Blue Hole vol. 01 ch. 10 (Manga)
3537-HIT COMBO!
There’s always the one jerk who tries to take over in the second act.
And don’t forget to visit Illuminati-Manga’s website!
STATEMENT ABOUT KENGAN OMEGA:
At Hokuto no Gun, we are always dedicated to finding obscure gems that haven’t got much attention by either official publishers or by other scanlation groups, and delivering high-quality translations for them. Back six years ago, Kengan was one of those obscure series, and as we translated it, we’ve watched its popularity boom to levels we’d never imagined. After the legion of fans brought in by the start of the Netflix anime, we thought for sure that it was only a matter of time before the series were licensed for an official English release. But as time went by and this never happened, we realized that as long as we were translating the series with quality translations and dynamic typesetting, there would be muted demand for an official release, and our continued work on the series was hurting the artists and their publisher in this way.
With that in mind, we’ve decided to step back from translating Kengan Omega as of this chapter. We will also be taking down all our Kengan chapters from Mangadex as soon as it reopens. We encourage any other aggregator to take them down as well.
We understand this is a sudden decision that may come as a shock to many of you, but please trust that this was not an easy decision for us to make and it took a great deal of soul-searching, and we would not have made it if we did not have 100% conviction that this would be for the best of Kengan and its fans around the world. We understand that there’s not much we can do to stop other groups from filling the void, but we humbly implore all other scanlation groups, if you care about Kengan whatsoever, to understand our motivation for doing this and to stand with us, and to the fans to stand with us in waiting for an official release rather than latching on to a scan group just trying to get clicks. Meanwhile, we will go back to the obscure series that was our mission to begin with, and we hope that those of you who were just here for Kengan would give them a shake as well.
Thank you for your understanding, and we hope you stick around as we go onwards and upwards!
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Hey, I just wanted to thank you for all the amazing work you’ve been doing for so long on the Kengan series. I started to read it back when the fourth or fith chapter of the first tome was out. Thank you for the good translations, thank you for increasing the pace of releases back on the first Kengan and thank you for your dedication. It was a tough choice to let Kengan go but aren’t Hokuto lovers tough by nature haha? I hope for the best for the series, the translations and for your team. Thank you again ^^
To be completely honest that is a completely ineffective way to incentivize an official scanalation which would never even be half of the quality you guys have already shown. Additionally even if it did happen the story would be set back years as they redid Kengan Asura. The most likely thing you will achieve is that some lesser group will fill in the niche and the readers of Kengan Omega will suffer.
Who gives a fuck about kengan omega readers, woe is the people who get to illegally read something?
Love this manga, too bad you’re stopping but thanks a lot for all this work you guys have put in the scanlation
No official release will be nearly as good as the work you guys have done. I know it’ll never happen but some publisher really should just hire the Hokuto no Gun team.
Gotta say guys, that makes me really sad. I’ve been hoping the publishing companies would see work like yours or EverydayHeroes and step it up from half-hearted translations and typesetting. Not all of em are bad but none of them are great.
To be sincere its sounds like terrible idea and it is… buy its your terrible idea so for whatever its worthy thank for all these years of hard work
The kengan official probably its never going to happen just like baki but someone will fill the void
Thanks so much for all the amazing work. I wish your decision was different but it’s not my place to say – good luck in the future!
That sounds like the most ass-backwards idea I’ve ever heard.
Remind me, how much of Baki was officially released of ~140 volumes? Less than 40? Sounds about right.
Do you hear people raving about Kengan anywhere that’s not a niche group? No? I wonder why.
Sandrovich’s Dumbbell series was localized within 2 years. How long has Kengan been around again? Almost 10 years, you say? Gee, I wonder why that came over so fast? Could it be mainstream appeal?
Pure fighting manga like Kengan are just not that popular. It’s too brutal for the shonen crowd, and its almost complete lack of story has no appeal for those interested in plot-heavy series. It’s a niche manga for a niche audience.
What are you going to do when no publisher picks up Kengan in the next 5 years? How are you gonna feel? Think about that.
I for one, will welcome the new scanlation group that picks it up.
I respect what you’re trying to do here, but it’s definitely not going to work. The alternative to pirated Kengan is not official Kengan: it’s no Kengan.
What you’re doing here won’t significantly affect the calculus of the people who decide whether to pursue an official release. How could it? The chain of cause and effect just isn’t there. Especially where Asura is concerned; you can’t re-bottle that genie.
Maybe I’m looking at it in the wrong direction. This decision couldn’t cause an official release, but an official release could cause this decision.
