I totally didn't take my sweet time translating this thing.
By Pepsiman 66 Comments
MOST RECENT PART UPLOADED: PART FOUR OF FOUR. GO TO THE BOTTOM OF THIS POST IF YOU WANT TO DOWNLOAD THE FULL ARCHIVE.
NOTICE
If you're new to this thread, then feel free to read each part in order. This is a scanlation of a doujinshi for Persona 4 called "Kimi no Tonari" (キミのとなり "Next to You") released in chunks as my team and I finish them. If, however, you've read the other parts, I've included headings for easy reference as to which part you need to find so you can catch up. As such, because of quirks in the Giant Bomb image gallery system, each part has its own gallery on my profile, which is always linked at the end of every corresponding portion on here. Thanks for reading and I hope you have as good a time as we are with working on it!
As they would say in Japanese, 僕達の訳した同人誌を読んでくれてありがとう！楽しんで下さい！
PART ONE
The gallery is right here, for those uninterested in the magical origin story of this project..
Fast forward to the past month or so, when I decided I finally had the time and energy to restart things anew. My fluency at the language had improved pretty significantly since the first attempt, which made me think that it was a good opportunity to give the manga a fresh, more accurate English script anyway. Couple that with some interest from other people to see the work and I had more motivation to actually do the project than I had before. It took some time since I had to work at it alone in Photoshop on the side when I wasn't studying, but here I am, with the fruits of my labor in the gallery below. There are a few things to note about this release, though.
- It's only the first ten pages. It's short, but I'm working at this thing incrementally when I have free time. I'm posting this many so people who are interested in it have a taste of what it's like.
- Like all good manga, this is kept in its original format, meaning each page is read right-to-left and then top-to-down. It gets to be pretty intuitive quickly enough.
- You could call this a beta. I proofread my work and made sure the artistic integrity was kept intact (ie: when having to superimpose text onto a background), so while I endorse this work, there's always the chance things could change in the final version, whenever it is that I actually get around to it.
- This is not the official Persona 4 manga published serially in Japan. Somebody else already works on that stuff and I won't be linking to it here. As such, because this was originally a non-profit, fan-produced effort, it's very likely this wouldn't have seen a commercial translated release abroad. I'm doing this simply for the love of the game and so that English-speaking fans can see a side of the Japanese community they very rarely ever get to witness in their own language.
- While I tried as best as I could to maximize the scan quality, you'll notice that things are usually a bit iffy on the right or left-hand side of the page. This is mostly due to the scanning process involved; the physical copy I own is the only one I have and since very few were published in Japan anyway, let alone imported, I really didn't want to tear the pages out of the margin and do it "properly." I can't do that to one of my own books. It should still be perfectly readable anyway.
- If you're actually interested in helping me out with this, I'm looking for people who know their way around Photoshop, since having an assistant or two to focus on that stuff would make these things go way faster. You'd need to mostly be able to blank out (ie: make completely white) dialog bubbles and be able to impose translated text onto backgrounds, whenever necessary, without compromising the quality of the original background. It's not terribly hard stuff, really, especially since the artwork itself is pretty simple. I can't say I have a specific schedule for this stuff, but if you'd like to help out, shoot me a PM and we'll see if we can work some things out.
The gallery version for this post is right underneath this, but in case you're having resolution issues (which is very likely, due to gallery limitations), you'll either need to load the image onto a separate tab/page or just go straight to the main album version here, where the pictures should be at their native size. The cover for it is at the top of this post because it was too much of a hassle to get it to work below. If you're still having issues, let me know, but I hope you enjoy what I have thus far!
Gallery
PART TWO
For those of you who don't want to hear about how some buddies of mine did for major favors for me on here to make this possible, then feel free to just check the gallery here.
It's still New Year's Eve where I'm living and because I'm sympathetic to the cause of people wanting to get wasted to ring in a new decade, I'll keep this one much shorter. This time around, I got a lot of help on the Photoshop side of things from people on this very site, making it a much faster process to get the end product released to you all. Those folks and what they've done are noted in the credits section at the bottom of this post. Please, if you enjoy this scanlation, drop by their profiles and give them some thanks. I might be the one doing the writing for this gig, but they're the ones making sure the images are as best as they can be for you all. They're much more skilled at getting stuff done in Photoshop in a timely manner than I am, so they deserve all the credit in the world for making such a quick release time possible.
