Battle Athletes Daiundoukai: Satellite Stage, Heat 6

Just on the border, of your waking mind, there lies another time, where darkness and light are one... And as you tread the halls of sanity, you feel so glad to be, unable...to go beyond....

I have a message from another time.

No, it's not an April Fools joke. We're back. It's been a while. Lost my job today, so the joke's on me, right?  Suddenly plenty of time to finish up this chapter, though. Through good times and bad, the show must go on.

This is the end of volume 2, which means we are now right at the midway point. I might've hoped for a slightly less ridiculous end to the volume, but it's all business from here on as the Daiundoukai - and the relationships of the characters - heat up.

Hopefully we can do the second half a little bit quicker, but how many times have I said that now? It's not like anyone's reading this blog anymore anyway, right? Hahaha.

Download Link: MediaFire

Also, as promised, here are the complete raws for Volume 2. Keep in mind that, as these are unoptimized, the file size is quite large: Volume 2 Raws

Battle Athletes Daiundoukai: Satellite Stage, Heat 5

Aaaaaaaaaand we're back. Sorry for the wait. This could've been done months ago, but for various reasons, it wasn't. We'll try to do better, I promise. I say this in the assumption there are people still checking this blog, poor wretches! T-T

This chapter was a bit of a surprise when I first read it, because it's here that the setting really begins to diverge from what I knew before from the OVA and TV series. We hope you will enjoy.

Download Link: MediaFire

Battle Athletes Daiundoukai: Satellite Stage, Heat 4

IT BEGINS. AGAIN. Or is it "still"?

I hope you've all been enjoying the Olympics. I promise we didn't hold this back to release it just now, it simply happened that way, but there's no doubt it's an appropriate time as always. I admit I'm not nearly as into the winter games as I am the summer ones, but I do love some Curling, and where I live, the winter Olympics is the only chance to ever see it.

I watched quite a bit while working on this chapter, in which the girls are getting up to their own stick-utilizing sport, although the similarity pretty much ends there. Also Mylandah throws down some more of her awesome bad behavior.

We hope you will enjoy!
Download: MediaFire

Battle Athletes Daiundoukai: Satellite Stage, Heat 3

Well, here we are again. We were doing so well for the first half of the year, but as so often happens, there have been many upheavals in the past four months. However, things should hopefully be settled for a while now.

I hope there are still some people who are interested in this project, but however that may be, and no matter what delays may take place, my desire and determination to see this project finished won't waver. So please believe in that.

On another matter, ever since Jmanga went out of business, we've received several requests to restart Kimi no Tame, but I'm afraid we have no intention of doing so. A very great deal more of it than we ever did is already available in English thanks to Jmanga, and that will have to do.

To tell the truth, there are actually several unclaimed manga Zefiris and I would love to be working on, but as should be obvious, we have enough trouble even attending to just one. Who knows what unwise gambits we may one day choose to make, but for now, we hope you will continue to enjoy Battle Athletes Daiundoukai.

Download: MediaFire

Battle Athletes Daiundoukai: Satellite Stage, Heat 2

It's time!

Lots of people get to act cool this chapter. Mylandah makes her debut, and for those who know the character, her behavior is sure to meet or exceed your expectations... Next Jessie has a big moment, and then Kris enters the fray! By the way, there's no extra page this time, the chapter just ends abruptly. Yes, it's a cliffhanger alright.

One translation note. At a critical moment, Jessie refers to Akari as her "shinyuu" (親友), and we had the usual struggle to decide whether to put it as "best friend" or merely "dear friend, close friend, etc." Ultimately I decided on "best friend", as I think that really is the best way to describe their relationship. Also, it makes Jessie that much more awesome for boldly declaring it at such a moment.

We hope you will enjoy!

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Battle Athletes Daiundoukai: Satellite Stage, Heat 1

Time to begin the main event! Or at least, to make our way to the place where we can begin getting ready to begin preparing for the main event...er...yeah... Anyway! On to the Satellite Stage.

Welcome back to Battle Athletes, where space, far from being the silent vacuum you might imagine, is filled with whooshing noises. Lots and lots of whooshing. You'll understand soon. Enjoy!

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Battle Athletes Daiundoukai: Land Stage, Heat 5

Well well. You know that motivation and discipline I mentioned? I found it. It's been 29 days since our last release, and even though this is a double length chapter, we managed to do it in that time. It's really a lesson to me of how things can and should be done. Now, I certainly can't promise we'll be pumping out chapters every two weeks, but certainly we'll be aiming more toward a paradigm like that than we've managed in the past...

