Do you know how hard is to get someone to stargaze, nowadays? We have everything on Earth’s ground, we have our cellphones, TVs, PC, Internet, so, why bother?

A man by a name of Jack Horkheimer always thought that we should look up to skies more, even in this modern age. Since 1976, his small weekly show, “Jack Horkheimer: Star Hustler”, helped several generations of American people find their way through the sky, and even outside of the USA, his legacy was remarkable. Week by week he would talk about the sky passionately, showing and explaining to us, in a really simple way, astronomical events for that specific week, small information about our solar system and the Universe.

For instance watch this small video, the latest video he made (sorry about the ads at the end):

Quite appropriately, as the video said, you can see the Summer Triangle right now on this days. For a Sora no Manimani approach to the Summer Triangle, please watch chapter 11 – The Star of Words, and also the cover for the volume 2 also in chapter 8 – Vapor Trail.

And that’s just one sample of his work. Each week of each year, for 24 years he made one of those short clips. Just, how much information you could fit in a 5 or 1 minute segment? For me, that segment felt like the whole Universe got condensed in my head.

Personally, I got to know about Horkheimer relatively late in my life. The show got its name changed to “Jack Horkheimer: Star Gazer”, and with that title my local planetarium had some VHS cassettes running around with his show taped and spanish-dubbed. His compelling way to explain things trapped me always and I felt, I always felt, that we should help make astronomy as widely available as ever. Some years after, I got to know about Sora no Manimani, and then I started helping DRAT with that project. With that in mind, I hope you can feel the legacy he left inside of me.

Jack unfortunately has left us on August 20. It has been a great loss for all stargazers all around the world, because if I’m not to be corrected, we always strive to find a nice way to explain astronomy, to teach people, and which best way that the way he did: simply.

That’s why in his honour, and the honour of all the ones that left us in the past years and days, lets reach the skies once more. Let’s forget about all the problems and sorrows of modern age, and for a while, just a while, let us submerge ourselves in a vast sea of stars and planets right above our heads.

Jack, you’ll be surely missed. If ancient Greek beliefs are to be true, shall you become a huge bright star in the sky.

Keep looking up!

G: but cute nonetheless.

m: ha ha ha

G: what?

m: the cats
ridiculously cute?
XD

G: lol

And just what cats could M and I possibly be talking about? You’ll have to read Flat; Skew Lines 2 to find out~.

BUT

we’re celebrating today. Yup. We finally finished another project. A project that, sadly, nobody downloads. It’s actually my personal favourite. Somehow I like it better than Flat or SoraMani. Many thanks to the people over at Arienai! for collaborating with us on this sweet little volume.

You can download
- Promised Land, the last story from the Inu wo Kau anthology here
(and the full volume with minor fixes here). (DPP edit: there were a few more minor fixes. The links have been updated)
- Cool and Fearless (SnM ch19) here
- flat; skew lines 1 here

A few requests from us…
1- Please refrain from rehosting our projects elsewhere. We know you’re eager to share your favourite manga with your friends, but we can do without that kind of extra publicity.
2- If you don’t know what refrain means, please look up a good dictionary. I’m sure it’s not too much to ask.
3- Please don’t bother updating our releases that we haven’t on MU. We’ll get to that in our own time.

Oh, and if anyone’s been wondering, the Blue Library and the stupid young general are sitting somewhere on the backburner… until the day someone volunteers to adopt them. ^^;

Enjoy the releases!

…Anyone fancy hosting some stuff for us?

We look like we’re in a rush, don’t we? You must be saying: Wow, these guys are releasing Sora no Manimani really fast! And well, we are trying to get a nice pace.

To be fair and just FYI, these two chapters were cleaned and typeset at the same time by different staff, that’s why we were able to deliver the two chapters almost at the same time (except that I took some more time because of a small incident).

Nevertheless, I’m glad to present you the first appearance of Oumi Ayumi in Sora no Manimani volume 3 chapter 18: Welcome to the High School Astronomy Network! (with a 1337 size of 13.37 MB!)