Anyway, as usual, a gallery is right underneath this paragraph for the next ten pages, but you'll likely just need to go to the actual gallery on my profile here to get a readable resolution. Because of trouble I was having with the GB imaging tools, I couldn't stick it in the same gallery as the first set, so from here on out, each part will get its own gallery until the whole project is complete, which is when you'll get access to the entire archive in one nice 7-Zip file. Enjoy!
Gallery
PART 3
Alrighty, then. This is the second to last part that will be uploaded for this doujin manga before it's complete. Not a whole lot to say about it that hasn't been mentioned in other parts besides the usual thanks. In this one you have some fighting, some contemplating, and other such antics from Chie and company. Whether you've been reading this since day one of the project or you're new and just catching up you have my thanks. This manga should be finished up fairly soon, depending on when I can cram in translation work into my study schedule that resumes next week. Once that happens, part four will be posted here and a download link to the entire thing in one archive will be provided as well. A few edits might happen to the dialog, especially in part one, since that was before I had the style manual finalized, but other than that, it should be more or less the same.
Gallery version is, once again, underneath this paragraph, although resolution issues will probably mean you should just go directly to this area of my images instead. Once again, thanks for reading and be sure to check out the credits to see who did what. I certainly wasn't alone in this.
Gallery
PART FOUR
In case you're too polite to say "tl;dr," you can just hop on over directly to the larger gallery version here.
And now we've reached the end. What can I say? This is the last part and with it comes the finale. The end of the school year comes and, much like in the original game, Taniyama has to part ways with everyone, Chie included. That being said, it isn't over until it's over, as there's a nice little surprise in store for Chie afterwards. It's a nice ending to a pretty laid back doujinshi. Naturally, the you can head over to the main gallery version on my profile right here if the resolution here proves to be troublesome. With this final part, I'm also releasing the entire series as an archive, with the link to it in the next section. The specifics about its contents are in that section. That being said, it was a pleasure to translate this doujin. It's definitely not the best manga I've ever read, Japanese or otherwise, but it's nice to have something tame in a field so often stigmatized for the hypersexualization of a minority of works. I hope you've enjoyed reading this as much as I and the others have with scanlating it. You have all of our thanks for the support every step of the way.
Gallery
DOWNLOADABLE ARCHIVE
If you want to download all four parts so you can read everything in one fell swoop as it was originally intended, you can do so here. In the event that the link goes down, feel free to check for a more recent version on Team Boke's blog, where it should have a more permanent home. That being said, if you find the download link to be broken, feel free to PM me and I'll gladly reupload it and (likely) edit this page accordingly.
As such, besides having all of the work in one place, you'll also find that part one's pages have been updated so that they now abide by the style standards adopted for the other parts. Some of the lines ended up being changed due to both different spacing and also a general obsessive compulsiveness to really refine some of the writing I wasn't completely happy with. Other than that, these are all the original JPEGs as I uploaded them and are named and ordered such that your average image viewer should be able to go from one to the next without any problem.
TEAM BOKE CREDITS
Some very nice people went out of their way to help me on this project. Without them, this thing would have taken me much, much longer to do, so please, give them a lot of kudos, too. They really deserve it and are a great bunch. They're listed in alphabetical order below, although collectively, we're referred to as "Team Boke." It's a nice name if you know your Japanese. We also have a blog where you can track our future projects, in case that interests you.
Bartman3010- For being among the first people to take me up on my request for more help and tackle the Photoshop side of things. He did things like white out dialog boxes and restore backgrounds when English would have to be written over them, although he was also responsible for more technical things, as well.
Fallen189- For also being one of the first people to lend me a hand with this project when I asked for help. Like Bartman, Fallen did similar image editing stuff and has handled a large number of pages for me.
Pepsiman (ME!?)- I'm the one and only translator for this project. I pretty much take that nice physical copy of the doujin I have sitting on my bed and, after having the assistants do their thing, make it readable in a language most of you understand. I'm by no means a professional translator in real life; in fact, I'm still studying the language as my major in university. But it helps to get all the practice I can get and this project certainly helps.
Special Acknowledgement
AjayRaz- For promising to get us sandwiches at some point. We're still waiting, but it's nice of him to think of our hunger.
KatzuNiku- For providing additional support to Bartman's work.