MH Interviews: Rycolaa

There's another interview for you all, this time with Crayola of Rycolaa scans. He's (and the other members of his group) been working to bring us sports manga for several years now. Be sure to take this opportunity to thank him for all his efforts if you haven't done so yet.

On with the interview:

1. Please give an introduction of yourself and your scanlation group, what series you scan, how your group got started etc.

Hi, I'm Crayola. I started ryColaa scans, you get ryColaa from rearranging the letters in Crayola. I'm the dude that mostly works on sports scanlations. I started scanlating maybe 2.5 years, I started somewhere around February 2007, it was a crappy speed scanlation of Naruto in that arc where Sasuke fought Orochimaru.

We scan mostly sports series, but that's not it, our current lineup includes Ahiru no Sora, Beach Stars, Frogman, Full Contact, Godhand Teru, Hakoiri Devil Princess, Houkago Wind Orchestra, Metal Heart, P2! Let's Play Ping Pong, Stripe Blue, W'S, and Zippy Ziggy. It's a long list, but it just started steadily growing as I grew more and more interested in more mangas.

The group originally was just me by myself, taking translations and raws from mangahelpers and making my own speed scanlations, starting off with naruto and one piece at first. Eyeshield 21 and Prince of Tennis were lacking steady scanlations, so I decided to work on those as I enjoyed those series and there were already 5-10 scanlations of naruto and one piece every week. Eventually, I got more translators and more projects which then led to getting some staff, though our current active staff count is pretty low. JOIN US!! Anyway, that's how ryColaa scans got started.

2. How did you start scanlating? Was there any particular reason you started? How much easier is it now compared to when you began?

Answered this sort of before in the first question. I started because I was realllllllly bored and I figured what the hell, nobody's doing the series I like, so I should do it myself. I don't think it's easier than when I started, because all I did back then when I started was, 1. Rotate, 2. Crop, 3. Level, 4. Clear Bubbles with white boxes, 5. Typeset. If anything, it's gotten moer troublesome with all these filters and everything that people use, multiple fonts, and all that jazz.

3. What types of manga do you enjoy? Which series in particular are your favourite and you what would you recommend others to read? Are there any genres that you don't like to read.

I mostly read sports mangas and comedy mangas. I really like Adachi mangas, one of my favorites would be Adachi's Katsu! which is a boxing/comedy/romance manga. I'm also a big fan of the usuals, One Piece, Bleach, Naruto, and various other series. BECK was a big favorite of mine.

I don't think I'd enjoy reading Josei, Shoujo, Yuri, Shoujoai, Shounenai, Yaoi, Bishoujos, and all that jazz, not a fan of genderbending either

4. How do you feel about the amount of thanks and fan feedback from your series? What do you feel when you see people discussing the series that you work on?

I feel disappointed but not surprised... that i don't really get much thanks and feedback. People like to just download and read, completely ignoring the source of manga, so that's why I'm not really surprised. The only series of mines that seems to garner and fan feedback seems to be Zippy Ziggy. I don't read that many discussion threads and whatnot, so I don't really know what I feel.

5. Is there any other personal information or hobbies that you want to share with us?

Hmmm... my hobbies include reading manga, watching the occassional anime(I rarely watch anime since there's nothing good anymore, right now I'm only watching Cross Game and MAJOR), reading books(spy thrillers and the like such as books by Vince Flynn and Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell), playing tennis, basketball, and I guess that's it.

Well, here's some personal information I guess, my name is Ray. Here's something more personal I guess, I chose the name Crayola after a period of time. I liked this girl whose initials were KC, and so I decided to make a username based on that and the C in that username was crayon, and from crayon I got Crayola which I thought was appealing since it has Ray in Crayola and my last name started with a C, so it's like C. Ray and then there's the extra ola to make me sound all fancy.

6. Rycolaa specialises in scanlating various sports series. What characteristics of the sports genre make you want to scan that genre?

I personally like to play sports and well, I guess I just like the general storyline of it, the main character working hard or is a genius who continues to face stronger opponents and usually doing some wacky things on the way and going to higher levels through hard work and trials.

7. You were scanning Eyeshield 21 for a long while. What did you think of the ending of that series and the way it was 'strung out' with the American Cup ending? Was there anything about that story that you would have changed?

Oh my GOD! I hated the ending, the American Cup ending was sooooo bad. They should've ended it with the Christmas Bowl or added a few chapters to wrap up what happens after the Christmas Bowl, the whole America Arc was so stupid. They did not need to add that in and I felt like it killed the story as the whole series was about making it to the Christmas Bowl, the fact that they won the Christmas Bowl was good enough of an ending, I honestly wouldn't have minded if they had lost the Christmas Bowl, because it was all about their trials of becoming such a great time when they were just a collection of misfits who decided to work together and try to become the best.

8. What is your opinion of read online sites such as Mangafox and Onemanga? What about their method of taking the first scanlation of a series that becomes available and not updating it once a higher quality scan comes out?

Not a big fan of these Online sites, I think they should update it to a higher scan when one comes out, but then again, I guess it's all subjective, but it is obvious in some cases which scan is better. I'm not a big fan of them I guess, since they probably make a ton of money from their online manga reader, and probably( I don't know if they do or not) do not give back to the community in anyway such as donating to scanlators, or buying/scanning raws, starting their own group with their revenue in order to scanlate lesser known series.

9. What do you think of joint projects? Have you ever done any with other scan groups? If so what were the difficulties in doing so? Why do you think that some people would prefer to race against others rather than form a joint group in order to release the same project?

I don't mind joint projects, but I guess it makes things more complicated because each team is going to have their own leader and it's unclear which team's leader has more say in the direction of any particular project. I haven't really done much joint work except with kmts for MAJOR, and amtt for W'S(which we haven't released yet).

I guess some people prefer to race because they think they themselves are superior or would rather do things their own way and try to muscle out the competiton. Many think of this as sort of a popularity contest, so they probably try to steal the project from another group in order to gain a larger fanbase and to use the popularity of the stolen project to feel some of the limelight.

10. How did you find out about Mangahelpers and why did you decide to join in? What parts of the site do you find the best? Is there anything you think needs changing?

I don't remember exactly how I found mangahelpers, but I'm sure it had something to do with trying to find latest scanlations of naruto or eyeshield 21 or prince of tennis or something along those lines. I'm 90% sure it was because I read the credits page of some scanlation and the scanlator had written mangahelpers.com on it and so I checked it out. I decided to join in, as I said, mostly because I was bored. I don't really go in to discussion threads save for the spoiler threads, so I guess the parts of the site I like best would be the raws,translations,scanlations areas.

I can't think of anything that needs changing really for this site, maybe improve the speeds, I was just downloading a raw from the Mangahelpers server and it was going at like 12kb/sec, and I feel like I often download pretty slowly when I download from Mangahelpers and I guess that would be one of my main problems with their server.

You can find Rycolaa's scanlations here:

Ahiru no Sora

Beach Stars

Choku!

Eyeshield 21

Foo Fighter Fuji

Frogman

Full Contact

Godhand Teru

Hakoiri Devil Princess

Houkago Wind Orchestra

Karate Shoukoushi Kohinata Minoru

Lock On!

Major

Metal Heart

P2! Let's Play Ping Pong

Shin Prince of Tennis

Spray King

Stripe Blue

Yu Yu Hakusho

Zippy Ziggy

Rycolaa Homepage

If you have any more questions or comments you can ask them in Rycolaa's Ask Me Thread.