ｷﾀ━━━(ﾟ∀ﾟ)━━━ !!!

Good evening!

Today is -- astonishingly -- the group's fifth birthday. When we first got together on a frosty February morning in 2012, we had a single, simple goal: to buy old pianos from yard sales, refurbish them and sell them for profit. But this turned out to be somewhat more complicated than we had anticipated, and we were about to break up and go our separate ways when suddenly -- one of our members read on the wall of a bathroom stall that DMG would pay BL groups tens of thousands of American dollars to scanlate their excellent collection of licensed titles. Now, as it happened, this graffito turned out not necessarily to be true, but by the time we realised this we'd developed a deep, profound affection for BL scanlation which has sustained us all the way to the present day. More seriously -- really, many thanks to everybody who's stuck with us this long, especially through our more languid later years.

And, of course, if you've ever enjoyed any of our titles, please consider supporting the original creators -- all of the stuff we've worked on is still in print (or is still easily gettable, at any rate): CDJapan has a good English interface and there's guides out there to navigating through Honto. And really, we all do our best here but nothing quite compares to seeing the actual original artwork in situ, without the intervention of scanning, levelling and etc. You'll be amazed by the screentones, we guarantee it.

Anyway, the actual content. We're happy to report that long-time friend of the group Lenny (who brought you Sonna me de Mitekure and the initial part of Yoru to Asa no Uta (...sorry about how that one worked out)) has returned! (she'd spent some time in Japanese prison after being caught forging a marriage certificate between herself and antique J-rocker Yasuaki Honda -- we couldn't afford the $25 bail between ourselves) And tonight she has ~an entire volume~ for your collective pleasure. This is Ringo ni Hachimitsu, Ki kara Ochiru, by new faces Syohei (art) and Inutoki (story).* It's a collection of individual stories mostly in the nature of intense weird guy x pleasant nice guy pairings, with some very cute characters and an extremely charming, relaxed sort of art style. So please, put on your manga-reading blazer and your sunglasses and enjoy:

Ringo, Ki kara Ochiru [complete]

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Now, we must note with some regret that this title, unfortunately, comes from one of Libre's subsidiaries, and so we think it prudent to take the usual special precautions. So we'll keep this link up until about Monday, 20th February, and then it'll go down -- overkill, no doubt, but we've built ourselves a nice little dwelling here and don't want anybody coming in and sweeping the ornaments off the mantelpiece, so to speak. Of course we apologise for this kind of carry-on which, of course, we wouldn't wish (and don't intend) to make a habit of indulging in.

And finally, something very stupid. I (taking off my group-leader's mitre and speaking in my personal capacity) have for all these years maintained a fervent ardour for Naoe Marimo, entirely out of proportion to the quality and quantity of her works (2012's Ant & Grasshopper Assortment remains her most recent series). So for the last little while I've been trying to see what miscellaneous items of her output I can pick up, and have enjoyed... limited success, at best. But I have a few things here: [1] the extras to the Ant & Grasshopper volume, including the bonus paper and an extra page from an adjacent issue of Monthly Zerosum where the guys tell you how to enter a giveaway that closed about four years ago (a gruesome ordeal to acquire), and [2] two small oneshot things from 2011 and 2015. So I hope one or two people find this all enjoyable, and I apologise to everybody else in advance.

Ant & Grasshoper - Assortment - Extras

[mediafire] | [sendspace]

Naoe Marimo Special

[mediafire] | [sendspace]

Which takes us to the end of this post! Big thanks to you all for being cool people, and we'll see you again soon, hopefully!

*By way of the most lamentable completeness we should note that Inutoki died, infinitely prematurely, from a severe illness at the end of last year.