The Jet Black Hedgehog: Shadow the Hedgehog (Manga)

I must say "what if the piracy gets it canceled" is probably one of the worst threats to discourage piracy I've ever heard.

"Don't read it, or else there won't be any more for you to not read!"

Smacks a bit of "you HAVE to support Berserk 2016, or else we'll never get a future not-dogshit Berserk adaptation!" from back in the day.

 

Corocoro can [verb] my [genitalia]. I don't know how these things work, but I'd be willing to be there's a minimum delivery for this partnership agreed upon between them and SEGA, and Corocoro unilaterally canning the whole thing likely isn't practicable. So yeah, I'm ready to play chicken with them. Because what difference is there really between the manga existing but being inaccessible to anywhere outside Japan for entirely arbitrary reasons and it not existing at all?

 

Here's a fun fact: CoroCoro has previously done many franchise tie-ins, such as Crash Bandicoot, Fortnite, Shrek and even multiple Sonic manga. But almost no one in the West knows about this due to how obscure this children's magazine is outside of Japan. (I know about its existence only because it was the place new Pokemon used to be showcased, and even then the only pages I ever saw were those that talked about Pokemon. Everything else was ignored by scanlators.)

It actually surprised me a lot when I saw that someone bothered to not just scan the Shadow manga but also translate it. You'd think this would clue in the folks at CoroCoro that there is an untapped marked outside of Japan that would love to buy an official translation. But the sad truth is that CoroCoro executives are ancient dinosaurs who still use fax for work. They absolutely believe that Westerners should just travel to Japan and buy a physical copy of a manga written in a language they can't even read.

Tl;dr:
It's not stealing if you can't legally buy it. CoroCoro did not suffer a single lost sale due to English speaking pirates. But it's futile to scream this at CoroCoro. They won't listen. I will laugh forever if they do indeed cancel the Shadow manga.

 

To be honest, they could've lost money...
If japanese readers got the scans before buying the magazine, wouldn't that be a loss to CoroCoro?
Or can they read it online, legally, in some way?

 

That depends on whether Japanese readers are interested in reading an English fan translation.

 

The first scans was the original Japanese version though, and then people made their translations. You can go on Twitter and search those out even if they got copyright striked.

I do agree that more publishers could do what others are doing and make their content available digitally and in other languages legally.

But what gets left out of the conversation is that when the chapters get leak it's the original JP version, and it's not like the Japanese audience doesn't know this happens.

That's why more publishers are going after manga leakers.

CoroCoro does have a digital version btw, so I can see why they came down on those leaks.

I do hope that they reconsider releasing this in other languages, or at least sell the volume overseas if there is one.

 

Thank you very much for the tip. Purchasing it via BookWalker worked really fine for me. I suggest downloading the app from the App Store and make an account from there, since it's in English. Then login on their website and finish the purchase with the help of a translator and a PayPal account. The book will then appear in the app's library.

For the collectors out there, you can order a physical copy on CDJapan. That's if you're willing to deal with their shipping costs: https://www.cdjapan.co.jp/product/NEOBK-2916885

I'm pretty excited now. Getting it was really no big deal. I'd say, go for it, fellas.

 

til CDJapan sells manga

 

You can now read chapter 1 online for free. Possibly later chapters as well. Still no English.

Boy, lotta good all that handwringing over scanlations did, huh?

 

Lol. If that's so... I typed out all the words, if someone wants to machine translate them. See the file I uploaded to my Google Drive.

Make sure you delete the word wraps in between the lines. Else the translation won't make sense most of the time.

 

If you guys make an account with corocoro (again, very easy to do), you can upvote the manga 10 times after you are done reading it for free.

 

Finally I can read it. I just hope they release an english translation

 

https://www.corocoro.jp/ranking
The manga has managed to reach rank 4 today among the game adaptation manga. Yesterday it was 8, so this is pretty good! I hope they see the interest and let it keep going well into next year (if that wasn't the plan already).

 

Chapter 2's out, according to user 'tailchana'

 

Bookwalker ended up reducing the asking price by a fair bit, but I gotta say, that first chapter feels like a fluke at this point. Second chapter immediately jumps to white space, passing up the rest of Shadow's history, introduces a gremlin balloon, talks about the game mechanics and bringing Maria back. The worst part is that the black doom "eye" was the larva all along, but it's floating above the soldier... and Shadow asks if it manipulated the soldier to shoot Maria out loud... and then dozens of soldiers arrive with larva floating besides them...

Obviously that doesn't make the events of the flashback canon, or even real, if that many larva showed up and it immediately transitioned to white space. But still, kind of disappointing, especially as a premise for a tie-in manga that can draw new fans in. There might be more flashbacks later, but I could see it focusing on white-space gags with the gremlin balloon for the most part.

 

Probably best to wait for translation on whether the flashback is meant to represent something real or nightmare. It's not even clear if this version of Shadow was swooped in from 50 years ago or present time. To me it looked like things started to crack like in Dark Beginnings though, and then we shift to present time.

As with any manga in the history of ever, it looks like it will spin-off into its own re-telling of the story. The balloon monster looks like the standard mascot side-kick that's probably mandated by the publishers lol.

 

I kinda get why CoroCoro was so pressed about scalations now - this sounds ass, and not having it available in English would’ve prevented a lot of people from finding that out.

 

When the chapter comes out on corocoro's website, users can write (hopefully respectful) feedback and messages to the author. I think writing in English or providing machine TL should be fine as well.

I know the direction this will take is likely heavily mandated by the magazine (although I do think it will not be full blown gag), but yeah... These elements will be trinkles in.

 

I must say, that was actually a pleasant read. Not as childish as it seemed without the context. It pretty much does confirm that Black Doom manipulated the soldier to shooting Maria, but again the implication is they attacked the ARK and other researchers, so I'm not extremely bothered by it.

The scene were Shadow is dropped to Earth was left pretty faithful to SA2 which is kind of cool to see it in manga form. And yeah it seems this Shadow is indeed from 50 years ago which is... Odd. But it does circumvent having to go over 3 other games worth of lore, so fair enough.

The new character is so far in offensive. Seems like child friendly version of Doom's Eye. Seems like they are gaslighting Shadow to get the 3 "wishing orbs" for them to revive Maria (but probably Black Doom will use it instead).

Judging by there being only 3 collectables I think the manga will probably be like 6-10 chapters, and now that it's officially in standalone territory, it should an interesting take on the story