Some extra stuff

First, congratulations are in order, given Jaku-chara’s decent results in the KonoRano 2020 rankings. The series was 3rd place overall (again), 2nd in the fan-vote, and 9th in the ten-year ranking. Tomozaki himself was 10th in the male characters, while Mimimi, Hinami and Kikuchi were 5th, 14th, and 16th respectively in the female character division. And of course,  we can’t forget Fly, who placed 2nd among the illustrators.

I’m sure she’ll be first after the anime comes out. Hopefully that means next year.

The official English translation of Jaku-chara’s second volume is now out, and I’d highly recommend you buy it if you have the means to do so. Be aware that some sites like Bookwalker will only have it available starting from the 26th this month.

With all that out of the way, onto the main point.

I’ve revamped the structure of this site slightly so the more prominent link to Jaku-chara at the top directs you to a page where I’ll be compiling all the side story content for Jaku-chara (among other things).

List of Jaku-Chara side-content

Uhh, older fan-translated things will still be floating around since it’s too troublesome to remove it all. But it’s not as easy to get to. Since you should be reading the official releases anyway.

Here’s the first short story (which is actually quite a bit longer than the other short stories):

Top-Tier Character Hinami-san Lv. 99

As mentioned elsewhere, it’s being released now because the original was made available at around the same time in Japan – after the release of Volume 2.

That’s all for now. There’s still a lot of other things to translate, but a lot of them won’t make sense until the main story has progressed far enough. In the meantime, do look forward to Chiramune translations. Patiently.

New series

So in the end I decided to pick up…

千歳くんはラムネ瓶のなか

AKA Chitose-kun wa Ramune bin no naka (abbreviated to ‘Chiramune’)

Disclaimer that I haven’t actually read the entirety of Volume 1 before starting the TL, and will be adopting a different approach from Jaku-chara (btw anime confirmed!!) in that the extent of what I know will be the extent of what I have translated.

May or may not become a long-term thing, will see if people like it.

Main Page
Prologue
Chapter 1 Part 1

Of course, Jaku-chara will still be the main thing around here and on our discord (for unlicensed content like short stories, anyway). But I just thought it’d be good practice to start on a new series that people in Japan seem to find interesting.

KonoRano 2019 Interview and an upcoming announcement

It says 2019, but it was published November 2018.

KonoRano 2019 Interview

I just thought it’d be best to publish it properly before, uh, other translation-worthy things start popping up…

Because there’s going to be some BIG announcement for the series within the next 24 hours or so! See the countdown below, which started 3 days ago. (Source: https://twitter.com/kiwaasa_gagaga/status/1181524725949841413)

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In all honesty given all the stuff they’ve been hinting at it’s going to have to be an anime adaptation, so pretty excited for that. There’s a bunch of events being set up to coincide with Volume 8, including some culture festival event (i.e. jaku-chara merch store) in Omiya, as well as a joint autograph/picture(?) session with Fly (illustrator) and Yaku Yuuki (author) for those lucky enough to be selected.

Also, as for the official English translation of Volume 2, that comes out in November, so not long until the English readers get to read past where we left off! I hear Volume 3 is scheduled for March 2020 or so, too.

Anyway, assuming I survive the typhoon that’ll be hitting Japan this weekend, I’m planning to publish the translation of the super special short story “Top-tier character Hinami-san Lv. 99” to coincide with the English release of Volume 2. It was mailed to those who applied for it after purchasing both Volume 1 and Volume 2 at the time of Volume 2’s release in Japan (while stocks lasted), and, well, as the title suggests, is a short story centered on a day in the life of the purported main heroine Hinami Aoi.

Here’s hoping the big announcement is what we’ve all been waiting for.

And so it ends.

Hello everyone.

learning2tl here.

In case people haven’t been keeping up, this will officially be the last translation release from us of the main story of Jaku-chara. Links are as below.

Volume 2 Chapter 3 Part 6
Volume 2 Chapter 3 Part 7

Quite a bit later than the original 1 April target, but we did actually manage to publish these on 18 April to coincide with the release of Volume 7. Just no blog post from me at that point because I was on holiday in Japan. And too busy reading the new volume.

Anyway, the series now has over 500,000 total copies in circulation. Still no anime just yet, which is a bit disappointing since it would have no doubt boosted the series’ popularity outside of Japan, but reprints of all volumes have just been announced so there’s still a possibility we’ll get that elusive announcement next month. Who knows. Was really expecting it with Volume 7 though, given how it was meant to wrap up the second big arc of the series. No spoilers, but was another great volume.

Keeping to the original plan somewhat, we are officially dropping the main story of Jaku-chara Tomozaki-kun. In case you’re one of those who hasn’t been keeping up with the news, Yen Press licensed the series last year and the first volume is slated for a 23 July 2019 release.

