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It's not over yet, there's another 10 pages or so, then the extra chapter and a long letter from Yukari to Gaku.
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Apr 11, 2015 10:25
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Krinkle posted:The one thing I liked about the 2001 or so adaptation of the time machine was the realization that you can't save your wife with a time machine you only invented because she died. There was a really brutal montage of his wife getting murdered by random rear end things over and over again and I think he went to the future and humanity's last active holographic info desk AI spelled it out for him. I'm sure that conceit was in better fiction for a hundred drat years earlier but I must have missed it. I had my mind blown, briefly, by a truly awful movie. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cSs6eKmTCDY It was not a good movie, at all. But man, did it have some really really good moments in it.
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Apr 11, 2015 11:31
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I finally got around to clearing some of my backlog of manga and finished this. I'm not entirely sure I liked the direction the ending took. Steins;gate spoilers but Yukari's situation really parallels Kurisu's situation in the original world line, and I think that mirroring the resolution to that would have been more satisfying. For those who haven't read or watched Steins;Gate, the whole plot is kicked off by Okabe seeing Kurisu get stabbed and it's resolved by Okabe tricking his past self into seeing her get stabbed without her actually getting stabbed. It would have ignored the philosophical themes this manga was going for, but I find Gaku's sudden shift to a laissez-faire attitude to be a little jarring. I also find the philosophy to ring a bit hollow; Gaku was acting to protect Yukari from a specific danger, not to trample on her right to self-determination. If someone is going to shoot me and my friend stops them, I don't feel that I've been deprived of choice in any way. Captain Bravo posted:This is actually kind of beautiful in it's simplicity. Gaku explored an infinite number of universes, but they were all universes in which Yukari dies. She couldn't not exist as a multiuniversal being in a universe where Yukari lives. My problem with this is, sure, Gaku can only try to save Yukari because Yukari died and needed to be saved, but nothing actually happened to prevent her from dying in the end. She just doesn't, for no apparent reason, except that the weird reverse cause-effect chain effect doesn't force Yukari's death to cause Gaku's powers. Nothing is stopping JAUNT in this universe from being as bloodthirsty as they were in previous universes, and I think there's something of a plot hole around why they don't. In the universes where Gaku has powers something, often JAUNT, has to kill her, but there's nothing in a universe where Gaku doesn't have powers that says they can't or won't go after Yukari anyway. Great manga, despite my nitpick. Thank you Dr_Amazing and FutureCop for the translations.
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Apr 19, 2015 13:17
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Desuwa posted:I finally got around to clearing some of my backlog of manga and finished this. That sounds terrible IMO. Not that I was 100% satisfied with how Qualia ended, but at least it's not a terrible twist thing.
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Apr 19, 2015 15:01
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Insurrectionist posted:That sounds terrible IMO. Not that I was 100% satisfied with how Qualia ended, but at least it's not a terrible twist thing. I don't have any strong opinion on how Qualia did it but it's not a "twist" in Steins;Gate at all, the entire show is pretty meticulously structured to require exactly the resolution it had. It's a good time travel story. e: And more importantly, a good story about a loser jerk with delusions of grandeur learning to live up to his delusions.
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Apr 19, 2015 15:04
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Tuxedo Catfish posted:I don't have any strong opinion on how Qualia did it but it's not a "twist" in Steins;Gate at all, the entire show is pretty meticulously structured to require exactly the resolution it had. It's a good time travel story. Sorry but that resolution is one of the dumbest things I've ever read. I'm sure it comes off better in story but there's only so much you can do with it. Besides I'm not a big fan of time-travel stories where someone sets out to prevent something from happening in the past and it actually works anyway. Hence why I enjoyed Gaku's repeated ever-more-ridiculous failures so much.
