The inconsistency of non-english Kingdom chapters.

EDIT: This post is obsolete as the schedule of the Chinese guys are really hard to predict nowadays.

 

As you guys noticed, the release dates of the non-English Kingdom chapter is quite inconsistent so i will just share what i know about it over here. Hope this answers your questions about future late releases.

Firstly, I will list out what might happen in a typical week when it comes to Kingdom releases. I will use Ch.X to refer to an upcoming Kingdom chapter.

• Saturday: Turnip farmers releases the english HQ version of Kingdom for Ch.X-1. More spoilers for Ch.X might be leaked. First spoilers of Ch.X leaked.
• Sunday: More/First spoilers for Ch.X might be leaked.
• Monday: Full Korean scans of Ch.X released.
• Tuesday: Full Chinese scans of Ch.X released IF AND ONLY IF the chinese guys are able to obtain the leaked scans.
• Late Tuesday/Wednesday: Turnip Farmers release their LQ v0 of Ch.X
• Thursday: Ch. X of Kingdom is officially out in Japan with the latest issue of WYJ magazine. Raws will be available all around the internet later in the same day. Chinese guys starts translating Ch.X into chinese.
• Friday: Chinese scans of Ch.X are usually out by today.

Now that you guys understand a typical release schedule of Kingdom, I will explain the inconsistency of my the chinese releases and my summary, which is based on the timing of the chinese releases, as well as the reasons of early/late releases of Korean/Chinese chapters.

Let’s get this out of the way first. Since i cant read Korean and can only read limited Japanese, i can only read and summarize the chapter in detail when the chinese chapter is out.

Regarding the recent early Korean scans, inconsistent Chinese scans and a bit on the release schedule of the English chapters, i will quote what i just wrote in mangafox forums:

The korean scans are translated from leaked raws, which the chinese guys used to have access to sometimes. Since the koreans/chinese guys are translating for their own community, they dont release the actual japanese raws with the early release since no one in their community can read them anyway. How the raws are leaked to the korean/chinese people is a mystery even to me.
By thursdays nights(china time), the chinese guys as well as most of the internet should have the japanese raws the chapter should be out latest by friday unless something happens to the scanlation group.

There were quite a few chinese scanlation groups that scanlates in the past but they dropped it(or something happened to them) after some time, which explains the random weeks with late chapters between the coalition arc and the Rao Ai rebellion arc. The current scanlation group, which IMO is the most reliable group, is the Kingdom tieba very own scanlation group who decided to drop the scanlation after the coalition arc because the other more established groups are doing it. They are picking it up again recently(around the end of Rao Ai arc) because no other scanlation group are doing it. However, the problem with them is that they do not have access to a consistent source of raws every week, which explains the late chapters we are getting recently.

The v0 of english scans are based off chinese scans to satisfy those who really want to know what’s happening(which is most of you guys). Turnip farmers do re-translate the chapter using original japanese scans and make minor changes when the raws are out. If you are interested in the Jap->Eng version of Kingdom, check out their website around saturdays/sundays. Usually, if the chinese version is delayed, such as this week, turnip farmers translate the japanese raws directly.

As I wrote above, the Chinese scanlation group currently is the Kingdom tieba very own scanlation group formed by Kingdom fans within that tieba. They are more reliable as they are hardcore fans of Kingdom and will not delay the translation if they have access to the raws. However, they are not professional scanlators and are just Kingdom fans like you and me, so they do not have a consistent access to the Japanese raws they need. While someone did offer to translate the Korean scans in tieba, the leader of the scanlation team rejected the offer as they wanted to translate the original text.

So, the main cause for the big time gap between the Korean scans and the Chinese scans as well as my summary is the lack of raws for the Chinese scanlation team and there is very little i can do about it. If any of you guys knows of any way to obtain the leaks for the latest raws of Kingdom BEFORE Thursdays, even if it might cost some money to obtain, do inform me and I will relay that to the guys in the Kingdom tieba. If the Korean guys and can get the raws early and translate it, im sure there is a source for it. Since there will be Japanese raws floating around the internet by Thursday nights, I am very sure the fans in Kingdom tieba will be sending them to the tieba scanlation team or posting them directly in tieba so there is no need to send me the link to the raws on Thursdays.

Finally, if Kingdom is indeed on a break, I will relay the message in the latest chapter summary or whenever i receive information on that.

A little guide when reading the posts in tieba. When reading the latest chapter of tieba, there will usually be a standard template that looks something like this:

【Scanlation group name/raws/spoilers】【第 (Chapter Number) 话 (Title of Chapter)】
Key for the words first square brackets:
网友汉化->Translated by “Online Buddies”. i.e. Kingdom tieba’s own scanlation group.
韩肉->Korean scans
生肉->Japanese Raws
情报->Spoilers

Note that the post title might not be in the format but the keywords will usually be in the title of the post. These posts will usually be pinned so it should be hard to miss.

Update(31 Oct 2015): A Chinese scanlation group picked up Kingdom recently and let’s hope the release of the Chinese chapters will be much more consistent. Many Chinese scanlation groups had picked up and dropped Kingdom in the past due to various reasons so I have no idea how long will this scanlation group be translating Kingdom.