Witch Craft Works

Wow, I'm glad I finally decided to read this, it's really good

@MrPoogly YES

Remember when the comments were about the manga and not about the semantics of scanlation groups?

 

I'll start it off: anyone notice that young Honoka is wearing a giant backpack as if about embark on a training journey? 

Thanks for the clean chapter~

The quality on this series has dropped greatly...

it's kind funny that they didn't take another month to release chap 22

 

Not really, there's method to the madness of most groups.

 

What follows is a brief piece of insight into how the release schedule of many groups work. Anybody not interested in this should probably just skip to another comment.

 

 

Typically speaking, a manga that a group is working on (usually if there's plenty of future chapters for the series available) will have the RAWs put up available to members perhaps in a spreadsheet or something similar. Then, the members of the group can simply take the RAWs when they're available, do whatever is required of them and upload the result but the release schedule will remain fairly consistent unless the group as a whole decides to make the series priority #1 or something happens to delay it.

 

I'll break down what I mean using an actual example of a manga I work on;

Let's say that the current released chapter for a series is c156

 

In actual fact, it's like this:

c156 - (released up to)

c157 - (ready to release)

c158 - (typesetted)

c159 / 160 - (translated)

c159 / 168 - (cleaned)

 

This is with a once per week release schedule. This means that if they wish to do so, a staff member can work at their own pace as long as they manage to an average of one or more per week and nobody would ever notice. If they were going to go on a two week vacation, they could just do several chapters in advance for example. They could do whatever it is they do up until a full volume in advance if they wanted to and then spend the next two months lazing around doing nothing, or working on other chapters and it's completely up to them.

 

Groups do this, because they're not well oiled machines made up of paid and skilled workers that can consistently do exactly one chapter per X amount of time unfailingly but rather it's made up of unpaid volunteers, so a buffer gives them a lot of leeway with the staff and their personal lives beyond the group as long as no one section of the scanlation process falls too far behind.

 

I'm saying this, because odds are that c21 and c22 were probably already mostly done, maybe they only needed the typesetting doing or just some quality checking - whatever. Point is, they were almost certainly (mostly) done but the group has a release schedule and normally you'd have gotten the next chapter a week after the previous one while the group caught back up, but in light of ToW's jumping ahead it's likely thrown a little spanner in the works so you all got c22 a little earlier, but possibly future chapters may be a little later as a result while the group catches up with itself or alternately now it's back to the normal release schedule.

it's kind funny that they didn't take another month to release chap 22

well, about the scanlation, I have no idea why people are so worked up about. Just appreciate the effort of the group, how hard is that.

 

I have no problem with the scan quality. My problem is kinda in the manga itself. The plot of chapter 21 is reallllly stupid. I mean, what's the first thing you do after capturing an enemy? STRIP THEM. No, I don't mean it in a perverted way. In a logical sense, you have to make sure the prisoners don't try anything funny under your watch. Apparently, these witches are too dumb for that. Letting a prisoner in her armor with all the grenades? and the bitch doesn't blow off with it? I don't see intelligent plotting or clever thinking in any ways or whatsoever. And when the main guy heat up for action for like....5 seconds, the girl takes over, WTF is that????

I had no problem when Animexis worked on other projects. And I only said (in a manner) to ToW Scans "it's your life so it's your choice" when they said they'd do the other chapters, but what an increasing number of people tend to do (I am no exception) is that they get overexcited about the new translations that they ignore the efforts of the groups. I've been striving towards that goal so I can be less impatient, but there are some manga I like that I will admit, have had a long break from translations like Rotte no Omacha and Asa made Jugyou Chu! where the number of raws surpass the number of translated chapters. Look I understand some groups have other projects and some don't want to do them, but knowing how far behind the translation is, it's no doubt that some people are willing to ignore quality just to read what's happening

Screencap away.

 

And then everyone was happy and nobody hurt.

 

If that was that, there wouldn't be any problem. Problem ends up being though, that certain people feel morally obliged to make harmful or even downright hateful comments against the slower group, regardless of the circumstances involved and often even accusing them of things that straight up just aren't true.

 

Hateful comments like those are one of the biggest reasons behind people stopping work on scanlation and on rare occasions even entire groups closing their doors. We give up plenty of our free time and in no shortage of cases our money too simply to spread the joy of manga, only for people to complain and attack scanlators for it because they feel they deserve more of everything and faster too?

 

I know personally that if anybody complained about the release rate of any manga that I current work on cleaning, I'd seriously consider just not bothering any more because really why should I keep caring for people like that?