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Apr 19, 2015 15:29
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Insurrectionist posted:Sorry but that resolution is one of the dumbest things I've ever read. I'm sure it comes off better in story but there's only so much you can do with it. Besides I'm not a big fan of time-travel stories where someone sets out to prevent something from happening in the past and it actually works anyway. Hence why I enjoyed Gaku's repeated ever-more-ridiculous failures so much. It's pretty dumb to judge stories according to how accurately they portray something that isn't actually possible anyways, rather than by the emotional / human point they're trying to make. Like, Qualia works because Gaku is overstepping herself, so it's a story about how that backfires. Steins;Gate is a story about a guy who talks a big game while doing absolutely nothing, and how he has to step up to become an adult / a better person, and the time travel mechanics reflect that. You might as well get mad at Back to the Future for being full of anachronisms. Tuxedo Catfish fucked around with this message at 15:37 on Apr 19, 2015 |
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Apr 19, 2015 15:35
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Insurrectionist posted:Sorry but that resolution is one of the dumbest things I've ever read. I'm sure it comes off better in story but there's only so much you can do with it. Besides I'm not a big fan of time-travel stories where someone sets out to prevent something from happening in the past and it actually works anyway. Hence why I enjoyed Gaku's repeated ever-more-ridiculous failures so much.
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Apr 19, 2015 15:44
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Insurrectionist posted:Sorry but that resolution is one of the dumbest things I've ever read. I'm sure it comes off better in story but there's only so much you can do with it. Besides I'm not a big fan of time-travel stories where someone sets out to prevent something from happening in the past and it actually works anyway. Hence why I enjoyed Gaku's repeated ever-more-ridiculous failures so much. More S;G spoilers: Well the trick is that Kurisu doesn't actually need to get stabbed, Okabe just needs to think she was. He doesn't even set out to save her; he actually saves her from being stabbed completely by accident before even realizing he had a time machine, but in order to resolve the rest of the plot he has to un-save her without un-saving her. As for the repeated failures to save someone, that actually happens with a different character in S;G, and the resolution to that is to get out of that "set" of worlds, much the same as Qualia did. But again, I feel S;G handled that better because once they've solved that problem there's an actual guarantee that said character won't be killed. She could still die for any random reason, sure, but unlike Yukari there isn't a shady worldwide organization still trying to get her eyes. Then again you should probably just watch Steins;Gate. The anime was really great and easily my second favourite from 2011, so it's worth a watch if it wasn't already sitting in your backlog.
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Apr 19, 2015 22:23
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I'm so hype for the swimsuit chapter E. The steins;gate anim is legit good and you should peep it asap
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Apr 19, 2015 23:26
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Namtab posted:I'm so hype for the swimsuit chapter In general I think S;G actually does a good job of exploring some of the same themes as Qualia, it's just undermined by its tone. I get the impression that in some cases they used the goofy tone to soften what would otherwise be relatively dark ideas and themes - it's hard to interpret the conclusions of Feyris and Ruka's arcs as anything other than soul-crushing, but for both characters they soften the blow by making them play goofy pseudo-comic-relief roles. I saved your dad! Wait, nevermind, he's dead again, because I want to save my girlfriend. Hey I gave you the one thing you've wanted all your life! J/K, enjoy going back to a life of dysphoria and rejection. S;G and Qualia both deconstruct the traditional narrative for this type of story, as well - the idea that a 'perfect ending' can be achieved given sufficient effort, and that it's possible for a Protagonist (or anyone) to engineer circumstances to achieve an optimal result. In S;G I'd argue that this is a layered thing criticizing the way players & designers approach branching narrative in visual novels - followed to its logical conclusion, this approach turns all the social interactions & choices in a VN into a spreadsheet where you fiddle with numbers to get the choices you want. Virtue's Last Reward does this rather directly as well. The S;G VN actually has a side branch that explores this briefly and it's really dark. S;G's ending undermines this a bit in a way that feels slightly unearned, but it's at least clever and internally consistent. In the past 5-10 years we've seen a handful of VNs and games that are grappling with the narrative & psychological consequences of modern game design - at this point many VNs, otome games etc are literally just a list of routes you select to get an ending. I view Qualia as a story that addresses these same themes without being gamey in any sense - Gaku's mindset is essentially that of a VN player looking for the 'perfect ending' that has to exist, because that's how stories work, and treating human beings as agency-less tools. Life is Strange is a cool recent example of this because it just dives straight in: You can rewind everything, all your choices are reversible, you can fiddle around to decide which one you like best. You'd expect that to undermine the significance of choices and make them meaningless (and it sort of does...) but then the designers go to REALLY INTERESTING, thought-provoking places with it. If you like Qualia and/or S;G and have a few hours for a game, maybe try LiS out. I like Qualia's ending because it doesn't have that feeling of being unearned or 'too perfect', but I will have to reserve final judgement until someone competent has translated the final bits (the lovely version of 18 up on readers is incomprehensible).
