A Flirty and Devoted Kouhai (Pre-Serialization)

[DirkHardpeck]

I mean, in the end what's the point of asking for permission if you're just gonna upload it under anonymous/no group to spite the artist when you get told no?

 

[Xeryo]

O k

 

[ShunZephyr]

@DirkHardpeck hmmm? I don't recall doing that? other people are doing it, not us. its out of our hands.

 

[DirkHardpeck]

@ShunZephyr lol ok, sorry, you guys totally have nothing to do with it *wink*

 

[jeccccccccccccc]

I’m glad that this is updated, but didn’t the author said not to?

 

[ShunZephyr]

@DirkHardpeck exactly. it was absolutely and totally not us. glad we finally came to an understanding

 

[DirkHardpeck]

@ShunZephyr No but seriously why would you guys ask for permission and then go against the mangaka's wishes anyway when you're told no. It's not like if someone wouldn't connect the dots if they looked at it for more than five seconds. What with you telling people "oh noooo, don't come to our discord and use my translations oh noooo there's totally nothing I can do!" and the fact that the accounts uploading were made specifically to upload this series immediately after the announcement that the artist said no.

 

[ShunZephyr]

Rant incoming:

@DirkHardpeck

Spoiler

In all seriousness, i really didn't expect so many people to have the same feeling as us. (I personally always thought of manga readers to be lurkers and just go "eh, oh well i guess. next series.")

All this will soon stop because I know for a fact that I have really, for realsies, stopped TL at chapter 22. so anything after 22 definitely isn't from us.

As for anything before.. well, my TLs are up available online. anyone could have gotten their hands on it, as you can see. anyone of the people who did the scanlation work COULD be one of us, but it also COULDN'T. Although i would like to go on record once more that as far as i am aware, we are not any of them.

Honestly, if i wanted to, i could point fingers at Tsudow and say it was all him (I mean, I wouldn't know what he is doing behind closed doors, right?).

But am i going to do that? No. Because i trust my team. (and also whatever the heck he does as a non-member of melonpan is entirely up to his discretion and none of my business. I don't judge you for the type of porn you watch, right? Same thing. Heck, how could I know it's not you doing the scanlations and trying to start drama? Think about it.)

This is my (much more selfish but realistic) opinion: He is the reason why we got so popular in the first place, since he does EVERYTHING except TL. (well the series was one other thing, but having a bad product is definitely one of those things that affect us too.) It would also be biting the hand that feeds you if I were to throw him under the bus right now. And that will soon apply to all the other team members that are joining us.

What I will admit to is that I was the person behind the convoluted recruiting scheme. Yes, I am a greedy person. I want to see that my efforts have bore fruit. I want to be thanked, because it feels good. I will admit to being a lowly person that relies on thanks as motivation sustenance.

I also wanted MelonPan to grow so I could do more manga TLs, because I like doing it. (That's what hobbies are. You do them because you enjoy them.) I wanted to meet people that had the same interests as me because I am a loner IRL. I don't care if you blame me for it, that was entirely my selfish opinion, and Tsudow was just dragged along for the ride.

But it accomplished what I set out for it to do, and that was to bring in new recruits. I believe in "The ends justify the means.", whether or not you agree with me is a topic for another day, but that is my modus operandi.

Now then, the conversation stops there. Any other grievances you have with us can be put in the discord where I'm sure there are others that could just as easily explain to you things I missed out than having me pop in all the time whenever i get pinged

edited for bad grammar and spelling and more clarification, because it turned into a rant.

 

[DirkHardpeck]

@ShunZephyr

Spoiler

I mean thanks for coming clean I guess, but I'm still curious why you'd even bother asking the artist if you were going to disrespect them anyway by pulling stunts. Unless the entire intent was to artificially create drama, then I guess congrats?

 

[ShunZephyr]

@DirkHardpeck yup, not going to bother explaining anymore. you hear but do not listen.

 

[DirkHardpeck]

@ShunZephyr I should be saying that to you. I asked you a question and you replied with a rant about how you're a loner and wanted friends.

It seems super disrespectful to ask a mangaka "Hey can we translate this?" and after he says no and that he doesn't want people to translate any of his work for you to go "Oh, man, golly gee, here's all these translations of his work. He told us no but it would be a shame if you used my translations to post it online after he already told us no"

 

[ShunZephyr]

@DirkHardpeck well I guess you didn't read Tsudow's reply. We were overzealous and started work because he took almost a week to get back to us.

