The Circle of Life Knows No End!

Exactly one year ago today, we embarked on a very ambitious project to finally bring a completed version of Masayuki Ishikawa's masterpiece Moyashimon to English readers after years of the manga first being licensed, and then dropped, and then being picked up by another scanlation group, only to then not go beyond volume 2. And so, it is with great pleasure, but also a bit of sadness, that we now release chapters 158 and 159 of Moyashimon, ending the series after a year-long scanlation effort, which according to our Manga Updates page, is our 1,111th batch release. Also included at the end of the series is the last bit of bonus content, 7 pages in total.

When it comes to Moyashimon, the series itself is amazing, and well worth the multiple awards and adaptations it received. Overall, we wouldn't have decided to do it if we didn't love this series enough to make it through its more difficult aspects, although far and away, the most difficult part of Moyashimon was the sheer amount of text. Not only the amount of text in the actual panels, but of course all of the other text that was written into the margins, which, as a translator, was incredibly frustrating at times. And don't even get me started on all of those super long bubbles that Itsuki would sometimes say, and more often than not, with really technical text that was already challenging to translate in the first place.

But for the most part, it wasn't really all that bad, considering that most chapters in the series were only 16 pages, most of those pages didn't require redraws, and as an extension of that, there weren't that many double-page spreads that required to be joined and redrawn. Granted, there was that double-page of doom in chapter 1, which you can see the before and after with all of the overtext, and also the before and after with the overtext removed. But once that was done, everything else about the series seemed almost minor by comparison, enabling us to ultimately complete the series in only a year's time.

The series itself is certainly one of the best projects we've worked on, and seeing it progress over the course of the series was a joy that we can't really say we experienced with most of our other projects, except for perhaps Usotsuki Lily and Kuragehime, which are the longest and second-longest series we've done. Moyashimon is our third-longest series at about 2,730 pages; in comparison, Kuragehime was just over 2,900 pages, and Usotsuki Lily was about 3,600 pages.

Moyashimon was so different when it began, with radically different art, and the lack of a concrete direction for the series was also rather evident in volume 1. But as the series progressed, Ishikawa's art improved immensely, and the characterization and plots started to become more complex and nuanced, enabling it to expand far beyond its rather humble beginnings. This is really one of those series that you can't really get a clear idea of what it ultimately becomes unless you've read the first 2 or 3 volumes at least, and even then, the series still manages to change rather dramatically in the later volumes.

It's especially for that reason, that we are going to miss Moyashimon immensely. Long before we decided to work on it, there was certainly an interest in the series, although maybe not exactly one that would extend to scanlating it. Especially before we did Stop!! Hibari-kun!, it's doubtful that we would have had the experience or the confidence to attempt something as intimidating as Moyashimon from a scanlating point of view. So to a large degree, our ability to have not only worked on but ultimately complete the series is largely due to all of the experience that we have gained over the time that we've been scanlating manga. Up until early last year, Moyashimon seemed almost too insurmountable, as it was too long, with too much text, that was too technical, and it had a double-page spread in chapter 1 that was way too hard to even think about attempting to not only do it, but do it correctly. But we're glad we didn't think about all of that, and just decided to do it. That too was also due to all of the support we've received from readers of our projects over the years.

So although there will be aspects of the series we won't miss working on, we will miss seeing the daily lives of Sawaki, Haruka, Hazuki, and of course, especially Kei, which although not the only reason why we decided to do the series, was certainly a major one. Just in terms of cross-dressing characters in manga, Kei is one of the more prominent and well-known characters in general, but on a more personal level, his character is also one of the most endearing, especially after reading chapter 155.

So what's the final takeaway for Moyashimon? That it was mainly about fermentation and microbes set at a crazy agricultural university with really quirky characters and situations? Maybe on the surface, but like so many great series, it really was more than the sum of its parts, and it's a series that deserves to be read and re-read for generations of manga readers. If ever there was a series that deserved the moniker modern classic, then we believe Moyashimon satisfies that distinction. So it's with a heavy heart that we lay this series to rest, but just to be able to even say that, we wouldn't have it any other way.

Let's brew!

Moyashimon ch. 158: Mediafire, Dropbox
Moyashimon ch. 159: Mediafire, Dropbox
Moyashimon volume batches: Moyashimon page