New in the Manga Guide / History

This one is somewhat special. Don't think I'll be updating every two weeks. Because it's a real pain to upload 5,000 files with FTP. My ISP's FTP has been acting up lately on top of it. But anyway, here it is: 2,165 authors (didn't change the version number, it seemed pointless). Furthermore, there are a couple of important changes. I changed the Japanese encoding. I never could get New JIS to work properly on a HTML page. There was always a problem, sometimes with Japanese encoding, sometimes with western encoding. So now it has all been changed to SJIS, there are also metaheaders, which means your browser will try to default to the Japanese encoding. If you don't have the fonts, that means that you may get a message giving you the possibility to download and install the fonts. Just do it, it doesn't hurt. Other change: I've subscribed myself as Amazon associate. That's why you find a link at the bottom of every page to Amazon. I've also included links to the manga on Amazon where appropriate. For instance, when you're on the page with Love Hina, you'll find below the entry of Love Hina some direct links taking you directly to the page of Amazon showing you that volume. Just see it as an additional service of this website and as a way for me to offset some of the costs inherent to the maintenance of the site.

I've decided to begin 2004 with a big update. A new year, a new version number. Version 13.1 online, featuring 2,125 authors. Oh, I made also some small changes to the site. You should have no problems anymore in displaying the Japanese encoding (at least I don't have problems in IE6). I also looked carefully at the stats and saw that the large majority of users is displaying in 800x600 or greater resolutions. So from now on, width of the pages will be designed for 800x600. People still using 640x480 will have to scroll sideways. If you're still in that situation, sorry about that.

Some 100kB of data added between this and version 2.6. Getting close to 2,100 authors. Didn't integrate new manga for december yet. But I did integrate recent manga data for april-november

I put up a new version of the Textguide, version 2.6. It contains now MORE THAN 2,000 authors. The file, BTW, has also reached a milestone by being bigger than 3MiB. I still vividly remember the days when I took over maintenance of the guide and it was a small file only 220K big and no more than 80 authors or so referenced. I've come a long way.
Special attention has been paid this time to: corrections submitted to me (not yet completely done, but getting there); seinen manga; newer manga series that weren't yet in the guide; shoujo manga (especially authors whose name begins with 'ki', 'ku', 'ko'. Oh, and one special correction: I discovered that the synopsis of "red eyes" had been completely misplaced.

21 September 2003: As you will notice, a complete update of the site has been made, which means that you'll find now more than 1940 authors and 11,000 series referenced.

27 August 2003: A new version of the ASCII Text version of the guide is online. New manga still only till April, but I've corrected a large number of typos, inconsistenties that have been submitted by one of you (you know who you are)... There's been a whole lot of new authors added in the guide too. Mostly shoujo artists.

29 May 2003: Chapter two of "Tsurumoku Dokushin Ryou" is online. Shouta gets into an awkward situation.

24 May 2003: There's a new feature. From a few series I will host one or more sample chapters. The purpose is NOT to become a scanslationsite, which is why this will be limited to a few sample chapters. The goal is to make you acquainted with series that deserve it. So don't ask me for more of the same series. I won't comply. You can find a link to the first of such chapters below. It's chapter 48 of "Momoiro Sabbath", one of my pet series. And Chapter 1 of "Tsurumoku Dokushin Ryou". Another one of my favorites. It's on fortunecity, so the bandwidth is limited to 3GB a month. If you can't enter, try again later.

6 June: An update of the textguide. Again substantially larger, quite a lot of shoujo authors have been added. Some new synopses thanks to Seki. All new manga are now up to date until april 2002.

20 May: FINALLY A COMPLETE UPDATE OF THE GUIDE. We are having a new home too. The pages on Geocities will from now on only function as a portal. Be amazed: in this version, you'll find 1,600 authors. On this site, you'll have no worries about ads either.

7 April: Finally a new version of the TextGuide. I'm truly sorry of the LONG wait between last update and this one. I simply couldn't find time to do it. I'll try to do better in the future. Even now, I couldn't bring all of the Guide into line. Only those authors up until the "K". The rest will follow.
On another note, THE WEBGUIDE WILL NOT BE BROUGHT INTO LINE with the Textguide. It's obvious why: Yahoo doesn't allow for FTP anymore, and I'm not going to pay for their worthless premium services. So, it has become quite impossible to do a refresh of 5,000 files. So, until I find another home, you'll have to do with the TextGuide only.