Side note: one common misconception I've seen around sometimes is that scanlation groups run some kind of a donation fueled business - they really don't and indeed it's often the opposite, with sometimes members (usually the leader) getting a part time job simply to keep buying the raws and for paying site hosting feels. Donations just cover a part of that unless they stick to a free bog site or similar and only use public raws which aren't always available or of okay quality. The only ones who make profits with scanlation as a business are sites like MangaFox and corporations like Noez, who take the effort of others, plaster their own adverts around and then sell their own brand of illicit merchandise at the same time.

 

Mind if I screencap this part of your post? It will be useful when discussing why sites like MF are complete bull.

 

On this topic I'll just have to say that yes, the quality of chapter 22 was far from the best; but that doesn't mean anything. Someone who wants a quick translation will obviously have bad quality. You can't have everything. It takes a lot of time, as many have already said, to

properly clean the chapter; the translation is, in fact, one of the easiest parts of scanlating.

 

So, if you really want good quality (or, at least, better quality), wait until Animexis releases it. If you don't care about it, read it now.

 

And then everyone was happy and nobody hurt.

 

(PD: while I agree some groups sometimes take too much liberty when deciding when to release a chapter, it isn't the case with most, so relax those asses, people)

You know I wanted to stay out of this argument of new group taking over.....Let me explain something to those how do not know, do you know how long it takes to edit to clean up images?  Try it and tell me what your times were.  If your not sure what I am talking about, look at chapter 21, then look at chapter 22.  Notice something different?  The image quality is very different.  Any group can edit it and be done in a hour or two on a new chapter, but they want to release good quality images on every page of every chapter.  Meaning that this process takes time.  Granted, Animexis might not have that many people working on the project, but it is a thing most groups have to work around.  Remember it isn't about money for every group even if they ask for donations.  Some ask for donations, and yet they still put out the same amount of chapters on material they like whether they get any donations at all......have you ever noticed that? 

o so u re saying that it takes two months to clean and redraw one chapter of witch craft? sure nice!,just to say i don blame animexis for the time they get to release since they re doing it for free.

I hadn't read c22 until today, as I didn't wish to do so until I'd read c21 too.

 

Still, I'm a cleaner for several groups and while I'm not affiliated with any involved party here I'd now like to say a few words of my own on the subject.

 

 

Honestly speaking, the cleans for c22 are in a word, genuinely awful. Most groups tend to put a little time and effort into the translation, cleaning, redrawing, typesetting and quality checking of every chapter so that the result is good. We do this because rather than simply translating the chapter so others can read it, we respect every chapter and want people to be able to enjoy them beyond simply the words on the page. Things like the artwork tend to be every bit just as important as what's being said, assuming that part is also done correctly.

 

Now, personally I don't mind people doing high quality scans (of which they're not, Animexis does medium quality - the usual standard), as long as they either don't mind that other people are going to release lower quality scans in the mean time in order to cover the gap, the murmurings of discontent may start to rumble a little, or they make the project priority number #1 and keep up to date with releases. Honestly speaking though, Animexis aren't badly behind, they're just lagging slightly of which there could be any number of reasons why.

 

Perhaps Animexis are facing a lack of staff to work on chapters. After all, you cannot typeset a chapter without somebody first translating and cleaning it. Perhaps some or all of their staff are busy with finals, I know a lot of people are at the moment, so they simply don't have the time spare currently to work on the next chapter. Personally I give up an hour and a half of my day for every 20 page medium quality chapter that I clean, some people feel it's more important to not fail their classes than to work on a few more chapters. Everybody has their priorities and all of that.

 

Side note: one common misconception I've seen around sometimes is that scanlation groups run some kind of a donation fueled business - they really don't and indeed it's often the opposite, with sometimes members (usually the leader) getting a part time job simply to keep buying the raws and for paying site hosting feels. Donations just cover a part of that unless they stick to a free bog site or similar and only use public raws which aren't always available or of okay quality. The only ones who make profits with scanlation as a business are sites like MangaFox and corporations like Noez, who take the effort of others, plaster their own adverts around and then sell their own brand of illicit merchandise at the same time.

 

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tl;dr:

Animexis aren't that far behind. If they were 30 chapters+ behind like For The Halibut were on Freezing and are on most of their projects, grumbling is to be expected. Just a few chapters however is nothing, just be patient and they'll come. This isn't costing you a penny after all and is done simply by fans for the benefit of other fans, for no reason greater than we all love manga and want to bring more of our favourite mangas to other people.