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Apr 20, 2015 04:12
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Oh, is Life is Strange supposed to be good? It looked like the teen-drivel version of Heavy Rain to me.
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Apr 20, 2015 04:19
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HellCopter posted:Oh, is Life is Strange supposed to be good? It looked like the teen-drivel version of Heavy Rain to me. If you like Qualia the Purple, you'll probably like it. It plays a fair bit with limited time travel without putting you into a position where you feel like it's just an undo button for mistakes.
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Apr 20, 2015 04:31
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So while I know it's not really the thread for it, can you either link to an LP of that really dark side path in S;G, or at least summarize it?
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Apr 24, 2015 02:14
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http://lparchive.org/SteinsGate/
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Apr 24, 2015 02:20
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Okay I found out http://lparchive.org/SteinsGate/Update%20123/ and click next like four times. Gross. I remembered it differently. I forgot this part for a reason.
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Apr 24, 2015 02:36
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But I liked how Groundhog day was essentially a hell for Williams until he understood and tried to make things better. Hell the movie pretty much explained he can't do everything he wants like save the hobo from dying. That he should try to do the best he can, but also not beat himself over things out of his control. It wasn't necessarily a perfect ending, but it was the best he could try to make of a situation.
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Apr 24, 2015 03:16
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 FINAL CHAPTER TRANSLATED, BOOK DONE, GOONS WIN, etc.  And that's all she wrote, folks! You can find the final chapter in complete form here: http://imgur.com/a/IJEVZ It's a little silly that it exists because I thought the last 'ending' we had wrapped it up quite well, but there are still some nice things in the added epilogue to ponder over. Enjoy! Just wanna thank everyone again for helping through this process: ActionZero for introducing everyone to this great read, Dr. Amazing for kicking off the translation project, and a bunch of other goons that helped not only through editing, but in providing stimulating conversation. It's been a blast and I feel like not only have I learned so much about Japanese and the translation process, but quantum physics and philosophy as well. Gotta love hard-sci-fi! Unfortunately, there is a small note of sadness: I wasn't able to completely translate the bonus 'letter' from Yukari to Gaku. I gave it the ol' college try, and I might give it another try in future, but right now it's too far outside of my skill set that I wasn't able to provide a good enough translation that would be any better than the one already provided, and in a timely manner. Not only is it incredibly time-consuming because it has no furigana (having to look up each kanji individually by stroke/radical...ugh) and other annoyances, but it's also difficult to 'shape' the text in a fluid way without the helpful flow provided by manga. If anything, I have a newfound respect for light novel translators and I now realize why most translations for those sound the stilted way they do. However, it's not all gloom and doom. As I said, there still is a (albeit awkward) translation of the letter available, and as an added bonus to make up for my failing, we do have... SWIMSUIT CHAPTER~! As long as you don't see any obvious mistakes in the text that I didn't catch, you can feel free to post these chapters wherever you like (and if you do see some mistakes, let me know and I'll fix them lickity-split). Cheers!
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May 2, 2015 06:02
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wait the last time you updated wasn't the end?
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May 2, 2015 06:07
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I am happy for Kasoku-kun and his amazing drill
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May 2, 2015 06:08
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Thank you so much for your hard work FutureCop! I LOVE THIS STORY!!! And hey, at leat no I know that Yukari finally survived
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May 2, 2015 06:23
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FutureCop posted:
I'm tempted to try and fix /a/nonymous's terrible version of the letter. Maybe if I use the original JP as a reference and do a couple editing passes... Thanks again for translating all the chapters. You and Dr. Amazing did a spectacular job. P.S. (spoilers for the end of ch18) At the end of ch18, after the letter, there's a drawing of adult marii and adult gaku. Gaku looks like she did in most of the adult chapters. Marii is taller. I'm not sure, but I like to think this suggests that Marii lived after all and Gaku never saw her letter (or at least never saw it under bad circumstances.) The letter also seems to pretty clearly express the series' yuri subtext, so I guess that's unambiguous now... Even with all the ambiguity - this series doesn't really have a concrete, clearly understandable ending - Qualia is a great ride. Gaku's character arc is excellent and it's a really thought-provoking story. I'm glad I read it.
