aterriblethought

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I haven't caught up on purchasing the official translation for Acid Town but I did write up a couple of posts here and here discussing things that bothered me about the translation. It'd be nice if I'm not slammed one day and could dig into it some more, but overall, very disappointed with Tokyopop's take on the title. I don't want to blame the artists working on the title; they are probably being paid peanuts to turn around work with unrealistic deadlines. But I think it undermines the overall expectation of quality when purchasing an official translation and is just going to keep driving people back to scanlations and pirating. It hurts the industry as a whole to not even try to do good work.

As to Kyuugou's reassurances... yeah, she said she was going to continue it for sure back when she published chapter 52, and it's been nearly 2 years. If the publisher had any contact with her at all I can't imagine it was serious. I think companies like Tokyopop are just snatching up whatever is available and I'm sure Acid Town was cheap. To be fair Kyuugou has been dealing with surgery and things, but it hasn't stopped her from churning out 40+ page chapters for Hitsuji that look stunning. Acid Town obviously just isn't a priority.

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Just the other day I was wondering if there are fans out there who came in through the official translations, welcome! And sorry, lol. If you're all caught up then you're in the same boat the rest of us have been in for the last ten+ years.

The last chapter we released was chapter 53 in September of 2023 I think. I keep checking but there hasn't been any additional chapters released in Japan since. Kyuugou has been focused on her new(er) series and hasn't come back to Acid Town. I think there's a decent chance the series ends up abandoned. 😩

Well, I'm sad to say the day is finally here... Acid Town has been licensed in English by Tokyopop, seemingly.

There's no official announcement yet other than a product page. To say I'm disappointed and anxious about this news is an understatement. I had been hoping for a company that I trusted more to pick up the license. But I'm not familiar with Tokyopop's recent work, I've just been told it's decent enough. I've been working on this series for over a decade so of course decent doesn't cut it with me.

To be fair I think it is about time that Acid Town got a solid redo in English. The early chapters by DP had a number of errors, and when I initially took over I was new to the whole hobby and the quality of both the scans and the translations aren't fantastic. I would love to see a nice, new, clean edition done of Acid Town without the quality inconsistencies, and with the updated artwork of the books.

My anxiety comes from not knowing who all will be working on this and what their goal is. I don't trust that a company like Tokyopop will take the time to do it right and not phone it in. I worry we'll end up with bad translations and lost context for some of the cultural aspects of the series. And I worry that Acid Town's lackluster, inconsistent release schedule will cause the company to drop the series long before it finishes.

I'm not sure why they chose to license Acid Town over any other of Kyuugou's completed and very popular series. Those seem like they would have been a better financial bet and slam dunk if the goal is to turn a profit. But Acid Town does have a small but dedicated fan base, so maybe the demands for an English release just got through after all this time. Or, maybe they accepted the series as a condition of another deal. I have no idea.

I do think fans should support any official release because it will support Sensei. I just know that I personally won't probably ever be satisfied with it and I'll probably be going over every panel here with a fine-toothed comb, so you can look forward to me being a neurotic psycho about it.

Our downloads page has not been consistently maintained and with the news of the English license I will be removing broken links and no longer promoting the downloads page. Right now we're not dropping the series, though. We'll see how things shake out.

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Who put Jail Bait Wait and Wife Husbandry on the TV Tropes page for Acid Town regarding Hyoudou and Yuki, listen, I just want to talk, because.... no, absolutely not. If they end up a couple, fine, I'll back down, but for now, I would like to argue in this 5,000 word essay how this is just not the case --

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It's my 14 year anniversary on Tumblr 🥳

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Funnily enough, this is the only post on this blog that still gets notes.

Back in 2022 after playing this game I launched into a fanfiction for it, busted out almost 50k words in a very short amount of time, then just put it down and didn't finish it once life got busy.

Recently I have been going through a lot of grief and trauma in a short span of time and found myself thinking a lot about this game again and the fanfiction I dropped and went back to read it, and it's actually pretty good?? It seems a shame to leave it unfinished so I've jumped back into it. I also replayed the game wondering if I was writing the characters right and yeah, it's pretty spot on. I have... maybe 5 or 6 more chapters to write to wrap it up.

