Dang. Somehow or other, we got there. All 101 chapters of Ueno-san wa Bukiyou are translated, and the manga is complete. Whew.

So, obviously, there’s a good deal to unpack here on the other side of things. I’ll do my best not to forget anything, but forgive me in advance if it’s a little scrambled. It’s bad enough I haven’t posted anything to this blog for over a year to begin with.

First order of business, Ueno-san itself. After over a year since the release of the concluding volumes 9 and 10 in May of 2022, I’ve translated every chapter of every volume and released them all on MangaDex. Certainly could have been done in a more timely manner, but life never really works out how we expect. This project has taken its fair share of hard work, gradually inching towards the finish line over a five-year span since its beginning in June of 2018, and I’m unbelievably relieved to be done with it. Kind of my defining work, if I had to say. I was never especially proficient enough to multitask, and most of the side manga I’d toyed with ended up dropped or going nowhere (still sad about Akiyama), but this one was my white whale, and all that matters is that it’s finished. Forever. Hot damn, I don’t have to come up with any more invention names! Woohooooo

Anyway, there should be a download link for the entire Ueno-san series compilation on the Releases page of this blog, up above. Holy shit, I get to mark it as “Completed,” too. I’m going to remove all of the individual volume downloads and simply mush all the most up-to-date versions of everything into one batch, start to finish, so if you have any lingering downloads of older volumes, I recommend getting the new one. And as always, feel free to redistribute these as you see fit. Honestly at this point I could really give less of a shit where they end up, or if they even end up credited back to me (although it was always hilarious to me to see scraped versions show up without TL Notes, significantly bastardizing the reading experience). Link ’em, torrent ’em, edit ’em, I really don’t care. Ueno for everybody. If you hate MangaDex, or any online readers at all, enjoy your downloadable files.

Second order of business: I have had a fair share of questions come in about what’s in store for the future of Graveyard of Airships, and that’s what I’d like to discuss next. The funny thing about the answer is, at this moment of writing, I don’t have a concrete plan. It may not come as a surprise to anybody who’s actually reached out to me over the course of this journey, but I can be a bit of a flake. I’m not a very disciplined person, lol, and that’s what made solo work so enticing in the first place. Even having to make some kind of final decision is not easy for me. I don’t particularly want to retire, but I also don’t expect that I have always or can forever continue to meet the expectations of readers. Like, I could see myself taking several months off just to chill (and did do exactly that during Ueno-san’s run), which might make it seem like I don’t want to work anymore, but I also know I’m the sort of person to catch the bug every now and then and do some translating when it feels fun again. Basically, it bothers me that if I say I’ve quit, then working at any point in the future will have people confused, and if I say I haven’t quit, then people will expect me to work with some kind of regularity (which isn’t entirely unfair).

The other issue, essentially, is that it comes down to projects. Ueno-san was a perfect pick up, always intriguing and consistently low in page count, while offering unusual translation conundrums and a lot of opportunity for creativity. I honestly don’t believe there’s another manga out there quite like Ueno-san, which is a huge part of what kept me coming back. And rather than cast my feelers back out and look for something new, I would MOST LIKELY set to work on Kare to Karetto next. I’ve actually told multiple people that already, my go-to answer: “If anything, Kare to Karetto.” It’s sort of in a similar boat as Ueno-san was at the start, with a small enough audience there won’t be ravenous demand for updates. Hell, if it remains relatively unpopular, that might never change, lol. But it’s an odd story, and with occasional echoes of Ueno-san throughout, though with its own sense of humor and charm. I still really love Caret as a character, for some reason. I got my hands on basically the best-quality-possible raws for all 4 volumes of Karetto, so I’d be starting over again from the beginning, which would be the only minor snag in getting that project back into full gear. But, well, gun to my head, I would say that sooner or later, it will happen.

I wouldn’t expect much out of hshs Sasero or Aan-chan, though. Sasero is one I do still occasionally miss, and wish I could give the translation it deserves. Kind of my eternal “maybe someday” project.

Aan-chan is still dead forever. Sorry. That’ll be the last time I get any big ideas about doing SFX.

Aaaand… I think that’s everything. As it’s been a while, obligatory reminder there is contact information on the About page up above, in case you actually do end up with a question I didn’t think to answer here. Or if you still feel like showering praise and gratitude on me. That always felt pretty nice, to be honest.

For the last time when it comes to this particular manga series, at least…
I’ve been Bainhardt, and thank you all so much for reading. (´-｀)b