You know I wanted to stay out of this argument of new group taking over.....Let me explain something to those how do not know, do you know how long it takes to edit to clean up images?  Try it and tell me what your times were.  If your not sure what I am talking about, look at chapter 21, then look at chapter 22.  Notice something different?  The image quality is very different.  Any group can edit it and be done in a hour or two on a new chapter, but they want to release good quality images on every page of every chapter.  Meaning that this process takes time.  Granted, Animexis might not have that many people working on the project, but it is a thing most groups have to work around.  Remember it isn't about money for every group even if they ask for donations.  Some ask for donations, and yet they still put out the same amount of chapters on material they like whether they get any donations at all......have you ever noticed that? 

sorry but most groups need way longer for each chapter cause the work is more

 

as one want to deliever good quality 25 min for editing would be a joke for them

 

just typesetting for most pages are like 10+ bubbles which take atleast 5-10 minutes per page if you add redrawing it can go up to like what a crazy redraw is needed over an hour

Thank you for the release Animexis.

Thanks for the chapter!

Looking at the Animexis site, it seems like the other project they were working on just finished, so WCW is next up.

release those chapters ToW, animexis don't give a fuck.

me and one more weekend waiting for chap 21 part V

let's be honest... scanlation/fansubbing has become a round bsns for many... ANIMEXIS just joined the party... that's all...

what surprises me is that i am not the only one that actually thinks that way... but i have to commend TOW for actually doing something about it "sorry for being a lazy bum :("

here is a fact... when you run a group... scanlation or fansubbing whatever... and you take money FOR WHATEVER FUCKING REASON from your fanbase...

then you ARE compelled to provide prompt releases.

but people is also in one way guilty of abusing of their right of "RETARDEDNESS" by "DONATING" money to these people...

Everybody makes valid points, this series is the best

I feel groups should be held accountable by the fans, I have a real group and my fans let me know whats up, if you take on a series, claim poverty to collection donations for raws, than you are being held accountable to release, there is no excuse, people are paying for releases so fans should hold them accountable to expect releases within a certain time frame. If a series is a monthly it shouldn't take 3 months per chapter, if a series is already 2 or 3 tanks out it shouldnt take 2 months per chapter, if your server cost so much XXX money than go to a blog format to alleviate expenses, no scanlator should ever have the mindset I come in this business for money, we do it for the love and love should make all efforts to keep cost down but still release a quality item. One editor can release one release a day or one release every two days as long as script is available. and if you have no translator for certain series than drop the series or focus on the series you truly enjoy and drop the ones you dont, there is enough groups out there to pick up those series.

ofc it would be good if the groups that collect money would also do fast releases and so on, I am with you on that, but its like kickstarter, if you get unlucky then the guy that collected the money can just take the money and don´t give you anything for it. its your job to to decide if its worth it to trust and support a project/group so much that you want to donate money to it.

if you want to continue talking about this then it would be better if we made a thread/topic for it, because else we are just spamming the comment section.

thats a different topic, but isn´t it the fault of the people that donate the money? I mean they should know how fast the group is and how they deal with their projects, so when they donate its like saying "ok, you can continue doing it like now". so its more the fault of the people that donate, no one forced them to donate.

I feel groups should be held accountable by the fans, I have a real group and my fans let me know whats up, if you take on a series, claim poverty to collection donations for raws, than you are being held accountable to release, there is no excuse, people are paying for releases so fans should hold them accountable to expect releases within a certain time frame. If a series is a monthly it shouldn't take 3 months per chapter, if a series is already 2 or 3 tanks out it shouldnt take 2 months per chapter, if your server cost so much XXX money than go to a blog format to alleviate expenses, no scanlator should ever have the mindset I come in this business for money, we do it for the love and love should make all efforts to keep cost down but still release a quality item. One editor can release one release a day or one release every two days as long as script is available. and if you have no translator for certain series than drop the series or focus on the series you truly enjoy and drop the ones you dont, there is enough groups out there to pick up those series.

thats a different topic, but isn´t it the fault of the people that donate the money? I mean they should know how fast the group is and how they deal with their projects, so when they donate its like saying "ok, you can continue doing it like now". so its more the fault of the people that donate, no one forced them to donate.

 Its not fair to anyone who donates money for raws and hundreds upon hundreds are being donated and no chapter is being released for months on end, I once donated to them as a fellow scanalator, 100 dollars and they stopped releasing stuff for over 6 months claiming some excuse of low staff, if thats the case give back the money people give and drop the series you cant manage and allow another group to take them over.