If you're still here waiting for scanlations, we are also still working on those, it's just been A Whole Lot lately. Chapters 14 and 15 of Hitsuji are coming.

some thoughts on Room No.9

A while back (like 5 years ago back!) I played through a visual novel called No, Thank You!!! and wrote up some thoughts about it here, so now that I've had a chance to play a game related to it, I thought I'd post some thoughts here. This time around the game is so short that I think I'm going to dive into the potential endings, so I'll call out at what point I'll be mentioning spoilers. This is like part review, part just me rambling because this game made my brain fall apart.

Room No. 9 is a BL visual novel game that was released in Japan in 2016 and in English in 2020, so I'm a little behind on the times. It was produced by the BL off-shoot of "Clock Up" called "parade" that also produced No, Thank You!!! The connection between Room 9 and NTY is kind of tenuous; they feature the same train station, so they probably take place around the same area and time period, and they both seem to feature the same shadowy organization that the protagonist of NTY was connected to. But that's about the extent of the connection and the game features no returning characters or plot points from NTY, and focuses exclusively on two new characters, Daichi (the player character) and Seiji. Similarly to NTY, Daichi is not a nameless PC but a fleshed out character; the game is fully voiced in Japanese for all speaking lines; and the amount of actual choices in the game are fairly minimal, which makes it a bit less like a game and more like a vaguely interactive novel. It took me about five hours to play through the first time so it has a fairly brief play time in comparison to NTY. It also goes without saying that Room 9 is most definitely NSFW. :) Similar to NTY there's extensive options for customizing the content and interface, and I was definitely taken aback the first time I booted the game and it asked if I wanted to turn the scatological filter on. "What am I getting myself into?" definitely crossed my mind at that point.

The story of the game can be summarized like so: Daichi and Seiji are best friends, and at the beginning of the game, meet up for drinks to commiserate about their recent breakups with their girlfriends (yes they're both straight). Daichi had been saving up to take his girlfriend on a 10 day trip to Okinawa, and it's too late to cancel at that point. The suggestion is jokingly made to take Seiji along instead, and the joke ends up becoming the plan, and not long later the two head off to Okinawa together. When they arrive in Okinawa, they board the bus to take them to their hotel... and the next thing either of them know, they're waking up in a hotel room. But the hotel room itself is odd; there's a giant video screen in place of a window, and the door leading out of the room is locked. Neither of them know how they got there. They soon find out they've been kidnapped as part of a "behavioral analysis study," and are shown a video demonstrating the consequences if they don't cooperate (involving the madness and violent death of past participants). The rules of the experiment are fairly straightforward: complete one task a day from a short list of options and earn ten points. If they earn 100 points, they'll be released. Assuming they manage to do a task a day, they can be out in about ten days. The tasks are a rather extreme version of a "would you rather" game, and involve either Daichi being physically injured by Seiji, or Seiji being sexually degraded by Daichi. The intensity of the tasks increases with each successive task, and a task that appears as an option one day may not appear the next. The game largely follows Daichi and Seiji as they attempt to navigate the tasks to escape as quickly as possible and, hopefully, not compromise their friendship.

I recently started replaying NTY, and these "experiments" are mentioned in a blink-and-you'll-miss-it line by Haru reflecting on the sort of things his "grandfather" indulges in. Daichi and Seiji spend some time towards the beginning of the game wondering about the nature of their kidnappers; the hotel's furnishings are upscale, and the food they are served is very high-end. The entire nature of the experiment implies an extensive amount of money is involved. It fleshes out a little bit the scope of just how massive and influential the criminal organization from NTY is that they can pull this off, apparently with quite a number of victims and a body count, and have never gotten caught. Why anyone would do this and how they can afford the cost is never really answered and we never actually see any of the kidnappers. The entire room is bugged with cameras and microphones, so my personal opinion is they sell the tapes or possibly even the data from the experiments for a lot of money. In any case I'm not sure it's worth thinking about that much, LOL. The nature of the experiment lends itself well to a game and it surprised me a bit that they didn't push the extent to which you could have really interacted with the experiment and the point system, but that would have ballooned the amount of narrative way beyond whatever I imagine the budget was. As it is, the game features over 2000 CGs, though most are just minor variations of the same art like eye darts and facial expressions.

