Inio Asano’s new series is entitled Oyasumi Punpun (おやすみプンプン; “Good night, Punpun*”). The description on the homepage of Young Sunday doesn’t reveal much about the story, but it looks like it’ll be a comedy (not exactly Asano’s strong suit IMHO).

* Note that “punpun” can also mean “to smell strongly” or “to fume [with rage].”

All right, here’s the deal. To get more people in our new IRC channel, I have decided to make some of our new releases available in the channel 48 hours before they go up on BT and direct downloads. All you need to do to get the latest chapter of SWWEEET is start your IRC client and join us at #kotonoha @ irc.irchighway.net. Pretty easy, right? It’d be nice if you could stick around instead of just leeching and leaving, though.

It has been announced that Inio Asano will start a new series in Vol. 15 of Young Sunday (to be released on March 15th). Asano mentioned in an interview that his next project would be a fantasy story set at a hot spring resort. I suppose he was talking about this one.

What a Wonderful World and Hikari no machi (Asano’s follow-up to WaWW that we plan to pick up after we finish WaWW) both contain fantasy elements, but a full-fledged fantasy story? That sounds like it could be another deviation from the author’s usual style, as was the case with Nijigahara Holograph. On the other hand, Young Sunday is not Quick Japan. While QJ’s editor-in-chief basically told Asano to do whatever the hell he wanted, I’d expect YS’s one to be a bit more conservative in terms of artistic freedom. I think it’s likely that we’ll get a story that resembles Solanin (Asano’s previous series in YS) in style and mood, which is, of course, not a bad thing at all. In any case, we’ll keep you informed.

In other news, I’m happy to announce that Kotonoha has finally created its own IRC channel. You can find us at #kotonoha @ irc.irchighway.net

Since the channel is still new there isn’t a lot of activity yet, but I hope you, dear loyal readers, can change that. If you are “in the area,” we’d be glad if you drop by and say hello. Kotonoha members are a friendly and sociable bunch, we won’t bite (not hard, anyway). Just use common sense (don’t pester ops for upcoming release news or troll around) and you will be fine.

See you there.

Well, well, it looks like What a Wonderful World is exactly the kind of manga many regular Kotonoha readers have been waiting for. So here we are, working hard to bring you the next chapter. In “Wandervogel,” we learn more about Hotta, the ex-punk-now-office-worker introduced in the first story, and his struggle to cope with his new way of life.

Inio Asano—who’s a member in a band himself—seems to belong to the group of people who believe that artistic expression (in this case music) is one of the most important “weapons” against the dehumanizing effect of modern society on the individual. While that line of thought is hardly revolutionary or even novel, the way Asano describes his characters is unpretentious and engaging. It makes you care about them and their problems, which seem real and tangible. Therein lies much of the power of Asano’s writing.

Incidentally, there’s a striking similarity between the character Hotta and Asano himself. At least if you go on their looks.

Coincidence? Or is Hotta one of Asano’s alter egos?

The one thing about the results of our latest poll that surprised me the most is how many people visited our homepage through links on other scanlators’ sites. I didn’t know we were that “prominent.”

In any case, in order to reciprocate the kindness, I would like to use this post to list all fellow scanlators’ sites who are linking to us. We have worked with some of them in the past. If you enjoy the kind of manga we scanlate chances are you will like their projects, too. Here we go:

• BLAH
• Die Küsse Scanlations
• Dragon Voice Project
• Entropy
• Lililicious
• Manga Translation
• Omanga
• Reimu
• The Waffle House

Doumo arigatou gozaimashita!