Golden Kamui: Snow Country For Old Men

The Something Awful Forums > The Finer Arts > VEGETA > Golden Kamui: Snow Country For Old Men

MachuPikacchu: Oct 15, 2012; Sacre vert! Maman!

I just binge-read all of this. How can one series be so good? HOW, I ask you. It manages to be consistently funny and exciting and informative (and, uh...appetite inducing) while maintaining a consistent tone.

Favorite part has to be Tanigaki confidently saying "boner" when he turns good guy.

# ? Sep 21, 2017 19:31

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# ? May 17, 2024 02:51

Theowulv: Feb 21, 2015; My wall can now attack

This manga only has two flaws, killing Edogai off way too early, and the fact that Ryu doesn't show up enough.

# ? Sep 21, 2017 19:51

MachuPikacchu: Oct 15, 2012; Sacre vert! Maman!

On the other hand, I just noticed that Sugimoto's tin of ~~miso~~ osoma gradually gets emptier as the series goes on.

# ? Sep 21, 2017 20:32

HouseofGlass: Apr 18, 2005; Quick! To the Bat-Fax!

So it looks like Viz did a DMCA takedown and asked batoto to remove every single chapter of Golden Kamuy. That's a real shame, since I prefer uploading on batoto since it lets us reupload and fix errors if we need to. I thought Viz wasn't quite as quick to remove series as, say, Yen Press, but I guess I was wrong.

But more interestingly, I was looking at pictures of the Viz version of volume 2 on twitter and I noticed something. It seems an awful lot like they just, well, plagiarized our scanlation.

Viz

Ours

Viz

Ours

Viz

Ours

Viz

Ours

Sure, there's only so many ways that you can write something, but some of that stuff is almost word for word what we had. Also, what's most suspicious to me is that the Ainu is exactly the same. Given that a written Ainu language was a late invention that didn't always have a consistent romanization, there's a lot of room for different ways to write out Ainu words. I'm the one that transcribed all the Ainu words, and I used a lot of guesswork when it came to the spelling of some confusing words and how I decided to split words up in a sentence. So the fact that they wrote the same thing would be pretty surprising if their work was totally original. I can't say for 100% sure, but it sure seems like they just copied what we had, changed a few words, and then got paid for it. Not that we can do poo poo about it as a Highly Illegal Scanlating Group, though!

HouseofGlass fucked around with this message at 15:49 on Sep 22, 2017

# ? Sep 22, 2017 15:43

Rodenthar Drothman: May 14, 2013; I think I will continue
watching this twilight world
as long as time flows.

Huzzah!

(Geno for viz, not you.
Because: Seriously, viz?)

# ? Sep 22, 2017 16:01

BravestOfTheLamps: Oct 12, 2012; by FactsAreUseless; Lipstick Apathy

HouseofGlass posted:

So it looks like Viz did a DMCA takedown and asked batoto to remove every single chapter of Golden Kamuy. That's a real shame, since I prefer uploading on batoto since it lets us reupload and fix errors if we need to. I thought Viz wasn't quite as quick to remove series as, say, Yen Press, but I guess I was wrong.

But more interestingly, I was looking at pictures of the Viz version of volume 2 on twitter and I noticed something. It seems an awful lot like they just, well, plagiarized our scanlation.

Sure, there's only so many ways that you can write something, but some of that stuff is almost word for word what we had. Also, what's most suspicious to me is that the Ainu is exactly the same. Given that a written Ainu language was a late invention that didn't always have a consistent romanization, there's a lot of room for different ways to write out Ainu words. I'm the one that transcribed all the Ainu words, and I used a lot of guesswork when it came to the spelling of some confusing words and how I decided to split words up in a sentence. So the fact that they wrote the same thing would be pretty surprising if their work was totally original. I can't say for 100% sure, but it sure seems like they just copied what we had, changed a few words, and then got paid for it. Not that we can do poo poo about it as a Highly Illegal Scanlating Group, though!

lol owned

# ? Sep 22, 2017 16:02

HouseofGlass: Apr 18, 2005; Quick! To the Bat-Fax!

I feel like I probably made some mistakes along the way (nobody's perfect!). I want to email the poor translator and warn him of great danger. But I also think if they ended up copying one of our mistakes word for word that would be just about the funniest thing.

# ? Sep 22, 2017 16:10

BravestOfTheLamps: Oct 12, 2012; by FactsAreUseless; Lipstick Apathy

Like that one where Tsurumi makes a direct reference to Godfather Death (the Grimm fairy tale) but "shinigami" isn't translated?

# ? Sep 22, 2017 16:15

Bad Seafood: Dec 10, 2010; If you must blink, do it now.

HouseofGlass posted:

I thought Viz wasn't quite as quick to remove series as, say, Yen Press, but I guess I was wrong.

They aren't, typically. There are tons of other VIZ series that remain up on sites like Batoto. I could speculate why they changed their position, for good or for ill, but honestly I have no idea.

