December Updates:

Hai to Gensou no Grimgar's 12th volume is receiving a commercial translation on December 16th.  These translators have been churning volumes out at a splendid pace all year, but it's still not enough.  In Japan, the 14th volume is being released on Christmas Day.  If they maintain their current pace and translate volumes 13 and 14, by then surely volume 15 will be out in Japan.  The race just continues.

And that's when you have a really fast translation team.  Suka Moka, for instance, is up to volume 6 in Japan, but the first volume still hasn't been fully translated into English.  At this rate we'll never catch up.

Hataraku Maou-Sama's 20th volume is being released in Japan this December, but we're still stuck on volume 17.

It's rather sad that Japanese authors can produce all new content faster than English translators can simply copy and paste it into English.  We're falling further and further behind on so many fronts.  Da Capo is the most extreme example, but it's starting to feel like we'll never get to read the ending to any story anymore.

This is why it's so important to receive a completed anime.  Anime is reliably translated, unlike manga, light novels and visual novels.  Unfortunately, out of my top 200 anime, only 100 are either completed or slated to be completed some time in the future.

The other 100 drop off at some point in the storyline and leave you as helpless as ever.  When the anime adaption is incomplete and the manga/novel/visual novel translation isn't keeping up. . .

If Japanese franchises would just reach their endings at some point, then it would be possible for translators to catch back up slowly but surely, but Japan is determined to never reach the ending to anything.  Just look at Kimi ni Todoke and its insistence on another chapter coming out in 2019.  Just how long is this series going to take?  It started in 2005 so we're talking 15 years so far.  Why is every Japanese franchise a monster from a horror movie that simply refuses to die?

Gate had reached its ending, and then the author went and made a sequel series.  The original story was translated -- but of course the sequel wasn't, so we were robbed of a completed, translated story and given more squiggly gobbledygook in its place.  It's just agonizing.

SAO was meant to end with Alicization, but of course it didn't after achieving its level of popularity.  Fairy Tail had a perfectly good ending, but then 100 Years Quest came out.  Bakemonogatari was supposed to end with Owarimonogatari, but then Nisio Isin came up with some fun new ideas for the series and off we went again.

Nanoha could have ended with StrikerS, but they insisted on making Force, and then putting it on hiatus, meaning we're now stuck at an eternal cliffhanger instead of a nice and tidy ending.  Thanks a lot!

Between the halfhearted efforts of translators and the endless production of sequels there's just no chance of closure anywhere.  Even Dragon Ball is still ongoing.  Not to mention Boruto. . . Please God just let it end!

Overeager Japanese who will never let a story die combined with apathetic Englishmen refusing to translate anything further makes Jack a sad boy.

Meanwhile, Isekai Kirihirake's manga is readable, though hardly world shattering, adding another arrow to my quiver.  Next up for trial: Eiyuu no Musume.