I just spent hours translating Karetto pages, so I figured I’d cap it off with a little brain-dump here, though it’ll still be some time til the first portion is ready to release. I’m excited, though. The fact that not a single group has touched this manga in something like 8 years is a damn shame, but I hope I can change that.

I’ve been having a lot more fun working on this manga than I expected. Something about the comedy in this one clicks with me – it’s a great feeling to piece together enough of the joke to finally get it, then suddenly start laughing. It’s not raucously hilarious or anything, but I’ve been laughing more than at most of the other stuff I work on. Good sign. Even if this manga isn’t well-received, I’ll probably keep working on it simply for my own enjoyment, lol.

The characters have a totally different dynamic from the ones in Ueno-san, and there are going to end up being more of them showing up in more chapters overall than in Ueno-san, so I’m looking forward to seeing audience response to that. And I think as the protagonist, Karetto-san has the potential to be just as appealing to some fans as Ueno-san is to others.

Moving on to some of the setbacks: Volume 1 has no true chapters, but volumes 2-4 all do. While their chapters are around Ueno-length, volume 1 is instead broken up into three “chunks” of about 30-50 pages each. This means volume 1 will take me the longest to release with the longest delays between. What a terrible way to start a project.

volume 1 on the left, volume 3 on the right

Also, volume 1’s raws are the worst quality. Each volume is in a different resolution, which I probably won’t bother rescaling to any standard, but they all look more or less fine. Volume 1’s are kind of washed out and grainy, and some of the pages are crooked. They’re usable, but definitely look the worst out of the lot. I’ll likely have to try touching them up as I go. What a terrible way to start a project.

And, well, that’s about it. I’m almost done translating chunk-pter 1, but that’ll leave cleaning and typesetting. It’s gonna be slow going with this one until I get to volume 2, but I really want to get it out there. Peace.