1 August: New version of the TextGuide. Includes new manga for July 2001. I've also uploaded a new section in the guide, though I still have to adapt my links. It's a compilation of all the monthly manga top 10 that have appeared in over 9 years of Viz' Animerica. I've had a lot of work correcting the numerous mistakes and inconsistencies in their lists. But you can admire the result at THIS PAGE. I'm going to try to extract some data out of it, such as: what has been the most successful manga series in the past ten years, who has been the most successful mangaka,...

17 June: New version of the TextGuide. Includes new manga for June 2001.

25 May: Chapter two of the "Tsurumoku Dokushin Ryou" manga has been translated.

16 May: I have included a new section on this homepage. It's still very small, you'll have to look closely, but it will grow steadily. SCRIPT FILES of manga I've translated. These are scripts (simple textfiles) and you're allowed to download them and use them as an aid to read the original manga you bought. You are NOT ALLOWED to use them to put up scans. I will personally behead (^_^) those who misuse my scripts. Oh, there's also a new poll online (finally) and I've put the results of the previous poll in the appropriate page.

1 May: New Textguide (v10.5). I've reached a new milestone for the Guide: the textguide is 2 MB big! We are also getting close to 1,500 authors. I just love numbers and milestones ^_^. I have the feeling that the Textguide is now fairly well ahead to warrant an update of the whole website (which dates from november 2000).

1 April: A new textguide (v10.3) is online containing the new manga for March and April 2001 and a lot more synopses and authors as usual ^_^. The site is booming with visitors. Thanks everyone. Unfortunately, this doesn't translate in contributions. I'm receiving less contributions now than two years ago. You may think that the guide is very complete, but I know that it is far from complete. So, yes, this is a call for more contributions. I can only review the manga I know personally, you have to fill in the others for me if we want the guide to become as complete as possible. Reviews wanted!! Check the textguide (download the zipfile) for the latest information to see which series have still not been reviewed.

1 March: A new textguide (v10.2) is online. A lot more authors (1390), and new manga of Jan/Feb 2001. 67000 lines full of info.

30 December: A new textguide is online. It contains the most important new manga appearing in december 2000. It also has a lot more authors (1340 now) than the previous one. 65,000 lines full of info!!!

10 December: I've put up a webversion of the Manga Magazines Guide. Actually, it's more a copy of the textversion. See link above. I've also made a new backdrop available.

20 November: FTP problems seem to have largely disappeared on Geocities and I could upload the thousands of files that were needed to finish the update. Well here you have it: GUIDE V9.8, +1,300 authors, +6000 series, synopses galore... I will try to implement another look for the following update, use stylesheets and solve the problems with the JIS. Yup, it isn't yet solved. If you're using Internet EXPLORER, don't view the pages with Japanese encoding enabled. It will mess them up. Use Western encoding and NJSTAR instead.

A new textguide (v10.2) is online. A lot more authors (1390), and new manga of January / February 2001. 67000 lines full of info.

A new textguide is online. It contains the most important new manga appearing in december 2000. It also has a lot more authors (1340 now) than the previous one. 65,000 lines full of info!!!

I've put up a webversion of the Manga Magazines Guide. Actually, it's more a copy of the textversion. I've also made a new backdrop available.

FTP problems seem to have largely disappeared on Geocities and I could upload the thousands of files that were needed to finish the update. Well here you have it: GUIDE V9.8, +1,300 authors, +6000 series, synopses galore... I will try to implement another look for the following update, use stylesheets and solve the problems with the JIS. Yup, it isn't yet solved. If you're using Internet EXPLORER, don't view the pages with Japanese encoding enabled. It will mess them up. Use Western encoding and NJSTAR instead.

I'm currently in the process of doing a complete update of the guide. SHITTY GEOCITIES FTP SERVERS are giving me a hard time with deconnections. That's why it's not done yet. Especially the detailfiles and coverimages may not yet be synchronized with the rest that has been updated. Don't worry, I'll correct everything in the following days or as soon as those DARNED GEOCITIES SERVERS give me access. Sorry about the language, but it's getting on my nerves. By the way, there are now more than 1,300 authors in the guide.