Anyway, if you've read through this description it can definitely seems like this game has "fan disservice" written all over it, and you'd be right. This is a brutal game. I'll admit that I went in with some level of expectation of what would be involved and was WOEFULLY UNPREPARED. I am forced to admit that my imagination in this department is incredibly innocent in comparison to what some of the tasks were that Daichi and Seiji were forced to choose between.

And yet I really enjoyed this game and find myself struggling to say why exactly. What I did like is that the game really takes its time to develop the two lead characters and make you care about the stakes they're facing. What I also liked is that the characters' reactions to their situation felt very natural and not forced or overly dramatic. I think this concept had a potential to go to somewhere incredibly horrific and melodramatic, and they just never really go there (with some exceptions... more on that when I discuss the endings). Daichi in particular is a character who already has faced a significant amount of suffering and trauma in his life and recovered thanks to his friendship with Seiji. They already have a strong rapport and know how to lean on each other coming in, so the experiments are mostly designed to try to break the connection between them. Something that impressed me about the game is the way it depicted reactions to trauma... the descriptions of dissociation, especially, were absolutely spot on, and you can tell the writers did quite a bit of research (and it seems like the English translators did a fantastic job, so kudos). .. maybe a disturbing amount of research, now that I think about it. Anyway, I just felt like the characters always seemed real, and I often found myself relating to things they said or did. The progression of your choices always results in something that made me go yeah, I guess that makes sense, even if I never had any fricking clue what result the choices would have (they give you like nothing to go on, it's things like choosing whether Seiji keeps his glasses on during sex which seems like it would be utterly inconsequential but speaks to how much Daichi is thinking of Seiji's comfort). Also unlike NTY, both characters are essentially good people (I'm placing a big old asterisk on this again), so you want to root for them and for things to turn out well.

There seems to be only one "true" ending, so I'll say at this point forward I'm going to be playing kind of fast and loose with spoilers, so if you're actually interested in picking up the game for some strange reason, you were warned. :)

There are six endings, labeled with letters, and the ending I got the first time was ending D. Most of the endings follow a similar route and branch off towards the end. The D ending results in Daichi and Seiji escaping, but they drift apart and don't remain friends. For the most part I felt like this made sense as part of the progression of the story; Daichi and Seiji take turns being the victims of the tasks, with the scales weighted a little more heavily towards Seiji's side, and they are so careful to avoid tipping over their physical reactions into more-than-friends territory that they never really show any physical affection for each other whatsoever. I'll admit this drove me bonkers. I have no idea what I'd do in the same situation, but if it was my friend, I would try to reassure them with something at least as banal as a hug or something. But despite sharing the same bed, Daichi and Seiji always keep a physical and mental distance between them in this version of the story. I'd say it's probably the most neutral of the endings and maybe even the most realistic... it'd be difficult to forget about that experience and go back to being friends if you weren't able to help soothe the mutual sense of hurt in any way.

It's worth mentioning if you're kind of squeamish about the physical torture side of this game, it is very benign, and none of the endings I played went further than driving a nail through Daichi's hand. In basically any version of the story where it comes up, cutting off one of Daichi's fingers to fulfill a task is considered too extreme and not even offered as a playable option. Because the tasks include instructions and any objects needed to fulfill the requirements of the tasks, the physical tasks are almost hospital clinical in their depiction and very clean. The first time around I found myself wondering why this was even included in the game... if it's someone's fetish, it's not portrayed in any sort of fetishy way, and it just sort of makes you wince in agony for these two for having to go through it at all. I think it's mostly there to just split the burden between the two characters and because having only sex scenes results in the hell that is ending A.