# ? Sep 22, 2017 16:23

HouseofGlass: Apr 18, 2005; Quick! To the Bat-Fax!

BravestOfTheLamps posted:

Like that one where Tsurumi makes a direct reference to Godfather Death (the Grimm fairy tale) but "shinigami" isn't translated?

No, actually, I think it's a reference to a rakugo story called "Shinigami." This one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3IH4DK-h3iQ

The rakugo story seems to be an adaptation based on the Godfather Death story, but I don't think Tsurumi is directly referencing the Grimm fairy tale. Either way though, it doesn't change the fact that I didn't catch the reference at all, even though I saw that anime! Whoops!

HouseofGlass fucked around with this message at 16:50 on Sep 22, 2017

# ? Sep 22, 2017 16:39

Okuyasu Nijimura: May 31, 2015

It is SO funny that you mention the idea of your scanlation having been plagiarized, HouseofGlass. I recently re-read from the beginning on bato.to and just had a sort of thought like, hmmm, I wonder how the scanlation stacked up against the printed version and I noticed that it was quite often not just similar (VERY similar) but just about verbatim. I guess I didn't say anything about it because I wasn't really sure what to say about it, but it was noticeable. Particularly the Ainu, as you said. And that's not coincidental, that's not just "well, there are only so many ways you can say it..." because we all know that as far as translation goes, actually, there are a LOT of ways you can say it while still being more or less true to the original version. Translators still have recognizable styles to an extent.

It's this same kinda stuff that gets talked about round and around. I picked up golden kamuy because my friends on twitter were talking about how amazing it was before the physical volumes came out, but ordered it the second I could. I literally would not have known about it had people not been reading your scanlations. I probably wouldn't have stuck with it had the quality of your translations also been noticeable. I have every intention of buying every volume available, and have actually started buying up a few JPN volumes (I wanted 11 to see a couple differences y'all didn't have yet cuz you were going week to week by that point).

But yeah, you can't do poo poo about it since it's a scanlation. Well, thanks for your hard work. It's appreciated.

Okuyasu Nijimura fucked around with this message at 09:07 on Sep 23, 2017

# ? Sep 23, 2017 09:00

Rodenthar Drothman: May 14, 2013; I think I will continue
watching this twilight world
as long as time flows.

I've worked on series that have been picked up in the past, and it's actually pretty common for this to happen. It may be that they did just verbatim take it from the scanlator's work, but it could also be because they read your work before they picked it up. So any reading of your work that they had you done before they picked it up would of course color their future translations.

It's impossible to tell if it was definitely one way or the other, but the fact that they actually went after the scanlations is kind of damning.

# ? Sep 23, 2017 17:03

Okuyasu Nijimura: May 31, 2015

I actually wondered myself how common it is. It was immediately obvious to me in this instance because of something out of the ordinary in terms of the timing on the way I read things.

# ? Sep 23, 2017 20:09

Law Cheetah: Mar 3, 2012

it seems like it would be cheaper for the company to just buy the translation from you guys. i think thats what happened when the Beck manga got licensed. when this kind of thing happens is it their contractors pulling a fast one on Viz?

# ? Sep 23, 2017 20:39

Okuyasu Nijimura: May 31, 2015

It's cool when you steal a translation and still take like 4 months to put out a volume :laugh:

I feel like GK has a slower release schedule than other volumes I buy(I think most I get are spaced out 3 mon?) but I may not keep up well since I usually just load up as many as I can at a time via preorder then forget about them until they show up at my door.

# ? Sep 23, 2017 20:44

Josuke Higashikata: Mar 7, 2013

work smart not hard that's why nintendo sell you roms they've downloaded from places like emuparadise on the virtual console eshop and why you get no-cd cracks with the crack group dummy info deleted from the .exe through steam on old games they do it because the people they're copying from don't really have a leg to stand on. definitely sucks that they can take it and claim it's theirs though.

# ? Sep 23, 2017 20:57

BravestOfTheLamps: Oct 12, 2012; by FactsAreUseless; Lipstick Apathy

I had a dream that I received a package from the author, and turns out there was a portrait of me as a Golden Kamui character in there, which also doubled as a teabag. It was because I backed his Kickstarter for an animated short starring Shiraishi (he was asking for 10 million dollars, got 200 million dollars from fans worldwide).

The portrait didn't look anything like me, but I was so excited that I woke up.

# ? Sep 26, 2017 20:09

Pewdiepie: Oct 31, 2010

BravestOfTheLamps posted:

I had a dream that I received a package from the author, and turns out there was a portrait of me as a Golden Kamui character in there, which also doubled as a teabag. It was because I backed his Kickstarter for an animated short starring Shiraishi (he was asking for 10 million dollars, got 200 million dollars from fans worldwide).

The portrait didn't look anything like me, but I was so excited that I woke up.

Congratulations.

# ? Sep 26, 2017 22:49