Red Blue - Ch. 52 - The Unsinkable Ship Sets Sail

[N2Dvil]

Ah so I’m not the only one who finds it suspect af how they chose to snipe this, but not work on The Unbeatable Duo instead >_>

Really hope someone picks that up, the whole premise seems to be built more around Pro Fighting (which makes me hopeful we see Meguru again)

 

[N2Dvil]

Long time lurker/manga reader, felt like weighing in as a neutral observer. The discord server was also public so I peeked in when I saw comments here that the conversation started there

Frankly, I don't think either group is in the wrong. It's understandably frustrating to think that you're working on a unique translation for a manga only to find out that another group has been hoarding releases. Initially, the two translators appeared to mutually understand that no one was really starting beef. Realityscans provided screenshots indicating they'd started to work on Red Blue in late 2024 and that they wanted to let the original group know that they had a lot of chapters saved up in case they didn't want to waste effort translating or rereleasing for something they had already translated. Admittedly, asking if the translation could just be left to them was a little rude, but I think they afterwards gave sufficient context.

A few random people from the earlier group started throwing more incendiary comments at Realityscans to try and stir drama (seriously, accusing people of being someone's alt is such a throwback to irc servers in the late 2000s). Then BlackBeat @'d Realityscans in their discord server and asked them to leave the Red Blue translation to him, gave them some good feedback to improve their work, and told them it was embarrassing to release at the moment.

I don't think it's fair to just tell Realityscans to throw his work out and fuck off. Realityscans indicated they were fine with putting out their releases and for anyone else to continue their translation. They said they didn't really feel an obligation to the readership in DMs to BlackBeat that were shared on his discord. This is a somewhat cavalier attitude, but ultimately some people are doing this out of passion, others as an interesting project to learn another language, or for any other number of reasons, and you can't police people's motivation for something they do in their free time, or ask a stranger to throw out work they've spent time on just because yours is better.

Realityscans wasn't hostile and basically just said "do what you want and I will too, in the end worst case scenario the readers get two releases to compare". If BlackBeat finds this demotivating, that seems very understandable to me. If he continues translating at his own pace, that would be awesome, because he's absolutely right that his translations are better quality. Frankly, as the random online scanlation reader that simply reads manga and isn't plugged that deeply into scanlation culture, but probably represents 99% of the silent majority, I want to read Red Blue in English.

If some rando dumps 100 chapters of mid translations, I am going to read them. Many of us are junkies looking for a fix after mainlining Jujutsu Kaisen Thursday speedscans for years and a few translation issues aren't going to dissuade us. This is probably not the greatest attitude towards consuming content, but it's reality, which is ultimately what people need to consider to decide on a course of action. Some streaming services like Netflix favor a binge model (here, releasing 100 chapters of middling quality all at once), others release episodes one week at a time (BlackBeat releasing quality translations, but sometimes banking them for 9-10 months and going at a slower pace). Both work.

Sorry for writing so many words, but it was a weird situation to stumble upon. I hope both groups are able to come to a satisfying conclusion but no one is really the asshole here. Thanks to everyone for their work!

Good points but the incendiary comments from JSN, me or Ref (or whoever else you mean here) came more from a fear that this is just Retsu again: A group so bad it got kicked off MD, they were working purely on AI translations, which gave us bangers such as Jack Gym (instead of Shark Gym). The way Reas also appeared after Retsus decline and having similar bad english skills on Discord and being similar non-approachable as to Retsus main guy back then didnt help (Retsu seems to have given up at that point thankfully). Adding to the fact that Discord has a more lax atmosphere most of the time, people type out stuff in their heads faster out then here, Mangadex and Discord arent professional enviroments after all. That aside,i wouldn't say Reas is as understanding as you make him out to be. Its semi-impossible to lead a normal convo with the guy bc of lacking english skills (or him just not answering/reacting to stuff at all) so him doing a manga tl fans waited years for, ofc reactions gonna be mixed at best. He also seems to be in it for the donations but thats fine as some other well known groups do the same. The main reason people are so harsh with Reas here is that they fear it drives BB away from Red Blue bc lets be honest: Why do you want to put out your stuff if the fans just read the other version. We seemed to have reached a common ground as BB will continue Red Blue on his own pace and that is all that matters for me at that point.

 

[0takuDragonSlayer]

Really hope someone picks that up, the whole premise seems to be built more around Pro Fighting (which makes me hopeful we see Meguru again)

SAME BRO! I am absolutely dying to see what the old cast is up to and how far the author has come with his writing & realistic fight choreography

 

[Black_Beat]

Long time lurker/manga reader, felt like weighing in as a neutral observer. The discord server was also public so I peeked in when I saw comments here that the conversation started there
...
Sorry for writing so many words, but it was a weird situation to stumble upon. I hope both groups are able to come to a satisfying conclusion but no one is really the asshole here. Thanks to everyone for their work!

Hi there, thanks for the summary and insight.

I feel like I should be transparent and be honest as to why I, on a personal level, don't like Reas and The Start Group.
I want to make this short so I'll just boil this up to 2 points:
1. I'm suspicious that they are going to paywall their release and/or ask donation for weird reason, and based on their latest release, I seem to be right (this is the same MO they did from their other project).
2. I'm certain that their release is not just bad, it's machine translated and/or done by someone who can't even read Japanese. I don't want to reveal how I know this for now, but you'll see on my next releases.

Spoiler

(the irrefutable evidence will be in chapter 48, mine is currently in PR stage)

In other words, this is just a scummy dispassionate operation.

Edit: This doesn't include a weird and suspicious thing that happened to me. I don't want to say it here, but if you're in for some gossip, feel free to DM me.