Other than that, I'm taking courses in 3D modeling/animation, so that's sucking up a good chunk of my time as well. I watch the occasional TV show. Game of Thrones is a favorite of mine, Better Call Saul, etc.
Are you looking into becoming a computer graphics designer in the future?
I'm not entirely sure where I'm gonna take it. The thing is, when I was growing up, I always wanted to get into the gaming industry. For a variety of reasons, that never actually worked out. If I do end up completing this course, I suspect I may attempt to turn into a solo venture of sorts of do something similar to what Studio FOW is up to. So whatever it is, it'll probably be adult in nature, but I'm still far away from that stage.
Ok, then. So the next topic, again, is a bit more focused on yourself. What are some favorite anime/manga/LN/VN/doujinshi/etc. that you like, and maybe some artists/tags/genres (H or non-H)? You can also hate on stuff if you want here.
I can't say I've watched much in the way of anime in the past several years, mostly due to time constraints. I need to juggle the work, the games, etc... That being said, I did manage to watch all of Attack on Titan when I got my Netflix account a while back, and I really enjoyed that one. Before that, I think the last anime I watched to completion was Code Geass R2 so many years ago. Around that time, Naruto was falling apart, so I stopped watching that. I remember I used to like Naruto a lot, and then it felt like it was 29 budget animation episodes for every super cool, well animated fight, so I was like, "Eh... Do I need to suffer through another dozen episodes with ugly animation before I get to something cool again?”
A lot of anime was also really boring, same-y, moeblob harem crap, so I kinda fell out of it a bit. Or nothing held my interest past episode 1. But like I said, it's not that I don't want to watch anime. It's just that I need something to hook me quick. And for me, that was Attack on Titan.
But in terms of older anime I liked, I guess some would be Gundam Seed, Saber Marionette, and Code Geass. One I really loved that never made a domestic release as far as I know was VS Knight Ramune & 40 Fire. I'd say back before 2009 or so, I watched almost everything that ever came out.
And do you also read manga or LNs or VNs, the usual stuff?
Hmm... Well, the thing is, I technically read manga 10 hours a day. It's not necessarily manga I read for fun, though. However, I used to read manga back when I was still into anime. One of my favorites back then was Keroro Gunsou. Tenjou Tenge was another I liked a lot. Yakitate Japan was awesome, as well. But I haven’t read any fansub manga in recent years.
Any particular reason?
Well, for the domestically released manga, it just got to a point where I was buying manga and I never got around to reading a lot of them due to time constraints, so I just said "I could spend 15 bucks on this new issue which I'll probably never read, or I could just save my money and accept that my schedule's completely trashed."
And don't even get me started on how much doujin I've got sitting there. Like physical books. I used to go to anime cons and just buy everything that was even remotely interesting to me. It also got to a point where I was actually becoming afraid to import doujins, just because our customs agents are incredibly stupid - I've had a few packages get seized at the border.
Did you get them through official markets or were they on auction sites?
I can't remember the name of the site. Some of them were simply through amazon.co.jp before they stopped all shipments of hentai to other countries.
I had a package come in once with a book by Takemaru Sesshu which included a 24 year old women who looked underage. That book got seized. But in the same box was a JKP book. And if you know JKP's thing, the book included a guy strangling girl while clutching her uterus and jerking himself off, as well as another scene where a guy is frantically jamming his dick into a pregnant woman's nipple. That was let through.
Go figure. Can't let that obscenity poison our minds.
Hahahaha, oh well, can't choose who searches these things I guess. But yeah, with all the manga/doujinshi you've seen, do you have any particular artists/tags that you like or hate?
Specifically Japanese artists or general? Either way, I could make a list that could wrap around the planet.
I guess in this interview let's keep it to JP artists.
JKP is obviously one of my favorites. Katou Jun is one that I really like. I usually like Erect Touch. Lemme see if I can find others. It would be hard to rank them, I think. Finecraft 69 is awesome. Looking through a list...Gura Nyuuto's pretty good. Shinozaki Rei is another one I like a lot. Eroquis! too. Most of these would probably not survive the top 5 if I was to make a list, but they're pretty good.
I tend to like very clean linework, which is why I say "Usually" for Erect Touch.
Erect Touch does get slightly messy when he starts up on his tentacle shenanigans, I think...Although I did like his Pandora works.
It's not really the tentacles that bug me. It's that sometimes he releases that are very "roughed out" in terms of linework. Almost like he was in a rush to get it out there and he didn't want to bother inking it something
That sometimes does happen in the middle of doujinshi I guess. It's jarring.
I'm sure it does. Gotta get that stuff ready for Comiket.
Then, any tags that you like/dislike?
Tags that I dislike would be guro for sure. I think that just about does it for stuff I genuinely dislike. There's other stuff that makes me go, "meh, whatever. it's there," but in terms of stuff I really hate, it would be guro. I once translated a Kaki no Boo doujin, and I was genuinely ill afterwards.
Right, you do mention that in your info on the blog.
As for tags I like (in no particular order): creampie, preg, loli, futa/shem,...I dunno. gimme a tag list.
Haha, that's fine as is - so many tags to go through anyways. Well, another quick question: if you specifically weren't allowed to do hentai/doujin commissions, what, if anything, would you be doing in its place?
I'd be up for regular manga. It's just that not many people are willing to pay for it, so it's either free fansub groups that do it or it doesn't get done. As for anime, I wouldn't say that that's my specialty. I could get accustomed to it over time, I suppose, but vocally, I'd say I'm a bit lacking. Not having anyone to speak Japanese with tends to eat away at your comfort level with the spoken language.
Especially when dealing with homophones and the like, I assume.
Ya. The thing with manga is there's very little wiggle room on how something can be interpreted. There's still "some" wiggle room in certain situations, but it's a lot more concrete than trying to differentiate certain words without kanji there to lock you down.
Next question - could you give us a brief timeline of an average day for you (scanlating, schoolwork, etc.)?
Well, the classes are online classes, and only twice a week, so those don't take up an enormous amount of time on their own. The assignments are another matter.
Typically, I'll wake up around 11-noon. I'll grab some lunch/breakfast. I'll get back home and begin working on the translations. I may stop around 7 to grab something to eat. Then I'll work another 3-4 hours. Probably until midnight unless I've still got the energy to keep going. If my brain's turned to mush, I'll probably play a couple of League of Legends matches, and then I'll go to bed around 3am or so. Whether or not I have some assignments to fit in there depends on what I need to get done.
Typically, I work in phases, so I'll finalize the payments on a number of commissions. Let's say 3 or 4. If my brain's not cooperating, I'll do the boring grunt work of cleaning the pages and adding the moaning sounds to all 4. Then I'll come back to them the next day and begin going through the translations themselves. Doing it that allows me to focus on the translation without having to go, "Okay. I'm in translation mode and everything's gravy. Page 1 done. Clean page 1. God, this is boring. Okay. Switch back to translation mode for page 2. Time to clean page 2." etc., so I get all that nonsense stuff out of the way, and then I can just go through a translation cleanly, without having any downtime between pages, which can potentially cause awkward tonal shifts [between pages].