Anyway, it's tough to say much about this chapter without spoiling the suspense. This is the end of the Land Stage and gateway to the Satellite Stage, which is three times as long. For at least three of our aspiring young ladies (but which?), this is only the beginning. Many more struggles and important meetings lay ahead...and for Akari, one of the latter in particular.

One thing to add is that you should look closely at the group of bikers gathered on page 138. There are some rather amusing pre-race preparations going on between a few pairs of students...also, this chapter contains some NSFW elements, so careful where you read.

As always, I want to thank Zefiris for her eternal patience and indulgence, never complaining at my bipolar shifts between procrastination and bursts of demanding fervent action. She really is the one who makes this work possible. We hope you will enjoy!

Heat 5 Download

Also, as promised, we are also releasing the raws of volume 1 at this point. Keep in mind that as these are unoptimized, the file size is quite large.

Volume 1 Raws

Battle Athletes Daiundoukai: Land Stage, Heat 4

Well, here we are again. Sorry for the long delay. There have been legitimate reasons for delays in the past, but there aren't any now, I'll be honest. This could've and should've been out long before this, and the only reason it wasn't is a lack of motivation and discipline on my part. My apologies for that, and for keeping you waiting.

In any case, it's Icchan's big moment, for both good and ill. This chapter sets the scene for the big Triathlon in Heat 5, which is the double-length, sixty page finale of the first volume. Please look forward to it.

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Battle Athletes Daiundoukai: Land Stage, Heat 3

Reactivation! It's a favorite word of mine.

Happy belated holidays, and upcoming new year. Our resolution is of course to put out more BA more quickly. I was hoping to be able to put out a chapter a month when we started this, but things just haven't worked out so far. Things have been stabilizing in some ways, though, so hopefully...

Anyway, this chapter introduces Ayla, who was actually a quite different character in the TV series, both in design and personality. Also...maybe my memory's just hazy, but I don't remember Ling-Pha being quite so...uh, yeah...guess it's time for another rewatch.

It's been great to be back at work on this again. We hope you will enjoy!

Download: MediaFire

Battle Athletes Daiundoukai: Land Stage, Heat 2

I really love the Olympics. Have since I was little. Female athletics is something I've always considered to be a very positive and empowering thing. I love to see those strong, skilled women striving and competing together.

This is also the reason I love sports anime and manga, and Battle Athletes is a very special example of that genre for me. In short, there couldn't be a better, more appropriate time to release more of it than right now.

This chapter introduces the glorious Jessie, who will be an important character all the way through, I'm happy to say - and wow, just look at the way Akari reacts to her. Even if you left out everything that happens later in the manga, this would've been enough to convince me that Akari is a lesbian. (Not that it's ever very difficult to convince me of that.)

It's such a blessing to be able to work on this. I'm enjoying it so much, and I hope you will too.

Download: http://www.mediafire.com/?1k2kl13hscmpviz

Battle Athletes Daiundoukai: Land Stage, Heat 1

At last we're underway. Would've come sooner, but real world troubles, as always. Anyway, I'm already really enjoying working on this. As some of our readers may know, we've done a lot more four-panel stuff than "regular" manga. That wasn't by design, it just sort of happened, and I have to say that it's wonderful to work on something with an actual plot and direction, instead of the typical random fritterings of Yonkoma.

The manga is divided into the "Land Stage" and "Satellite Stage". There are five chapters, or "heats", in the Land Stage comprising the first volume, and seventeen in the Satellite Stage, taking up the second through the fourth volumes. Here then is the first "heat", where Akari takes her first steps and makes some new friends.

As far as translation notes, here's a few things to know:

1. Ichino has a strong Osaka dialect. As innumerable bad localization attempts show, there's no good way of reflecting this in English. We've tried to give her dialogue the same casual, informal quality while moseyin' clear o' tha gol-durn nonsense some o' y'all might know 'bout.

2. Ling-Pha ends all of her phrases with "-aru", which in Japanese is a stereotypical way of denoting a Chinese accent or speech style.

3. Tanya's dialogue is both childish and rough. Short, simple phrases with a lot of "omae"s, "yatsu"s, and "zo" sentence enders.

Oh, and for those wondering about the raws, we've decided to release each of the four volumes as we complete them.

Enjoy, and remember - annoying as he may be, the coach is not a romantic threat. :P

Download: http://www.mediafire.com/?2oo7h9x65rug7hg

Our Upcoming Project

Among older yuri fans, there is a franchise that is well known and fondly remembered. The anime versions of this franchise, a 6-episode OVA and 26-episode TV series, were some of the earliest anime to contain strong and intentional yuri themes, as opposed to the willful self-delusion of "subtext" which was the order of the day. (To put its age in perspective, the TV series was apparently the very first anime TV series of all to be released on DVD in Region 1.) It was among my first anime purchases, a great show that I continue to cherish as one of my most important early experiences in both yuri and anime in general.

