It's even older if you count those weird non-canon self-published prototype chapters where Miu was Micchan and had a pet panda and Nobue and Chika had an older brother. I think those date from around 1998 or 1999.
Thanks for the translation!
I love looking forward to reading the next chapter and then finally reading it two years later. (Not that I'm blaming the translator for the manga's sporadic release schedule over the past 13 years or so.)
The manga celebrated its 20th anniversary in the summer of 2024 so I presume the first chapter with "Mako-chan" was back in 2004 or early 2005 at the latest.
It's the end of summer break so this chapter takes place around early September. Considering that Japanese graduation is in February or March, the baby would have to be around 3 months premature for it to arrive before graduation.
Funny you should say that; I noticed that, in the art on the title page, Sou looks like she has two right feet, which seems like a really difficult mistake to make for an artist so focused on drawing feet.
One thing that surprised me about this chapter is that I assumed that Miko's father was roughly a decade older than Miko's mother from the way he was drawn (and the picture on the home shrine shows that he hasn't really "aged" visually as a ghost) but, if anything, the flashback shows Mamoru...
I've been posting updates on Jirou Sugiura's progress on newer chapters in the thread for the most recent chapter. I know the chapter 55 discussion thread is still there but, since the easy way to find the thread from the main page for the manga is gone along with the chapter, I guess I have to...
This link has picture of earbuds more relevant to what kid Mamoru was wearing in this chapter, the Sony MDR-E252, the first of their "NUDE" ("Natural Unequalled Dynamic Earbuds") in-ear earbud range from 1982. (I think Sony did away with the "NUDE" acronym shortly thereafter.)
The earbuds in...
I think that Wada's initial plan, getting carried by a princess by Suzuki, would still have been a huge hit even after the kiss from the previous contestant.
Suzuki wasn't mad at Tomoki for getting kissed by Wada, Suzuki was mad at Tomoki for punching Wada.
Regarding the blurb in the title panel describing a video that I presume will give us our first glimpses at the upcoming fifth season of Minami-ke, I checked the Kodansha Young Magazine Youtube channel and the only Minami-ke video I could find was this promo from 2012 advertising the Minami-ke...
Here's the full rough layout version of Chapter 58 on Pixiv.
Jirou Sugiura has already posted the first four rough layout pages of chapter 59, which continues the storyline from the previous chapter, on Twitter.
I'm not sure if he's finishing the artwork on chapters 56 and 57 while doing the...