First of all, happy Remembrance Day to all. A bittersweet day for the people who served in the military and gave us the freedom that we have today.

I thought about writing something like, Sweet Fourteen as the headline. But honestly? It sounds just as lame and dumb as Sixteen does. I never quite understood the fascination with the sweet sixteen birthdays. I get that it’s a rich, affluent people-thing, but I don’t understand why sixteen. Why not 15 or 17? What’s so special about being 16? I mean, maybe in certain places you’re allowed to fuck adults with minor consequences (snitches get stitches kinda stuff), but you’re still not an adult. I get the eighteenth birthday stuff, but anywho. Don’t know how I got on this tangent.

So Illuminati-Manga is a year older and we’re turning 14. I always had our anniversary release as the first day we released a chapter, as it was always a confirmation of something becoming official. I’ve seen people start up groups and amount to literally nothing. It’s funny, when I started scanlating – which was around a week after the group was founded, you can go check our early Gantz releases as they’re still on the bot, they’re some of the very rare chapters where I wasn’t credited for anything – I never thought I’d last this long. I always thought, well, we’ll see how I like this, we’ll see how this goes, maybe the group will die off like virtually all of them do. Then I started liking it, and it was, well maybe this’ll last a few weeks. Then a few months. Then the next thing I know, this became my main hobby. And soon after that, I became monetarily involved by buying equipment and tankobons. I’m not kidding when I say that I’ve spent a couple thousand bucks on equipment & books since February 2007 (date when I bought a scanner for Elfen Lied specifically). Half of it went to pay the shipping costs, which is just… Fucking hell. Would have been cheaper for me to fly to Japan, buy a couple hundred bucks worth of books, shove them into my luggage and fly back. Whatever. I’ve estimated that I’ve bought close to 750 books in Japanese with the sole purpose of scanning. I’ve ended up scanning, either as favors or as a “transaction” (ie, you scan this for me, I translate that for you), over 600 books. And as I write these words, I think that those might be conservative estimates. I’ll make a blog entry about it one day and count to see what I’ve done, as I’ve kept almost every single book I’ve scanned in a closet. I’m kinda curious to see how many books there are and how many total pages I’ve scanned. The amount worries me a little.

Thanks to all the groups we’ve worked with in the past 14 years, there’s been a lot. Special thank you to Nitouryu, laika, dh85, illiteracy, tim, Zenquibo, Phaedris, Molokidan who have been a big part of the group over the 14 years. Love you guys, hope you’re all doing well.

I started writing with a purpose and then I just have blanks, so I guess it’s a good way to end this. Now, for the releases…

Idiot Section Chief 12 (!Idiot12) – It’s the return of the… The last chapter was 7 years & one week ago. Here’s hoping chapter 13 doesn’t take as long.

Kizu Darake no Jinsei v01 (!Kizu01) – Introducing another Saruwatari manga with Hokuto no Gun. They had proposed working on this a while back. I had the raws (up to v08 I think), they had the whole thing translated, I figured… Fuck it, more Saruwatari. A big thank you to Hokuto no Gun as usual for providing the translation. Next release will depend on how bad the redraws are. 🙁

One Day in the Life of Ivan Dejavu (!Ivan) – More Hoshino Yokinobu! The only catch is, as I’ve found out when buying a bunch (25+) of his books, a lot of the short stories were already published in other books. For example, there’s only 3 new stories in this book, while every other chapter was published in The Distant Dawn. If you want to skip the other chapters, the new ones are chapter 2, 7 & 9. A big thank you to a gangster of the scanlation game, Hox, for translating. Here’s hoping we can do something together reaaaaal soon.

Yankee go to Juku 21 (!Juku21) – A bit of a break in the norm due to special circumstances, but I doubt anyone will mind. If you do, well, the problem lies entirely in you. Thanks to Nuwang for providing the translation once again!



Good night. I’m hungry.