Factory line style, I see.
Also, I can't listen to podcasts or anything like that while I'm translating because it throws off my focus, so I don't listen to music or anything. I use the cleaning process to listen to any podcasts I need to because it's just grunt work.
Ah, ok. Since it does require a lot of concentration I can see how the multitasking will slow it down a lot.
Yes. That's probably why it used to take me 10 hours to get through a doujin.
What's one aspect of scanlation you wish you could improve upon?
Well, when it comes to rebuilding artwork underneath text, I basically don't have the artistic talent for that. It's not necessarily that I wish I could improve on it because I'm fairly certain I just don't have that in me, and I'm really not willing to sidetrack into 2D art courses to become good at it.
I used to have a guy for about a couple of years who would clean any background text and all that stuff. He was very good at it, but eventually, it became unmanageable for me to keep him on. Basically, I would send him something to get through, and he would take 3 weeks to actually clean it and get it back to me. Meanwhile, the client would be waiting, going, "wtf, why is it taking so long?" So even though his work was top notch, it was losing me clients, and after repeated warnings, I decided to cut it off completely.
Could you give one or two tips, warnings, advice, etc. for a person that's interested in scanlating for the fan community?
Tip 1: Don't go into it for the money. I get these comments all the time about "Oh, you must be making tons of dough with all the commissions you've got." The truth is, I'd probably make more working at McDonald's.
A jacuzzi full of money, I’m sure. Any others?
Tip 2: Don't feed trolls. As for warnings, don't feed trolls is kind of a warning in itself. But really, the internet is a cesspool of negativity, and you need to be cautious about having an opinion on anything. One of the reasons I do not use Twitter or social media is that I wouldn't be able to handle it.
Oh, and one more tip - if you take payments, do not advertise the method.
As in, discuss privately with the clients?
Exactly. A certain service that will forever remain nameless is exceptionally hostile to this line of work. The same tip could apply to artists or anyone even remotely connected to this field.
All right, we'll just do two more questions before we wrap up. First, why do you think futa series/scanlations are so sparse? Is it just because of the niche or something else?
Are they really that sparse? It does feel like they don't come out as often as they used to, though. At the same time, I feel like the futa genre is well taken care of by western artists (which reminds me, Uno Makoto is another favorite of mine.) I mean, the futa genre is niche in the sense that it's one out of several dozen genres. But I don't believe there's necessarily a lack. Just maybe that people will always want more than what's available.
As far as scanlations of futa are concerned, I think I do quite a few of those. I'm not sure of the exact distribution of my futa to non-futa commissions, though. Granted, I'm also factoring in shemales, which some may balk at. I know some people who used to like Amanoja 9 for example, and then suddenly stopped liking him once the translation came out and they read that many of the characters self-identify as men - and I know that's a sticking point for real life trans women.
I had one commissioner of the Amanoja 9 books angrily tell me to replace all the mentions of "man" with "woman" and that using "man" everywhere is super insulting. I'm like "Okay, you try to replace †˜man’ with †˜woman’ in all of these occurrences and then tell me that the sentence still makes any sense. I translated that line that way because that's what it says." He tried to say that it wasn't like that when the previous anon had translated the first two books and I basically told him, if that is the case, then either the artist did an about-face on the identity of the characters, or it's a rewrite. It turns out it was neither, he was just mad and didn't remember the first two books that well.
But yeah, there's definitely a growing trend where shemales are superseding futa. And obviously, people who think that jerking off to shem makes them automatically gay will get pissed about it.
I see. Ok, last question. So an online site named Vice recently released an article about the fan scanlators, briefly covering some stuff, etc. Now, one of the points it makes is that when the aggregate sites started to come out - Mangareader, Batoto, Fakku, TokyoTosho, Nyaa, the subreddits, and so on - the community as well as the market shifted because of the sudden easy access to titles. Do you think your views/thoughts on the community and scanlation has changed due to the rise of these aggregate sites? If so, how?
I don't have a very favorable opinion about the aggregate sites, to be honest. The thing is, a lot of these aggregates take in ad revenue, which can eventually become rather substantial. And they're essentially riding on the backs of scanlators, some of whom get paid for their work, but almost never from the aggregates directly. Doujin-moe, for example, pays a lot of their translators directly, but they also leech in order to pad their site and turn into a fatter, yummier turkey. And by doing this, the scanlators, who obviously only host their own content, become an extra bookmark that can be deleted in favor of simply going to the aggregate site. So the aggregates are doing a lot more harm than good to the scanlators themselves, unless they keep them on the payroll.
Part of why there were especially so many complaints against Mangafox/Mangareader for deleting the watermark pages.
Ya. I've had people delete my watermarks as well. They'll argue that they want the release to be "clean" or whatever, but that's just bullshit. They just don't want to give free advertisement, and they don't want to risk people finding the source because they want the ad revenue. For my part, I've always said that I don't care if my stuff is reposted elsewhere, but keep the release intact, and don't put it behind a paywall. Ad revenue is one thing, but when you get into pay-site territory, that's really shitty, because that’s stuff that doesn't even belong to them.
Right when you try to sell someone else's effort.
Exactly. That said, even though Fakku made their name by "leeching" content from elsewhere, they did ask me for permission when it came down to it. And now they've been fortunate enough to snag legit deals, which is going to bring hentai translations out of the gray area it's been in for a decade. I feel like what they're doing is probably the best thing that could happen to the industry. The translators can get paid. The artists can get paid. And people can fap to more stuff than ever because there's an incentive to release more and more.
It's basically like how Gabe Newell said that piracy is a service problem. Beforehand, the manga publishers were always reluctant to jump overseas and get a huge new revenue stream. If Jacob can pull this off and be successful at it, perhaps more publishers will come along, and people can get every Comic Unreal, every Masyo or wharever manga they desire in record time. And it won't be up to one generous guy to foot the bill for a prohibitively expensive 400 page translation.
And hopefully slowly loosen that bottleneck. Anyways, this is the end of the interview - do you have any last comments, questions, shout-outs, callouts/flames, or shameless plugs?
I'm not sure... Drawing a blank a bit. Obviously, people can find me at sahadou.com. Things will probably slow down on the website in terms of releases, but I'll still be around, and if people want to see what's slowing everything down, they can keep their eyes on Fakku over the next few months. I suspect there won't be an announcement for a month or two, though.
Thank you so much for doing this interview.
No problem.
