Thread: FRHS Weekly Group Review: Chapter 7

Because I missed a week (and because my boss is out of the office today) this thread is releasing early. Hopefully, this will get us back on the originally planned schedule and we'll stick with Fridays (not that anyone is following at this time anyway).



Yet again, Thanks to You're Welcome Scans for scanlating this project.

As always with the FRHS threads, keep in mind that there are un-tagged spoilers below this post.

Chapter 7

I definitely enjoyed this chapter more than the past 3 or 4. While it doesn't have a lot in the way of main story progression (which is what I usually gripe about) it does introduce Goat, who I get the feeling will be either a permanent cast member or at least prominent in the next few chapters. While I don't expect the restaurant angle to continue after the end of this chapter, it was portrayed in a less goofy way than the last few chapters presented their gimmicks. The sub-plot within this chapter of Shiihara working at Starlark was enjoyable, and since I lived in Japan for a while I was able to catch some of the references here.
"Dailies" is clearly a ripoff of Denny's, but judging by the Starlark uniforms and Shiihara's comment regarding them, Starlark is a reference to Anna Miller's. Anime/manga fans have undoubtedly seen this type of maid/waitress uniform before, but likely don't know the origin. A quick google Image search brings back an explanation, irl example, and modern example of the outfit's popularity:

Example 1

Example 2

Example 3

My wife (from Tokyo) explained to me that it's sort of an unwritten rule that they hire girls who are gifted in the chest department. To put it simply, Anna Miller's is a less extreme Hooter's, and instead of wings & beer, they serve diner & bakery food.

The Trivia page for FRHS on the Anime News Network has some interesting material regarding this chapter. I will quote it here, then link the full page below because IT CONTAINS MINOR SPOILERS FOR THE OUTLAW STAR MANGA.

"Yet another Sci-fi related Trivia fact: In Future Retro Hero Story, there is a robot character called Goth. He also bears resemblance to Gort (no surprise there) from the American 1951 film, 'The Day the Earth stood still'." Huh. Seems like Goat could have been translated a few different ways. Here's the page with more FRHS Trivia: Future-Retro Hero Story (manga) [Trivia] - Anime News Network

Hey, I don't know if you remember me but I was the guy who helped scanlate more of the FRHS manga a couple of years back. Do you remember me? You contacted me a couple of months back about restarting the scanlation? How's it going?

Originally Posted by shades7000

Hey, I don't know if you remember me but I was the guy who helped scanlate more of the FRHS manga a couple of years back. Do you remember me? You contacted me a couple of months back about restarting the scanlation? How's it going?

Hey shades! That was me who first contacted you, followed by Mantis (who is REGULARLY this site's Admin). You couldn't have come by at a weirder time because Mantis is out of commission due to a rather serious surgery so I'm the acting Admin for the time being. That being said, I'm managing the OLS manga project & Light Novel project at the moment, so I would be the one to talk to about FRHS as well.

Yes, we'd like to get FRHS rolling again if possible. We haven't caught up to your most recent chapter yet, but we will this year. Could you give me some background on what's holding up progress on FRHS right now & what we could do to help? A private message is fine if you don't want to divulge details about your scanlation team in public. Thanks for reaching out!

Nah, I don't mind divulging details to you about this! What happened exactly was that the translator for the series used to contact me via email about cleaning his personal scans. I would clean what he gave me, and in exchange he would handle typesetting and translation. So it was basically a pretty well functional joint project until he stopped replying to my emails after I finished cleaning chapters 14 to 16 I believe. Sorry for ghosting you on this restart, I've been trying to finish up current series I have now so I can hopefully get more time to help on this. Please tell me if you're still interested in doing so! I promise it won't take half a year to get back to you guys this time!

I for one am indeed interested in continuing to scanlate Future-Retro Hero Story and help any way I can. Not only is it a fun manga that more people should know about, but it's also a vital part of Toward Stars (and Takehiko Ito's) history. That's nothing to push aside.

Let's also not forget that canonically Future-Retro Hero Story rests on the same timeline as both the Outlaw Star manga and anime. I'd say that timeline forks into two different universes before Outlaw Star.

I'll be around to help as well, although I'm not sure what my role would be just yet.

Ok, so how do you guys want to get started on reviving this project? Would you guys like links to the manga raws? The next chapter we would have done would have been chapter 14, which is the start of volume 3.

A better idea of your cleaning process could help with that. I'm not too familiar with scanlation terminology. Apparently "editor" and "cleaner" can be used interchangeably. Unlike that I'm an editor in how I proofread translations, but also sometimes make small changes beyond spelling/grammar.

My typesetting work on Outlaw Star has involved replacing text, rebuilding more difficult areas (probably the biggest time sink) and adding SFX to the final version. The ancient Outlaw Star raws we're working with can be a pain.

I've scanned many things but I suck at scanning manga. (Guess I could work on that.) Since our main translator is literally a pro we compensate him but he's very generous about this. So, I'm saying all of this so we can establish roles. From what I've seen you're far better than me (not to mention experienced) at the cleaning side. I guess we should discuss this more in-depth in a group chat. Steam or Skype would be best. (Maybe Discord too but I can't remember whether Zemekis uses it.) PM any details.

I tried to find FRHS raws. I only found people who'd uploaded your scanlation. I've used some Japanese P2P networks in the past, so I'll see what I can find when I get the chance.

Yeah, that way I see it, an editor is someone who can handle more than one task at a time. He can do cleaning and typesetting, or redrawing, or any mixture really. I do possess some raws for the series already, as well as the ones from the previous group as well, although those are pretty interesting, they're from the bunkoban edition. I'll PM you my Discord name in a bit.