Introduction

Greetings to all manga fans, otaku, wherever you may be!

Let me begin by thanking anyone and everyone who reads this as this is my first blog and am still unsure of the ins and outs of writing one of these. The story of my love of anime and manga goes back to when I was, but 10 years of age. It was long ago, in times of old, when saying you liked Pokemon was actually acceptable and even prompted praise. 

Anyone else remember those times?!

My life began in merry old England, among the cobblestone streets and thatched cottages...oh, who am I kidding?! I was born in the city port of Southampton. Still England though! I didn't make that up!  I spent most of my happy childhood there before my Dad's job sent us abroad for a number of years (Switzerland and Thailand). A story for another time though. Back to the anime.


At first, all was calm and quiet, then suddenly wham! Bam! Pokemon man! The craze struck my school in Switzerland like a flash of lightning. The trading cards were everywhere until they were eventually banned, with the anime following soon behind. Upon returning to the UK, we finally got satellite TV and I was introduced to various forms of absolute joy incarnate, which included Sailor Moon, Shinzo, Monster Rancher, Escaflowne and Yu-gi-oh.

Nowadays I've immigrated to the land down under, Australia, and have only recently rediscovered the joys of anime. Manga, I've only started to appreciate more recently due to renewed interest in art and by extension sequential storytelling. Anyway, here in the land of Oz, where Madman Entertainment is the ruling distributor of manga, I encountered a publisher I had never seen before. 

To the internet!!!!

 

Where imagination takes flight.

Chuang Yi Publishing turned out to be a company in Singapore that licenced and translated manga into English and simplified Chinese for an Eastern audience. However many of their titles are distributed by Madman making them available to buy in Australia. You can imagine how confused I was upon seeing the same volume of Vampire Knight on the shelf, in the bookstore, with two different covers.

EHHH??!!

The Shooting Star that is this Blog!

Just the beginning.

 
 Now having had the distinct pleasure of reading some of Chuang Yi's translations of some of my favourite stories, I hit upon the idea to create this blog and compare them with their Western equivalents. Namely the American English translations done by Viz Media, Tokyopop, etc. There's also the fact I don't have a large number of people to discuss this within my everyday life, so I guess this is my way of reaching out to the anime and manga community.

Chuang Yi releases have slipcovers!

 However, alternate English translations do not just exist in Singapore. There have been multiple translations of several titles in the States as well as bilingual editions released by Kodansha Japan. In time I hope I will be able to get to those too. I consider myself a relatively simple person so unfortunately profound explanations and multi-layered analyses may be absent from this blog although I will strive to be as in-depth as possible.

I look forward to traversing the perils of awkward dialogue, experiencing the joys of inspirational dialogue as well as everything in between. Presentation of the artwork and overall quality of the book will also be touched upon.

Alright, enough with my waffling!

Hope you guys will join me, but until then I howl a fond farewell to you all.

Thanks again for reading!