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For this interview, I had a great, lengthy discussion with a translator that’s been churning out work after work for the community at large for over a decade. Although based strictly around a commission model of translation unlike many other translation groups today, SaHa has maintained a prolific volume of quality works in English for readers to enjoy over on its blog. Sayo – the founder of the group – was gracious enough to tell us more about the experiences through the years.
What got SaHa started? What is the daily life of a commission-based translator like? What does he think of the online fan community now and the rise of aggregate manga-reading sites? For the answers to these questions and more, read on!
SaHa’s most recent series involve Seishokuki (Inamitsu Shinji), The Great Escape (Ozaki Miray), and My Family Passion (Yasuhara Tsukasa).
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OK, so first question - just tell me a bit about yourself, what you do, how you got here, and any hobbies that you have.
Hello, I am Sayo of SaHa, the manga/doujin translation group. I started off doing translation in my final year of university after some of my more advanced Japanese courses got cancelled due to a lack of students. I decided to take a stab at translating some very basic doujins at the time (which I believe were all of the Negima doujins by Gust). This allowed me to slowly build up my kanji vocabulary. When I started out, it probably took me like 10 hours to get through 1 doujin - it was pretty rough at first.
Eventually, a guy called "Numbus" caught wind of me and offered to start paying me for translations, so I started doing work for him. Later on, I saw that that was going nowhere, so I struck out on my own and opened the blog - which is where I still am to this day.
Those radical searches, eh? What do you rely on now for translating?
When I started out, radical searches were definitely what I had to rely on. And obviously, a dictionary. Eventually, I got my hands on an OCR which sped things up a bit. Nowadays, I've built up enough of a vocabulary that I don't need to rely on OCRs or anything like that quite as much - maybe for scientific words that I've never encountered before like diseases and junk like that.
Ah, ok. Back on topic, what exactly did you mean by “going nowhere” with Numbus earlier on?
Oh, with Numbus? Basically, it got to a point where he was sitting on something like 100 unreleased doujins, and he'd hold them back out of spite for the fanbase.
Also, we were in talks to potentially get a legit business going with the Japanese artists to start releasing paid manga in English. But I later found out that his intention was to essentially let me do all the legwork and he'd just sit back, take the translations, and make the money off them.
That is extremely...unfortunate.
It’s also worth mentioning that Numbus was paying next to nothing for the translations, so it got to a point where either working for him or working via commission for others was not even an option worth weighing.
Basically, Numbus would take anything I sent him, but it would always be a flat fee regardless of page count. He even wanted to pay that same flat fee for 200 page books, which was just lol. So I just stopped giving him large books. I did the average doujin stuff, which was maybe 20 pages each.
A natural consequence.
Ya. I don't really like going on the attack or anything, but Numbus was not a swell guy.
Eventually, I decided to contact one of the few people actually releasing legit manga, which was Simon from Icarus comics. After some back and forth discussions, I started working for him. So I did a couple dozen books for Icarus, until Simon fell ill and dropped off the face of the planet.
:( An unfortunate part of working like this over the internet, and in a field like this too.
Ya. After that, I just kept going with my commission work on SaHa. And most recently, I was contacted by Jacob to work with Fakku, and that's essentially where I'm at now.
Was the business idea that you worked on with Numbus sort of like what Fakku is doing now?
Pretty much exactly what Fakku is doing now, yes.
When did your communications with Numbus begin?
When did my communications with Numbus begin? That would have been 2004. He caught onto me pretty quick if I recall correctly. I was maybe two months into doing translations when he contacted me through HongFire, which was where I would release my translations at the time.
About the recent development, do you mind sharing more details on your current contract with Fakku, or is it something still in the works?
It's barely begun, but it's in motion. I don't think I'm allowed to go into any specifics about what it involves, though. Suffice it to say, it's translation work.
Then just one last question about this before we move on - is it on a greater or smaller scale than what you have going currently for commissions? For comparison, would the amount of Fakku-related work be greater than what you're doing currently for commissions?
Hmm... lol. I'm afraid that answering that may reveal too much. It's essentially a full-time job. I will still be doing commissions when I have the time, though. The thing is, it's not just me working on it, so I've gotta juggle contacts with other people and stuff.
Ahh, all right. I'm fine with keeping it a juicy secret for now. But in any case, I'm sure that a lot of people will be anticipating the announcement :D.
It's fairly exciting stuff.
Haha, excellent. Ok, so could you briefly go over some hobbies that you do outside of scanlation, if you don't mind me poking into your personal life a bit?
I'm a reasonably heavy gamer, though I feel like it's gotten to the point where I have a lot of difficulty getting around to playing all the games I buy. Steam is a curse...my pile of shame is quite shameful. Nowadays, I mostly play League of Legends, though.
Other than that, I'm taking courses in 3D modeling/animation, so that's sucking up a good chunk of my time as well. I watch the occasional TV show. Game of Thrones is a favorite of mine, Better Call Saul, etc.
Are you looking into becoming a computer graphics designer in the future?
I'm not entirely sure where I'm gonna take it. The thing is, when I was growing up, I always wanted to get into the gaming industry. For a variety of reasons, that never actually worked out. If I do end up completing this course, I suspect I may attempt to turn into a solo venture of sorts of do something similar to what Studio FOW is up to. So whatever it is, it'll probably be adult in nature, but I'm still far away from that stage.
Ok, then. So the next topic, again, is a bit more focused on yourself. What are some favorite anime/manga/LN/VN/doujinshi/etc. that you like, and maybe some artists/tags/genres (H or non-H)? You can also hate on stuff if you want here.
I can't say I've watched much in the way of anime in the past several years, mostly due to time constraints. I need to juggle the work, the games, etc... That being said, I did manage to watch all of Attack on Titan when I got my Netflix account a while back, and I really enjoyed that one. Before that, I think the last anime I watched to completion was Code Geass R2 so many years ago. Around that time, Naruto was falling apart, so I stopped watching that. I remember I used to like Naruto a lot, and then it felt like it was 29 budget animation episodes for every super cool, well animated fight, so I was like, "Eh... Do I need to suffer through another dozen episodes with ugly animation before I get to something cool again?”
A lot of anime was also really boring, same-y, moeblob harem crap, so I kinda fell out of it a bit. Or nothing held my interest past episode 1. But like I said, it's not that I don't want to watch anime. It's just that I need something to hook me quick. And for me, that was Attack on Titan.
But in terms of older anime I liked, I guess some would be Gundam Seed, Saber Marionette, and Code Geass. One I really loved that never made a domestic release as far as I know was VS Knight Ramune & 40 Fire. I'd say back before 2009 or so, I watched almost everything that ever came out.
And do you also read manga or LNs or VNs, the usual stuff?
Hmm... Well, the thing is, I technically read manga 10 hours a day. It's not necessarily manga I read for fun, though. However, I used to read manga back when I was still into anime. One of my favorites back then was Keroro Gunsou. Tenjou Tenge was another I liked a lot. Yakitate Japan was awesome, as well. But I haven’t read any fansub manga in recent years.