I've added some more synopses by Eirias and Hank Liao and done some corrections too.

An update of the textguide with new manga from november and october and with many new synopses by Eirias.

An update of the textguide to include the contributions of a few people of whom I had lost or didn't receive their first email. I haven't counted the number of authors in the guide exactly, but there must be around 1,300 authors in the guide now. More than 60,000 lines of information and now 1,7MB big. We have still a looong way to go. So keep those contributions coming!

I have updated the textguide with the new manga for july and August 2000. There are also quite a few new synopses kindly submitted by Seishinja. Thanks.

It has been a while since the Webversion has been brought inline with the textversion, but now it is. There are of course too many changes for me to detail them all. There are a couple of important things I'd like to mention though. Firstly, from now on, the Geocities banner will pop up. Secondly, I've noticed a problem with the Japanese encoding if you're using the internet explorer with Japanese fonts. Some pages don't look right. There isn't a problem in netscape navigator. I suggest you use NJWIN with internet explorer. I'm currently looking into it. Even though the webguide is the July version, it doesn't contain the July manga. That'll be for later.

20 May: IMPORTANT NEWS: There is a new TEXTGUIDE ONLINE, but it is not on geocities anymore. The zipped file has exceeded 500KB and I have found that it is impossible to upload files that are greater than this limit on Geocities. The Textguide link now points to a page on Fortunecity. I hope this works out well. If you experience any problems, mail me. BTW, there are more than 35KB of new info in the guide.

Heh, this update didn't take that long, ne? A new textguide is online containing 15kB of new/updated information. Some new authors, and the new manga for the month of May.

Sorry that it took so long to update the guide. I've been very busy with real life and other things. I'm still working on my backlog. The Textguide gets updated now: the most important new manga of march and april 2000 are included together with some new authors and changes here and there. The updated file is 11K bigger than the previous one. Other updates will follow, hopefully a lot sooner. If you've contributed something and it still isn't up, don't worry. It is in my backlog and will get treated.
Some of you have probably noticed that I was the guestpick author on the Anipike this week. I'm very honored to have been chosen by the people at the Anime Web Turnpike.

Only the TextGuide is updated. I included some 35KB of new info, contributed by various people. Thanks alot! The list of manga appearing in February has also been included. The Guide is now visited by on the average 180 (!) people every day.

I finally got around with making a full update. The webguide is now in sync with the Textguide. You'll notice that there are numerous little changes everywhere. Remark the new index of translated titles, the heavily extended (and annotated) lists of animated series, fantranslations are now also included in the Guide (search for TRA:(X) tag). There is a lot more in the detailguide too. Summaries for the Violinist of Hameln by Eirias... I have put up a FAQ file with answers to questions I have recently received. If you want to contribute or have questions, read it first please!
Oh yeah, I have added a supplement to the guide. Some of you have noted that there was an entry for the Usenet Manga Magazines Guide in the contents table of the UMG. A long time ago this UMMG was always posted together with the UMG. I've waited so long to include it, because I wanted to contact the person who was the maintainer, but I can't seem to find him anymore (Ryo Shiroma). If anyone has his email address, let me know. Anyway, I've now include it at the end of the Guide. The UMMG has been edited by me to fit the UMG format, but it is not really up to date! If you have additional information regarding magazines, by all means let me know.

Sorry, but I'm still not ready to make a full update. To make it up with you guys, I'm putting out version 8.12 of the Textguide (the last one for this year), with a number of synopses by a new contributor: Seishinja. To find these contributions, look for the "{KAM}" tag in the guide. Version 8.12 is almost 1.5 MB big!!

I've only updated the Textguide for now. I'm actually working on an improved version of the WebGuide. There is a lot of programming to do. I hope to have it online in the next week. Amongst the new features: an index sorted on the translated series titles.

