[...] launching Rumiko Takahashi’s new series Rin-Ne online (with simultaneous publication to US web and Japanese print), Viz has now created an entire [...]

And one more: high school isn’t required in Japan; in fact, you have to pass an entrance exam to get into high school just as you do to get into college. (Even for some private junior high schools, I understand.) Almost everyone does go to high school — but it’s not required. Entering high school is a somewhat significant life step/stage, so it wouldn’t be all that strange for Sakura-chan to hope/expect that something might change at that point in time. Even if she isn’t a mutant. . . . ]

And one not-necessarily-cultural note, too. I assumed that Sakura-chan was presuming that previously-unseen boy was Rinne-kun in part because he was coming to sit in the seat assigned to that previously-unseen Rokudô Rinne-kun. Of course, she didn’t know at first she was the only one who could see him — and he wasn’t there long, was he? . . . :]

(I suppose one could put that down to a cultural expectation that everyone would be polite enough to sit only in their own seats. On the other hand, if he hadn’t been there before, how did he know which seat was his? Unless it was the only one open.)

But last night, as I was drifting off to sleep, I suddenly had a flashback — all the way back to the beginning. (Yeah, yeah, it’s not that far back — but it was a flash.)

Oba-chan (a/k/a O-nê-chan) was wearing her haori when we met her — however briefly — and Sakura-chan could see her.

That incident didn’t give Sakura-chan the power to see ghosts. She already had it!

Maybe she was born with it, maybe not. But she had it before she got hypnotized — or lost. Though maybe she got hypnotized into losing her memory of how she got it . . . or when. After all, she’s the one who said (well, thought-ballooned at us) that she started seeing ghosts about that time — so she definitely doesn’t seem to remember that she had the power/ability/talent/whatever before then.

Anyway, it’s a point to ponder — for . . . well, maybe only the next five days now! . . . :]

(So now I have to let folks know it worked. And then go enjoy it myself!)

I’m not complaining. I’m just trying to keep track of this “experiment” with the newsletter . . . and I hope you don’t mind being a sort of control group of one for it.

So I’ll see how signing up for the newsletter works this time — and how patient I’ll manage to be on Wednesday if I don’t see something from them in my Inbox.

Thanks for your patience. . . .

(And I asked your permission, Johanna, because you had seen a problem — with my comment — that I hadn’t. I wanted to address you and your suggestions with respect. And I figured that if neither one of us, looking from different points of view, could see any problem with my idea of spreading the news . . . then it was that much more likely to be okay with others. So I asked. And you answered. And yet once more, I thank you.)

So Viz is using the newsletter itself to announce posting of the latest episode. That is very good to know. Unfortunately, it’s also the first I’ve heard of any way to find out a chapter is posted other than by checking and re-checking the site. (Or hoping that you see a notice from somebody else on some fansite who’s in the know and mentions it.)

I could wish Viz had mentioned *that* somewhere. But at least you have, Johanna, and once more I thank you.

I hope you wouldn’t mind if that news was spread. (I’ll hold off on spreading it myself, though — until I hear from you, either here or directly.)

Paranoia?! . . . I may be “louder” than some other fans — maybe even louder than the average fan. In my other life I encounter a lot of situations where “if you don’t ask, you don’t get” is the rule. So I’m not reluctant to ask questions — and to look for if not expect answers, even if only the courtesy of “we don’t know yet” or “that answer is here, stop bugging us” or some such.

But I can’t believe I’m the only fan who’s been frustrated by the tail-end-of-the-target-day postings. Or the only fan who’s been repeatedly visiting multiple pages of the RumicWorld site looking for more information. And I think it would benefit both us and Viz if we knew the option of receiving notice of chapter postings via newsletter (or any other methods Viz offers that wouldn’t risk clogging up their Website) was available.

How would it benefit Viz? Well, they have been promoting this offer of free reading now in an attempt to build an audience/customer base for the future, and to gauge its size. To accumulate what you don’t have to be an accountant to call “goodwill”. That’s what they want to get in exchange for the promise of same-day other-language posting. Viz didn’t have to make that offer — there’s no constitutional right to freedom of manga . . . :] . . . but it did — and I’m glad. I’m good and willing to make that exchange — and so, I’m sure, are you.

But once Viz offered so clear and specific a promise, yeah — that did and does entitle us somewhat. To the promise, or to some explanation if there’s a problem in keeping the promise at times.

(Likewise, if Viz sets up and offers ways to receive and share comments from the general reading public, those ways should be equally open to comments regardless of whether they are positive, negative, neutral, or mixed. If they only wanted to post rave reviews, again, they could say so.)