It's difficult to say which is the worst of the non-"true" endings. I think if you're playing for the sex, ending A would seem appealing - in this version of the story, Daichi and Seiji pretty much exclusively choose the sex tasks, which puts a heavily emphasis on Seiji being victimized and Daichi being the aggressor. While this results in a LOT of sex scenes, the end result is increasingly horrific, as the repeated abuse turns Seiji into a masochist and warps Daichi into a sadist. In this version Daichi finds himself musing that cycles of abuse often result in a victim becoming an abuser, and as a victim of abuse himself at the hands of a violent stepfather, he resigns himself to becoming the villain. It's portrayed in a way that makes it seem as if Daichi is being considerate of Seiji; he doesn't want Seiji to have to compromise himself at all by being forced to hurt Daichi. Despite physically escaping the room, and returning to something resembling a normal life, I think in this version they never really do escape the room. Daichi and Seiji continue to have violent sex, and Daichi has even escalated to whoring out Seiji, though he hasn't yet accepted money for it. This ending was such a bizarre confusion of sex scenes and absolutely gut-wrenching sadness that the story would result in this happening to these two.

Ending B introduces Daichi and Seiji crossing the friendship line a bit earlier, pushing the requirements of a task to add kissing, but unlike ending A this only seems to add to the level of torment the two of them experience. The two spiral into despair, and at the end Seiji attempts to kill Daichi, and can't do it. They're both absolutely shattered, and perhaps wanting to spare Seiji, Daichi kills him. Fortunately (or unfortunately) the death of one of the participants will result in the release of the other, and Daichi is suddenly turned out back into the world, where he walks around in a daze, struggling to come to terms with what happened and the death of his friend. I was shocked that Daichi doesn't kill himself in this ending. I think the only reason I wouldn't rate this ending worse than A is because killing at least one of the characters seems to be a sort of mercy in this situation. My headcanon would definitely be that Daichi offs himself as soon as possible after the credits roll. He has nothing left to live for.

Ending C is very similar to B and follows some of the same progression, but given a choice, Daichi reaches out to Seiji while he's lost in despair and comforts him a bit. Taking physical comfort in each other spirals out of control, however, as they repeatedly indulge in sex as a means of escaping their thoughts and emotions about the situation. In that sense it is kind of similar to A, except that the characters don't lose their inherent values; they just become lost to the room, and never bother trying to escape, despite having made it so close to the end. This ending is definitely sad... but at least they have each other... my standards are so low!!

Ending E gets close to the true ending, but in this version after Daichi and Seiji manage to escape, Daichi insists on going to the cops in a misguided attempt to spare others the pain of what they went through. There's a bit of a disconnect between Daichi and Seiji in this version. Seiji explains he doesn't want to go to the cops because he doesn't see the point; the criminal organization is so powerful, there's nothing they can do. It's not mentioned but it's also possible Seiji doesn't want to go to the cops because he doesn't want the story getting out there and negatively affecting his family or reputation. But I think it's more likely the real reason he doesn't want to go to the police is he doesn't want the experience to continue. Making the case public means he continues to be victimized for life every time the story is brought up. At the very least if he keeps it to himself, he can pretend it never happened and go on with his life. If you choose to go to the cops anyway, it doesn't go anywhere; no one will believe Daichi, and he won't give them Seiji's name. Seiji disappears, supposedly to continue traveling, and Daichi and Seiji never see each other again. It's left very open-ended what happened to Seiji here; did he really run away? Did he feel abandoned by Daichi? Did he get kidnapped again, did the kidnappers do something to him as punishment for Daichi going to the cops? It's unclear, but a shame. The D ending is not great, but at least we know that both characters are alive and relatively healthy at the end in comparison to E.

The F ending is most likely the true ending and the only one that ends happily. In this ending, Daichi decides to not go to the police and instead to go have fun with Seiji outside their new hotel room. On the train into the city, Daichi is having difficulty processing a return to normal life, and instinctively reaches out to connect with Seiji. Seiji does the same. This seems to reinforce their connection to each other as someone they can rely on for support, and they go on to have normal lives where they're still friends, and Seiji will always be around for Daichi. I think for anyone hoping for an ending where the two end up as a couple, this will seem really disappointing.... but it's the ending that kind of makes the most sense for these two characters, so I think it's sweet. At the beginning of the game Daichi is a character who believes that no matter how difficult things get, there's always a better day ahead, and that he can get through anything with Seiji's help. Seiji saved him as a child in his darkest moment when he was abandoned by his parents, and Seiji is there for him again as they try to recover from the events of the experiment. It's nice to me to see Daichi retaining his hope and positive attitude.

