Tuesday, August 4, 2020

Goat&CatScans: Retired Heroes Chapter 39 + Retrospective

It began with a Jojo reference, and it'll end with one.

Hey hey people, Cory in the House. It's with a heavy heart that I bring to you today the 39th and final chapter of Retired Heroes. That's right, this is the last one. It doesn't seem like we'll be getting any more of this manhua in the foreseeable future as the publisher has gone out of business or something, so this is where we're stopping as well. But enough for that, let's get the actual chapter links out of the way before I start waxing poetic.

Chapter 39: https://www.mediafire.com/file/b38e4zdfq0dysdi/Chapter_39.zip/filehttps://www.mediafire.com/file/b38e4zdfq0dysdi/Chapter_39.zip/filehttps://www.mediafire.com/file/b38e4zdfq0dysdi/Chapter_39.zip/file
https://www.mediafire.com/file/b38e4zdfq0dysdi/Chapter_39.zip/filehttps://www.mediafire.com/file/b38e4zdfq0dysdi/Chapter_39.zip/file


<=== Spoilers ahead!! ===>

So now that you've read the chapter you're probably thinking some things. I know, LinJie left some loose plot ends lying around in anticipation of a second sequel. I'm disappointed too. What happened to Tanya? Did Shok really turn evil? Was Shay conceived on screen? Alas, the world may never know. For everyone's sake I do hope this continues at some point.


But man, what a ride it's been! This project lasted a hell of a lot longer than I ever expected, a journey spanning more than a year and a half. When I first started on this back in October 2018 I was a broke college student who just played video games all day. Now I have a degree, a job, and pretty soon a place to call my own. As you can see, scanlating really builds character and enriches one's life. It will transform you into a manly Adonis. Seriously though, it also inspired me to start learning Chinese again. Maybe one day I'll be able to read the raws unaided.

We made some friends along the way too. The catfolk of Nekyou Scanlation provided a lot of resources and really helped to legitimize Goat&Cat's operations, in particular Blue, Wordref, and WanderingMacrophage. It was also through Nekyou that I discovered the gaming community known as Cosy Inn, which is host to its own gallery of intriguing characters.

I've also developed a greater appreciation for scanlators in general. When I'm reading stuff on MangaDex I now actually read the credits pages of a lot of chapters instead of just skipping them, and learned about the man behind the manga (scanlation) so to speak. Some of them are really interesting people. Some of them are almost as funny and witty as me. Almost.

So what does the future hold for Goat & Cat Scans? Well, we don't have any other works to translate. I'm open to any suggestions you may have, but they have to be in Chinese, and I'd have to wrangle the Cat into being on board with it. He tells me he'd rather do light novels instead of manhua. But barring any suggestions, this blog will now be returning to its regularly scheduled programming of shitposts and my personal diary entries.

One last shoutout to YOU, the readers who have stuck with us for all this time. It was pretty amazing knowing someone out there was actually reading(and possibly even enjoying) what we were doing. If we ever do anything else, I hope you'll follow us on that too.

Until then, so long, and thanks for all the fish!

-- Coriasis, the GOAT of Goat&CatScans

Sunday, June 28, 2020

Goat&CatScans: Retired Heroes Chapter 38

Man, we're so close to the end. Chapter 39 is the last one we have raws for as it seems the author LinJie has gone on hiatus. Just one more to go.
yep, this is the sound you get when squeezing someone's face
This post's font at the moment is Times New Roman as for some reason Blogspot won't let me change it to my font of choice, Trebuchet MS. Just in case you were wondering why things look different compared to my previous posts.

Oh yeah, I should post the results of that user opinion strawpoll I posted a while back:
It's a lot more positive than I expected, and I'm pleased to see there are 6 whole people that actually read my blog posts and cared enough to respond. Whoever you are, you guys are awesome.




Translation comments down here in case you want to read the chapter first.

Page 5 proved to be problematic because of the phrase "王的风范" which the Cat initially translated as simply "Majesty". Based on the context I thought it should be "The Way of Kings" or "King's Way", which I really wanted it to be, because I'm a huge fan of the author Brandon Sanderson.

I eventually settled on "King's Demeanor" as that's what Mage said it was and when I searched up the phrase this image turned up:

Also on page 13 I wanted to replace "former hero" with "retired hero" to get that sick title drop, but if that's what the author wanted to do I'm sure the actual title characters would be there, but they aren't. Sadface :(

Monday, June 8, 2020

Goat&CatScans: Retired Heroes Chapter 37

Hey hey hey, it's the next chapter much sooner than we expected! My life has been pretty busy recently but the Cat has deigned to pick up the slack in my stead.

