Wednesday 2 July 2014

Apologies and the Loss of Chuang Yi

My Apologies To Anyone Who Reads This Blog

I am very sorry for this delay and do my best not to let it happen again. I'm really embarrassed it has taken me so long to get this out.

So what are my excuses? Procrastination mainly.

My next post was going to about Chuang Yi's "Vampire Knight", but to be honest my feelings towards this series as a whole are lukewarm at best so the motivation just wasn't there at the best of times. It was a chore to read and a chore to write about.  Several months passed before I could borrow the Viz edition out of the library. What I should have done is switch to another title. I moved house in January too to be closer to work.

None of these are valid excuses, but I hope you can forgive me. Vampire Knight will come out at some point, but for July I have other plans, which I will detail below.



Chuang Yi Publishing's Demise

Yes, sadly it is true. Or at least it was 4 months ago. Sorry about this post being so late. Chuang Yi seems to have decided to cease translating and publishing manga or at least that's what Madman Entertainment thinks as they will be steadily replacing Chuang Yi's book with their Viz equivalents. Madman guessed it really. My thoughts are that Chuang Yi prints copies for Madman with their logo on it in Singapore, as I have come across multiple copies of the same title, both with Madman logo and without it. That's why Madman can't just print out more copies themselves. They only have distribution rights.

For anyone who wants to read the original post by Madman, I will put a link to it here. This means titles will be increasingly hard to get hold of as stores will run out and drive the prices up on second-hand copies as they become collectable. From what it looks like, Chuang Yi seems content to quietly fade away and hope we forget about them.

We won't, but they can dream on.

Anyway, guess we'd better get started and move on then. I still have a good enough collection to continue this blog and am still very interested in writing it. As you can see here, there's still plenty of material to go through, providing I can get the western equivalents out of the library as I don't wish to buy the same books twice.



Beyond that, the treasure hunt begins! For now, some books can still be found in the shops and online, but before long it looks like eBay and other marketplace sites will become the main channel for getting these books.

What's Next?

So now, what does the immediate future hold?
Well, to show my excitement over recent announcements, I shall be making July a magical girl month. I was a huge fan of the original Sailor Moon dub growing up and even still have fond memories of the Cardcaptors dub as they were among my first anime. Flash forward to the future and the idea of Sailor Moon getting a Blu Ray release and a redub is just....amazing!!!! I can't wait to hear it. Now if only someone would license it for the UK as Viz's releases tend to be locked to region A/1, which I'm a sad puppy over. Manga Entertainment UK has an announcement for July 19th and in the wake of this news, my prayers may be answered.

On a similar subject, I have also preordered the US Madoka Magica movie release as I did not previously own the Blu Ray and Aniplex of America's Blu Rays tend to be region free. Here's hoping that the dub has been re-recorded however I can't help, but feel if that was the case they would have announced it by now. It'll still be worth it for the better audio and updated visuals though I heard they cut out Mami's backstory.

Where was I? Oh yes! So I shall be doing volume 1 comparisons for Cardcaptor Sakura and Tokyo Mew Mew this month and giving my thoughts on the recent (2-year-old) release of Kodansha USA's "Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon".  I'm not entirely sure what I can say at this point that no one else hasn't already, but still feel the need to express my opinion as this was the manga that started my interest in different English translations and SailorHell's coverage of it, which I do recommend checking out.

What happens after July?! Well, Questions will be answered! Lines will be drawn!

Why is one Chuang Yi title flipped when none of the others are?

Why do some titles not translate the sound effects? Don't they know how scanlation-y that is?

Stay tuned, hopefully, I'll stay on track!

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