It's Both Until You Look!

Today's release is a cute one-shot called Schrodinger's Nekomiya-san by Kutsugaeru, which is also posted on the author's pixiv account. In the story, Hakone asks out his classmate Nekomiya who he fell in love at first sight with, only for Nekomiya to admit to being a cross-dresser, but is Nekomiya telling the truth?

Schrodinger's Nekomiya-san one-shot: Mediafire, Drive

What You Wear Says A Lot!

So finally, here's About a Guy Who's Been Destroyed From His First Love Being a Pretty Girl ♂ chapter 4 after quite a bit of work. And if you didn't see it already, there's a lot more to come with this series, as detailed in the release a few days ago of Kobayashi's other web series, so looking forward to that.

About a Guy Who's Been Destroyed From His First Love Being a Pretty Girl ♂ ch. 4: Mediafire, Drive

Edit: Typos on pages 17 and 31 fixed. Replace with this and this.
Edit 2: Typo on page 14 fixed. Replace with this.

There Will Come Some Change!

Kanoboku is back with chapter 21 after taking a break a couple weeks ago.

Kanojo ni Naritai Kimi to Boku ch. 21: Mediafire, Drive

Change Breeds Company!

Today, here is About a Lazy High School Guy Who Woke Up as a Girl One Morning chapter 12, which is actually pretty long for this series at (currently) 14 pages. The chapter clearly isn't completed yet, so more to come in the future when it gets posted.

But that's just the tip of the iceberg, because after a large positive response Kina Kobayashi has received for both this series and her other ongoing web series About a Guy Who's Been Destroyed From His First Love Being a Pretty Girl ♂, it's just been announced that they will be get official volume releases by Square Enix. On top of that, a lot of the content from the web versions will be updated to a more professional level, as well as another 40 pages of new content in the first volume of both series, set to come out on the same day in July, listed already on Amazon here and here.

If that wasn't enough, both series will be officially serialized starting in July, with Lazy Guy being serialized on Square Enix's Manga Up! app, and First Love being serialized on Gangan pixiv. First Love's title is also being shortened to just His First Love Was a Pretty Girl ♂ (original title: Shounen no Hatsukoi wa Bishoujo ♂ deshita, 少年の初恋は美少女♂でした). The only thing else that I can tell from the previews posted on Kobayashi's pixiv account here and here is that although Lazy Guy looks like it will retain its orange color scheme, First Love will lose its yellow color scheme and will just be in black and white. There's no way to know for sure until the volumes come out and the serialization begins, but that's just going by what the previews show.

So I'm excited to see that these series are being given a proper treatment, and when the volumes come out, I'll be working from them to update the series to the finished versions, and then continuing beyond them via the new serializations, but obviously still retaining the web versions, a lot like what's been going on with other series like this series and its web comic version.

Next up is chapter 4 of First Love.

About a Lazy High School Guy Who Woke Up as a Girl One Morning ch. 12: Mediafire, Drive

Edit: Small line adjusted on pg. 7. Replace with this.

There Will Always Be a Way!

And now for something totally unexpected. In what amounts to the most delayed release ever, here are Shounen Oujo chapters 32, 33 and 34, the most recent chapters released for the series as of when the latter part of 34 was released way back in June 2017.

The reason why I didn't release these before was mainly because I was waiting to see if the series would come back from its most recent hiatus and then release volume 6, but that just never happened. On top of that, Comic It, the magazine that Shounen Oujo was serialized in from 2015 to 2017 after it transferred from Sylph, was discontinued with the release of its final issue in February 2018, and then the website stopped hosting anything in November 2018.

In addition to that, the author Utako Yukihiro replied to someone on Twitter back in December 2018 who was asking about the status of Shounen Oujo. And this is what she said:

"Thanks for the reply! I'm sorry for making you wait for Shounen Oujo for a while now. The serialization has currently been halted, and it's continued to be difficult to get it restarted, but please look forward to it once it restarts...!"