Any particular reason?
Well, for the domestically released manga, it just got to a point where I was buying manga and I never got around to reading a lot of them due to time constraints, so I just said "I could spend 15 bucks on this new issue which I'll probably never read, or I could just save my money and accept that my schedule's completely trashed."
And don't even get me started on how much doujin I've got sitting there. Like physical books. I used to go to anime cons and just buy everything that was even remotely interesting to me. It also got to a point where I was actually becoming afraid to import doujins, just because our customs agents are incredibly stupid - I've had a few packages get seized at the border.
Did you get them through official markets or were they on auction sites?
I can't remember the name of the site. Some of them were simply through amazon.co.jp before they stopped all shipments of hentai to other countries.
I had a package come in once with a book by Takemaru Sesshu which included a 24 year old women who looked underage. That book got seized. But in the same box was a JKP book. And if you know JKP's thing, the book included a guy strangling girl while clutching her uterus and jerking himself off, as well as another scene where a guy is frantically jamming his dick into a pregnant woman's nipple. That was let through.
Go figure. Can't let that obscenity poison our minds.
Hahahaha, oh well, can't choose who searches these things I guess. But yeah, with all the manga/doujinshi you've seen, do you have any particular artists/tags that you like or hate?
Specifically Japanese artists or general? Either way, I could make a list that could wrap around the planet.
I guess in this interview let's keep it to JP artists.
JKP is obviously one of my favorites. Katou Jun is one that I really like. I usually like Erect Touch. Lemme see if I can find others. It would be hard to rank them, I think. Finecraft 69 is awesome. Looking through a list...Gura Nyuuto's pretty good. Shinozaki Rei is another one I like a lot. Eroquis! too. Most of these would probably not survive the top 5 if I was to make a list, but they're pretty good.
I tend to like very clean linework, which is why I say "Usually" for Erect Touch.
Erect Touch does get slightly messy when he starts up on his tentacle shenanigans, I think...Although I did like his Pandora works.
It's not really the tentacles that bug me. It's that sometimes he releases that are very "roughed out" in terms of linework. Almost like he was in a rush to get it out there and he didn't want to bother inking it something
That sometimes does happen in the middle of doujinshi I guess. It's jarring.
I'm sure it does. Gotta get that stuff ready for Comiket.
Then, any tags that you like/dislike?
Tags that I dislike would be guro for sure. I think that just about does it for stuff I genuinely dislike. There's other stuff that makes me go, "meh, whatever. it's there," but in terms of stuff I really hate, it would be guro. I once translated a Kaki no Boo doujin, and I was genuinely ill afterwards.
Right, you do mention that in your info on the blog.
As for tags I like (in no particular order): creampie, preg, loli, futa/shem,...I dunno. gimme a tag list.
Haha, that's fine as is - so many tags to go through anyways. Well, another quick question: if you specifically weren't allowed to do hentai/doujin commissions, what, if anything, would you be doing in its place?
I'd be up for regular manga. It's just that not many people are willing to pay for it, so it's either free fansub groups that do it or it doesn't get done. As for anime, I wouldn't say that that's my specialty. I could get accustomed to it over time, I suppose, but vocally, I'd say I'm a bit lacking. Not having anyone to speak Japanese with tends to eat away at your comfort level with the spoken language.
Especially when dealing with homophones and the like, I assume.
Ya. The thing with manga is there's very little wiggle room on how something can be interpreted. There's still "some" wiggle room in certain situations, but it's a lot more concrete than trying to differentiate certain words without kanji there to lock you down.
Next question - could you give us a brief timeline of an average day for you (scanlating, schoolwork, etc.)?
Well, the classes are online classes, and only twice a week, so those don't take up an enormous amount of time on their own. The assignments are another matter.
Typically, I'll wake up around 11-noon. I'll grab some lunch/breakfast. I'll get back home and begin working on the translations. I may stop around 7 to grab something to eat. Then I'll work another 3-4 hours. Probably until midnight unless I've still got the energy to keep going. If my brain's turned to mush, I'll probably play a couple of League of Legends matches, and then I'll go to bed around 3am or so. Whether or not I have some assignments to fit in there depends on what I need to get done.
Typically, I work in phases, so I'll finalize the payments on a number of commissions. Let's say 3 or 4. If my brain's not cooperating, I'll do the boring grunt work of cleaning the pages and adding the moaning sounds to all 4. Then I'll come back to them the next day and begin going through the translations themselves. Doing it that allows me to focus on the translation without having to go, "Okay. I'm in translation mode and everything's gravy. Page 1 done. Clean page 1. God, this is boring. Okay. Switch back to translation mode for page 2. Time to clean page 2." etc., so I get all that nonsense stuff out of the way, and then I can just go through a translation cleanly, without having any downtime between pages, which can potentially cause awkward tonal shifts [between pages].
Factory line style, I see.
Also, I can't listen to podcasts or anything like that while I'm translating because it throws off my focus, so I don't listen to music or anything. I use the cleaning process to listen to any podcasts I need to because it's just grunt work.
Ah, ok. Since it does require a lot of concentration I can see how the multitasking will slow it down a lot.
Yes. That's probably why it used to take me 10 hours to get through a doujin.
What's one aspect of scanlation you wish you could improve upon?
Well, when it comes to rebuilding artwork underneath text, I basically don't have the artistic talent for that. It's not necessarily that I wish I could improve on it because I'm fairly certain I just don't have that in me, and I'm really not willing to sidetrack into 2D art courses to become good at it.
I used to have a guy for about a couple of years who would clean any background text and all that stuff. He was very good at it, but eventually, it became unmanageable for me to keep him on. Basically, I would send him something to get through, and he would take 3 weeks to actually clean it and get it back to me. Meanwhile, the client would be waiting, going, "wtf, why is it taking so long?" So even though his work was top notch, it was losing me clients, and after repeated warnings, I decided to cut it off completely.
Could you give one or two tips, warnings, advice, etc. for a person that's interested in scanlating for the fan community?
Tip 1: Don't go into it for the money. I get these comments all the time about "Oh, you must be making tons of dough with all the commissions you've got." The truth is, I'd probably make more working at McDonald's.
A jacuzzi full of money, I’m sure. Any others?
Tip 2: Don't feed trolls. As for warnings, don't feed trolls is kind of a warning in itself. But really, the internet is a cesspool of negativity, and you need to be cautious about having an opinion on anything. One of the reasons I do not use Twitter or social media is that I wouldn't be able to handle it.
Oh, and one more tip - if you take payments, do not advertise the method.
As in, discuss privately with the clients?
Exactly. A certain service that will forever remain nameless is exceptionally hostile to this line of work. The same tip could apply to artists or anyone even remotely connected to this field.
All right, we'll just do two more questions before we wrap up. First, why do you think futa series/scanlations are so sparse? Is it just because of the niche or something else?
