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Nostalgial trip for manga geeks
Just finished reading: History of Scanlation
That was emotional, even though I was just a bystander throughout the years (I got into manga in highschool, but latched onto scanlations around beginning of college, around 2002, via an equally bored friend in a dormitory). But hey, it was epic to realize that the old scanlation groups really made a contribution to how people view manga these days.
Seeing the old names of scanlation groups listed on the site reminded me of early days of getting into manga. In High School, we bought Chinese versions of Tankoubons without realizing that it was Chinese and Japanese (ahahahaha, my old collection of Ranma, Yu Yu Hakusho and Sailormoon). Then, through a joint effort with![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
riisha, we acquired an entire collection of Yami No Matsuei (1-9) in Japanese, not to mention the Fushigi Yuugi collection that actually belonged to Kristine next door, but for some reason, remained on riisha 's desk for several months, while we practiced reading Hiragana and Katakana using one dictionary. For understanding, we downloaded Text translations of YnM off the internet, and compared them panel-by-panel. O_o
Then came college, and I ended up sharing a dorm with Celeste (before she went to the US), who was then badly addicted to Tokyo Crazy Paradise, Angel Sanctuary and Basara (no, not the burly Sengoku Basara, the shoujo one where they were 'too busy fucking to realize they were mortal enemies and leaders of two opposite armies'). Ahahahahah, I remember Celeste teaching me how to use IRC. It was also at that time, she attempted to help a shoujo scanlation group, and got me to scan an entire chapter of Never Give Up! One thing I learned from experience - if I wanted to scanlate, I would rather be an editor or a translator instead of a scanner - my back fucking hurt from breaking the spine of a tankoubon and pressing it to the scanner glass for acceptable High Quality. Rinse, repeat about 40+ pages. Then came the matter of compressing it and sending it over the internet - ON A DIAL-UP connection. Fuck. I don't even remember if I DID send it or what happened afterwards - it was that nerve-wracking and tiring. Oh, the dedication.
Anyway, the article mentioned the early days of scanlation, and I ended up remembering all those times when I surfed around for something to download and read to while away the days of solitude in a dormitory. There was Band of the Hawks, which got me into Berserk and other great Seinen titles, such as Homunculus, (but really, I think I blundered into the site because of their Weiss fansub of the OAV) and by extension there was Omanga, who released AS and MPDPsycho and etc. Then there was Sakura Crisis (you Love Mode fans out there, who wouldn't remember them?) and Shi-Ran (who made me love Naono Bohra so hard) which were my first exposure to yaoi - before they folded up and most of the projects were taken up by Nakama and other groups. Then there was FuguTabetai, where I got into Tenjou Tenge (I gotta finish that manga someday). I even remember being banned from the Shoujo Magic IRC channel, when I thought they had the same rules as most of the other channels I visit, and thus used the wrong command. I didn't encounter Toriyama World until much later (when I was looking for Zombie Powder), but I remember downloading from Storm in Heaven and Aku-tenshi. Lillilicious was my first yuri exposure, though I remember Celeste pimping a manga called Hen to me. Then there was Salad Days - scanlated by other Filipinos. Wow, other people actually remember them.
Then there was Josei manga, when there was this tiny group called Ushi who scanlated Kimi wa Pet, Gokusen and for some reason Air Gear - but they might've been the first casualties of the group rivalries that I encountered. I didn't even realize that there was a sort of evolution going on, when people started changing the scanlation system, just that all of a sudden, Ushi was complaining of foreign groups stealing their raws, then their group died down, and I started using the trackers to look for groups who took over unfinished projects. Manga Jouhou and Daily manga were prominent bookmarks then, if I couldn't find a certain release in one, I'd find it in the other. Then suddenly, other people were releasing Berserk, Tenjou Tenge, etc. I had to keep track of a lot of them, and I had to agree that the "old guard" would find it demeaning that people scanlated manga with emphasis on speed instead of quality. Instead of IRC, people can direct download, or even read online - though that last option never appealed to me because of my speed-reading - the page loading was always too slow, and I can't go back and ogle the artwork offline when I get to the end of a chapter.
Anyway, it was a good trip to read that article, and realize that there were a lot of friction going on in the background, and the reasons why so many old groups are gone and so many new in their place. Especially now that I'm also translating, it's surprising to see how much changed in under a decade. I do love the fact that it's easier to get raws and find other people in MangaHelpers, who want to scanlate the same manga that you do =D.
