I'm really curious to know if you have officially dropped the manga. If so (and even if not obvs), I'd just like to thank you for so many amazing years of awesome translations. This manga may not be very popular in the west but I'm glad you kept bringing it for so many of us
Hey, sorry for just now seeing this even though this question was sent back in late November.
No, we haven't officially dropped the manga, and Idk if any group has picked up the series while I was gone. Emphasis on the "I" because our absence was not a consenting choice made by anyone else in this group. So if anyone harbors any kind of resentment, then do not direct it towards anyone but me. If we ever decide to officially drop the series, I'll make an official announcement on this blog. To be honest, I wasn't really gonna make much hubbub about a comeback and just post a chapter as if no time had passed. But, because I got this question and you were very nice about it. I'll give some insight.
- 🦙
The only reason I'm an active part of this fandom (any fandom now really) despite it being against my lurker nature and excessive anxiety issues is because I was encouraged to do so by a friend. If you know me from Discord, then you probably know that aside from running this blog, I'm leader of the scan group and owner of its server, I'm even an admin for the Natsume fan server which is its own separate thing.
I don't know if that sounds already sounds overwhelming, but just to scare you, I also proofread the scripts so the dialogue sounds natural and act as quality checker for each chapter. This means cleaning/redrawing sections of pages if the CLDR forgot or didn't meet the standard of quality I'm looking for. Similar with typesetting, I'll rearrange the text if I feel it could be done better. I'm also the main SFX person. When it comes to the scan server, outside of running and maintaining it, I also act as mod to make sure people aren't posting anything inappropriate or inoffensive + setting up bots and permissions.
When I was in High School and even during my early years of college, I could manage it cause I had the support and energy for it. Plus, my love for Natsume was scary intense. So when life got hard, I found that working on scans acted as a lifeline.
Then I had a messy fallout with the friend who prompted all of this, and things shifted. It didn't help that things in my personal life got really bad and more or less stayed that way for 2/3 years. And because of the association, and the guilt of falling behind, working on Natsume was no longer a stress-relieving activity. It became the source of my stress. I ran away because I was scared and overwhelmed. It wasn't healthy and it only made things worse, honestly.
But, I've been really hard on myself over this past year, and I finally reached the point of wanting to come back, but the guilt from being a deadbeat was still eating me alive. Then I got really sick at the start of this month, and I'm no lie, I'm still sick... but that gave me a lot of time to think and reevaluate all kinds of things. Because honestly? I miss working on scans and the collaborative aspect that I fell in love with because of Natsume.
And literally just this past Saturday/Sunday night, I sent a message to the group, apologizing for what I did and provided a similar explanation of why I did what I did. I trying it as just an explanation and not an excuse - I hope I was able to do that here too.
I told my group to give me several days before I actually start working on scans again, though, because it'll allow me to catch up with everything and figure out what needs to be done next, and it'll also give me more time to recover.
Thank you once again for being kind and understanding! I really appreciate it 🥹💚
hey, just wanted to let you know that something you do for free happens on your schedule, at your emotional freedom, at your convenience. Please don’t feel guilty for not investing time into translating the manga when you were investing that time in dealing with the negative emotions and associations you had with it. That was valuable work. Valuable personal work to help yourself and sometimes the things we enjoy have to take a backseat to personal development and rest. The things you and your crew have done for the fandom don’t go unnoticed. They are so appreciated. And even more, I appreciate that you do it when you can and that you take time to put your own health (mental and physical) first. I’ve been in fandom a long time as a casual lurker and occasional doer and slow fanfic writer and sometimes this is how it is. I hope you have a wonderful holiday season and that you get some relaxation and enjoyment. You and the crew deserve it!
Not gonna lie,
(emotions under the cut)
- 🦙
reading this ask and the other messages I’ve received have made me cry from the overwhelming emotion. I even got a headache from it and had to drink my water with electrolytes. This happened hours ago, and I’m still getting teary-eyed from glancing at this again.
I know it’s easy to just focus my Natsume icon with his silly googly eyes, and nothing more, so thank you for seeing me as a person.
Also, thanks for thanking my group too cause I always worry whether their hard work goes unnoticed since unless you’re in the server and happen to be in a convo with them, you don’t often get to hear from them directly. I always try to praise them for it whenever I can because of it. I couldn’t do anything of this alone so I value the time we’ve spent and every way that they’ve helped me.
I hope you have a happy holiday season too! My wish is to recover before my friend’s holiday get together, so I don’t have to cancel 💔
Can you gimmie a fanfic recommendation about natsume and natori friendship, or maybe something like Natori and Natsume were caught by the paparazzi and they thought that Natori had a special relationship with Natsume? Thankyou
I don't read read fanfic, sorry, so I'm going to call a friend (my followers) for this. Please give Tumblr user @dizyamochi some fic recommendations, please.
hi. just wanted to say thank you for all the work you put into translating natsume yuujinchou. i hope you're having a good day, and if not, i'm sending you some of my strength so we can keep going together.
On behalf of my group, thank you!
These last few days have been kinda rough for me, but today was a really good day! I doing on an errand run which took up a good chunk of my day, but there was a lot of exciting news or updates for media I really enjoy! 🥹💚 It's just nice to finally go out again even if it's just for errands a;jdfk since I've been bedridden for almost a month 💔
And thank you again! Your words of encouragement made me feel really good 🥹💚 I'm sure the strength we give each other will get us through 2025! In the meantime, I hope you have a good rest of the year, and enjoy the holiday season. If it sucks, then I will draw a very crude Nyanko-sensei.
hello, I read from somewhere that there's a novel for natsume yuujinchou. are you interested to translate the novel?
Translating a novel is a completely different beast compared to translating a manga, so unfortunately, it's unlikely that we would. There are light novels of Natsume Yuujinchou—I don't remember if all of them have been translated but at least some of them were. I'm pretty sure they can be found floating around somewhere on LiveJournal.
have you guys watched the english dub yet; what’re your thoughts on it if you have? :) i tried watching it myself since i’m a big fan of christopher wehkamp and i even predicted months before they announced a dub was coming that if they ever did do one he’d be perfect for madara. but something about natsume’s va doesn’t do it for me unfortunately, it’s too deep and lacks the gentleness natsume should have. max mittleman who plays atsushi in bungou stray dogs would’ve been perfect imo
I still have only seen the first episode which I wrote about here, but based on the clips I've seen of later episodes and of characters that get introduced later like Tanuma, my overall thoughts now would be much less positive. I still wouldn't say the dub is bad but the quality seems to be inconsistent.
And a few months ago, out of curiosity, I watched the Latam dub and found the first episode was also really enjoyable. I skimmed a few episodes after that, and lol, if you thought Tanuma's voice was deep in the English dub... then you're not ready to hear Tanuma's Latam dub voice.
Can I ask if there's any plot coming up in the unreleased chapters? It's been so long since Natori ripped up that letter
There's a lot going on.
Consider this my informal call for proofreaders/quality checkers. Informal because I'm not yet at the point to invest enough time to recruit people, but we're of need of a couple of quality checkers.
If you're interested, please dm me on discord. my username is mockturdle.