However, there is a mysterious misfortune attached to this franchise, one that has endured down through the years even to this day. The original version of this work, the manga, is a phantasm which has remained all but completely unknown to the West. The Wikipedia article barely mentions it, TVTropes and the ANN Encyclopedia don't even register its existence, and - as far as anyone knows - beyond a few tantalizing and perennially reposted images of the ending, it is simply not to be found on the internet. It is an old manga now, difficult to obtain, and it would seem that without being sure of what they were getting, no one has been crazy enough to go to the trouble.

That is, no one until now. Obtaining and scanlating this manga has long been a secret dream of mine. At last, after a nontrivial amount of money and effort, my dream of bringing it into the light is finally underway. Zefiberyl Translations is delighted to announce our "new" project:

Battle Athletes Daiundoukai.

That's right. We're taking you all the way back to 1996.

The characters of Battle Athletes are old and dear friends to me, so I was extremely interested to see the treatment the manga gave them. Having finally had a chance to look at it, I can say that I'm extremely pleased with it. On the whole, it's a superior version of the story that combines some of the best features (and omits some of the worst features) of the OVA and TV versions, along with plenty of its own unique elements and attractive artwork. Besides the canonical and mutual main couple resolution, there is also a second canonical pairing at the end, a couple that I never would've expected to actually get a happy ending together.

Another interesting difference is that later on in the manga, there's quite a bit of martial arts/fighting action. Judo and Kickboxing are some of the final qualifying events, and in true sports manga fashion, our heroine Akari has to undergo some intensive training to be able to stand up to her opponents.

Shoryukens? Yeah, we've got those.

At four full volumes, this is quite an ambitious and long-term project for us to undertake.  Even so, we're hoping to begin bringing it to you soon. Translation should not be too difficult; the kanji all have furigana, and no complicated terminology is in use. One problem is that the copies I received, while serviceable, are showing their age somewhat, especially around the outer page edges. Here you can see an example, before and after scanner magic. (The new scanner I bought for the purpose proved to be a very good investment.)

The content's not important, pay no attention...

Zefiris assures me that further cleaning should be able to fix these issues up tolerably. She's hard at work in both areas at the moment, so have no fear. (She has a criticism that it "needs more Bernkastel", but that particular criticism of hers is liberally applied to all Bernkastel-free media...) She also states, in rather the same vein, "I look forward to people claiming that it turns het. Their whining when the yuri shows up will be so delicious, even Bernkastel would approve."

Since, as I said earlier, raws of this manga don't seem to currently exist on the internet, our intention is to also make the raw versions of each release available as we go along.

Well then, please look forward to our first release!

Kimi(hime) no Tamenara Shineru

Well, this hit us as quite a surprise. We were actually working on getting some chapters on this manga done this month - in a new resolution, too - but it's licensed.

By JManga no less.

Well, it is in more capable (and hopefully faster!) hands now, so consider it dropped here, and please consider getting it on JManga instead if you liked it, once they release it.

This was the last project we were doing, so we have nothing on our plate now and don't really know what to do next, if anything. Maybe we'll put out a one-shot or two. We honestly don't know yet.

Take care, and thanks for following this little blog.

~Zefiris

Choir! 26, 27, and 28

Happy early Valentine's Day, and as always, sorry for the long wait.

Well, it's a bittersweet moment. These three chapters are the whole reason I wanted to work on Choir! in the first place, and although it took way too long to get here (mainly my fault), here they are at last. It's sad, but fitting, that they be our final Choir! release.

Although it may not be the greatest manga in the world, I've grown quite fond of it over these three years, and its many crazy references taught me a lot of obscure stuff about Japan. I hope you've enjoyed it too. It should be unnecessary to say, but we encourage anyone who wants to continue work on Choir! to please feel free to do so.

As for translation notes, in Chapter 27 Shousei and Mayuko have a go at yobisute, which is the custom of dropping honorifics entirely and referring to someone only by their given name. This is the most intimate form of address in Japanese, and is a very romantic, coupley thing to do. Often though, as in this case, it's tough to make bold changes like that...

Anyway, after this we're hoping to put out some more Kimi no Tame before long. Please look forward to it.

Download: MediaFire

We're not dead. We've merely vanished from your world.