So on page 3, our boy Eric is expressing his awe at how Jenova actually has combat experience and is capable of fighting rather than being an academic or "armchair" wizard. There were a number of different ways we could express this but I chose to say "battlemage" because it sounds cool. 

Chapter 37: https://www.mediafire.com/file/xex8eieofvs8w06/Chapter_37_v3.zip/file

All the chapters: https://www.mediafire.com/folder/4o5obdo2l3198/Retired_Heroes_Translation_Project

Buy us a Ko-Fi: https://ko-fi.com/goatncatscans  https://www.mediafire.com/file/vtl9ed3py5letby/Chapter_37.zip/filehttps://www.mediafire.com/file/vtl9ed3py5letby/Chapter_37.zip/file

EDIT: omfg I forgot to include 3 whole pages of action because they didn't have dialogue or sound effects, fix'd

Friday, May 22, 2020

Goat&CatScans: Retired Heroes Chapter 36

Coronavacation is almost over... and we got two whole chapters done, at the same rate as it would have been if we weren't stuck at home. But hey, consistency is a virtue, no?

Mangadex has been running pretty slow lately so I don't know if you'll be able to read it on there.

Eric channels his inner Disney Prince(ss)

Chapter 36: http://www.mediafire.com/file/kerjsmmogdv1ubx/Chapter_36.zip/file

ALL PICK: https://www.mediafire.com/folder/4o5obdo2l3198/Retired_Heroes_Translation_Project

Tuesday, April 28, 2020

Goat&CatScans: Ko-Fi Online

Hey hey people, Cory in the House with a chapterless announcement: 
It has been suggested to me by numerous people (just two but who's counting) that I create some channel for people to donate to the group. While the mere act of scanlating comics already enriches one's mind, body and soul, I wouldn't say no to any material compensation that should come our way.

Thus I have created an official Ko-Fi page for Goat&Cat Scans. BEHOLD, THE LINK: https://ko-fi.com/goatncatscans

Donations may be used for:
  • Acquiring raws (should we ever need to, we're still good up to 39 for Retired Heroes)
  • Web hosting fees (should I ever decide to get a real website for this instead of using my shitty old blogspot)
  • Karate lessons to rescue our families who were kidnapped by ninjas (just kidding)
Me IRL when someone actually donates:
Ironically, the rights to this image cost more than we will probably ever receive.
Jokes aside, I don't have high expectations, especially during these tough times we're in.

Whether you decide to donate or not, you can also support us by answering this strawpoll here: https://www.strawpoll.me/19897069 

Saturday, April 25, 2020

Goat&CatScans: Retired Heroes Chapter 35

Today I decided to be petty and give a shout out to some people I know in the credits page.  My friends don't even read Retired Heroes, I just asked them for some random words to put on there in lieu of my own troll quotes as I was out of ideas. Nobody looks at the credits anyway, right?
Look at me! think about who's truly worthy
Chappie 35: https://www.mediafire.com/file/b5p1lqr1iw7nnt0/Chapter_35.zip/file

The Big Store: https://www.mediafire.com/folder/4o5obdo2l3198/Retired_Heroes_Translation_Project

Saturday, March 28, 2020

Goat&CatScans: Retired Heroes Chapter 34

You'd think with this whole pandemic thing going on we'd be faster...nope, video games.
Awaken my Matt-sters!




He may be only a supporting character, but I immediately feel in love with Matt. He's big, brawny, and doesn't care who he hits!
I was thinking of doing some joke about this being the 34th chapter and a certain rule but this comic is a bit too wholesome for that so this is all you're gonna get.

Chapter 34: http://www.mediafire.com/file/jtsfpk323f671jc/Chapter_34.zip/file

Chapter Archive: https://www.mediafire.com/folder/4o5obdo2l3198/Retired_Heroes_Translation_Project

Saturday, February 29, 2020

Goat&CatScans: Retired Heroes Chapter 33

Same energy.
Bit of a rush to get this out before February ends. It's one of those 'bait' chapters where the first few pages are in color so you start hoping the whole thing is, but it's not. Apparently the printed volume is though.

Page 1 being in color gave me a little trouble, as the Cat had to put some white shadowing behind some of the text so it's easier to see. When it comes to digital image editing I'm what you call an F2P player, so I use GIMP, which can edit Photoshop format .psd files but oftentimes things get messed up in the conversion, and in this case the shadowing got removed. I can't go through this shuffle every time just to correct a minor spelling error so I'm probably gonna switch over to Adobe's stupid program at some point before the next chapter. Anyways, enjoy.