Are they really that sparse? It does feel like they don't come out as often as they used to, though. At the same time, I feel like the futa genre is well taken care of by western artists (which reminds me, Uno Makoto is another favorite of mine.) I mean, the futa genre is niche in the sense that it's one out of several dozen genres. But I don't believe there's necessarily a lack. Just maybe that people will always want more than what's available.
As far as scanlations of futa are concerned, I think I do quite a few of those. I'm not sure of the exact distribution of my futa to non-futa commissions, though. Granted, I'm also factoring in shemales, which some may balk at. I know some people who used to like Amanoja 9 for example, and then suddenly stopped liking him once the translation came out and they read that many of the characters self-identify as men - and I know that's a sticking point for real life trans women.
I had one commissioner of the Amanoja 9 books angrily tell me to replace all the mentions of "man" with "woman" and that using "man" everywhere is super insulting. I'm like "Okay, you try to replace †˜man’ with †˜woman’ in all of these occurrences and then tell me that the sentence still makes any sense. I translated that line that way because that's what it says." He tried to say that it wasn't like that when the previous anon had translated the first two books and I basically told him, if that is the case, then either the artist did an about-face on the identity of the characters, or it's a rewrite. It turns out it was neither, he was just mad and didn't remember the first two books that well.
But yeah, there's definitely a growing trend where shemales are superseding futa. And obviously, people who think that jerking off to shem makes them automatically gay will get pissed about it.
I see. Ok, last question. So an online site named Vice recently released an article about the fan scanlators, briefly covering some stuff, etc. Now, one of the points it makes is that when the aggregate sites started to come out - Mangareader, Batoto, Fakku, TokyoTosho, Nyaa, the subreddits, and so on - the community as well as the market shifted because of the sudden easy access to titles. Do you think your views/thoughts on the community and scanlation has changed due to the rise of these aggregate sites? If so, how?
I don't have a very favorable opinion about the aggregate sites, to be honest. The thing is, a lot of these aggregates take in ad revenue, which can eventually become rather substantial. And they're essentially riding on the backs of scanlators, some of whom get paid for their work, but almost never from the aggregates directly. Doujin-moe, for example, pays a lot of their translators directly, but they also leech in order to pad their site and turn into a fatter, yummier turkey. And by doing this, the scanlators, who obviously only host their own content, become an extra bookmark that can be deleted in favor of simply going to the aggregate site. So the aggregates are doing a lot more harm than good to the scanlators themselves, unless they keep them on the payroll.
Part of why there were especially so many complaints against Mangafox/Mangareader for deleting the watermark pages.
Ya. I've had people delete my watermarks as well. They'll argue that they want the release to be "clean" or whatever, but that's just bullshit. They just don't want to give free advertisement, and they don't want to risk people finding the source because they want the ad revenue. For my part, I've always said that I don't care if my stuff is reposted elsewhere, but keep the release intact, and don't put it behind a paywall. Ad revenue is one thing, but when you get into pay-site territory, that's really shitty, because that’s stuff that doesn't even belong to them.
Right when you try to sell someone else's effort.
Exactly. That said, even though Fakku made their name by "leeching" content from elsewhere, they did ask me for permission when it came down to it. And now they've been fortunate enough to snag legit deals, which is going to bring hentai translations out of the gray area it's been in for a decade. I feel like what they're doing is probably the best thing that could happen to the industry. The translators can get paid. The artists can get paid. And people can fap to more stuff than ever because there's an incentive to release more and more.
It's basically like how Gabe Newell said that piracy is a service problem. Beforehand, the manga publishers were always reluctant to jump overseas and get a huge new revenue stream. If Jacob can pull this off and be successful at it, perhaps more publishers will come along, and people can get every Comic Unreal, every Masyo or wharever manga they desire in record time. And it won't be up to one generous guy to foot the bill for a prohibitively expensive 400 page translation.
And hopefully slowly loosen that bottleneck. Anyways, this is the end of the interview - do you have any last comments, questions, shout-outs, callouts/flames, or shameless plugs?
I'm not sure... Drawing a blank a bit. Obviously, people can find me at sahadou.com. Things will probably slow down on the website in terms of releases, but I'll still be around, and if people want to see what's slowing everything down, they can keep their eyes on Fakku over the next few months. I suspect there won't be an announcement for a month or two, though.
Thank you so much for doing this interview.
No problem.
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Hey guys, I'm Genericremix, a member of a fledgling podcast called 4Playeranimecast and a forum newbie here. Today I'm here to kick off a series of interviews with contributors within the manga/anime/doujin/etc. community. Frustrated with not knowing why a group releases so slowly? Interested in learning more about the process of fansubbing, scanlating, and the myriad of other stuff people do to bring readable English translations to your hands? Why does that one group only keep uploading imouto-related hentai? Look no further - these interviews will sate your questions.
I've posted this first interview in its entirety here. Enjoy!
For this interview, I managed to sit down and have a brief chat with one of the more well-known translators on Fakku, LustyLady00 from the Lusty Lady Project. Although the group stopped uploading/translating hentai in the spring of 2014, its translator was graciously willing to share the experiences of working on scanlation, aspects of his personal life, and perspectives on recent events concerning Japanese takedowns. Read on to find out more!
The Lusty Lady Project’s most recent series involve Girls Lacrosse Club -Akagi Aya Chapter- (DISTANCE), Servant-chan Sharing (Izumiya Otoha), and Iizuka-senpai x Blazer (Yuzuki N’).
So first question - just tell me a bit about yourself, what you do/did, what you might be up to now, and hobbies/favorites both in doujin stuff and out.
I'm someone who after 4 years of job-hunting had finally found a job - in that time I studied Japanese on my own after taking one year in college and found I took to it like a fish to water. It was then that I attempted fansubbing but found my constant want of certainty dragging out the translation process by hours more than I wanted. While in that fansubbing group I befriended the editor/typesetter at the time and he asked if I would be up for doing manga scanlation. I tried it out... and it was a match made in heaven.
What do you mean exactly by "certainty" in terms of fansubbing? You mean like waiting for QC (quality control)?
Oh no, I mean in the dialogue itself. As I was brand spanking new to fansubbing (and translation/Japanese for that matter), I could just never be sure what the characters were talking about sometimes. There were words I was uncertain about - even more so as Japanese has many homophones. There were also times when characters spoke rapidly so I had to go back to the line a dozen times just to try and make sure I understood it right. With manga I'm actually able to see the word and, thus, be more certain of what I am translating.
Ahhhh, that's very true. I would definitely expect it to be a bit more confusing, especially if/when more modern slang is used. Ok, so how did you transition from doing manga to hentai stuff?
I got started by working around on manga and [soon after] there was the idea of working on hentai, or manga porn, as well. I was reluctant to do hentai at first but in the end I was able to stay mature about it... It's just sex in the end.