Dennis Hirschmann has given me another batch of new info. I've prepared a new version of the guide integrating this info. But besides this, the number of authors (> 1,130) and descriptions have been significantly augmented. I've added more than 4,000 lines of info (100KB) and also a couple of new features. The publisher is added for translations, and the release dates for the animations have been added with the APG: tags. I'm putting this new textversion of the guide online now.

An update of the homepage. I hope it's now somewhat clearer. If not, mail me. Something new: I intend to place one backdrop every week for download on this page. The backdrops will especially focus on manga. I've found that other sites with wallpapers allmost always present anime and not manga wallpapers. This should remedy it. The wallpapers will be up for a week, and won't be reposted afterwards!!

I had planned to do a full update, but I discovered an error after generation. So I'll only update the textguide. The new manga for November are included in it. But that's not all: there is more than 70KB of new info in the textguide. Lots of new synopses, 70+ new authors, bringing the total on 1,081 authors in 47,000 lines chockfull of info. I've made a major overhaul of links in the guide. There are now a lot more in it. If you know of other good links for series, let me know. There are two rules for inclusion: the site must mainly be about the manga, and I keep the total number of links for a given series below three.
The textguide now also contains the publisher with every translation tag, translation tags are fairly complete for English and French translations.
A full update is planned for next week. In it you'll find also a number of new synopses for several series: BAKURETSU HUNTER (contributed by PHOENIX), Momoiro Sabbath and more.

The full update I've mentioned before has been done now, All the changes in the textguide of the last two months are reflected in the HTML pages. There are also a number of new synopses in the detailguide, but I forgot to tag them as new, so the list in the "newsection" is empty. Look especially to the "Violinist of Hameln" (by Watanabe Michiaki) synopses done by Eirias. Happy to announce that there are now 1,016 artists referenced in the guide.

Description of 1 October update: There will be a full update of the site very soon, with even more news, but for now I'm releasing the 8.9 version of the guide. Lots of new authors AND lots of new summaries for series. Too much to describe in little words.

Well, I've made a little check-up through the Guide and corrected some small mistakes, updated also the info concerning available translations in English and French. Added a couple of authors who should've been added already a long time ago as they are known in the West. Almost a thousand authors now!! So here you go, still the same version (8.8) but a corrected textguide. Do not hesitate to write me if you spot an error!

An update of the Textguide for September. It contains the most important manga appearing in September 1999. Lots of new authors have been added too, especially authors working for Shuueisha. There are now more than 970 authors, and 4,700 series referenced in the Guide!

Some corrections, a general synopsis and synopses for the second and the third volume. A series of Watanabe Michiaki. The synopses have been donated by Eirias. Thanks a lot!!

It has been a little while since all the changes in the Textguide were reflected in the webversion, but here it is now. At the same time, I've put up version 8.7 of the guide which contains the most important new manga coming out in August 99. This version of the guide describes more than 915 authors!! The Textversion has reached the 42,000 lines frontier. There are some new synopses in the detail guide too (for example with Ranma). A couple of changes in the HTML too. In the Synopses index, you choose the volume you want to see now by means of a listbox and a little javascript (your browser has to support javascript for it to work, but I'll add a button for those who don't want to use javascript).
I've perfected now also a way to link to an author directly. I already had such portals, but the layout was really bad. Now, this has improved and you may link directly to those portals. For example: Adachi Mitsuru Portal. These portal links are fixed. DO NOT LINK TO THE AUTHORPAGE DIRECTLY. Not that I mind, but with every update the link will most likely change. So it is much better to link to a portal. If you want such a portal being put up for your favorite author, then I will do so IF I have a picture of the author (or a self-portrait). You could send me one If I don't have a pic available.

The second part of the synopses for Rurouni Kenshin has been put up, thanks to Eirias. There are only 4 volumes missing and those will come with the next general update.

I've received a lot of small synopses for the Rurouni Kenshin series (first 10 volumes) from Eirias. Thanks very much. I've decided to put them up already now. But you'll have to go directly to the Rurouni Kenshin series because they are not reachable through the 'new in the detailguide' section, as it is only a partial update. This will change at the next complete update.

Back again. Personal problems and the changes at geocities have caused me to wait such a long time before updating. Only the textguide has been upgraded. But he contains now more than 900 authors!!

