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Here is the second installment of our scanlator interviews. Today's interview is with unok-kun of ShinraTensei. We have two more secret interviews to go, and then we will start using your nominations. We have already contact Nihil Sine Nefas to see if they would be willing to participate in an interview, so you can vote for another choice now if you have already voted! As a sidenote, don't vote for Maximum7 since we (Maximum7) run the site, we're going to hold off interviewing ourselves until much later. You can make your nominations here!

So without further ado, click here to read unok-kun's interview!

Originally we were going to do these scanlator interviews since MangaHelpers hadn't posted one in half a year, but it looks like now they're planning to resume them. The more interviews you get to read the better right? Anyways, the purpose of these interviews is to help the readers get to know a little bit more about the hard working people that bring you the scanlations you read here. We will be posting around one interview per week. In today's interview, we sat down with [Cross], the founder and leader of CxC Scans.

Edit: We decided to open up nominations for the next interviews. Vote here!

The interview is a bit hard to read on the front page, so click here to view it full size.



Please introduce yourself to our fine readers.

Ah right well I'm [Cross], the founder/leader of CXC Scans. I enjoy graphic designing as a hobby, though not really professional in any sense (I'm an engineering major afterall). Like most folks I enjoy video games. I can't really name a preference, though I suck at first person shooters, I usually go trigger happy for the fun of it. Can't say I'm caught up on all the new anime, but I can say I'm currently watching Durarara! which I'm enjoying quite a lot. As for manga, I only read a couple of series aside from those my group is currently working on. And I'm an avid tokusatsu fan (Sentai, Kamen Rider and the like). Guess I'm rather old fashion, despite my age, but I'm fine with that.

Tell us about your scanlation group. How and when was it started and where did the name come from? What series do you scanlate?

The group CXC Scans was created nearly a year and a half ago under myself working on shadow-skill's translations of Bamboo Blade. The whole reason I created the group was because I was rather annoyed at the ending of the Bamboo Blade anime, it sorta angered me when a certain teacher character was pregnant with, who I deem, the wrong character's child. Sure it was petty, but I felt the need to seek an alternative, so I went to the manga but the project wasn't active for a couple of months, so I decided to take some kind of action. To be honest, it's the most initiative I've ever taken in a long while. And just as I was beginning to do so, shadow-skill just so happened to start translating the series publically, talk about fate. I appreciate the guy for what he does, especially the work he does, as he helped me with the translation of our next two projects Code Geass: Lelouch of the Rebellion and Code Geass: Nightmare of Nunnally. For a majority of the time it was only shadow-skill, imotochan, ravona, gecko moria and I who made up the group with those three projects. Nowadays the group is considerably larger and we're working on quite a lot of manga series: Bamboo Blade, Code Geass, Yozakura Quartet, Hanamaru Kindergarten, The Sacred Blacksmith, Maria Holic, Mayoi Neko Overrun!, DualxJustice, Kami-sama Dolls, and Bamboo Blade B. We also work on a couple of weekly series, Medaka Box and Onidere which are joints with iMangaScans and Sexyboii Scanlations respectively, Sket Dance (Yes, we are continuing it, with gusto no less :3) and Super Dog Rilienthal.

As for the origin of the name CXC, as much as I enjoy the mystery, I enjoy it even more when I come up with fake origin stories that glorify it more than needed. To be honest even I'm starting to believe my tall tales, but heck it's rather simple now that I look back. I was looking at it in a marketing sense; it'd be easier to remember a group or anything for that matter when it's short and simple. Then for some odd reason, I thought of the railroad crossing sign, which is RXR, but I despised the letter R, so I decided to use my favourite letter C instead, and that's pretty much it.

Generally I started off with what little experience I had (editing manga with my sense of humor), and simply asked my friends over at the MangaShare forum, imotochan, gecko moria and ravona, if they wished to help out, and they were without much experience in scanlating either. Some basic tutorials later, and we were functioning rather well, dishing out 3 chapters per week of our three respective projects. Shadow-skill translated all three of them on a weekly basis, so I can't really express my thanks to his hard work enough as he practically helped drive the group along. Afterward I took the initiative, as opposed to sitting around for my recruitment thread on MangaHelpers to gain more hits, I personally reached out to translators/cleaners and was rather successful (Generally most of the people who applied early in the group's life aren't with us anymore). I like being more hands-on rather than waiting for things to happen on their own.