Chapter 33: https://www.mediafire.com/file/ldz0py82acvekzj/Chapter_33.zip/filehttps://www.mediafire.com/file/ldz0py82acvekzj/Chapter_33.zip/filehttps://www.mediafire.com/file/ldz0py82acvekzj/Chapter_33.zip/file
https://www.mediafire.com/file/ldz0py82acvekzj/Chapter_33.zip/file 
Everything but the kitchen sink: https://www.mediafire.com/folder/4o5obdo2l3198/Retired_Heroes_Translation_Project

Tuesday, January 21, 2020

Goat&CatScans: Retired Heroes Chapter 32

New year, new chapter. A couple months ago I recall hearing a friend say "Hindsight is 2020... and so is next year!" A real knee slapper, I know...

January has historically been a slow month for this blog, even today. It's been either nothing or a single post. Don't hold your breath, because this trend will likely continue.

You ever notice how when you're bored with nothing to do, nobody wants to talk to you, but when you're busy doing something you suddenly get bombarded with messages? This has been my experience with New Year's eve. From 2012 to 2016 I spent New Years at home, (effectively) alone, posting some sad celebratory threads on my forum to which nobody responded. In 2017 I started going to parties and actually having fun, coming home the day after to see a veritable smorgasbord of missed conversations. Funny how that works. I'm sure there's some witty saying that covers this exact situation but you're probably just here for the chapter so I'll end it there.

Get Chapter 32 here: https://www.mediafire.com/file/fz4i3dxkvoz6oyt/Chapter_32_mk2.zip/filehttps://www.mediafire.com/file/fz4i3dxkvoz6oyt/Chapter_32_mk2.zip/file https://www.mediafire.com/file/fz4i3dxkvoz6oyt/Chapter_32_mk2.zip/filehttps://www.mediafire.com/file/fz4i3dxkvoz6oyt/Chapter_32_mk2.zip/filehttps://www.mediafire.com/file/fz4i3dxkvoz6oyt/Chapter_32_mk2.zip/fileafadsf https://www.mediafire.com/file/fz4i3dxkvoz6oyt/Chapter_32_mk2.zip/filehttps://www.mediafire.com/file/fz4i3dxkvoz6oyt/Chapter_32_mk2.zip/file

The whole nine yards: https://www.mediafire.com/folder/4o5obdo2l3198/Retired_Heroes_Translation_Project

Tuesday, December 17, 2019

Goat&CatScans: Retired Heroes Chapter 31

It's that time of year again. The time we all show off to our horse gods.

In case you were wondering about the massive delay, here's the long and short of it:

It's late September, and Mage volunteers to translate the next chapter as he wants to put a "sword meme" in at the end. The Cat and I are pleased that we can leave everything up to him and take it easy, because that always goes well.

Flash forward to the middle of October. The script has been 'almost done' for a while, but our shining star has been busy with work and then got sick a day or two later. I don't worry about it too much assuming it'll pick up at some point when he recovers.

Radio silence ensues as both of my translators are out of commission due to various obligations and the holiday season. This goes on until a couple days ago when I finally decide it's time to call in the Cat who finishes the script and pastes it in.  

Then I find out that pages 1 and 10 have this weird pixelated area at the bottom, and my initial suspicion is that the images got corrupted when someone downloaded them. I ping Wordy who mistakenly believes that the Cat is the one who's been acquiring raws this whole time despite us specifically having a discussion where we established that the boss-man on the Nekyou side is the one providing raws. That happened a while ago so I couldn't really expect her to remember, but I'm frustrated regardless. Finally I check out the raw site and find out the corruption is absolute: the original Chinese raws are pixelated. The Cat whips up some emergency Photoshop to make those parts slightly easier on the eyes, and that's what you'll see in this release.

I'm not blaming Mage for this, as I could have made this call much earlier and let you guys know what was going on. I also feel somewhat ashamed it took the negging of another scanlator to galvanize me into action.

Nevertheless, it's pretty amazing that G&C has made it this far, we passed the 1 year anniversary of our first chapter 2 months ago. We have about 5 chapters to go and I personally don't plan on stopping til we reach the finish line. Alright, enough of that, here's the goods.

Chapter 31: http://www.mediafire.com/file/q4iigamye9hll4t/Chapter_31.zip/file

The whole shebang: https://www.mediafire.com/folder/4o5obdo2l3198/Retired_Heroes_Translation_Project