So someone had to convince you to do this initially?
Not really... In the end my editor just nudged the idea of doing a doujin [to me] and I figured I might as well try it... and meh, I don't mind working on doujins too much... Translation-wise they are very easy and the artwork locked within is just as good, if not better, than regular manga at times. There are also times where I end up being more partial to working on hentai than manga and I get in fights with my editor at times
Just got used to it I guess?
Pretty much... I get in the habit of things and, once I do, they are hard to break.
On hobbies/interests:
My hobbies and interests do include manga and hentai scanlation but beyond that there is:
- Collecting (all sorts: cards, bottle caps, videos)
- Reading manga
- Watching anime
- Reading and writing (granted this is more at a standstill as I am a horrible time keeper and end up running out of time, or energy, to really do them)
Oh, and I collect manga, too.
What is currently your favorite manga, anime, (maybe VN/LN), and hentai series/tag/artist? And with regards to hentai, which tag/artist/series do you find the strangest/most repulsive, if any?
A-ha, let's see...Favorite manga had to be Parasyte... I just got sucked in and only just finished reading it... Currently one of my favorite mangas has to be RE: Monster written by Kanekiru Kogitsune and drawn by Kobayakawa Haruyoshi.
Anime-wise... It's a good thing you say currently because I watch at least 15 animes a season... At the moment my top three would have to be: Trinity Seven, Log Horizon 2, Akame ga Kill. Hentai series... I would have to say, and I'm shocked to say this myself, The Otaku in 10,000 B.C. It's just so ridiculous you can't help but like it.
Favorite hentai authors... Akatsuki Myuuto just has a fantastic style, I like Nagayori for storytelling, DISTANCE for just the general situations, Konchiki for comedy, Horitomo for imagination and monster girls, and Homunculus for the vanilla. Fuetakishi is good times, too.
Yeah, I know some people who remember the Lusty Lady project for some DISTANCE works - good times.
Hehe, yeah... Our last work was a DISTANCE piece.
So any tags/artists/series you found distasteful?
Oh! Excuse me, favorite tags... They would have to be:
- vanilla (Always a plus),
- monster girl (Depends, of course),
- boobs (I am open to whatever size... maybe leaning towards oppai, etc. but I can really go either way),
- harem,
- osananajimi,
- tomboy,
- dark skin,
- tan lines,
- swimsuit (And just general outfits).
Now for least favorites...they’re really only tags... I can't really say I dislike certain authors enough to the point where I can say I hate them but they just make me say, "nah, not my style”... But anyway, tags:
- rape (Just no)
- scat (HELL NO)
- gangbang (Just makes me scream "GET YOUR OWN!")
- old man (Yuck)
- fat man (Double yuck)
- ugly man (Now you're just pissing me off)
- netorare (If anybody actually tries ANYONE CAN BE GOOD IN BED! It doesn't do anything about your personality)
- tentacles (Some people may feel competitive against an octopus... I do not. The idea of multiple orifice stimulation isn't a bad idea... But I don't think that many arms, or tentacles, are absolutely necessary)
What is one thing that you think most non-scanlators are unaware of with regards to the scanlation process?
Probably the editing process and how it is done - nowadays the entire process of cleaning, redrawing, typesetting and what have you is broken up to different people whereas before it was only one person, one editor, who did all that. The reason why The Lusty Lady Project was so fast was because we had only ONE person doing all that as the editor.
Is it broken up because it's simply more efficient or because there are less people that can do everything relative to the stuff that needs to be translated…or perhaps both?
A bit of both. From what my editor told me there just weren't that many people who wanted to learn ALL THERE WAS about editing a manga so the process ended up getting broken up and delegated to different people.
Right, right. So I guess groups just have to be a bit bigger nowadays unless you have some really good people like you guys working together.
That is pretty much it... If you want quality AND speed it's best to have a small group where they are masters of their craft, but if you just want quality then a big group it is... with each person being assigned a different part of the editing process. If fans are ever wondering, "why is it taking so long?" It's mostly because a.) the group is too compartmentalized and b.) real life issues.
There you have it. But yeah, next question was: I know you guys shut down the project quite a bit before the recent Wani Magazine takedown incidents and the DDoSing of various anime-related sites. Can you give us a bit of your perspective of what, if any, changes occurred before and after these incidents?
A lot of scrambling to get rid of certain pieces on certain sites...just trying to avoid Wani's gaze...certain sites disappearing...and sometimes reappearing. Forums being made to figure out what is safe and what is not... information collecting, pretty much. Biggest example being fakku.net. And declarations, sometimes raging, from some groups saying they had to drop a series or more because of it.
Did you see it as a concerted reaction/effort or did you see a lot of different scattered reactions going on?
It was mostly negative but, ultimately, my editor and I were of the same opinion: It was only a matter of time... this was bound to happen someday. It's great that Japan is not letting itself being completely "leeched" as it were.
Right, I mean in the end this is distribution without dues to the artists at hand.
Right. If anything scanlations are just previews that allow for more people to see the artist's work.
Indeed. Now, you've uploaded a LOT of series over time - have you noticed any trends in the types of doujins that are uploaded now compared to back then?
When I first started doing doujins, I learned from my editor that the more, how shall I say, "wholesome" genres (vanilla, harem genres for example) were being neglected and the more "unsavory" genres (to me, anyway; the whole, rape, netorare, scat, etc.) were more prevalent... That the more wholesome genres were only done if groups were commissioned to do them. My editor and I like a good story with great art and so we ended up doing more series from the wholesome genres which, ultimately, were more our cup of tea. Nowadays I would like to think it has evened out (if only a little) between the genres that are posted/uploaded.
Oh interesting, so the groups actually picked out the more "niche" tags first - I didn't know that.
It seemed that way for the longest time... I suppose the rationale was that people would be inclined more to pay for the "nicer" stories if there were more "nastier" stories already being released. We ended up bringing about an age of vanilla... if not good taste... and I think it just stuck in the end.
And many readers thank you for that, I'm sure. Anyways, next question - tell us a quirk or strange tendency you have while reading/working on manga.
I don't find it so strange, as I did it for the longest time; but I used to not read through an entire piece (be it either a series or a one-shot) before translating... I just translated as I read. Nowadays not so much. The idea of "pre-reading" was foreign to me. An unfortunate quirk of mine would have to be the mixing up of "you're" and "your" as well as occasionally missing a word here and there. That drove my editor nuts at times... especially when whole bubbles were missed.
Oh dear - that's unfortunate but happens to the best of us.
Yeah..*sigh*
All right, two more questions and then we're done. If you could change any one thing about the manga/anime community or what manga artists do frequently, what would it be and why?