So in that regard, yup, in hindsight we should not have done that. So I would like to request some form of leniency as this was our very first series.

Also, there is that thing where you are preaching moral ethics in what is technically an illegal website. It's like walking into jail and expecting everyone inside to be an upstanding citizen. Have you bought a copy of every single manga you have read? I highly doubt so.

But yes, it is disrespectful, and If that's what you wanted me to say, you did it.

But, what would have been more disrespectful would be us going "yup,okay. Just going to keep everyone in the dark, continue uploading and pretending that everything is totally a-okay."

We chose to be transparent about this, release all the work we had done before stopping because it would have been a waste to just throw it in the trash (I spent hours of my life on the TL that I will never get back), then stop there.

Of course, this is the internet, so nothing ever ends that amicably.

If only you saw the actual DMs I had with iron... smh. That was another can of worms.

 

[DirkHardpeck]

@ShunZephyr yeah I read the part where he wanted to start hurling insults at ironon, which kinda just made him sound like an ass. But the DMs aren't public, and it's not like the mangaka will publish his side of any disagreement. Right now it just sounds like you guys are trashing on him without saying why really.

I wouldn't blame the dude for being overly defensive because more and more TL Groups seem to be forming with the intent of cashing in on patreon/donations/ad revenue off of other peoples' work. Not that I'm saying you're the types to go off creating a Patreon after your first project, but after the Mangadex/Scangroup drama it seems like there's way more people trying to cash in. And I'm sure mangakas have noticed the trend in recent years.

I also don't blame the dude at all for driving away the western audience. It seems like every week westerners are starting drama with JP Artists on twitter, and he has a pretty substantial following on the platform.

 

[ShunZephyr]

@DirkHardpeck
Yeah Tsudow usually isnt like that. It was that bad. You just gotta trust me on that one, unfortunately.

TL;DR of that conversation was : I'm the author, and I said no because there might be unforeseen circumstances.

I personally dont see what's the problem with TL groups? That's practically what translation work is, isnt it? The words you speak arent yours when you translate.

Furthermore, with those types you mentioned, it would have to be a good enough service to warrant people wanting to pay, right? You wouldn't pay 30 bucks for a McDonalds cheeseburger, now would you?

Of course getting money hungry is one thing, but that's a problem not just found in the manga community.

Granted, that would be a different thing if someone already did have an English serialisation,and the TL group was just trying to snipe him and steal monetization. But it doesnt apply in this case.

 

[DirkHardpeck]

@ShunZephyr I think what it comes down to is that from the mangaka's viewpoint he's got these guys with no previous body of work trying to make a buck off of his works. It's a bit different when you're just forming a group and asking artists permission opposed to, say, Taco or Roto asking artists for permission. To go further, I remember there being a comment about showing him view statistics of your guys' translations. To me, if I was in that situation, I'd feel like there's these foreigners coming out of nowhere trying to strongarm me into granting permission for something they went ahead and did without waiting to hear my response. Which again leads back to the him fearing that you're trying to make money off of something you strongarmed him into. I hope I'm articulating my point well enough. Whether or not it was your intention, it could look like you were really aggressive from his viewpoint.

The translation quality was pretty good, I just really hope you guys treat creators with more respect than you did with ironon here.

 

[ShunZephyr]

@DirkHardpeck

Yeah, we thought of that possibility too. So, something else that was mentioned to him during that conversation was that if we were to continue, we wouldn't monetize ourselves in any way, and we would still quite literally do translations for free.

but he still said no. so he was probably extremely paranoid? Hindsight is 20/20, and after calming down, i believe that the both of us had our own problems going on. But from my viewpoint too, he wasn't very helpful either. there was mutual disrespect going on, no matter how much formal speech one uses to the other party. And trust me, i tried my best to match his speech.

also, he refused to give a logical reason, which ticked me off. like it doesn't have to be much, maybe say, ah i plan to get serialised (i mean, its not that hard to figure out once u start requesting people not to do TLs, right?), or something.

 

[Trueflame001]

I don't get all this drama and nonsense in the comments. It's a cute series and fun to read and I never would have seen it if not for the scanlation team(s) so thank you to everyone involved.

 

[abnas106]

Can someone explain what the drama is about, wtf happened?

 

[weaponisedlentil]

the author doesn't want scanlations for to some reason, even if the scanlations wouldn't be monetized

 

[Aratadesu]

I don't want to be any part of the drama but dang this Manga is so wholesome.
10/10 perfect for people who doesn't like their school life right now lmao