Guide (v 8.5) now describes more than 839 authors!!!
An update of only the Textguide, the most important manga appearing in June 1999 have been included. Several other small changes have been made here and there in the guide (not indicated by an update mark).

A big update now. The Guide (v 8.4b) now describes more than 830 authors!!!
Everything in the TextGuide v8.4b is now reflected in the WebGuide. Furthermore, there are a number of enhancements in the site. You can now download (some people have asked me this) a version of the TextGuide which has been splitted in a number of smaller files. Look further down the homepage for the link.
There is now a Statistics section in the site. For now it contains three additional lists, but I will extend it with much more in the future.
There are also a number of changes in the DetailGuide. You will slowly begin to notice thumbnails of the chapter coverpages popping up in this part. For now there are only 65 of them, but there will be more. Also, check out the Synopsis section of Momoiro Sabasu (Pink Sabbath). This is a very funny series on which there was a website a couple of years ago, but it doesn't exist anymore. I like the series a lot. Beware, it is a little etchi sometimes (nothing worse than Ranma or Futaba-kun changes). I have also added over 50 coverimages.
I have integrated almost all of the 'Ribon Mascot' authors Jill Astley submitted and am currently still working on the 'Margaret' authors. For more information on Ribon Magazine, visit her site at: Ribon Magazine.

Guide (v 8.4b) now describes more than 820 authors!!!
Still an update of only the Textguide, I've got some computer problems at home which is the reason why the only thing I can manage for now, is the update of the TextGuide. I'll resolve the problem as soon as possible, and make it up for next week (I hope, I really hate Microsoft).

The Guide (v 8.4) now describes more than 780 authors!!! This is an update of only the Textguide, which will be reflected in the HTML within the next two weeks (with even more info included). There is too much info to integrate, I won't be ready until next week, which is why I'm putting out the Textguide now. The reason for this is that I have received a lot of info on 'Ribon Mascot' authors and on 'Margaret' authors, submitted by Jill Astley. I am currently working hard to integrate it all in the guide. To give you already an idea about the extent of the update, the textguide will grow to more than 1,1 MB and will contain more than 800 authors!!! By this way, I'd like to take Jill for all the work put into the collected information. Don't forget to visit her site, which you can find at Ribon Magazine

A big full update of the Guide. I received once more a big amount of information from Dennis Hirschmann. Lots of new series and lots of series, especially old ones, where there is now a publication date list. A lot more bios too. The guide in textform has breached the barrier of more than 1,000,000 characters.

The awaited full update. About 600kB more information than before. The biggest change is situated in the series index. I had to split it up because it became simply too big. There is now a main switchboard where you'll enter and from there you can go to the different sections. Try it, you'll probably like it. There is now also info included with the entries in that index. Furthermore, I've written some new synopses for Rough and Ranma in the detailguide, and there are now more than 710 authors in the mainguide. The new manga appearing in march are also included. As usual, search for "9903" in the textguide. I think that I'll compile a little index in the future to have an equivalent of this in the Webguide.

This time too, I am only updating the TextGuide (8.1b). I know I said last time I was going to update the whole site, but although I have the new one at home, I think it is not ready yet. I really need to do some optimizations (especially the list of series which has become extremely long) and like to include that with the new update. So the new full update will come around 1 march together with the new manga appearing in march. Rest assured, there will be alot of new things. Amongst them: lots of new chapterlistings in the detailguide, new synopses in the detailguide (Rough)...
For now, download the textguide! It contains now more than 700 authors! I also received a number of synopses from Natane, with more to come. Thanks for the support!!

The Ultimate Manga Guide in text form now counts more than 30,000 lines!! The update concerns only the Textguide (>840kB). A bigger version 8.1 will be reflected in the Webguide somewhere around 15 February with more to come.

As I said before, I received an enormous amount of information and synopses from Dennnis Hirschmann. He submitted more than 80 new authors for the Guide. To give you an idea about the extent of his submissions: the Textversion has grown from around 700kB to more than 800kB. Most of Dennis submissions were Shoujo-artists which is actually perfect, as there was a bias towards Shounen-artists in the Guide. Many thanks!
There have also been a few improvements in the Engine: look at the authors index to see what I mean.