...As if you had to ask...CENSORSHIP! Be it either anime/hentai or just the whole idea of only allowing certain people access to certain series, it just gets so stupid. If there is a demand it should be satisfied. I wouldn't be surprised if some people were "driven to extremes" because of such a thing. The blacksabers, the whitesabers, the black holes, the white holes, the mosaics... it's a part of the body and shouldn't be abhorred... not to mention you can pretty much guess the two people are having sex so why bother?
Indeed, people will find a way in the end if the want/need isn't met.
Yup.
Ok, so the final question is - where did the name "The Lusty Lady Project" come from?
From me in the end... In my hometown there was this peepshow by the name of "The Lusty Lady" that had sadly (more so to others I'm sure) had been closed down. Despite being what they were, they were greatly respected as an independent peepshow where the dancers, performers, whatever you want to call them bought the rights to the establishment and ran it for themselves. Ultimately I chose that name as a sort of homage to them.
That's actually really cool - so the name does have a background to it!
Yeah - one fan who was curious about the name asked me about it and when I told him he was like, "wow, that's deep... BALLS DEEP"... A special response, I know... but yeah... I guess it is.
Tasteful response, to be sure. So do you have any last comments, shoutouts, callouts, announcements, etc.?
Oh yes... a couple things I ended up thinking of in the process of the interview - a couple more hentai dislikes:
- bestiality (Yeah, nothing),
- furry (Yes, I like monster girls, but furries? Not my cup of tea),
- lolicon (Again, not my cup of tea... Just not for me)
Also, as far as me and hentai go... I prefer stories that don't objectify the woman or reduce her to a mere sex object. Plot and story are always appreciated with me as well...
Shoutous, hm? Okay, here's one: GOOD LUCK, FAKKU.NET! CONGRATS ON GOING LEGIT! MAY YOU BE THE FIRST OF MANY TO COME!
Excellent, excellent, was thinking that too…All right, anything else?
No, that just about wraps it up... If anything, my dream is to be a mangaka in Japan and live there (if not, become a manga writer and find an artist, lol)
Hopefully you'll be able to find a good opportunity sometime - especially with Japanese publishers opening up to places like Fakku, there might be better times ahead. Again, thank you SO much for agreeing to do the interview.
You are very welcome.
This interview and others to come, as well as more anime-related content, will be available on 4playeranimecast.com. Also follow us on:
http://www.facebook.com/4playeranimecast
http://www.twitter.com/4ppanimecast
http://twitch.tv/4playeranimecast
The above content may only be re-posted elsewhere with express consent from the 4Playeranimecast members.
I've posted this first interview in its entirety here. Enjoy!
For this interview, I managed to sit down and have a brief chat with one of the more well-known translators on Fakku, LustyLady00 from the Lusty Lady Project. Although the group stopped uploading/translating hentai in the spring of 2014, its translator was graciously willing to share the experiences of working on scanlation, aspects of his personal life, and perspectives on recent events concerning Japanese takedowns. Read on to find out more!
The Lusty Lady Project’s most recent series involve Girls Lacrosse Club -Akagi Aya Chapter- (DISTANCE), Servant-chan Sharing (Izumiya Otoha), and Iizuka-senpai x Blazer (Yuzuki N’).
-----
So first question - just tell me a bit about yourself, what you do/did, what you might be up to now, and hobbies/favorites both in doujin stuff and out.
I'm someone who after 4 years of job-hunting had finally found a job - in that time I studied Japanese on my own after taking one year in college and found I took to it like a fish to water. It was then that I attempted fansubbing but found my constant want of certainty dragging out the translation process by hours more than I wanted. While in that fansubbing group I befriended the editor/typesetter at the time and he asked if I would be up for doing manga scanlation. I tried it out... and it was a match made in heaven.
What do you mean exactly by "certainty" in terms of fansubbing? You mean like waiting for QC (quality control)?
Oh no, I mean in the dialogue itself. As I was brand spanking new to fansubbing (and translation/Japanese for that matter), I could just never be sure what the characters were talking about sometimes. There were words I was uncertain about - even more so as Japanese has many homophones. There were also times when characters spoke rapidly so I had to go back to the line a dozen times just to try and make sure I understood it right. With manga I'm actually able to see the word and, thus, be more certain of what I am translating.
Ahhhh, that's very true. I would definitely expect it to be a bit more confusing, especially if/when more modern slang is used. Ok, so how did you transition from doing manga to hentai stuff?
I got started by working around on manga and [soon after] there was the idea of working on hentai, or manga porn, as well. I was reluctant to do hentai at first but in the end I was able to stay mature about it... It's just sex in the end.
So someone had to convince you to do this initially?
Not really... In the end my editor just nudged the idea of doing a doujin [to me] and I figured I might as well try it... and meh, I don't mind working on doujins too much... Translation-wise they are very easy and the artwork locked within is just as good, if not better, than regular manga at times. There are also times where I end up being more partial to working on hentai than manga and I get in fights with my editor at times
Just got used to it I guess?
Pretty much... I get in the habit of things and, once I do, they are hard to break.
On hobbies/interests:
My hobbies and interests do include manga and hentai scanlation but beyond that there is:
- Collecting (all sorts: cards, bottle caps, videos)
- Reading manga
- Watching anime
- Reading and writing (granted this is more at a standstill as I am a horrible time keeper and end up running out of time, or energy, to really do them)
Oh, and I collect manga, too.
What is currently your favorite manga, anime, (maybe VN/LN), and hentai series/tag/artist? And with regards to hentai, which tag/artist/series do you find the strangest/most repulsive, if any?
A-ha, let's see...Favorite manga had to be Parasyte... I just got sucked in and only just finished reading it... Currently one of my favorite mangas has to be RE: Monster written by Kanekiru Kogitsune and drawn by Kobayakawa Haruyoshi.
Anime-wise... It's a good thing you say currently because I watch at least 15 animes a season... At the moment my top three would have to be: Trinity Seven, Log Horizon 2, Akame ga Kill. Hentai series... I would have to say, and I'm shocked to say this myself, The Otaku in 10,000 B.C. It's just so ridiculous you can't help but like it.
Favorite hentai authors... Akatsuki Myuuto just has a fantastic style, I like Nagayori for storytelling, DISTANCE for just the general situations, Konchiki for comedy, Horitomo for imagination and monster girls, and Homunculus for the vanilla. Fuetakishi is good times, too.
Yeah, I know some people who remember the Lusty Lady project for some DISTANCE works - good times.
Hehe, yeah... Our last work was a DISTANCE piece.
So any tags/artists/series you found distasteful?
Oh! Excuse me, favorite tags... They would have to be:
- vanilla (Always a plus),
- monster girl (Depends, of course),
- boobs (I am open to whatever size... maybe leaning towards oppai, etc. but I can really go either way),
- harem,
- osananajimi,
- tomboy,
- dark skin,
- tan lines,
- swimsuit (And just general outfits).
