Black Lagoon ~ Rei Hiroe

[chaosof99]

Black Lagoon by Rei Hiroe

Summary from Wikipedia:

The story follows a team of pirates/mercenaries known as Lagoon Company, who smuggle goods in and around the seas of Southeast Asia in the 1990s. Their base of operations is located in the fictional city of Roanapur in Thailand, and they transport goods in the PT boat Black Lagoon. When on land, they move around and conduct business using Benny's Pontiac GTO. Lagoon Company does business with various clients, but has a particularly friendly relationship with the Russian crime syndicate Hotel Moscow. The team takes on a variety of missions—which may involve violent firefights, hand-to-hand combat, and nautical battles—in various Southeast Asian locations and when not doing much, the members of the Lagoon Company spend much of their down time at The Yellow Flag, a bar in Roanapur.

Licensed by Viz Media.

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Hello,

I am not pretending that my opinion will be much worth in this forum as regularly just lurk around and wait for scanlations to pop up, but I have an issue and as this is the biggest scanlations community I know and regularly visit, I think this is the best place to give it a shot.

The issue I have is with the fact that absolutely no one is scanlating Black Lagoon.

I came to it when Carlsen Manga started to release the series in germany and therefore giving me, an Austrian, also access to it. This coincided with the end of the first series of the anime which I promptly got from a colleague. As far as I have gathered, Shinsen-Subs saw very high downloads for this series when they subbed it and it was also one of the few titles that made money for Geneon before they shut down their american operations.

This is all in addition to many anime reviewers, especially podcasters liking the anime very much.

I find it kind of hard to understand how a series that got so much praise all around and seemed rather popular with the crowd being paid no attention to at all when it is in manga form. The only scanlations I came across where Akatsuki-Mangas scanlations for the first two volumes as well as a few others translating the first or the first and second chapter.

I am not too familiar with the process of scanlation, but with the monthly release schedule of this manga, the episodic nature of the series and the fact that it needs next to no setup, I cannot really understand why nobody is translating a critically acclaimed and popular series.

Any insight for me?

[damnz]

It often happens when the anime gets much more attention that the previous or later made manga. Same happened to Moribito, Gurren-Lagann, etc... people probably think people won't download something they've already seen animated.

[Juiceman]

Popular anime tend to boost awareness of the manga they were based on -- but that doesn't mean that they are definitely going to be scanlated. As of right now there are simply no groups interested in the series. There are already plenty of great, and arguably better, manga out there not being scanlated, and only so few scanlation groups. It's not hard to imagine Black Lagoon being low on the priority list.

[Archiel]

chaosof99, as it turns out it seems that sora-scans have taken an interest in BL, and probably may have started scanlating it. Personally I too wanted to scanlate BL and post the releases here but due to problems finding a translator I couldn't.

Here is the link the to the sora-scans site www.sorascans.com

[wildzero]

I feel your pain here, chaosof99, and thanks Archiel for the link. I've been looking for a scanlator of BL. Wahoo!

[Woofcat]

I would love to scanlate it, I have wanted to since the anime finished. The problem is finding translators.

[chaosof99]

Oh, I thought the Sora scans chapter 00 was released earlier than end of October. The scanlation is very nice, but I don't know how well planned out that project is. After all they have 7 volumes and more to catch up to.

I think the best course of action would be if they released chapter 00 (the basic setup) and proceed by scanlating the current storyline with the stuff in between scanlated when there are resources left.

In any case I wish them best of luck and I will keep reading their scanlations although I already own volumes 1 to 4 in German and volume 5 is slated for December.

At least there is a glimmer of hope.

[Oroko]

Volume 6 was scantilated on Rapidshare if anyone is interested.

There's no readme to any group that made it, nor do I see any credits, so yeah, enjoy guys.

RapidShare: 1-Click Webhosting

[chaosof99]

Some 4channer who calls himself Anonymous Spore scanlated Volume 7. Heres a Sendspace link to it.

[chuckleb]

Does anyone have links to the previous chapters? I'd like to fill from the beginning.

Thanks