Hello there. It’s me again, NQS, lead proofreader and co-founder of NijiNiji Nikubou Scans. I don’t pop up much but there are times like this when I feel that I need to make my opinions known. I’ve read the comments for the HOC chapters posted on mangago, both the good and the bad (and there were a bunch on both sides of this matter) so I would like to address some of the things that are being said. There are a bunch of comments saying some variation of “Why are you people being so rude?” I am also wondering this. As a member of the group that people are displaying loyalty to via sternly worded comments, I want to say that I am honored and greatly happy that you enjoy our work so much. That being said, just because we are working on something does not mean it is off limits to everyone else. That was never the way we felt about any of our projects and if some of the things we may have said in the past have lead people to feel that way, then we are sorry as that was never our intention.
Every group, or individual, is more than welcome to work on whatever project they wish. We take no offense to other people release a project that they worked so hard on, even if it is a project we have been working on also. Our group has never believed that different versions of the same release are a bad thing. There are many ways to handle each step in the scanilation process and every version brings a different interpretation to the reader, and with that, the chance to have a version they prefer over others for various different reasons. We have released our version of projects that were already completed by other groups in the past because we genuinely loved those mangas and, even though the process is still as difficult as any other project, it like a treat to ourselves to work on something we love so much. So who are we to deny that same enjoyment to other groups. Every group who completes a project deserves praise from the readers who enjoy their hard work, not derogatory comments from people who believe they did something wrong. We are well aware that our releases of HOC have been non-existent for quite sometime. This delay is not because we’re being lazy about it or because we don’t care about the project, far from it actually. There were many bumps along the road for us and HOC. From cleaners vanishing without a trace to major script rewrites, and we apologize for all of that, but sometimes there are things that are beyond our control to a certain extent and there’s no merit in stressing over things you can’t easily change. In that respect, we actually are thankful to the group who did this release as it gives readers the chance to continue to enjoy something that we have not be able to supply them with as quickly as we would have liked to. When our leader, Nina, said that the person who released the HOC chapters didn’t ask us if we dropped it, she was not trying to insinuate that they should have done that. All that she meant was that we don’t believe that this person “stole” HOC from us in anyway because, due to the long gap in release, it might have been their assumption that we may have dropped it. We don’t expect other groups to stalk our tumblr page to figure out the status of our projects. Regarding us dropping projects; t’s important to let it be know that the projects we dropped because of other groups picking them up were not done so out of anger or frustration. The decision to drop those projects were due to us having many other projects at that time and our members not having an extremely strong emotional connection said project. Our dropping things are more a matter of, “this other group is gonna do it now, people will be able to read and enjoy it, so we can take it off our list and focus on other projects.” If we feet especially strongly about a certain project, we would keep doing it just because we love it so much. In closing; No, we are not upset that this translation was released. No, we don’t not think that we own this manga just because we’ve worked on it in the past. No, we are not dropping HOC from our project list. Yes, scanilation can be hard work. Yes, scanilation is still really fun despite that. Yes, even the projects we love the most frustrate us at times. Yes, we would not be doing this if it wasn’t something we enjoyed greatly. Everyone please, stop badmouthing this release on our behalf. We are not upset about this and you shouldn’t be either. -NQS
