Try! Try! Try! - Kiyohiko Azuma - Prototype Yotsuba&! Collection

For my very first scanlation, here is Try! Try! Try!, by famed manga artist Kiyohiko Azuma.

This is an early prototype version of Yotsuba&!, where he was testing out character designs and the general flow of how a story would work. It was first published as a few webcomics on his personal website, but eventually he drew a full standalone chapter which was included in the publication of a collection of his earlier works, Azumanga 2.

 

Azumanga 2 is interesting in the sense that is a boxset with multiple pieces: 2 booklets of standalone comics, one main book containing a large variety of comics, and a card containing a CD-ROM. 

 

The Goods

 

 

This CD-ROM Includes the Try! Try! Try! webcomics that were published on Azuma's site, along with some behind-the-scenes sketches and info, so naturally everything Try! Try! Try!-related was translated and included in this release. Enjoy some early 2000's Japanese web design!

Yotsuba's early design is truly something...

Who is Suechi? We will never know...

There was another scan and translation floating around, but the scanning quality was office copy machine-tier, and the translation had something to be desired...

Yostuba originally said いっとく, which if you look up in a dictionary gives you "virtue".

But what she was actually saying is like a slangy contraction of 言っておく, which means something like "I will go tell (in advance)."

It gives me great pleasure to clean up this forgotten bit of Yotsuba&! history and make it look (and read!) so much better. The version that was floating around out there was servicable enough, but with the rescan you can really appreciate just how great of an artist Azuma is, even in his earlier days. The comic itself is still quite a fun read and has all the fun and joy that the later Yotsuba&! series would show off, plus all the behind-the-scenes stuff on the CD is quite the little treat. Working on all of this was great practice for my translation skills, as I basically had to do everything myself. I learned quite a bit from the process and I'm excited to apply it to more translations in the future!

If you are already a fan of Yotsuba&!, I hope you find this to be a nice little bonus that probably won't ever get an official translation. And if you aren't already a fan... what are you waiting for? Go out and buy all the volumes right now!!!

Download links:

MEGA (Direct Download)

Nyaa (Torrent)

If you'd like to get in contact, you can email me at mrmanager@airmail.cc

 

 

 

 

See you next time!