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.

Download

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