All the endings that involve one or both of them going back to their lives after escaping, and struggling a bit to adapt, really hit me hard. I remember times in my life after surviving trauma where I went out into the world and saw people going about their normal lives and feeling an odd sort of disconnect, like there was a barrier between myself and others. It's almost physically painful the way the world continues to go on completely oblivious to whatever it is you're experiencing or have experienced. At one point early in the game Daichi muses about his situation and how you don't often think about how there are people out there at any given moment struggling to deal with something. It was just one of many lines in the game that felt so real to me.

I think that's about it... if I can think of more to say about it I might come back for a second post. Hopefully this time Tumblr doesn't delete this before I post. Don't come after me Tumblr sexy police!!

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Could you upload new chapter of Hitsuji no Kawa wo Kita Kemono to Mangadex..? Thank you.. Ehehe maybe I can do that for you but locked behind members only when including the group translation.

Sorry for the delay, I uploaded the chapter here but I think there might be a one day delay if I remember correctly, so if the link doesn't work now, check back tomorrow. 😅

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Guuhhhh sorry I thought I'd posted it here! Here it is: https://www.mediafire.com/file/yir20s2i9e8t2x2/Hitsuji_no_Kawa_v02_ch12.zip/file

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Hello, how are you? I wanted to ask about the manga "Monster in sheep's clothing" will you continue translating it? It's one of my favorites and I was always looking forward to its updates, but it's been months since you posted anything and I was wondering if everything was okay. Thank you and I hope you can read this.

We've got a new chapter!

You can download the chapter here.

Progress has been slow since I've been working on the remaining chapters for volume 2 all at once (chapters 13 - 15). I have very little free time but am facing doing most of the heavy lifting which means it ends up taking a very long time. Thank you for your patience, I still have every intention of finishing up these chapters at least, though I can't say if we will continue after chapter 15.

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Im not sure if this tumblr is still active, but i was wondering if you know where to read scanlations of Acid Town chapter 54 and beyond? I cant find anything anywhere

There is no 54 and beyond. The series is ongoing in Japan and no more chapters have been released since Kyuugou has been focusing her efforts on Monster in Sheep's Clothing and dealing with health issues.

We still have the next several chapters of Monster in progress but it's slow going as I have had pretty much 0 free time since my baby was born.

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Hi there 👋 Just wanted to ask if there will be a chapter update for Hitsuji no Kawa wo Kita Kemono? I've been loving the series and wanted to know what happened next with Daichi and Tatsumi. I saw online that it's been almost a year since the last update. I do understand that you can't just hurry someone who scans and translate manga for free. Sorry if my question seems inappropriate

Hello! We've been on a bit of a hiatus. I had my daughter last March and have had basically no free time since then or been dealing with illness. So the scanlations have taken a back seat. But I've been continuing to pick up the latest chapters and bought volume 2 when it was released recently. I just can't say for sure when I'll have a new chapter done. I would love to bring on more staff so that the majority of the work isn't on me tbh.

Kyuugou-sensei is on hiatus as well dealing with another surgery, so we probably won't see more Acid Town chapters any time soon either.

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I hope no one asked this before but is Hyoudou in love with Ryuuji? I don't know if it's because I'm reading a BL manga but I've begun to think a little more about Hyoudou and it does feel like it's not just out of a sense of gratitude of why he wants to protect Ryuuji s son.

Hmm, I don't really get that vibe (Hyoudou has big asexual energy to me) but it's not impossible. Hyoudou was fairly young when he met Ryuuji so I guess I've always seen it more like he looked up to Ryuuji as a father or possibly a big brother. They were pretty close friends.

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It's been too long since I read any Kyuugou works or this blog 🥹 Congratulations on having your baby!!! So awesome to hear about it. It makes me think of how much time has passed since I first became a reader of Kyuugou back in highschool. It's been over a decade and I still love rereading their work's.

Welcome back! It's been a not inconsiderable percentage of my life I have to say...

My maternity leave wrapped up and I've gone back to work so life is approaching something resembling normal, and I've been getting back to work on scanlation stuff. At this point I have one chapter of Acid Town in the backlog and like 3 chapters of Hitsuji. lol help

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Scanlation left, official right. ROFL why would you translate it like that? In a BL manga? Good Lord. Also the text is too big and not weighted properly in the bubble.

