Aoi House Archive Overhauled

[Adam_Arnold]

Earlier this year, Brigid of MangaBlog e-mailed me joking about how the top search result that brought people to her site was "aoi house scanlations." I remember searching around and not being able to find any scanlations of Aoi House. I was half expecting to find some zip or rar files of where someone had taken all the pages and done an archive of the series, but no luck there. So I pushed the thought to the back of mind, and didn't really worry about it.

On Thursday night, I got a message from a fan wondering if I knew that YukiSama Scans had scanned the first volume. And went on to say, "For the major companies I don't mind as much, because it is just a delay until I can buy the book myself... in the case of some of my favorite web comics that is different. I don't like people to steal money from someone working directly with the people, and not working through some multi-million dollar company and won't miss a few people not buying the books right away. So, just figured I would give you a heads up in case you didn't know."

Well, as a pirate myself, this news didn't surprise me at all. In fact, it was just a matter of time until it happened. It did weird me out a little, though. I mean, let's be honest here... how many scanlation groups would even touch an OEL title?

Anyway, this news made me curious. I wanted to find the scanlation so I could see the quality of it. It turns out that YukiSama Scans doesn't have their own website and no one had ever made a torrent of it, so at least it's not that common a file to find. So I asked this fan if they could get it for me, and they did.

Looking through the scans, I quickly found myself not liking the overall quality of them. The book had been unbound rather badly and there were obvious chunks taken out of the art at the spine. The scans were also rather large in size (500kb to 900kb), but the scans themselves were far too dark and a bit fuzzy at times. And a few of the extras hadn't been scanned... but I digress.

So, am I mad that Aoi House has been scanned and put online? Nope.

Actually, having seen the quality, I took that as a challenge to make the online version here at Gomanga.com even better. Remember how all the pages from Episodes 1 through 13 were originally presented in only inked form? Well, no more! I've gone through all 292 of those first pages and changed them out with their formerly print-only fully-toned versions.

My hope is that people are coming to Gomanga.com and reading the series here, and enjoying what they read enough to support Shiei and myself by picking up the print editions. And really, you guys and gals are doing just that. Your support is what has allowed us to keep the series going. We're working on the final volume right now (Aoi House In Love! Vol. 2 is due out in June '08 ), and there is also an "Aoi House Omnibus Collection" coming out in April '08 that's going to collect the first two books into a single economic tome.

Thoughts? Comments?