Gunbird manga scanlation [complete]

[blackoak]

hey all, I finished my second shmup manga translation today, this time for GUNBIRD, by Masato Natsumoto!



This was released in August 1995, and like Mahou Daisakusen, was part of the Gamest comic series. The difference this time is that the official artist for the Gunbird series, Masato Natsumoto, also did the manga himself. So its a treasure trove of imagery if you like his artwork and the Gunbird characters. I really enjoyed translating this because it was a bit more self-aware and funny. The writer seemed to be having fun with how preposterous/silly all this stuff sounds, and I tried to reflect that in the translation. I also upped my editing skillz this time and was able to join the double panels together, making for some really nice imagery (especially of the bosses). And since I corrected my technical mistakes from before, this took about half the time despite having more text overall...

PNG:
Gunbird (full, PNG, 162mb) | [MIRROR]
Gunbird (part 1, PNG, 56mb)
Gunbird (part 2, PNG, 46mb)
Gunbird (part 3, PNG, 57mb)

Anyway, enjoy! I'm not sure when I'll translate the Sengoku Ace and Parodius comics. I don't like the art for the Sengoku Ace comic as much, and the Parodius, while very good, never got a planned second volume... so the story unsatisfactorily halts in the middle. Its very funny though. Now to get to that Takahashi Meijin interview...


My previous shmupforum translations can be found at this thread, but I will also list them below for convenience:

Jamestown and Sine Mora - Shooting Gameside Interviews
Mahou Daisakusen manga translation
Toaplan Shooting Chronicle Interview Madness
R-Type Developer Interview Collection
Gradius Developer Interviews (I,II,III,IV,Gaiden)
Scorer Interview Collection - TAC, LAOS, NAL, MON, etc
Stella Vanity and Valhellio Developer Interviews
Four M-KAI Interviews (Eschatos, JSS, Cardinal Sins)
Yoshinori Satake - Steel Empire, Over Horizon Interview
Armed Police Batrider Characters/Stages/Bosses translation (w/ NTSC-J)
Basiscape Composers Interview - Shooting Gameside #1
Cave Shooting History Interview Extravaganza!
Doujin Round Table Discussion - Shooting Gameside #1
Mushi HD/Saidaioujou Famitsu Cave Interview
Raizing Interview - Sotoyama Yuuichi and Yokoo Kenichi
Masahiro Yuge - Toaplan interview (Shooting Gameside vol. 4)
Tatsuya Uemura - Toaplan interview (Shooting Gameside vol.4)

[BulletMagnet]

I don't know what kind of stuff you've got yourself hyped up on to keep all this coming at such a brisk clip, but whatever it is keep hitting it!

[KAI]

Erection.

Thanks Blackoak.

[Pyongyang]

Superb stuff yet again, thank you for sharing and all your hard work!

[greg]

I love Natsumoto's art style. I loved his Gundam Side Story and Record of the Lodoss Wars manga. His art style is unique and I love seeing his artwork. Thanks!

EDIT: Did you create this .rar file properly? I am getting an error message with 001.png. It seems to be an incomplete archive.

[KAI]

http://shmuplations.com/ coming soon!!

[blackoak]

hahaha, thanks guys. translating is fun to me so its not big deal. and yeah, i'm working on a site to archive these and my other game related translations... hope to get that up in a few weeks.

EDIT: Did you create this .rar file properly? I am getting an error message with 001.png. It seems to be an incomplete archive.

Hmm, weird. I just checked both main link and the mirror, and both extracted fully and are readable for me. Maybe the download just didn't finish? I can upload some smaller segmented files today if people are having any problems.

[Hagane]

Great one. I liked this much more than the Mahou comic, captured the spirit of the game a lot better IMO. Thanks again for the awesome translations blackoak.

I didn't have any problem viewing the file, but I don't know if it's my crappy connection or what, but the download stopped several times before I could get the file. Maybe that's what greg is having a problem with?

[KAI]

Same problem here.

[blackoak]

Ok, that's what I figured. For now I've put the more reliable site as the primary download link. I signed up with godaddy in my ignorance, but after experiencing this and reading about their shitty bandwidth problems generally, I should probably switch to someone else (recs by PM welcome, hehe). EDIT: updated the download links with smaller files, in case anyone is still having problems.

[Ghegs]

I didn't have any problems with downloading, luckily.

I actually liked the Mahou Daisakusen manga more, even though having cleared Gunbird I was more familiar with the source material for this one. The flow was better in Mahou, I think, which made the reading experience much better for me.

Nonetheless, big kudos to blackoak for doing this.

[AeroCityMayor]

Thank you very much d00d. I've nearly bought this comic a few times when I spotted it on Yahoo - I'll definitely pick it up next time.

Nice flaps

Cheers,

Ralph.

[Master O]

For anyone who is curious, and I also mentioned this in the thread about shmup cameos in anime:

The Trump Gang is a parody of the Dorombo Gang from the 1970s anime "Yatterman." If any of you have also played the fighting game "Tatsunoko vs Capcom," Doronjo, that group's leader, is a playable character.

http://shmups.system11.org/viewtopic.ph ... 88#p863988

[greg]

For anyone who is curious, and I also mentioned this in the thread about shmup cameos in anime:

The Trump Gang is a parody of the Dorombo Gang from the 1970s anime "Yatterman." If any of you have also played the fighting game "Tatsunoko vs Capcom," Doronjo, that group's leader, is a playable character.

http://shmups.system11.org/viewtopic.ph ... 88#p863988

Actually, they got the same Yatterman voice actors to do the voices for the Gunbird 2 characters.

[Super Laydock]

I have had this manga for a few years, but aside from liking the pics and guessing the story
I never understood it at all.

Gonna go through this with your translation now.
Thank you very much.

Gunbird (especially Marion) kicks ass!

[blackoak]

The Trump Gang is a parody of the Dorombo Gang from the 1970s anime "Yatterman."

Thanks for mentioning that! There was actually a funny insult by Rouge which I had to google, and found out it was from Yatterman. I chose not to include a reference to it because it seemed too obscure (and wasn't really translateable...), but yeah, Natsumoto made the connection explicit.

one last bump before this is swallowed up Still working on that site, should have everything hosted there soon. Got a lead on a Ketsui and DDP doujin comic from rancor, so maybe those will be next!

[BIL]

Thanks for the translation and the bump, I've not been around much and missed this thread.