#kurata emi

[seldomscans]

Kurata Emi's Es no Kaihou (1979)

We proudly present you our new pick, Kurata Emi's Es no Kaihou (エスの解放 - Id Unchained). This manga was published in LaLa between September 1978 and February 1979. Special thanks to Platypus who first showed me the cover of this manga, which really set things in motion, and VIP thanks to phuji and shielshi for riding my hype train and being even faster than me at finishing this! <3

The "Es" in the title is the German for the good old "id" you see in psychology, and Japanese has borrowed it from German. The more you know...

DDL MangaDex

Also you should know that 5MENP, savior of all old and good manga, will be finishing off Ki no Mi, Kusa no Mi. Don't forget to keep an eye out for it!

[asnowperson]

Shin Seishun (新青春, The New Youth) by Kurata Emi. Published in Bessatsu Shoujo Comic Zoukan Ciao (back when Ciao was a supplement of Shoujo Comic) on 12/6/1975.

It tells the story of two bros4life who are struggling with youth, their friendship, the upcoming university entrance exams, and the ressure the society puts on them. It's mainly a social commentary on how the education system kills young minds, and university entrance exams are not much of a big deal, veiled behind some good old fun shoujo adventures.

[seldomscans]

Easygoing by Kurata Emi (1976)

This has been in the works for a while... We are proud to bring you a true gem from 1976, Kurata Emi's striking one shot, Easygoing.

This story, especially the last couple of pages, hit me on a personal level. What really impressed me even more is that this story was published in Hana to Yume of all things. Isn't it sad to see what the magazine has become after publishing good stories like this one, reduced to a shoujo magazine filled with tedious romance stories that doesn't even a single brain cell? Honestly, I wouldn't have expected to see such historical and social criticism in a 1970s shoujo manga magazine.

Also, apologies for the text left in Japanese on p. 29, because I couldn't make sense of them for the life of me. I even asked people. So, unless someone sends me scans/pics of the print book, we'll never know. Digitalization does old manga dirty like that.

Get your self-loathing here:

DDL MangaDex

Now, be on the lookout for 5MENP's releases, because I'm passing the baton to them to finish this compilation off. I don't want to ruin Kurata's works with my crappy TLs.

[seldomscans]

Menu by Kurata Emi

We have a little vampire manga for you for the spooky month! It's a 8-page one shot titled "Menu" by Kurata Emi, an artist who was most active during the 1970s and 1980s. I am slowly getting into her catalogue after seeing this manga's cover (shout out to Platypus!). This one shot made me smile, so I decided to translate it. With my scanlation buddies phuji and shielshi's help, we present you the very first English scanlated work by Kurata Emi!

Menu is part of a series of short, fun and quirky one shots by Kurata, compiled under the name Ichi Man Juu Byou Monogatari (一万十秒物語).

We'll also do another one shot and a one-volume series from her, so stay tuned if you like her art (but be warned, they'll be dark and depressing, and not goofy like Menu).

DDL MangaDex

[asnowperson]

Jojo no Uta (ジョジョの詩) bu Kurata Emi. This volume contains the first 5 instalments of her Jojo to Khaki-hime (ジョジョとカーキー姫) series, published in Bessatsu Shoujo Comic between 1975/10-1976-12, a one shot, and two shorter and funnier one shots.

Although the cover says this is volume 1, from what I could tell, the series just got another volume-original story for another edition, and was never resumed. Although the adventures of the tomboyish princess Khaki-hime (also laugh at me: I thought her name was "car key" at first because, katakana...) and her kind of bohème magic painter fiancé Jojo start off with lighthearted shoujo vibes with lots of wackiness, fantasy elements and happy stories, the mood shifts to a more serious tone when Jojo recalls a near-death experience he had and encountered the soul of a man who committed suicide in Aki no Irihi (秋の入り日), and when we follow a 28-year-old teacher contemplating his life choices (marrying young, no longer being himself and but "dad", feeling like his life is over although he's still in his 20s...) in Khaki-hime no Gogo (カーキー姫の午後). I liked the more slice-of-life-ish turn it took, but well, I guess they didn't hire Kurata for drawing stories that feel too close to real life.

[asnowperson]

Kurata Emi's Es no Kaihou

I like my shoujo manga trippy... Check those backgrounds out.

From Kurata Emi's psychological manga Esu no Kaihou (エスの解放, Id Unchained, 1979). Published in LaLa between issues 1978/9 and 1979/2. It taught me Japan uses words borrowed from German to talk about psychology terms.

[seldomscans]

Esu to Esuto Emu

I hope the end of the year hasn't been as crazy for you as it has been for me. To make up for last week's silence, we'll be releasing two manga chapters today, woot!

First, we have another one shot from our brilliant est em, which is a sequel to this story we previously released: Imouto no Koto (My Little Sister)

DDL MangaDex

And we bring you the penultimate chapter of Es no Kaihou, because we should finish one Kurata manga before releasing another one, right? (How do you like my teasing?)

DDL MangaDex

We at Seldom Scans wish you a happy New Year, and hope that 2024 will be a much better year than 2023 for all of you. Thank you for having good taste, and enjoying our scanlations.

[seldomscans]

Es no Kaihou - Finale!

And thus it ends... We bring you the final chapter of our weird-ass psychological ride, Es no Kaihou. But that's not all! We also have a short gag comic that was published at the end of the tankoubon volume of Es no Kaihou.

I, the translator, would like to thank platypus for letting me know this manga exists in the first place, and even buying and scanning the bonus manga, shielshi for agreeing to edit this thing I pulled out of nowhere, and phuji, who saved my poor scripts who were left to die because of lack of proofreading. You are all my champions.

Chapter 6: DDL & MangaDex M no Kaihou: DDL & MangaDex

We'll be working to clear our one shot backlog for a while, and I have found a couple more one shots I'd like to take on; so we say goodbye to our only longer series with this release. Thank you for sticking with us, and I hope you enjoyed reading a work by a lesser known shoujo artist from the 1970s. <3 I sure enjoyed translating this a lot.