State of the Dence: Fall/Winter 2014

[sleepyviolets]

State of the 'Dence: Fall/Winter 2014 Edition

HAPPY 2015!!!

The last six months have treated us well. We've experienced a few growing pains in the time period we spent growing accustomed to the merge, but we finished off 2014 with heaps of wonderful things to say about our group's progress.

Transcendence Projects

On the Transcendence side, we've managed to finished off some of our long-running projects (Men's Kou - 2010, Hanayashiki no Juunintachi - 2012, and most recently Black Bird - 2009!). While not all of us were very involved with the first two series, we can certainly as a group rejoice that Transcendence was able to see these popular projects through to the end.

Our ongoing projects have really been taking off, and it's only thanks to all our dedicated staff that we're able to put out consistent, high-quality releases every week. They've really taken the accelerator to our high-priority projects:

• Joou no Hana saw leaps and bounds of progress with 5 releases in the last 3 months, and it doesn't look to let up any time soon now that Nessy is leading our partnership with Phoenix Serenade Scans;
• Migawari Hakushaku no Bouken only has 6 chapters remaining in the series;
• we're nearly caught up on Natsume Yuujinchou, a project that had special significance to our team in the trying times of the merger;
• and Roze and MingMing have taken particular care in tag-teaming the scripts for Switch Girl!

We've seen steady progress with our medium-priority series, and our lower-priority projects haven't just fallen by the wayside, either:

• We've got to thank joopinks for riding it out through the remaining 2 volumes of Bibi!
• Love All, our joint series with Chibi Manga, is only 4 chapters away from completion.
• Last but not least, Cosplay Deka has seen constant effort to ensure at least a monthly release.
• Cosplay Animal has seen considerable progress, with Blue3Wind taking up the permanent TSer position.
• Our joint project Galism with Evil Flowers is still hanging in there,
• and our CL trial staff have each had a chapter of Really?! as a nice welcome to the cleaning world.
  
  Even projects we've temporarily placed on hold haven't just stagnated.
  
  • Butter!!! and Cheon Gi Dot Com are hanging in there,
  • while Ardour and Shibariya Komachi have seen some revival thanks to our TL Trial Staff.

Decadence Projects

Roze's baby Decadence, while not even one year old yet, has seen a ton of growth this year! We've finished a number of single-volume projects and oneshots (My Little Robinson, Shoujo no Jikan, and Arabian Pearl, among others), and that's not all.

The four longer-running projects that started Decadence off have been doing quite well:

• Our joint project Biyaku Cafe with Mystic Iris Scans is still going strong. Now that blue3wind is managing the project from MI's side, look forward to a whole bunch of releases!
• Hetamen is making good progress.
• While Love Devil started off as a project with Icarus Bride, we took it into our own hands and have since moved on to crumpledcrane and Roze translating the French scans, with chiisai-hime and CowTopia helping out as JP-TLCs.
• Love Scatters is still coming along smoothly, with great translations from Putochan to help us through.

Some of our newer projects have been off to a bit of a rocky start, but we're excited to be able to push all of them them out to the public!

• Chocolate Girl underwent a change or two in TL, but we have the French scans and will be working steadily on it!
• Our original planned TL for Kedamono Shounenshoujo poofed, but the reappearance of CTLs means this one will be back on track soon enough.
• Smells Like Green Spirit is one that some of our staff (cough, chiisai-hime and CowTopia) have taken particular interest in, so rest assured that this one will push through without issue!
• SP x Baby is currently on hiatus. We'll be back on it once the mangaka gets going again, no worries.
• And last, Aibu de Jirashite is one I've taken a special interest in, so please cross your fingers for everything to turn out okay!

Staff Members

Warm welcomes to our new Translator (crumpledcrane), Proofreaders (CowTopia, QueenyLeAcH), Editor (Pau), and even a returned staff member (Disturbance)!

Thanks to our core Transcendence staff who stuck around all this time (joopinks, MingMing, putochan, and yen_claire) as well as the Decadence staff for migrating over to Transcendence during the merge (Aozora, blue3wind, chiisai-hime, Hyeomi, Nessy, Nadisara, and Shifuyu). Our team would definitely not be the same without you all, and we're glad and ever so appreciative to have you be a part of it.

• Special thanks to Roze for stepping out of her comfort zone as an editor to provide French TLs for not one but two of our series. It takes a lot of effort and time management skills to commander such a heavy time commitment like translating along with everything else. Especially after taking on the admin helm at Transcendence, that's a lot of work, and we salute her for being able to do it all.
• To Nessy, our hardworking and ever-efficient Decadence Manager, it would be such a dirty ship without you (get it? because you clean basically everything ahaha /shot). Thank you for your honest but kind words and playing peacemaker for the whole team.
• Thanks to chiisai-hime for slowly expanding your role from a proofreader for many, many scripts - to a Japanese TLC - and finally to full-on translations for so many of our series. We seriously would not have half of the headway we do on our series if you weren't around.
• Thank you MingMing for being ever so responsive (whether it be about translations or trainees), and for always having your stuff together.
• (from roze:) A special thanks to Nielle as well. She is the Queen of the spreadsheet and works very hard to keep it constantly updated. She also should get a badge for the amount of poking she seems to do around the forum. I admit I have slacked off when it comes to poking people because she is so good at it and usually seems to do it before I do! (And I often forget >w<) We salute you too for all the amazing work you do around here as well, for being able to keep up with all the forum activity even though you're working a full-time job! That's amazing!
  

Also, here's a special shout-out to chiisai-hime, Disturbance, MingMing, Nessy, and Blue3Wind for taking on trainees! (Thank you for treating our newbies nicely *kisses*) Now that we have our new French TL crumpledcrane on board to help guide new recruits into the lion's den our recruitment subforum, I have no doubt that our readers will be flooding in to become trainees.

Looking Forward

Although the December Gameathon didn't turn out nearly as well as we'd hoped, we were still able to interact with some of our beloved readers. Look out for future efforts to do so, through a potential Donation Month (read: scanlation bribery, hehe). If any of you guys have ideas to lure more readers to the forum or just get in some more interaction, please speak up as we'd love to hear your ideas and make them a reality.

We've recently picked up a new series for Transcendence (Geten no Hana) and Decadence (Mahou Shoujo Ore). Get excited, because they look to be fun ones!

Lastly, thank you all for a wonderful second half of the year!! I won't end this State of the Dence properly, just to represent that Transcendence/Decadence won't end this year and will keep growing and growing to greater heights! Hope you all had a wonderful New Year's Eve / New Year and enjoyed the festivities with friends and family!