I was not, and am not, talking about suing Viz. Nor was I threatening a denial-of-service attack. I was just trying to identify some problems, in terms clear and penetrating enough to have a chance of convincing Viz that they were problems. And to do that early on, so maybe things would be made better sooner and stay better longer. (I would tend to prefer sending actual e-mails over using form pages or blogs for such a purpose — if e-mail addresses are available. I know they’re not always going to be available, though — so I use what’s offered.)

In other words, I’m trying to help Viz keep earning and gathering up that goodwill — from me and you and other fans like us. I want to improve everyone’s understanding of what the deal is — so expectations match the deal, instead of soaring too high above it and then crashing.

Granted, I’m not much more shy about suggesting ways to share that information than I am about asking for the information in the first place. To mention how I might do it if I were them. But I’m not them, and I know it. And, as mentioned above, I’m also not reluctant to accept the ways they’re using to share the information . . . if I know about those ways. (As now I do for one way. Thanks to you — not, alas, to Viz.) And I’d accept it with even more of a good will the more courteously my ideas and I are treated.

Anyway, you get to decide whether all this is (in the immortal words of archy the cockroach) “just an explanation not an excuse”. But I hope you can at least believe that I have intended good — and that I do appreciate your help and information — and that I will be looking for your message about sharing the news of the newsletter-as-chapter-posting-notice option.

If you’re that concerned about knowing when new chapters go live, you definitely need to subscribe, because then you won’t have to bother checking on it until you get the email.

If I got your comment stuck in my spam filter, I might think twice about posting it, too. It reeks of entitlement and paranoia.

Thank you for mentioning the possibility, Johanna. Can you provide a bit more help?

If I may ask — and with apologies to former Senator Howard Baker — “What did the newsletter say and when did it say it?”

The “Manga” page itself — the page from which we access the Reader — said Chapter 2 would be posted May 2. It now says Chapter 3 will be posted May 13. I think that same page could be used to give readers more specific posting-time information. But I can see Viz might prefer to use the newsletters to both distribute that information and gauge interest in the series.

So has the newsletter been doing this already — giving more than just the date? Did it say, for example, that Chapter 2 wasn’t going to be up until 11pm PDT? Or that (until further notice, at least) we shouldn’t expect any new chapter to be posted before __pm West Coast time? If this kind of information is in the newsletters, they may be useful.

OTOH, it wouldn’t help a lot to have a newsletter say “Today’s issue won’t be posted until 10pm Eastern/7pm Pacific” if you don’t get the newsletter until 11pm Eastern/8pm Pacific. And it would help, but only a little, if you got that message at 9pm Eastern/6pm Pacific.

So can you, Johanna, tell me/us — without violating any TOS agreement or suchlike — about what (and/or what kind of) posting-timing information the newsletters have been giving you?

In any case, I do again offer my thanks for your helpful suggestion so far.

It was 2am EDT Sunday 5/3 when the pages were posted. A few minutes past 2am, actually. But hey, Viz is based in San Francisco — so they were still barely into the 11th hour of Saturday 5/2 there, right? . . .

(*sigh*)

http://www.therumicworld.com/blog.php

and typed in the following comment to the latest entry (the one titled “Thanks for Your Responses” and posted 12:36am on Apr 29 by editor Mike Montesa). . . .

* * * * * * *

I was cautiously excited rather earlier in the day, when I checked the _RINNE_ “Read Manga” home page and saw that it no longer said today was the day for the next episode to be posted. I figured that meant it was about to be.

As I write, it is now 10:08pm Eastern Daylight Time (GMT -4) on Saturday, May 2. And if Chapter 2 were up, I wouldn’t be here writing this.

Even in San Francisco, you have less than five hours of today (”2″-Day) left to make your schedule. What’s up? Or, rather, why isn’t what’s supposed to be up already up?

If there are problems, you could tell us . . . either here in the blog or on that same front page.

If you’re always aiming for 9pm EDT/6pm PDT as the posting time, you could tell us . . . either here in the blog or on that same front page.

And if you don’t tell us *SOME*thing, one of these moments the sheer number of anguished “waiters” checking and re-checking for the next chapter — and the bandwidth pressure they/we generate in the absence of information from you — may create the unintentional equivalent of a denial-of-service attack . . . and knock down your whole system along with the goodwill you’re trying to generate with this almost-approaching-simultaneous publishing effort.

Don’t let that happen. Talk to us . . . please.

COULDN’T THEY TELL US?!? . . . :}

But now we’ve come to today/”2-Day” . . . and it looks like we’re playing another round of “Manga in Limbo”! . . . the online “you-call-this-a-game?” show which asks the burning question:

How late can they go? . . .

(Answer — 7:45pm EDT, as of this writing.)