The tweet seems to imply that the series may restart someday, but seeing as how it's been nearly 2 years since a new chapter was released, if it does ever come back, it may not be for a while still, if ever. Yukihiro has other manga and projects that she's involved in, so she's just been busy with other stuff.

It's a shame that even after working on this series on and off for about the past 7 and a half years that it still hasn't been completed, and that's despite how it seemed to be reaching a climax at the end of volume 5. This has always been a series that's been in the back of my mind, hoping to see more of it someday, and Yukihiro's above tweet is the only reason why I still have a little bit of hope that it will eventually continue.

If it does come back, new chapters will probably appear on the series' pixiv comic, Comic Walker and Niconico Seiga pages, the latter of which even has the latter half of chapter 34 (sometimes listed as 34.5). Of note at the end of that chapter was that there's a notice saying that it was planned to continue in volume 22 of Comic It released back in August 2017, but I can fully confirm that this did not happen, and that the latter half of chapter 34 was the last chapter released in June 2017.

So hopefully this will not be the last post for Shounen Oujo, but even if it is, I'll just say that I really loved this series. The art and story are phenomenal and it continued to be gripping with the introduction of new characters and situations going from volume to volume, in addition to the characterization and backstories given to some of the key characters. It had a lot of potential that was thankfully fulfilled in the chapters that have been released, and if ever a series deserved a proper ending, then this is the one. A lot of the series that I've worked on have either ended prematurely or were just simply axed, but none have I wanted to continue more than this series. So if you're a fan of the series, please enjoy these last few chapters for now and then maybe we can celebrate the series getting more chapters in the future.

Shounen Oujo ch. 32: Mediafire, Drive
Shounen Oujo ch. 33: Mediafire, Drive
Shounen Oujo ch. 34: Mediafire, Drive

The Power of Cross-dressing!

Here is Poker Face Cross-dresser chapter 5, which luckily is still continuing for now.

On a related note, Kina Kobayashi's two ongoing web series got new chapters, so more to come from them soon.

Poker Face Cross-dresser ch. 5: Mediafire, Drive

The End of One Journey is the Start of Another!

Almost exactly 4 years ago, I decided to pick up Junko Ike's Mizutama Honey Boy, which at the time had only 2 volumes out, and I wasn't really sure what exactly I was getting into. Now after all these years and tons of work over the course of the whole series, Mizutama Honey Boy officially comes to an end with the release of the special booklet that came with the limited edition of volume 10 and a bonus, 16-page one-shot recently released in LaLa's May 2019 issue.

The main reason why I picked up this series back then was its similarity, at least superficially, to Ayumi Komura's Usotsuki Lily, which at the time I had just recently completed about 5 months before starting on Mizutama. Both series actually have a lot in common in that they both feature strong female leads with girly male leads (in appearance in the case of En, and in behavior in the case of Fuji), they both began as one-shots later developed into full-fledged series, both ended up being their longest series for each of their authors, and stylistically, they both poke fun at shoujo manga tropes in general while also staying true to the demographic for the most part. And another odd coincidence was that I worked on both for approximately 4 years and picked up both when they had 2 volumes out. But that's really where the comparisons end since comparing the two really is like apples and oranges.

But this is about Mizutama. The series had a lot of unexpected turns and ups and downs, although it was obvious were it was going right from the very beginning, as is the case of most shoujo manga. Still, it wasn't just about romance or just focused on the main couple. Junko Ike made this series more about family than anything else, alluded to as early as chapter 5 when the Nanao siblings made their first appearance, and then expanding on Fuji's family and later Sengoku's own small family with her dad and Hime. I don't think this series would have been even half as long as it ended up if not for all the extra content outside of the main couple, and this also made the series a joy to read with every new chapter.