I really hope you like it! And if you really like it… Why don’t you just drop us a comment? Or better yet, why don’t you give us a hand?

Thanks to everyone in our team and specially Shyne for an excellent work!!! Go, go, DRAT!!!

*edit by mangafly* We are still looking for typesetters for Oira Houkago Wakadaishou.  T_T

Failure to find a volunteer will result in

- slower release of other projects.
Yup. Because I’ll now have to spend my precious translation time to try master the art of typesetting. *nods*
- absurd titles for the release posts,
which will result in difficulty for you to locate the releases. *nods*

OK. Now that I’ve got that out of the way, on to the next release.
But before that, we have a mini quiz. Failure to answer the questions correctly… will result in a serious repercussion.

Let’s get started now, shall we?
Q1 – Buchou’s class organised a Moon-Bunny Cafe for the school festival. True or false?
Q2 – Edogawa’s love for older women (oneesan) will just keep getting stronger and stronger. True or false?
Q3 – The waning moon is when the moon is coming out of hiding. True or false?
Q4 – Haruko-san and Sou-nii make a perfect couple. True or false?
Q4.1 – Sayo and Sou-nii make a much more perfect couple. True or false?
Q5 – A harvest moon is when the moon-bunnies go hopping around the moon harvesting the mochi fruits and the dango fruits. True or false?
Q6 – Washita Aiko is the legendary costume maker for Class A1-2, who was also the leader of the girls faction during the project voting. True or false?
Q7 – Sadako is the name of the ghost from the horror movie Death Note. True or false?
Q8 – Big duckies are most often associated with the manga/anime Gintama. True or false?
Q9 – The Sea of Islands is the only sea without any islands. True or false?
Q10 – You will need to add up the number of true statements in order to obtain the download link. True or false?

Enjoy the release~!

p.s.: We will not entertain any complains about the fourth question. Yes, ‘we’ means you, too, Tamashii. *ahem*

Another new manga by another budding new mangaka. It’s about a bunch of high school students and their paper airplanes. Apparently feelings, like paper airplanes, don’t fly straight too!

This 4-panel manga is published in GanGan Online. We’re releasing the first chapter, but there’s actually another chapter which is a one-shot prior to this one.  It is quite long for a 4-panel one-shot… I’ll probably translate it when I have more time. (And when I can bug my helpers…)

Download the first chapter of Kimi to Kami Hikouki to by Hazuki Matcha here. Due to a certain recent development in the scanlation world, we ask you to please refrain from redistributing our releases. “Preezu preezu don’t applodo our stuff elsewhere,” says Tamashii.

On to other projects. We need a typesetter for Oira Houkago Wakadaishou. It shouldn’t be as hard as typesetting SoraMani, so someone, anyone… help!

Lastly, I thank everyone who has and had been with us over the past 2 years. Without you guys, we’re no tards!

So here’s chapter 12; glimpse of the other.

“This is NOT Akkun”

Mangafly is actually super nice and we <3 her lots! She doesn’t beat us that often d:

Do you remember this? (from SoraMani volume 1, chapter 7)

Hello everyone! Tamashii writing…

So that you get to know: This chapter was a total riot. We started back in December ’09 and we ended up releasing it on May!
It’s part my fault.

We ran thru a lot of problems, among work, sickness, studies, computer crashes (we were able to recover), cats… Nevertheless, we fought, and completely glad we present you:

Sora no Manimani
Volume 3, Chapter 16
Illuminated Ground

Hope you enjoy it, as much as we enjoyed scanlating it. So, here’s your download link. We’ll be glad to hear from you, so please comment!

By the way, remember, we are actually recruiting! Visit our recruitment page to look at the positions we are recruiting for right now. We need your help!

I got hitted with a large trout by mangafly…

Edit: Corrected link to chapter 16.
Edit2: Changed link again for updates.

Inu wo Kau chapter 4:  Three People’s Days

download here