That was emotional, even though I was just a bystander throughout the years (I got into manga in highschool, but latched onto scanlations around beginning of college, around 2002, via an equally bored friend in a dormitory). But hey, it was epic to realize that the old scanlation groups really made a contribution to how people view manga these days.
Seeing the old names of scanlation groups listed on the site reminded me of early days of getting into manga. In High School, we bought Chinese versions of Tankoubons without realizing that it was Chinese and Japanese (ahahahaha, my old collection of Ranma, Yu Yu Hakusho and Sailormoon). Then, through a joint effort with
riisha, we acquired an entire collection of Yami No Matsuei (1-9) in Japanese, not to mention the Fushigi Yuugi collection that actually belonged to Kristine next door, but for some reason, remained on riisha 's desk for several months, while we practiced reading Hiragana and Katakana using one dictionary. For understanding, we downloaded Text translations of YnM off the internet, and compared them panel-by-panel. O_o Then came college, and I ended up sharing a dorm with Celeste (before she went to the US), who was then badly addicted to Tokyo Crazy Paradise, Angel Sanctuary and Basara (no, not the burly Sengoku Basara, the shoujo one where they were 'too busy fucking to realize they were mortal enemies and leaders of two opposite armies'). Ahahahahah, I remember Celeste teaching me how to use IRC. It was also at that time, she attempted to help a shoujo scanlation group, and got me to scan an entire chapter of Never Give Up! One thing I learned from experience - if I wanted to scanlate, I would rather be an editor or a translator instead of a scanner - my back fucking hurt from breaking the spine of a tankoubon and pressing it to the scanner glass for acceptable High Quality. Rinse, repeat about 40+ pages. Then came the matter of compressing it and sending it over the internet - ON A DIAL-UP connection. Fuck. I don't even remember if I DID send it or what happened afterwards - it was that nerve-wracking and tiring. Oh, the dedication.
Anyway, the article mentioned the early days of scanlation, and I ended up remembering all those times when I surfed around for something to download and read to while away the days of solitude in a dormitory. There was Band of the Hawks, which got me into Berserk and other great Seinen titles, such as Homunculus, (but really, I think I blundered into the site because of their Weiss fansub of the OAV) and by extension there was Omanga, who released AS and MPDPsycho and etc. Then there was Sakura Crisis (you Love Mode fans out there, who wouldn't remember them?) and Shi-Ran (who made me love Naono Bohra so hard) which were my first exposure to yaoi - before they folded up and most of the projects were taken up by Nakama and other groups. Then there was FuguTabetai, where I got into Tenjou Tenge (I gotta finish that manga someday). I even remember being banned from the Shoujo Magic IRC channel, when I thought they had the same rules as most of the other channels I visit, and thus used the wrong command. I didn't encounter Toriyama World until much later (when I was looking for Zombie Powder), but I remember downloading from Storm in Heaven and Aku-tenshi. Lillilicious was my first yuri exposure, though I remember Celeste pimping a manga called Hen to me. Then there was Salad Days - scanlated by other Filipinos. Wow, other people actually remember them.
Then there was Josei manga, when there was this tiny group called Ushi who scanlated Kimi wa Pet, Gokusen and for some reason Air Gear - but they might've been the first casualties of the group rivalries that I encountered. I didn't even realize that there was a sort of evolution going on, when people started changing the scanlation system, just that all of a sudden, Ushi was complaining of foreign groups stealing their raws, then their group died down, and I started using the trackers to look for groups who took over unfinished projects. Manga Jouhou and Daily manga were prominent bookmarks then, if I couldn't find a certain release in one, I'd find it in the other. Then suddenly, other people were releasing Berserk, Tenjou Tenge, etc. I had to keep track of a lot of them, and I had to agree that the "old guard" would find it demeaning that people scanlated manga with emphasis on speed instead of quality. Instead of IRC, people can direct download, or even read online - though that last option never appealed to me because of my speed-reading - the page loading was always too slow, and I can't go back and ogle the artwork offline when I get to the end of a chapter.
Anyway, it was a good trip to read that article, and realize that there were a lot of friction going on in the background, and the reasons why so many old groups are gone and so many new in their place. Especially now that I'm also translating, it's surprising to see how much changed in under a decade. I do love the fact that it's easier to get raws and find other people in MangaHelpers, who want to scanlate the same manga that you do =D.