Thanks to the many people who've inquired anxiously as to our situation, and forgive us for not answering sooner. A variety of issues have prevented us from moving forward.

One of the most important is, Zefiris is no longer interested in continuing with Choir! beyond the next three chapters (which, as I've hinted before, contain some truly excellent yuri). After that point, there is an upswing in the amount of fanservice/nudity - particularly of pseudo-lolis Mayuko and Shirayuki - that she finds both unpalatable and an unacceptable personal risk. Zefiris lives in Germany, and Germany takes an extremely dim legal view of trafficking in what they might consider pornographic depictions of underage characters. She does not wish to be prosecuted for this, and I certainly can't blame her.

As for me, let's just say I've been having technology issues. Both my car and my computer have been consuming my attention for the past several months. It's rather amazing how enslaved we are to the upkeep of the technologies that are supposed to make our lives more convenient. It is only just now that these issues appear to be finally resolved.

In any case, the plan is to release the next three chapters of Choir! as our last of that title, and then focus on Kimi no Tame for the foreseeable future. I can't say just when our next release will be, but we are and will be working toward it as time and circumstances allow. Thanks for your patience.

Kimi no Tame Nara Shineru, chapters 0-5

Here it is, finally. Sorry for the long wait.

This turned out to be a really wonderful thing to begin working on. I hope you'll enjoy reading it as much as I am myself.

As mentioned, this manga bears an extremely tenuous connection to the life of the historical Sei Shonagon, who served then-Empress Teishi. As such, there are a few things to clarify:

1. Teishi is referred to as a "princess", but although she is of the powerful Fujiwara house, she herself is not of royal blood. At the time, any daughter of a high noble house could be referred to as a "hime", and although we translate that as "princess", the meaning is not the same.

2. As you hopefully read in Shonagon's wikipedia entry, in the Heian Era it was customary for court ladies to be referred to by pseudonyms. This is also the case for Murasaki and Kou, both of whom have the title of "shikibu". Hopefully this will clear up any confusion about both of them being called such.

Well, I could go on, but it would be too easy to get bogged down in explanations. There's no real need anyway - at bottom this is a fun and fluffy work that is far from sweating the historical details. We should take the same attitude.

In any case, it's our pleasure to present this to you! Please enjoy.

Download Links:

MediaFire MegaUpload

Upcoming New Project: Kimi no Tame Nara Shineru

We are pleased to announce that we are taking on a new project, Kimi no Tame Nara Shineru (For Your Sake, I Would Die).

This is a charming work very, very, VERY loosely based on the life of Heian-era author and poet Sei Shonagon. The 27 year-old Shonagon, depicted here as a sort of medieval NEET, manages to land a job as the private tutor of the beautiful and refined teenage princess, Teishi. (Yes, age-gap romance!) There are also a number of other quirky court ladies, some of whom have their own eye on Shonagon...

Zefiris really liked this one, and I'm quite taken with it as well. Please look forward to the first chapters soon! (And don't worry, we won't be neglecting Choir. We intend to alternate releases.)

Page 6 of Chapter 22 Missing

Somehow page 6 of chapter 22 got left out of the release. (I guess nobody understood the significance of Kakin Ondo without this...most unfortunate. You may now be enlightened.)

Here is the missing page. The batch download links in the original post below have also been updated. Thanks to an anonymous commenter for the tip-off.

Choir 22, 23, 24, & 25 - The "Love Love Ski Trip" Arc

Here it is, finally. So sorry about the long long wait. As its name implies, this arc is concerned with skiing and yuri romance, not at all in that order. We hope you will enjoy.

A few notes:

On page 3 of chapter 22, "Our Little Con Artist", Mawata is making a strange joke that we couldn't quite figure out. Whether this is supposed to be referencing some obscure character, or is simply a typically Japanese dig at the "sneaky Chinese" stereotype, we just don't know.

Also, for reasons which will become obvious, Kakin Ondo is now the official theme song of Choir.

Anyway, we hope to do better from now on. Chapters 26-28 could be called the "Mayuko/Shousei Home Visit" arc, and are every bit as rewarding as that description makes them sound. In fact, those three chapters are the main reason we even began doing Choir. The rough scripts are already done, so expect them before too long. Thanks again for your patience.

Read it on dynasty: http://dynasty-scans.com/reader/search/choir

Status Update

Hey everyone, sorry for the delay. Just to let you know, we are alive and working. With luck, we'll be releasing chapters 22-25, the "Love-Love Ski Trip" arc, soon. The progress is as follows:



22: Completed
23: Completed
24: Completed
25: Editing

Please look forward to it. Here's a bit of a preview, haha...