Over at YN@LJ, a poster links to Nitta-sensei's post here.

Nitta-sensei announces the upcoming publishing of the last chapter of Haru (in BBoy Gold - which probably means #8, the tankoubon #14 will be out in the fall 2009 although the date is not set yet) and apologises for her wrongdoings, the long wait and thanks the readers for their support and mails during her hard time. I am not sure whether this means that Nitta-sensei is back - as I read it, it seems as if she is allowed back only for this to finish Haru. There is some talk about all her manga being pulled, and of the delay of the next BLCD in the series. Maybe Geri can shed some light over my wonky translation?

ETA: I've gone over the info that seemed most important again and got it to something like "Essentially, at this point in time the intention is to end Haru o Daiteita drawing the last part (in exchange) for the long support recived from the reader-sama (who are able to) distinguishing between right and wrong. The full/ended work will come with apology and gratitude."

Sounds like this is the end, both of Haru and of Nitta's work.

OMG! I so don't want Haru to end!!! *wails*

I've been meaning to post this for awhile and never got around to it, but I just thought I'd share an interesting tidbit regarding the When a Man Loves a Man manga. I noticed that Iwaki's club is called the "Rusty Nail" and it immediately made me think of the song "Rusty Nail" by the rock band X-Japan, since I'm a big fan of the group. They were hugely popular in their heyday, so it seems very likely that the club is named after the song.

Here are the rest of the Book 5 summaries: Fuyu no Semi, plus Nitta-sensei's afterthoughts. I added quite a bit of commentary to the Fuyu no Semi summary, because I couldn't resist correcting and clarifying BeBeautiful's information. See my resource links for more info.

Part 1

Here are the Book 5 summaries that I was working on. They were too long to fit into a single post, so I'm posting the earlier chapters here, and the Fuyu no Semi story, which is the longest, by itself.

Here is a list of resource links that I've compiled for the wiki. Some I've looked up as research for my fics, and the historical ones came up while I was looking up references while I was working on the Fuyu no Semi chapter summary for Book 5. I'm a huge fan of samurai dramas--I've watched each annual NHK taiga drama since 2002, so I couldn't resist adding a bit of commentary and doing some research to try and explain the various historical figures and references. Hope you guys find it helpful!

Just thought I'd mention that jpqueen has a nice assortment of used and new Youka Nitta merchandise available--the usual manga (original Japanese versions, not the Be Beautiful releases), as well as cds and dvds, and really cool stuff like Fuyu no Semi chopsticks and fan! I was really tempted to get them, but I'd already spent a ton on manga, so I reluctantly decided against it. I couldn't afford to get all the books that were available, but I got some of the later Harudaki books and volumes 1 and 2 of Boku no Koe, and some stuff by other authors (including the Kizuna volume I was missing, yay!) There's a bunch of the "When a Man Loves a Man" books, but there seem to be several different volumes in several different series, and it was kind of confusing as to which book follows which. I may try reading the scanalations first and buy them later. (When I have more money! ^_^)

Btw, if you try to do an author search on the site, you have to spell her name as "Yuuka Nitta" instead of "Youka".

I've purchased from them before, and they are quick and reliable. Unfortunately, shipping is very expensive, as the merchandise ships directly from Japan to the US (I believe that they'll ship to Europe as well). Airmail is slightly cheaper, but I prefer to use EMS, as it includes insurance, and who knows what could happen to the package between Japan and my house? I've never had any problems with lost or late packages, though.

Btw, I was curious--they translate Harudaki as "He Hugged a Hooker"?! Is that correct, or is the translation a little off? Quite a difference from "Embracing Love"! "I hugged a porn star," maybe? ;)

As some of you know, affordable copies of the BeBeautiful English translations of Haru wo Daite Ita have become hard to find. As far as I can tell, the only one readily available for under $20 is volume 4 - there appear to be several used copies on Amazon and eBay.

(Bidding for volume 2 on eBay is currently up to $38. #1 and #3 will each cost you over $40 on Amazon marketplace. #5 is listed as available new & used @ Amazon -- but it's "temporarily" out of stock, and the first genuine reseller is asking for $60. Yeow!)

The good news is that I just got off the phone with Peter @ The Beguiling, a comics store in Toronto. He says he has a few copies of v4 and v5 left at $19.95 CDN/US (before shipping). The online shopping system is wonky (it generated a script error when I tried to check out), but they do take orders and answer inquiries over e-mail and the phone.