The amount of bonus content was also pretty striking for this series, with there being at least one bonus chapter in seemingly every volume, in addition to 4 unrelated one-shots included in volumes 2, 5 and 9, as well as the special booklets included with the limited edition versions of volumes 5 and 10, plus the final bonus one-shot released a couple months ago. All told, this came to 1,979 pages, but if you don't count the 4 unrelated one-shots, the amount of content for Mizutama comes to 1,859 pages, which ranks among the longest for all the series I've worked on, with only a few series that were longer (by comparison, Usotsuki Lily was about twice as long at about 3,600 pages).

At times, Mizutama was difficult to work on, especially with a large number of double page spreads and a lot of redraws to take care of, which although pretty typical for any shoujo manga, still required a lot of effort to get through. The bonus columns in nearly every chapter (indicative of a shoujo manga published by Hakusensha) were also very nice in that it provided some extra insight into Ike's thought process about the series, which of course was yet another similarity with Usotsuki Lily which had whole pages with that stuff at the end of every chapter. Still, translating that block text was a little annoying at times when I just wanted to finish the chapter, but I'm still grateful for them after the fact.

All in all, Mizutama Honey Boy was a really fun series from beginning to end, and Junko Ike really shows her talent in art, storytelling, comedy, romance, and much more. She also recently ended her other series Onee Danshi, Hajimemasu, so I'm interested in seeing what she does next, even if there's no guarantee I would work on anything again by her at this time. But for now, I'll miss Mizutama, which in a lot of ways is the end of an era, it being the last series I picked up in 2015 that I still had to complete, and all of the other ongoing projects (excluding Shounen Oujo which isn't really "ongoing" anymore) are all from either 2018 or this year. So it's sad to see Mizutama end, but I'm glad that I could see it all the way to its conclusion.

Mizutama Honey Boy extra 1 - Special booklet: Mediafire, Drive
Mizutama Honey Boy extra 2 - Bonus one-shot: Mediafire, Drive
Mizutama Honey Boy volume batches

Edit: Typos fixed in extra 2. Replace with this and this.
Edit 2: Typos fixed in extra 1. Replace with this and this.

Cross-dressing Makes Everything Sweeter!

After a little while of not finding any new web comics to work on, I happened upon a new short series called Poker Face Cross-dresser (original title: Poker Face Josou Danshi, ポーカーフェイス女装男子) by Kurano, which has been uploaded both to their Twitter and pixiv accounts. In the story, a guy unexpectedly receives chocolate from his classmate Sentarou Yamanaka on Valentine's Day. If that wasn't surprising enough, Sentarou does this while dressed as a girl. Kurano initially drew a 2-page comic that was the origin of the ensuing series, included in this release as chapter 0, and as of last week, the series is up to 4 chapters, all of which are in this release, with hopefully more to come.

Poker Face Cross-dresser ch. 0-4: Mediafire, Drive

Some Promises Are Forever!

Finally, after a lot of work, we now come to the end of Mizutama Honey Boy volume 10 with chapters 51 and 52, ending the main part of the series. However, there is still the booklet that came with volume 10 that serves as a bonus epilogue to the series, and another bonus chapter recently released in LaLa to do, so there's still a little more to go before this series officially comes to an end.

Mizutama Honey Boy ch. 51: Mediafire, Drive
Mizutama Honey Boy ch. 52: Mediafire, Drive

Edit: Slight revision to a line in ch. 51, pg. 8. Replace with this.

I Feel Therefore I Am!

Finally after two months, Fukaboku returns with chapter 11. The next chapter will most likely be released on June 7.

Fukakai na Boku no Subete o ch. 11: Mediafire, Drive

The Bonds of Friendship Are Never Broken!

 

Nettaigyo wa Yuki ni Kogareru chapter 20 is done, ending what will be volume 5 to be released in June. And as per usual with this series, it's taking a one month break leading up to the release of a volume, so the next chapter will also not be released until June. Once again, this chapter was provided from the usual generous donor, so thank you as always.

Nettaigyo wa Yuki ni Kogareru ch. 20: Mediafire, Drive

Edit: Typo on pg. 17 fixed and reuploaded. Replace with this.