We’ve gotten a much of e-mails over the last week or so… Some of them may be questions you are wondering too! So rather than just responding to each one, here’s an edition of Mankin-Trad Mailbag!

My responce is in bold. If you would like to ask us a question, put it in the comments below, or click the Contact button to send us an e-mail!

Lawson.Noir asks:

Good day

I like many others am glad that the members of this site have taken on the task of providing scanlations for the works of Hiroyuki Takei that will probably never be released outside of Japan, for that thank you.

I for one am a fan of his other series which sadly don’t seem to be getting much attention so I wish to lend a helping hand. At the bottom of this message is a link to a page of a japanese manga site where one can view and read his works (in japanese of course). With this hopefully it provides Mankin Trad with raws to which they can use to make more scanlations of the series, if it doesn’t then I apologize for wasting your time

So keep up the good work.

Thanks Lawson.Noir for your support of the Mankin-Trad projects that we have released so far! However, we purchase the magazines every month (with expensive, and quick shipping) to make sure that you have the best quality, and consistent releases possible. Jezzy’s scans for each chapter is much better than anything we could pull from the internet. We average around 35MBs per page for our first scan. As a result you get the best quality possible as a result. So our methods we will continue to follow this method, and I hope you enjoy what our future releases will be! Also, just raw scans of the chapters in Japanese does only one thing; lowers the sales of magazine and compiled manga volumes. We should never try to hurt those sales, since they matter the most. As such, Mankin-Trad is taking the approach of never linking to raws or other scanlations on Mankin-Trad.

Gabriiell_11 asks about Shaman King Flowers Chapter 5:

why you people take so long time to traduce the chapters?

Well, here at Mankin-Trad, we try not to traduce the chapters that haven’t been released. But over at Patch-Café… we traduce the chapters in pretty much record speed. It’s often on the same day as the release in Japan we can present our first impressions of the chapter. I’m sorry that we can’t do it much faster than that. But our impressions are just that, so sorry if there was any miscommunications about that chapter.

*traduce = to expose to shame or blame by means of falsehood and misrepresentation

I_am_eikichi_onizuka asks:

when SK zero chapter 3 released 🙁

Thanks for your support of the Shaman King Zero releases! Our current plans for the Shaman King Zero series is to begin releasing them after Shaman King Flowers Chapter 6. We want to get that chapter out the door first. Once that’s done, then we will go back and catch up on all of the Shaman King Zero releases. We want to do it in a method that releases fairly consistently. Once a week would be great, but I’m not sure of that rate just yet. But they will be coming out at least faster than once a month. Somewhere in between that. But our goal is to get Shaman King Zero chapter 3 out the door before the end of the month. Please look forward to it!

Tony asks:

Hello Mankin-Trad. Thank you very much for what you do. I’ve been a Shaman King fan ever since I was a child. I was wondering if Hiroyuki Takei had any plans to make Shaman King Flowers weekly? That would be amazing. 

Thanks
– Tony

Thanks for following our releases! Sorry, but we have not heard of any plans for Shaman King Flowers to turn into a weekly publication. This is highly unlikely since he is currently working on Jumbor and Ultimo as well. His current contract is with JumpX, which to move to another magazine would require a new contract. That would of course cause a large delay in releases and run the chance of being cancelled in this new magazine.  Takei is most likely in a full year contract for Shaman King Flowers for JumpX, where it is a flagship series. Moving to another magazine would degrade the series’ level of exposure greatly (less covers, less color pages, less full page ads, .etc). So I just don’t see it ever happening.

James asks:

Hello,

I was just wondering why it’s taking so long for the rest of the JUMBOR chapters to be released. It has four chapters up to date in Japan, and the chapters that you have released only cover the first volume. What is going on?

Thank you for your time,
James

It’s always good to see that there are some Jumbor fans out there! Don’t worry, we want to release some Jumbor as well! We had a little issue with getting the Jumbor chapter 6 raws, so that held up our releases for the project. And Jumbor chapter 4 was a good stopping point at the time. But! We do really want to catch up. But there are a lot of chapters to do. Currently in Japan there are 24 chapters released. 20 chapters is a lot to catch up on (most of them being 40 pages in length). But the story gets really, really good in those chapters. Much better than the original, and might be the best story Takei is writing currently. (Well, he isn’t writing it… but you know what I mean). So since it takes a while to prep-up these releases… you will need to wait a little longer. Our goal is to release Jumbor chapter 5 after we catch up in Shaman King Zero. This gives Dit some time to work on the translations (which are more complex) and myself to work on the cleaning (which is more complex). We will also want it to be released a consistant rate as well. Not sure what that is, or when it will start just yet. Sometime in the future, we would like to have both the latest SKF and Jumbor chapter released in the same month. But that’s a little ways off. But it’s a day I look forward to!

TCGRed asks:

Hello! I am a big fan of Shaman King! I was wondering if KZB has been released in English yet? I live in Canada and I’m hoping it has so I can buy it all and support Takei! I haven’t seen any in the stores over here so I was wondering ^_^b Thank you!

~TGCRed

Sorry TCGRed, I’m sorry to report that Viz has not licensed the Shaman King Kang Zeng Bang for an English release. We knew that they were in talks for it, but they haven’t struck a deal. It’s probably since Shueisha was offering it as a package, where you needed to license the entire series again (not just the new chapters). That probably just wasn’t a good investment for Viz, and I don’t blame them. I hope the terms have changed and a new deal can be made with the current KZB package (which may also include digital distribution rights, as well as an Android/iTunes app). So until Viz grabs it, you won’t be able to find it in your local bookstores. You could however, import the volumes from Japan or Italy if you want to see the new chapters and extras. Once it is announced for release in English, we will remove all scanlations for KZB. This is the same as we did for the original Shaman King series (with around 8 months before its release in bookstores).

Dit says:

Here’s the translation 😀 enjoy~

Also you did a great job with chap 5, as always!

Wow, thanks Dit! And you always do a great job too! Thanks for the translation!

Jezzy says:

No, seriously November, go fuck yourself. 

Ok, well, I hope you look forward to our upcoming month of December.