Now for least favorites...they’re really only tags... I can't really say I dislike certain authors enough to the point where I can say I hate them but they just make me say, "nah, not my style”... But anyway, tags:
- rape (Just no)
- scat (HELL NO)
- gangbang (Just makes me scream "GET YOUR OWN!")
- old man (Yuck)
- fat man (Double yuck)
- ugly man (Now you're just pissing me off)
- netorare (If anybody actually tries ANYONE CAN BE GOOD IN BED! It doesn't do anything about your personality)
- tentacles (Some people may feel competitive against an octopus... I do not. The idea of multiple orifice stimulation isn't a bad idea... But I don't think that many arms, or tentacles, are absolutely necessary)
What is one thing that you think most non-scanlators are unaware of with regards to the scanlation process?
Probably the editing process and how it is done - nowadays the entire process of cleaning, redrawing, typesetting and what have you is broken up to different people whereas before it was only one person, one editor, who did all that. The reason why The Lusty Lady Project was so fast was because we had only ONE person doing all that as the editor.
Is it broken up because it's simply more efficient or because there are less people that can do everything relative to the stuff that needs to be translated…or perhaps both?
A bit of both. From what my editor told me there just weren't that many people who wanted to learn ALL THERE WAS about editing a manga so the process ended up getting broken up and delegated to different people.
Right, right. So I guess groups just have to be a bit bigger nowadays unless you have some really good people like you guys working together.
That is pretty much it... If you want quality AND speed it's best to have a small group where they are masters of their craft, but if you just want quality then a big group it is... with each person being assigned a different part of the editing process. If fans are ever wondering, "why is it taking so long?" It's mostly because a.) the group is too compartmentalized and b.) real life issues.
There you have it. But yeah, next question was: I know you guys shut down the project quite a bit before the recent Wani Magazine takedown incidents and the DDoSing of various anime-related sites. Can you give us a bit of your perspective of what, if any, changes occurred before and after these incidents?
A lot of scrambling to get rid of certain pieces on certain sites...just trying to avoid Wani's gaze...certain sites disappearing...and sometimes reappearing. Forums being made to figure out what is safe and what is not... information collecting, pretty much. Biggest example being fakku.net. And declarations, sometimes raging, from some groups saying they had to drop a series or more because of it.
Did you see it as a concerted reaction/effort or did you see a lot of different scattered reactions going on?
It was mostly negative but, ultimately, my editor and I were of the same opinion: It was only a matter of time... this was bound to happen someday. It's great that Japan is not letting itself being completely "leeched" as it were.
Right, I mean in the end this is distribution without dues to the artists at hand.
Right. If anything scanlations are just previews that allow for more people to see the artist's work.
Indeed. Now, you've uploaded a LOT of series over time - have you noticed any trends in the types of doujins that are uploaded now compared to back then?
When I first started doing doujins, I learned from my editor that the more, how shall I say, "wholesome" genres (vanilla, harem genres for example) were being neglected and the more "unsavory" genres (to me, anyway; the whole, rape, netorare, scat, etc.) were more prevalent... That the more wholesome genres were only done if groups were commissioned to do them. My editor and I like a good story with great art and so we ended up doing more series from the wholesome genres which, ultimately, were more our cup of tea. Nowadays I would like to think it has evened out (if only a little) between the genres that are posted/uploaded.
Oh interesting, so the groups actually picked out the more "niche" tags first - I didn't know that.
It seemed that way for the longest time... I suppose the rationale was that people would be inclined more to pay for the "nicer" stories if there were more "nastier" stories already being released. We ended up bringing about an age of vanilla... if not good taste... and I think it just stuck in the end.
And many readers thank you for that, I'm sure. Anyways, next question - tell us a quirk or strange tendency you have while reading/working on manga.
I don't find it so strange, as I did it for the longest time; but I used to not read through an entire piece (be it either a series or a one-shot) before translating... I just translated as I read. Nowadays not so much. The idea of "pre-reading" was foreign to me. An unfortunate quirk of mine would have to be the mixing up of "you're" and "your" as well as occasionally missing a word here and there. That drove my editor nuts at times... especially when whole bubbles were missed.
Oh dear - that's unfortunate but happens to the best of us.
Yeah..*sigh*
All right, two more questions and then we're done. If you could change any one thing about the manga/anime community or what manga artists do frequently, what would it be and why?
...As if you had to ask...CENSORSHIP! Be it either anime/hentai or just the whole idea of only allowing certain people access to certain series, it just gets so stupid. If there is a demand it should be satisfied. I wouldn't be surprised if some people were "driven to extremes" because of such a thing. The blacksabers, the whitesabers, the black holes, the white holes, the mosaics... it's a part of the body and shouldn't be abhorred... not to mention you can pretty much guess the two people are having sex so why bother?
Indeed, people will find a way in the end if the want/need isn't met.
Yup.
Ok, so the final question is - where did the name "The Lusty Lady Project" come from?
From me in the end... In my hometown there was this peepshow by the name of "The Lusty Lady" that had sadly (more so to others I'm sure) had been closed down. Despite being what they were, they were greatly respected as an independent peepshow where the dancers, performers, whatever you want to call them bought the rights to the establishment and ran it for themselves. Ultimately I chose that name as a sort of homage to them.
That's actually really cool - so the name does have a background to it!
Yeah - one fan who was curious about the name asked me about it and when I told him he was like, "wow, that's deep... BALLS DEEP"... A special response, I know... but yeah... I guess it is.
Tasteful response, to be sure. So do you have any last comments, shoutouts, callouts, announcements, etc.?
Oh yes... a couple things I ended up thinking of in the process of the interview - a couple more hentai dislikes:
- bestiality (Yeah, nothing),
- furry (Yes, I like monster girls, but furries? Not my cup of tea),
- lolicon (Again, not my cup of tea... Just not for me)
Also, as far as me and hentai go... I prefer stories that don't objectify the woman or reduce her to a mere sex object. Plot and story are always appreciated with me as well...
Shoutous, hm? Okay, here's one: GOOD LUCK, FAKKU.NET! CONGRATS ON GOING LEGIT! MAY YOU BE THE FIRST OF MANY TO COME!
Excellent, excellent, was thinking that too…All right, anything else?
No, that just about wraps it up... If anything, my dream is to be a mangaka in Japan and live there (if not, become a manga writer and find an artist, lol)
Hopefully you'll be able to find a good opportunity sometime - especially with Japanese publishers opening up to places like Fakku, there might be better times ahead. Again, thank you SO much for agreeing to do the interview.
You are very welcome.
-----
This interview and others to come, as well as more anime-related content, will be available on 4playeranimecast.com. Also follow us on:
http://www.facebook.com/4playeranimecast
http://www.twitter.com/4ppanimecast
http://twitch.tv/4playeranimecast
The above content may only be re-posted elsewhere with express consent from the 4Playeranimecast members.