I've talked about this previously... the "disposable bullet" thing is the literal Japanese translation, but what it's referring to is an expendable assassin in the yakuza. To me this is more indication of laziness/rush job on the part of the staff involved with the official version.

Am I being harsh? Yes, but that's because I've probably poured like a third of my life into this series and think it deserves better. 😩

I have the full volumes so I notice they did keep Wang's name as Wang, but the Heilong are now literally translated to Black Dragons. I mean.... I guess? But then why translate Heilong and not Seidoukai? I'm not a fan of this decision.

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First of all I want to apologize for the radio silence lately. We had almost finished wrapping up chapter 12 of Hitsuji when my daughter was born in March. If I get a free moment that's not spent with her it's usually spent eating or sleeping, just pure survival mode. My computer's been gathering dust. She's sleeping on me right now actually.

Anyway, I haven't been paying attention but it seems Tokyopop has released the first two English volumes of Acid Town digitally with the third volume coming next week. There are also paperback editions on the way, which is great news and a little wild to me that I might eventually see it on a bookshelf in the US.

If you're at all suspicious about the quick turnaround of these volumes, I think you're right. I posted some pictures here comparing pages from the original scanlator's work to the official English version. Here are my thoughts:

I've been typesetting for scanlations for years now and I've come a long way and still have a lot to learn, but to this day I continue to use rules and such that I learned from the original scanlators for Acid Town. Honestly the typesetting for both the scanlation and the official version are not fantastic, but the official version feels especially slapdash. It's not that big a deal to me that the SFX aren't replaced but it does show a preference for speed over quality. The upper right panel of Tetsu where the text is not centered is especially egregious to me and shows a carelessness not only on the typesetter's part but also whoever QC'd the page, if anyone did. There are also wildly different text sizes between the two neighboring bubbles. The original scanlation I have an issue with in the sense that too much text is squeezed into the bubbles and comes too close to the bubble edges... sometimes this is hard to avoid but it's almost every bubble. When typesetting I'm always thinking about how best to center the text and break up words for readability. The official version succeeds a little better there and is less overwhelming to look at.

I've always had an issue with the liberal and often incorrect translations from the original scanlation, but I have to admit when put side by side like this, the official version is missing a lot of character in the dialogue. I'd love to compare against the Japanese text but I'm nap trapped and my Japanese volumes are in another room, so maybe later, LOL.

I still need to buy the full volume but I am curious about the translations for names, really curious. So far everything looks about the same but they shorten Hyoudou to Hyodo... that's kind of normal when transliterating long vowel sounds in Japanese to English, but I always prefer the spelling that matches what you'd actually see written in Japanese, which is an o with a u. If you were to spell Hyoudou in Japanese without the u's it would be wrong. I'm mostly wondering how they translated the Chinese names though (Wang, Heilong, etc. Spelt Wan and Heiron in Japanese katakana, but the katakana is only intended to help read the Chinese characters and shouldn't be the basis of the English transliteration).

I'll come back with more thoughts once I get a moment to purchase the full volumes, but I would also love to hear others' thoughts if you've had a chance to read the new editions.

Chapter 13 of Hitsuji is also in progress and the translation for chapter 53 of Acid Town is done, but I'm a little uncertain what will become of that now that the official licensed volumes are out. I might come back to this later.

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Chapter 11 of Hitsuji no Kawa is available here! We also have a bonus chapter, the leaflet that was released as part of the Chara birthday fair last year. Thanks very much for the raws for this one!

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New chapter of Acid Town is available here! Happy Valentine's Day!

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Oh my gosh!! Tysm for the update and congrats on your pregnancy??? Thinking this would be a new chapter but hearing this news instead put a huge smile on my face! Wishing you all the best for your final weeks and hoping for a smooth time for you and baby <3

Thank you very much, that's very sweet!

The Acid Town chapter might end up being finished first, it's only 15 pages and I burned through translating and cleaning in a single night, so there's not much left to do other than typesetting. The Hitsuji chapters are taking longer because chapter 11 is a whopping 40 pages and the artwork is much more detailed, so the cleanup process is taking a while. 😩 Sensei always gives Hitsuji 100% of her effort.