Sunday, March 20, 2011

OK guys seriously.

I've received even more feedback about the last chapter, which many of you feel was sub-par, and I would like to clear up some lingering misconceptions which I know people have.

1. Red Hawk was IN ANY WAY to blame for ANYTHING
No. No no no no no no no. Red Hawk are really good people to us at JoJo Project. They offered us cleaners to help speed things along as a serious favor. All they did was do some redraws and page joins. Their work is very much appreciated; their experience and speed is something that JoJo Project can't hope to match for ages, and definitely not in time to try and do SBR once a week. The accusations that they're trying to "take over series" or that they fucked up chapter 71 just to call attention to themselves is really worrying. They are not "taking over" Steel Ball Run in the slightest; they stuck their necks out to do JoJo Project and the JoJo fanbase a really huge favor, but if this kind of reaction that both groups have been getting continues, they'll have to call the alliance off, which will leave you guys with slower SBR. Why would you do that? Why?

2. This chapter sucked.
Yeah, honestly, it kind of did. Our QC was a bit off, we weren't sure what to do with multiple people typesetting one chapter, and it didn't help that this is more than likely the most awkward chapter in SBR in ages. We couldn't have picked a worse chapter to have things go slightly wrong on if we tried, and that means everybody at both teams. For the next chapter, it'll be me doing both the typesetting and the script rewriting. If you're still unhappy with it at that point, you can be upset at me myself, not anybody else on either team. Before you judge anybody too harshly, please wait patiently for chapter 72. It is far longer, far more text, and if you don't like it then, well, please direct your complaints to JoJo Project, not Red Hawk.

3. Why are you still posting on 4chan, when all you get is trolled?
From this point on, we aren't. It's not worth it. You can leave feedback for JoJo Project on this blog or on the JoJo boards (in the appropriate threads there) and we will read it, but from this point on, if anybody is making a "new sbr thread", you can count on it not being an actual member of JoJo Project. We're doing this because we love JoJo and we love to spread the joy of this delightfully bizarre manga. When the internet hate machine is on in full force (hurrr hol horse?) and several of the group members are going to be trolled on sight even not in a JoJo thread, it's just not worth it for us anymore to bother with /a/.

I hope this has cleared up as many lingering misconceptions as possible. Wish me luck on chapter 72; it's a wordy one!
Saturday, March 19, 2011

Steel Ball Run chapter 71

Oh snap the release speed is not glacial! Thanks to Red Hawk for partnering with us on this and providing the cleaners we needed.

http://www.mediafire.com/?ml266o898vh29wt
http://www.sendspace.com/file/kfyig0

And because I was made aware of some pretty terrifying feedback from a certain imageboard where a lot of the JoJo fanbase is, here's a few answers to the complaints from Green Oval.

Bawwww Red Hawk get out of our JoJo, I remember when JoJo Project was two dudes in a basement, etc
JoJo Project is still JoJo Project. The only thing Red Hawk is providing us with are cleaners and a bit of help organizing ourselves. JoJo Project has always been rather a motley crew with severe disorganization problems, and a constant turnover of rookie cleaners. We had one of our rookie cleaners on this set, but we let Red Hawk help us with the redraws. It's the difference between 10 weeks and 1 week for a chapter, and no, I'm not even joking. If people are still angry that JoJo Project accepted an offer to help with cleaning, even if it means a drastic fall in speed if we leave the joint offer, we'll consider not doing this any more. But just because some people have some inexplicable issue with Red Hawk does not mean what they did for us at JoJo Project is any less awesome to us or that I am any less grateful.

The typesetting sucks/the script sucks/wtf happened to Freshy
Odd that everybody hates the typesetting this chapter, when last chapter, which was also primarily Freek typesetting, there were certain pages which everybody was praising for being some of the best typesetting yet in SBR. I don't understand it, and neither does he. Does everybody just miss when I used way the hell more fonts because I didn't know what the hell I was doing? As for the script sucking and/or Freshy's absence... Freshy is very, very busy, too busy at the moment to be working on SBR. (She has more important things to worry about like, oh, being Japanese and having family in Japan, as well as college classes with an insane workload.) It'd be nice if she could come back and help proofread, but I'll be proofreading in the future and despite my Japanese being kind of poor, I know JoJo more than most people and I'm not a terribly bad writer (this tl;dr shocked blog entry aside) so I think I can help a lot. Also, you can't blame Kewl or Freek or me or ANYBODY for this particular chapter sounding terrible; ever since this chapter first came out in Ultra Jump magazine, people hated it for sounding terrible in Japanese. We are not miracle workers. We cannot fix that there is stupid shit about winter catfishes and that this chapter is badly written by Araki without changing things so much that we'd really be releasing fakescans or parodyscans. Wait until next chapter before you judge us so harshly.

Shizuka I hate you, you're an attentionwhoring bitch
No, I'm really not, and I'm sorry if anybody hates me. I'm trying to do the best I can juggling what life I have with some severe illness and still trying to get SBR out. If things are occasionally kind of rough, or I make mistakes, I am sorry, but I'm just trying the best I can in a shitty situation. I will be attempting to fix some errors in v18 (which even I know has been a clusterfuck compared to previous volumes) for a full volume re-release, but as it is, I really am doing my best.
Saturday, March 12, 2011

Steel Ball Run chapter 70

Been a bit more than a week but I think we're doing OK!

Mediafire: http://www.mediafire.com/?cmxf7ecs9cbsb68
Sendspace: http://www.sendspace.com/file/7inyac

Thanks to Freek and Kewl for editing and translating, respectively.

Also, at this point, we don't know whether Araki himself is safe from the quakes. Odds are in his favor even if he was in Sendai at the time, but until we get more reliable word than just 2chan, all of us over here are hoping for the best!

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