Updating the TextGuide. Inclusion of the most important new manga appearing in January 1999. Version 8.0 of the textguide will be reflected in the webguide somewhere in January with the next update. The next update will again contain a considerable amount of new detailsections.

Full update of the site. From now on, only the parts that really change in the site will be replaced with such an update. Before, I had to reupload everything. For this time, there are lots more summaries. I have been working hard on the Detailguide, there is now also a better mechanism to show what parts are new or updated in that Detailguide. You can check out what is new in the Detailguide by going to the page especially made for this (look in the homepage).

My homepage became a little bit rusty. I have given it a revamp and reflected the additional features from the last months (the new indexes...) into it. I also designed a new title image for the UMG. I've integrated E-stat at the top of the page and Nedstat is at the bottom of the page. I hope this shows me how many of you actually take the trouble to download the homepage completely. I think I've been missing some hits by not putting E-stat at the top in the past.

Updating the TextGuide. Inclusion of the most important new manga appearing in december 1998. Version 7.11 of the textguide will be reflected in the webguide somewhere in december with the next update. The next update will contain substantially more synopsis and chapterlists in the detailguide. It is possible I'll also be including translations of some manga. I'll only include translations with permission of the person who translated it of course. I'll make them available in zipped form. I noticed that the last month the TextGuide in the zipfile was the wrong version. I'm sorry for that.

A really BIG update NOW. The site increases with more than 7MB information. A lot more coverimages, a lot more synopsis, a lot more index pages. Just for the statistics, there are now more than 3000 files on my webspace!!!

Updating only the textguide for now. Including some more authors (almost 600 now) and also including the most important new manga appearing in november 1998. In the homepage, you can find two links that won't work yet, but they will with the next big update.

I'm updating the home page of the site. I moved all information concerning usage and features to the how to use-page. This now contains an extensive description of the site and the guides. It even contains descriptions of features that you haven't seen yet but that I already have realized here at home. You will see them at the next big update.

Okay, here comes part of the upgrade of the webguide. The changes are situated especially in the detailsections. The structure has been altered, new features have been added, one of the new features is the addition of color information. Look at the howtouse.html file to see what I mean. I'll begin also with character descriptions, but that feature hasn't yet been completely programmed, so that shall be for the next upgrade. Not too much modifications in the Mangaguide, but a lot of new synopsis in the detailsections. One of the things I'll do in the future is generate an index for those detailsections.

Have been quite sick for a while, so I'm not doing an update of the WEBGUIDE for now, instead I'm only upgrading the textguide (contains the things appearing in october). Don't worry, there will be an upgrade of the WEBguide in the following weeks and there will be a lot of changes! I've been programming a new version of the detailguide and you'll see the result in a couple of weeks (better structure, more possibilities...). The update of the WEBguide in a couple of weeks will be 1 MB larger than the previous one.

Back again with another update. More than 520 authors now. September entries from fj.rec.comics added too.

Thanks to everyone for the positive reactions and the contributions to the Guide. This is a small update of the textfile reflecting some of the contributions. More synopsis and extensions will follow end of next week (the weekend probably).

Decided to modify the structure of the 3-4 pages I don't generate automatically. I make a difference between an update for the WebGuide and a general (only the TextGuide/general files) update from now on. I also created this file you're reading now. I also have an idea for a new feature (big cover gifts). Probably it will be online end of next week.

The Anipike updated monday, and immediately I was getting a lot of hits. Great. Thanks. It helps that I was chosen as one of the picks of the week. More than 300 hits on a few days. I guess I'll be getting less next week when I'm not new anymore. Other search engines yield a lot less hits, BTW.

Up until now, the Guide hasn't been referenced on the popular search engines destinated specifically for manga. Now that the Guide has become rather mature (but far from finished) I decided (encouraged by Iain) to reference it and make it known to the webcommunity. On the other hand, I'm still not ready to make it known on Usenet.

I programmed myself a little scanning engine which scans the monthly appearing comic lists on fj.rec.comics. The result is a file which lists me every occurence of every author I have in the Guide. this makes updating the Guide easier. As a matter of fact, I use the opportunity here to make some publicity for those listings. For those who know some Japanese, it is a really useful source of information. It already exists on the net for eleven years. The Scan engine needs authors, so that's why you find in the Guide now a lot of authors with only one series for example. Rest assured, they will be extended in the next updates.