To be perfectly honest, while there might be a slight delay before the official translation catches up and does Volume 2, long term I do expect them to be faster than us at our current pace. Please do support the official release if you have the means to do so.

Expect the translations for Volume 1 and Volume 2 to be completely removed from this site sometime in June.

So what’s next for this translation group? (Or what’s left of it)

Nothing much, really. No plans to pick up another series at the moment.

Thanks to all those who helped me bring this series to the English-speaking world (and in the process, quite a few other languages as well). Special thanks go to Kagefij, Fractal, GIN, Relicaa, ntsugu. Especially Kagefij, as without his guidance this project would have never really gone this far. It really helped to have someone more proficient than me in Japanese on board.

Thanks are also in order for the guy who did the manga scanlations. Great stuff while it lasted.

And of course, thanks to all you Jaku-chara fans for your support and enthusiasm.

Our discord server (which wouldn’t be set up had Fractal not joined, so thanks to him for that) won’t be going anywhere, so please do visit (on a side note, final zrnel count: 13). I’ll still be covering any Jaku-chara content that isn’t the main series.

You could say I’m in possession of a rather comprehensive collection of Jaku-chara interviews and short stories just waiting to be translated when the time comes.

See you around.

learning2tl

Still waiting

Chapter 3 Part 5

I wonder if anything will happen tomorrow.

Soon

Not much time left until the April cut-off date, but for what it’s worth, here’s another chapter part.

Chapter 3 Part 4

Also, Volume 7 due to be released April 18th.

488 pages, 800 yen. Hype.

2-3-3 (2-2-19)

Here’s the next one.

Chapter 3 Part 3

Uhh

At this rate I’m honestly not sure if very much will get done before the 1 April cut-off-date. Anyway, I still need to finish translating the KonoRano 2019 interview, but in the meantime here’s the first 2 parts of Chapter 3. There’s been something like two extra newspaper interviews since then, though. The guy really is going public.

屋久ユウキ先生、顔出しし過ぎじゃないですか。。。

Chapter 3 Part 1
Chapter 3 Part 2

As for news on the next volume, Volume 7 is slated for a March 2019 release. This time is supposed to be a bit special, since it wraps up the current arc, and there will be a special edition of volume 7 on sale, presumably to commemorate it. There might be some big announcements too, we’ll have to see…

 

 

Yes, we’re still alive.

Just thought I’d make this post to let people know what’s going on. Firstly, yes we are still working on this, even if the NU page hasn’t been updated lately. We’ve just been a little busy. See below for proof:

Chapter 2 Part 4
Chapter 2 Part 5
Chapter 2 Part 6
Chapter 2 Part 7

(It’s not really a batch release – these were released over time but I didn’t make a public post announcing it.)

There’s a lot of other things to talk about too, such as how Jaku-chara placed 3rd in KonoRano 2019 and how Fly got 3rd for illustrators. There was even an interview with the author Yaku Yuuki!

But I’ll save that for next time. For now, just a simple update.

IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT

Hello everyone. learning2tl here.

When I started this translation project as a lone translator in June 2017, it was with two purposes:

• To actually translate this interesting light novel and make it more well known internationally
• To improve my Japanese in the process

We are now nearing the end of 2018, and suffice to say, the team working on this has grown in size, Jaku-chara has seen a surge in popularity, and my Japanese has become a whole lot better. I won’t say anything about the speed of releases because, well.

Anyway, Jaku-chara has finally been licensed by Yen Press under the name “Bottom-tier Character Tomozaki”, with the first volume presumably due sometime in 2019.

Probably unsurprising, seeing as how at the time of writing this, the series has sold over 400,000 copies in Japan without even having an anime adaptation. (Not yet, anyway… but it does have a manga!)

Now for the answer to the question that will probably be on the mind of anyone reading this.

Q: What is going to happen to the fan TL?

A: We will of course be dropping the TL.

But not immediately. Our TL is nearing the end of Volume 2 Chapter 2, but has hardly said anything about the main theme of the volume (the student council elections), so I think it would feel very unnatural to stop the TL at that point.

So I’ve decided that the end of Volume 2 Chapter 3 (or else 1 April 2019, whichever comes first) will be the cut-off point at which we halt all translation. A month after that, any Jaku-chara content will be completely removed from this site.

So you should see us around for a little while longer.

Ideally, I would like this incomplete fan-TL of Volume 2 to serve as a teaser for the series, continuing to generate interest in Jaku-chara until the official translations come out. Hopefully I won’t receive any external… objections to the above plan, but if such a thing does happen, do be aware that we will likely comply without any prior warning.

I can vouch for the story getting even better in later volumes, so please do support the official releases when they come out.

Or learn Japanese.

 

-learning2tl

 

PS: If you’d like to discuss the series with fellow Jaku-chara enthusiasts, please note that our Discord server won’t be going anywhere!

PPS: To the official translator, I wish you all the best in dealing with what gets talked about in the afterwords…