Wow - It's been a long time....

It looks like I skipped September entirely.  Quite a change from posting nearly every day for months.  Well, there's a good reason.  All of my free time has been going toward cleaning.  I'm working on Kaichou wa Maid-sama with CrazyKitty Scans, which we're trying to get out as fast as possible every month. Since I do everything except translation and QC, I pretty much lose two nights of sleep for each chapter.

We're also working on Faster Than a Kiss. It was apparently dropped by another group after chapter 32, so we've got chapters 33 through 38 to do so far. We're not worried about the schedule as much on that one, but our goal is to release a chapter every two weeks.  If we stick to the schedule, chapter 33 should be out by Sunday! KWMS and FTAK are published in LaLa magazine, which is released on the 24th of each month.

My third project is Skip Beat! with Franky House. Luckily, I'm working with a great group on this one, including another cleaner and a typesetter. Last chapter I cleaned the whole thing, though. Kind of a rite of passage for joining the group it seems. :P Skip Beat is published in Hana to Yume, which is released on the 5th and 20th of each month, skipping every other 5th.

I'm insane. I have been keeping up on a few things, like the Kaichou wa Maid-sama anime (loved it!), Kuroshitsuji II (LOVED it!), and Bleach and Naruto mangas.  I just haven't had the time or energy to write things up. When I finish Ch. 33 of FTAK and we're done with Skip Beat Ch. 164, I'm going to take some time to go back and write in here. I really enjoy having a record of what I've read and watched, even though I now have some friends to talk to about this stuff since I've joined the scanlation community. I swear to not abandon this blog!!!

Faster Than A Kiss - Chapter 31

The conclusion of the Maeda-sensei story. Maeda-sensei was kidnapped by Kazuma's rival, Retsu, from another school. Kazuma goes to rescue him by himself, but a lot of other students follow him because they care about Maeda-sensei so much. When they get there, they see that Maeda-sensei had actually already made friends with Retsu. Kazuma is about to fight Retsu one-on-one when Maeda-sensei warns him that he's about to be ambushed. The thing is, the warning was in English, so it was a real accomplishment that Kazuma understood.

After this, Maeda collapses and has to be taken to the hospital. He has to quit being a teacher at Kazuma's high school, but he promises Kazuma that he'll keep teaching.

Fumino gets a call from Ryu saying that Maeda-sensei is in critical condition, so Fumino makes Kazuma rush to the hospital so he can talk to Maeda before it's too late. When they show up, they see that Maeda-sensei is just fine. He made Ryu call Fumino with the fake story so Kazuma would show up. Kazuma expresses his thanks to Maeda-sensei and introduces Fumino to him. Apparently he already knows their little secret and is just fine with it. ^_^

Faster Than A Kiss - Chapter 30

So here we get a glimpse of Kazuma's past. He was quite a delinquent in high school. One day, Maeda-sensei showed up and became his homeroom teacher. Maeda-sensei concentrated particularly on Kazuma, trying to get him to reform. He figured that if he took down the most delinquent student in the school that many others would follow. He even started an English exchange diary with Kazuma, who used the opportunity to try out using vulgar language in English. Other people started to notice that Kazuma was starting to calm down a bit and was refusing to fight. The boss of another high school was particularly upset about this, so he kidnapped Maeda-sensei and will only return him if Kazuma fights him. And so the chapter ends in a cliffhanger.

I really enjoyed the change of pace. We still got a bit of the weird but cute relationship between Fumino and Kazuma, but we also get to learn about Kazuma's past. During the chapter we also learn that Kazuma was disowned by his family during high school and he was living by himself. Good chapter. I'm looking forward to the next chapter, but the cliffhanger isn't so bad that I'm going to be in despair until I read it.

Faster Than A Kiss - Chapter 29

The new school year has started and Fumino is now in her third year of high school. The year begins with the "future aspirations form", basically having to choose what she wants to do after high school. Fumino realizes that she doesn't have any aspirations because she was only trying to figure out how to simply survive until recently. There is a forced 3-day separation from living with Kazuma to try to help her figure out what she wants to do without being influenced by their marriage. After discovering that she can now understand conversational English, she realizes that she really likes English now. She decides that she wants to study English and maybe be a teacher.

Faster Than A Kiss

I looked up LaLa magazine in Wikipedia to see what titles they are serializing since they publish Kaichou wa Maid-sama. Faster Than a Kiss is one of the titles that I thought looked interesting.

It's about a 16-year old girl, Kaji Fumino, who is taking care of her 4-year old brother after their parents died. None of their relatives are willing to take them in, so she is going to quit school to get a job. Her 24-year-old English teacher, Oijiro Kazuma, finds out and tries to convince not to. She basically says, "So what are you going to do about it? Marry me and support us?". He says "Fine! I will!" and so they get married. So the whole thing is about how a student and teacher who married on a whim can keep their relationship a secret and how they gradually become closer to one another.

It's rather predictable, but I find it cute and amusing. I'll continue to follow this one. (^_^)