How did you personally get into the scanlation scene? Were you previously a member of other scanlation groups?

That's somewhat of a gray area. Before creating CXC, I was part of the anime fansubbing scene, part of a small group called Higure-subs that focused on fansubbing the D.Gray-man anime, I myself am a timer. However I started CXC practically fresh with what I could gather from reading manga and knowing what not to do. I didn't really care much for the scanlation scene as a whole, but rather just focused on working on the manga that I enjoyed so other people could read it and enjoy it as much as I did.

Are you still actively fansubbing?

I guess you can say that. Since Higure-subs declined in activity, I decided to merge some of the people along with CXC, and we have a division called CXC Subs. Though we've been amusingly unsuccessful in all that we've done, having only released the first episodes of the projects we've started. But things have been looking up lately, and recent development show positive signs of have steady releases soon.
The people involved are dedicated enough to stick around (though I've given a few some jobs in the scanlation group so they have something to do >.>), so I won't give up either.

Do you have any memorable stories from your scanlating experience?

Hmm, yes there is one which is concerning the time our group decided to pick up Sket Dance. I had just finished reading up to the latest chapter, and was unhappy in the way that it was being neglected in terms of progress as there was a rather big gap between the scanlated chapters and those out in Japan. Well I took it upon myself to clear out the gap, but clearly couldn't do it myself, nor could a single translator overwork to do it in such a short amount of time. So in order to fill out such an order, we as a group worked together, translators helping each other and other members doing their share, for once we were all working on a single goal, which was to release Sket Dance. Now this probably sounds rather weird that I'm pointing out "teamwork" to be such a significant thing, since it's suppose to be a given in most groups. There is not much that brings us together as everyone generally does their own thing and then reports to me. Everything goes through me and other members haven't had too deep connections with each other, other than the fact that they knew each other through me. So I guess this project means more since it gave everyone something to be connected by, as we were all working really hard, and in the end we succeeded, though amidst some silly controversy. That's really the only thing that stands out, but since then the group seems closer.

Are there any scanlation groups you look up to?

I can't say I do. Though I do look down on some groups for shady practices, I feel the same amount of respect for every other group out there.

Care to elaborate on these shady practices?

Shady practices can mean anything from forcing payment for manga you scanlate to fake translation services created to dupe you out of your money. The crux of what I'm saying is the exploitation of money for self indulgent reasons. To a lesser extent, I dislike the fact that competition is breeding horrendous quality in some manga for the sake of being first, but that topic has been tackled to death, so I'll just leave it at that.

How did you find MangaToshokan and what made you decide to start uploading your releases to the site?

What's mangatoshokan?

We went over this before. You're supposed to say what a super awesome online reader we are. :/

Actually I was going to say awesome super online reader, but your way works too. My reasons were rather simplistic, as I'd assume they'd be for many other people. *starts reading off the MT welcome thread* You guys don't compress the manga for one, and allow me to upload the manga instantly. It's rather easy to do so, and you guys seem to have accumulated a nice community, so I see no reason why I shouldn't participate in the fun.

What was your favorite TV show growing up?

The Simpsons, while many say it's virtually unfunny as of late, it's still fun to watch.

Would you rather pee whenever you laugh or have a loudpseaker announce every time you fart?

Pee when you laugh, makes it easy since I have no sense of humor. But even then, it's not as noticeable as a loudspeaker.

Any closing comments?

Yup, for the leechers who download manga off our ircs and then leave without a word. We make fun of you after you leave.

We'd like to thank [Cross] for allowing us to interview him. If you read CxC Scans' releases, leave [Cross] and his crew some comment love, or if you have any questions for [Cross], you can leave them below as well!

Hello everyone! It's been a while since we've brought you a new feature. Today we have a feature that many people have been requesting for a while. What is that you might ask? It's the ability to edit the chapter number and release groups for a release! Now you can change these two properties without having to reupload the whole chapter. I know many of you are thinking it took us long enough to get around to implementing this, but if you knew how much work it took us to do this I think you would appreciate it more. Just kidding. ;P We have some more new features in the pipeline as well as some other goodies that aren't features so stay tuned!

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