Kizu 114-114.5 (End) – Some rambling…

Good morning everyone,

I’ll write about today’s release, and I’ll write a little about my life after. If you don’t want to read my ramblings, don’t click on the post.

Kizu 114 & 114.5 (!Kizu15) – I wrapped everything up in a volume pack already, just to make it nice & tidy.

It’s finally done. Three years and 115 (and a half) chapters later, we’re done. A few years ago, I had thought that this was going to be the most unlikely of the series Saruwatari Tetsuya had published that would end up scanlated by us, excluding the Tough series. Look at us now, huh? Pretty remarkable, honestly.

So this is the end of Jinsei’s story. A story with a lot of highs and some downs. The series might have trailed off a little at the end of the major arc, becoming episodic and directionless, but that’s how it goes sometimes.

I would like to give a huge thank you to our friends at Hokuto no Gun for their help on the series, as always. It’s not a coincidence that we work with them on a bunch of projects, they’re great to work with, we have like-minded approaches to a lot of things and we’ve been able to scanlated a lot of good stuff over the year.

A big thank you to Nitouryu for the general editing, zeraki for the redraws, illiteracy for the covers & color pages, and to tim for a lot of the signs & sfx. These guys did the shitty, thankless jobs for an ungodly amount of hours. God knows I probably annoyed the shit out of them dozens of times (especially tim, he probably has nightmares about me and my constant nagging).

So, what’s next? Right now we’re probably not going to have a scheduled weekly release as we’re going to work on the Christmas release for the 25th. In January, we’ll see what happens, but I won’t make any promises yet. We have two Saruwatari series that are kind of stalled right now and I would like to continue working on those, but Dog Soldier is a pain in the fucking ass because of the shitty paper and The Hard doesn’t have a translator. Not sure what we’re going to do with The Hard, but we’ll continue on Dog Soldier eventually.

In normal times, January is the month where I spend nearly all my free time scanning books and it kind of empties out my shelves. However, I’m not sure that’s going to be possible this year (see my ramblings below), but we’ll see. There are some books that I’ve been needing to scan for a while now and that I’m going to get around to doing, but it won’t be a situation where I’m scanning a book / day. I’d sometimes scan 2-3 books if I had a ton of free time, but that won’t be the case this year.

Normally, we released Jinsei exclusively on Mondays, with the odd exception here & there. But the majority of the time, it was Monday. This time, however, we concluded the series on a Tuesday because today’s a date I’ll remember for the rest of my life, unfortunately. On December 6th last year, I was woken up at 3:40 in the morning by a phone call coming from my father’s number. I didn’t get to the phone on time to pick up, but I got a call back a few minutes later from his girlfriend on his phone.

My father had died of a heart attack.

Shock. Confusion. My dad was a tough motherfucker, how’d he die all of a sudden? He didn’t have any pre-existing condition, he wasn’t in bad health, there weren’t any signs that this might be coming. And yet it did.

Fear. An incredible amount of fear. When I hung up the phone, I sat down and thought, What am I going to do now? My “safety net” isn’t here anymore. Nobody’s there to help you or guide you, you’re on your own now. Figure it out and hurry up.

To say that it changed my life is an understatement, There hasn’t been much that’s changed in my every day life, but nothing is quite the same, I don’t feel or think the same way I did before that phone call.

My father wasn’t my hero or anything like that, and in truth, I didn’t have much of a relationship with him until I became an adult. He was absent for most of my youth. But my father was the type of man I’ve always strived to be. He was strong, he worked hard, he didn’t make excuses, he always knew how to solve a problem when it came up, he had the most street smarts of anyone I’ve ever met by far. He didn’t want attention on himself, he loved the things that he loved and didn’t care if you thought less of him for it, he was extremely reserved and nobody knew much about him. He didn’t want anyone to know anything about him. He never spoke about important matters he hadn’t thoroughly thought about, and when he did speak, he was always right. It was maddening. In times where society seems more prone to listen to the carnival barker instead of the wise and reserved…

Everything my father achieved in life, he earned. He wasn’t born as the only kid of a rich family, he was the third oldest in a poor family of eight kids. His upbringing wasn’t easy, to put it mildly, but he made a name for himself. Made smart investments, made a few shrewd decisions, and had a very good life for someone who never had the greatest of salaries.

But most importantly, he was proud of who he was and what he accomplished. He was proud of his kids, despite being absent for a large part of our youth. At his funeral, all I was focused on was whether I could behave in a way that he would be proud of me. If the “otherworld” exists and his spirit lives on from there and he was watching me, would he have been proud of me?

It’s a good question, and unfortunately a question I’ll never get an answer to. But if I can try to be the man my father would be proud to call his son, I think I’ll have done well.

Months after he died, I started having a reoccurring dream once a week. Every time, something bad happens to his house, and I’m on the second floor. Either a window breaks, there’s a fire in the house, the walls started crumbling, there’s a major water, always something different. Every single time, I’d run down to the basement. Our basement, which is usually cluttered and full of junk, is completely empty except for the two furnaces. And when I look behind one of them, I see my dad there, his back to me, sitting in a simple wooden chair with his viola in his hands. I ask him with a little panic in my voice, What do I do? and I’d see the back of his head raise, and I’d hear a muffled voice – his muffled voice – before he’d slowly start to put his head down to return to his viola, and I’d wake up.

What do I do?

I wish I knew. I’m gonna have to figure it out someday, because the man who always knew what the right answer was isn’t there to help me anymore. I wish I could talk to him one last time, almost to say goodbye, but that isn’t possible. My safety net is gone. I miss him dearly and I wish I could still talk to him.

So, if you’ve made it this far, thanks for reading. If your parents are still alive, tell them you love them. They’ll appreciate it.

I was a video a few years ago and it didn’t resonate with me much, and I had completely forgotten about it. But then I saw it again this summer. The video was a discussion between two guys, and the interviewer asked the guy what his age was and how old his parents were. He said he was 45 and his parents were 75 or so. The interviewer followed-up and asked, how often do you see your parents? His answer was once or twice a year. Sometimes three, but usually once or twice. The interviewer asked him point blank, and it always gets me: So, at that rate, there’s a good chance you’re only going to see your parents ten to fifteen more times for the rest of your life. Are you alright with that?

I know I wouldn’t be.

Enjoy your families.

4 Thoughts to “Kizu 114-114.5 (End) – Some rambling…”

  1. lembu

    Thanks for Kizu and thank you too Hokuto No Gun , and manly tears.jpg irl for that story. I also had >Months after he died…. I see my dad dreams.

  2. Vince

    Thanks a lot for the manga translation; you guys don’t know how much this manga changed my way of perceive things. Thank you, thank you and thank you. Also, sorry for your loss. I hope you find peace of mind!

  3. Mohamed

    Thank you for the amazing releases year in and out and I wish you well with everything and keep strong, like your pops. My sincerest condoleances.

  4. This blog is always great to read because there is much more beyond the comics. There are people, there are lives. I have been reading your posts, GGpX, for almost a decade now. I read the manga you scanned/translated/typeset as well. But your posts are meaningful and inspirational to me. And I remember some of them with pleasure and emotion.
    Thanks for sharing this story, I am sorry for your loss, hang in there.

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