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May 2, 2015 06:54
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Dark_Tzitzimine posted:And hey, at leat no I know that Yukari finally survived I'm not sure, because that letter was basically a "if you're reading this, I'm probably dead, so here's my final message to you" kind of thing.
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May 2, 2015 11:21
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FutureCop posted:Unfortunately, there is a small note of sadness: I wasn't able to completely translate the bonus 'letter' from Yukari to Gaku. I gave it the ol' college try, and I might give it another try in future, but right now it's too far outside of my skill set that I wasn't able to provide a good enough translation that would be any better than the one already provided, and in a timely manner. Not only is it incredibly time-consuming because it has no furigana (having to look up each kanji individually by stroke/radical...ugh) and other annoyances, but it's also difficult to 'shape' the text in a fluid way without the helpful flow provided by manga. If anything, I have a newfound respect for light novel translators and I now realize why most translations for those sound the stilted way they do. Thank you for your scanlation, it was a really fun read. Try this site to speed up your Kanji research: http://jisho.org/ You can search for any radical in a Kanji, not just the one most dictionarys categorize them under, or just draw them.
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May 2, 2015 11:22
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Lurking Haro posted:Thank you for your scanlation, it was a really fun read. If you're using Jisho, make sure you're using the beta: http://beta.jisho.org/ it's spectacular.
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May 2, 2015 11:25
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Kaelan Zero posted:If you're using Jisho, make sure you're using the beta: http://beta.jisho.org/ it's spectacular. The beta is actually the official version now, the old one is now available at http://classic.jisho.org/
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May 2, 2015 11:46
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I'll join in on recommending Steins;Gate. The anime was awesome, to the extent that I'm having trouble getting traction on the VN because I've seen it animated and know where the story's going, for the most part. There's still plenty of branches I could check out, but right now it's a bit of a slog to get to that point, though ultimately I just need to be liberal with the skip or fast forward functions. In any case, the anime is one of my all time favorites, just good old fashioned fun with time travel.
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May 2, 2015 13:36
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I have never been more happy than I am right now
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May 2, 2015 16:12
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Good swimsuit chapter, worth the wait
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May 2, 2015 16:16
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Kaelan Zero posted:For kanji lookup a good companion to Jisho is Kanjitomo. It uses a similar dictionary and does a pretty good job of OCRing kanji. I use the two of them together when trying to speed-translate printed/written Japanese. Holy crap, Kanjitomo is amazing. jisho.org is great, but it can sometimes take annoyingly long for me to ID a kanji. This'll speed up the occasional translation I do immensely.
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May 2, 2015 18:31
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Namtab posted:Good swimsuit chapter, worth the wait Only Yukari can see the giant propellor in Gaku's butt.
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May 2, 2015 20:11
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Thank you FutureCop! Awesome manga , worth the work.
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May 2, 2015 20:21
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Kaelan Zero posted:For kanji lookup a good companion to Jisho is Kanjitomo. It uses a similar dictionary and does a pretty good job of OCRing kanji. I use the two of them together when trying to speed-translate printed/written Japanese. Oh my god, that is the greatest thing ever.
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May 4, 2015 15:07
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Are there any plans about getting the better scans up onto batoto to replace the 4chan speed translations for the last few chapters?
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May 5, 2015 21:51
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Post'em yourself. You can have multipler versions per chapter.
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May 6, 2015 01:47
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Thank you so much for all your work on this series, FutureCop and Dr. Amazing. This is one of my favourite manga series ever, and it's wonderful to have it fully scanlated.
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May 6, 2015 05:11
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Ah, didn't realize the chapters weren't up on Batoto yet. Sorry about that: I've now uploaded them. Didn't mean to put that on you too much, Kyte, though thank you very much for uploading the other chapters previously. EDIT: Holy mackerel, I didn't realize I got an avatar! Cheers for whoever did that, I love it 
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May 11, 2015 23:20
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This was a pretty fun series. Thanks for keeping it updated.
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May 11, 2015 23:54
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Yeah thanks guys I enjoyed reading it.
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May 12, 2015 00:15
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FutureCop posted:Ah, didn't realize the chapters weren't up on Batoto yet. Sorry about that: I've now uploaded them. Didn't mean to put that on you too much, Kyte, though thank you very much for uploading the other chapters previously. Oh poo poo I meant to do it and I forgot. Whoops. 
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May 12, 2015 02:57
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