Why have I been so quiet lately? Because I've been busy getting to work on THIS project! That's right, Franken Fran will now be back in business!
I have teamed up with good ol' Hox, who is translating, to scan and edit Franken Fran from here on, starting with the volume 3 extra chapter. It's a very good series, which I feel didn't deserve a whole year of being neglected. If you never bothered to pick up Fran, perhaps now is a good time to start?
In this short little extra, we learn a bit of back story on an old friend and resident of the Madaraki estate.
I've uploaded the chapter to online reading services, but you can also get a .rar of the chapter right here!
Franken Fran Volume 3 Extra
Also, please head over to Hox's site as well! The man does a great service to the community by scanlating very good series that tend to be criminally underrated. You can find Hox here!
Thank you SO much for this!
ReplyDeleteThe quality of the scans is great.
Did you have to take your own Tankoubons apart to scan this?
@Anonymous
ReplyDeleteActually, no!
Given that it was so few pages, and at the very back of the tank, it was fairly easy to flatten it properly in the scanner.
Some work in Photoshop also helped!
Unfortunately, for the scans of the upcoming volume 4 chapters, I've had to microwave and debind everything so far. The printing quality seems sort of shoddy, and in the cases of 2-page spreads, some pieces of the images were actually absent from the printing all together!
I almost shot myself cleaning up chapter 25.
Amuro:
ReplyDeleteAs in "This part is to close to the spine to read anyway, so let's save some ink by not printing it"-absent? Thought that Japanese manga publishers where so much better than US publishers, but I guess there are some exceptions...
Anyway, awesome that you're going so far as to destroy your own volumes. Guess it's almost impossible to make good scans if you didn't, but still, I would hate it if I had to destroy my own volumes.
@Anonymous
ReplyDeleteYes, something like that. The right-hand side of the spread was cropped off in the middle with a black line, as if they were going sort of "frame" both sides, but then when they got to the left-hand side of the spread, they just said "Oh, forget it," and shaved off a centimeter or two of the original art instead.
It's hard to describe, but it was incredibly frustrating. It's not 100% perfect, but I think it looks pretty good as long as you're not actively searching for defects in it.
As far as destroying them goes..
I can't read Japanese, so I didn't purchase them for my own personal collection or anything. I bought them specifically to scan them for this project. I would have preferred not to take them apart, but I was prepared to do it anyway.
An entire year for a series like Fran to ignored was unforgivable.
Thank you, this is awesome and you are awesome.
ReplyDeleteI can't thank you enough for this. I was delighted when I happened upon this series, and was disheartened to see that the scanlations had dropped off. Thank you for taking on the job to bring us all this great series. Thank you, thank you so much!
ReplyDeleteHi
ReplyDeleteThank you so much. I love this manga, too. I was really surprised and glad to see FrankenFran under the newest chapters at MangaFox. I thought I never could finish this manga but fortunately their are people like you.
You, sir, are a gentleman and a scholar. Glad that my favorite manga series is back into action again. Should we expect anything outside of volume 4?
ReplyDelete@ Anonymous
ReplyDeleteExcellent question, Anon!
The answer, to be blunt, is "Yes."
If you would like me to be more specific, the answer is "Yes, but we're not entirely sure when, exactly."
We have to wait for Volume 5 to become available for purchase. So far, it's not even up for pre-order yet. I'm keeping an eye out, though.
As you're well aware, there was a gap of an entire year between updates. This is due to the fact that Snoopycool was providing his own raws from Champion RED magazine. If I went and managed to get a subscription to Champion RED, we would be missing a lot of the serialization run.
So, unfortunately, the only logical way to catch up now is through the tankouban releases. Fran fans, however, have shown an amazing amount of patience during the gray area, and I don't think most will mind.
we would have loved to continue it; unfortunately our main translator...snoopy, disappeared on us and left us hanging. My wife was actually the editor for the first 3 volumes done by snoopycool. She's glad someone picked it up because it did need to be finished.
ReplyDelete@CCHHunter
ReplyDeleteWasn't necessarily trying to point blame at anyone; rather, just stating snoopy's mysterious disappearance as fact.
I can see why you'd want to keep working on it. It has proven to be a lot of fun to do. Also, kudos to your awesome wife.
Thanks a lot for picking up this manga, I really like it. And one question: will you some day reedit volume 3?
ReplyDelete@Anonymous
ReplyDeleteI have given that some thought, and it's a possibility, but I can't say for sure.