Nekura Musume to Internet

(tsl: Miss Gloomy and the Internet)

Phew! finally finished translating this toughie. I expected it to be somewhat easier considering how manga oneshots aren’t supposed to be very long (this is 20 pages) and the art looked uh rather simple so I thought ‘the words can’t be all that difficult right?’ but what took lots of time and effort to translate on my part were the numerous references to Japanese net culture. And mind you, although I know a little more than the average bumbling English-speaking passerby, I wouldn’t say that I’m totally familiar with all the various 2ch or niconico terms.

I actually learnt a lot more than I knew just from translating Nekura Musume, because usually I would never bother to read the Japanese 2ch Wiki pages and find out more about the weird (but amusing) NicoNico things around the site. For example, no one seems to have talked about dat落ち before even for the 2ch-copy 4chan.

The whole thing’s actually really hilarious even if you aren’t that familiar with Japanese internet subculture, as long as you know a little about things like 2ch… or just the more mainstream, well-known things like Densha Otoko (tsl: Train Man).

I’m looking forward to more stuff by Shinobi now ;u; Apparently he/she has a serialisation called ‘Yandere Girlfriend’ about some yankee girl who fell in love with a normal guy (I feel sorry for him already), but I’m still looking for chapters that I can read properly (and not the irritating digital reader…)

By the way, if you can read Japanese, you can read Nekura Musume over here with a digital reader at GanGan Online, a Square Enix online comic magazine of sorts. If possible, please rate the story after reading to support the artist and make GanGan more inclined to serialise more series by Shinobi. ;D

SDS will probably (hopefully) be releasing Nekura, fully scanlated, in a week… or two… The translation took me a total of approx. 11 pages in Word orz. Although, of course, quite a bit of that space was probably taken up by my random ramblings and the various references I used (in case my hardworking proofer uhm doesn’t happen to understand the Japanese when checking for accuracy). Check the flow properly too, okay? And I’m sorry if the typesetting is hell, I can uh try and do the typesetting in future if it looks manageable for an amateur like me orz.