Maybe I shouldn’t have given up on legal Kengan…
Yeah I’m sure all those aggregators that only scraped MD and official TLs will delete the chapters. I will never be licenced because it’s too niché. Anons will start TLing until new group picks up.
worst birthday present ever
Well, i only want to thank you for your work. That’s all. Your work do wonders and is still today a great help through hard days. And being honest: You’re bieng honest. that’s also good, of course ;)
I’m going to be real with you there’s absolutely no chance any publisher is going to pick up a series that’s already as long as Kengan, especially if it’s a martial arts series. And even if they did it would likely take at least 5 years for them to catch up to the point it’s at right now. Whether or not they’re a fan translations is a non factor in motivating whether or not something gets an official publication. All that being said you’re certainly not obligated to continue translating and if you don’t want to, but if your motivation is to get an official translation it’s just outright stupid. On top of all of that to trying deprive fans of an already existing translation is outright immoral and wong, no matter how you look at it. Honestly this is going to be a serious blow to manga translation in general if it picks up as a trend, and I can’t say I respect that decision in any way.
“We have a policy of never dropping projects. So while a project may be taking a ridiculously long time to release, it is not dropped, just stalled.”
Yeah, good one, guys.
fess up, we know you just hate the series.
Imagine pre-cucking yourself over an official release that doesn’t even exist yet. You sure you weren’t threatened by the powers that be?
Oh man, this is such a bummer, but I understand your reasons. Your work is superb, though. Is there any possibility that you can sell your translations to a publishing house, and continue working on the series as official translators? I LOVE Kengan, and I would love to be able to purchase it, but it is impossible where I live.
First off, i’m super glad about your translations of the kengan franchise, absolutely great work, thank you for everything. Now, it’s your decision and i respect that but your reasoning is wrong, official TLs are highly unlikely at best and never happening at worst, why? Kengan isn’t popular enough overseas, as some other guy mentioned, Sandro’s other work, Danberu, got localized in less than 2 years and it’s anime was really popular, it had a way bigger mainstream appeal, what kengan lacks. Now let’s look at a bigger MA manga, Baki, it’s more popular than Kengan by a longshot and yet it took decades for it to get licensed. I do hope Kengan gets licensed or that this post means that it already did but until then, stopping translating it sems pretty dumb.
unless you’re getting DMCA’d or otherwise spooked by you know who, I don’t really buy the reasoning posted
Honestly you could not have gone about this announcement in a more obtuse manner. Even assuming the best case scenario, which is that you were privately informed of/scouted for an official western release, giving such a blatantly stupid idealistic excuse and wiping your Dex content sets a bad precedent.
Doing so will not prevent people from reading your work on scraper sites, and whatever replacement we *maybe* get has negligible chance of being as professional-looking as what you’ve already put out. Come on guys, drop the pretense.
You are hero we don’t deserve, but somehow we need it, and we got it. Thanks for the hard work, Hokuto no Gun!
Fuck the haters, keep the passion burning.
Thanks for your hard work.
…I’m not super familiar with the rest of your work, but of those, surely *some* of your team’s prior projects never got official translations. This is a series that is nearly a decade old. If a Netflix adaptation didn’t ignite enough interest for an official release, nothing will.
I’m not sure I believe your stated reasoning, but there’s nothing I can do about it.
So much for the “we never drop a series” part. I get it, you were approached to do the official english release, but you didn’t have to be such utter maxi-pads about it.
What the fuck is wrong with half the kengan readerbase. Have more faith, and use your brains a little, y’all.
Dropping the series is your prerogative and all, but removing what has already been done is really spitting in the eyes of the fans.
You guys aren’t very smart, are you.
Can’t say that I am happy with this decision, but it’s yours to make. Thank you for all the hard work you put in over the years and I’ll be sure to stick around for more.
Also, gotta love all these greedy freeloaders bitching and moaning about not getting something for free anymore.
If no publishers put out an official version within a certain time period, will you guys pick the series back up?
Idiotic idea, was here Just for kengan, i’ll wait for your “Obscure series” to get official release.
So sad, but it’s only up to you. If you think this is what it’ll have to be so it will be. No regrets.
Thank you, sincerely. One thing, the Streisand Effect over your Kengan releases is something not to be overrated.
so, how do i go about reading it then??
Google exist, you can find goriillion scrapers that won’t delete kengan chapters
This was an incredibly stupid idea and demonstrates a complete misunderstanding of how manga licensing even works. I’m going to assume you guys just got tired of scanlating a popular series and wanted to go back to doing unknown stuff, because that’s the only thing that makes any sense at all.
Bet.