Geocities raised the number of Meg you can have for free. Eleven now. I took the occasion to augment the number of available pictures.

Up until now, the look of the WebGuide has been rather textual. Not a lot of graphical elements are provided. For the bulk of the information I like it that way. For the navigation buttons, I decided to create some buttons myself starting from a set of standard graphical items, I now can create any button I like. You'll see this new look appearing quite soon. The basic idea for the form of the buttons came from a website I visited recently (www.andyart.com).

Geocities raised the number of Meg you can have for free. Six now. I took the occasion to augment the number of available pictures.

One of the decisions I've made is the following: not only the artists deserve to be in the spotlight, also the scenario-writers have their place under the sun. But it is quite dangerous to mix the two: I have had the case of one series where I thought the writer was the artist and vice versa. So in the future, the Guide will internally be split in two: a first part for the artists and a second part for the writers. Their is only one disadvantage for me: it takes a lot of work to adapt my program to this radical change. So do not expect it to happen soon, but it will eventually.

The latest Textversion is now 430 kB big, contains 254 authors and 13,300 lines of text.

I decided to create a twin-brother for the Ultimate Manga Guide. The Detail-guide. It is a daunting task, so I cannot promise a lot in the future, but rest assured that it will grow. The Detail Guide delves deeper into every tankoubon. Instead of having simply the coverimage of the tankoubon on line, you will now find a HTML-document still containing the coverimage but also a list of every chapter of that tankoubon. And with every chapter you could find a short description of the chapter. This is about as far as I will go in extending the Guide. It should help to navigate better in the world of manga and to decide what you like. Don't ask me to go any further: I won't be putting up scans of the manga. This would be a violation of the copyright law. Support the artists by buying their work. For this you can find enough info in the Guide. BTW, the Detail Guide will also contain the ISBN-numbers for every tankoubon. It is not really necessary to order, but I know some bookshops like to have it.

Except for the synopsis, almost all of the info comes from several reference works. One of the most important was still missing in my collection: the yearly Fukuya comic Catalog. The 1998 edition covers every still existing manga up until september 1997. It doesn't cover manga who are not available anymore. This means that the scope of the Ultimate Manga Guide is broader than that of the Fukuya Catalog: I try to cover every tankoubon that has been published, sold out or not. The Catalog contains more than four thousand artists!!

Up until now I'm doing this alone. It is a time-consuming task but I like it. Only problem is, I do not know every series I write about which is the reason for all those 'No Synopsis' things. As a matter of fact, although I possess a respectable number of series (about 150) most of the series shall keep that annoying tag if I don't find any help. Luckily I found one of my friends willing to write some synopses (a time-consuming task). His name is Gerd Blocken. Thanks Gerd.

If you could spare some time, have a series I don't know about, and like to see your name on the contributors list, write a synopsis about it and send it to me. This will help a lot.

With every author you now have a standardised line of biographical info. Date of birth, prefecture of birth, town of birth, blood type. Date of death where applicable. I decided to link the names of the prefectures to a number of maps I found on the web. Clicking on the name of the prefecture takes you to the page with those maps.

Geocities raised the number of Meg you can have for free. Three now. I took the occasion to augment the number of available pictures.

I finished adapting my Guide generating program to include the links to the coverimages in the Guide. I'm using the publication dates for every series as the anchor for this. The number of images I can put up is limited (2MB).

To make the Guide more visually appealing (there were no images in it), I bought a scanner and began scanning pictures from authors and coverimages. I decided to create a database of coverimages.

I saw that I wouldn't be able to do anything with merely one MB of webspace. Geocities was a little better at that moment and I figured they would give more in time (I figured correctly). At that moment, I had 2 MB of webspace.

There are now 178 authors in the Guide. This big amount gave one big HTML-file that was simply unacceptable (>500kB). So I changed my generator-program to generate one HTML file for every author and an index file.

Another thing: I changed rules for naming the versions. From now on, at the beginning of the month the first number after the dot will augment with one. At the turning of the year the number before the dot will augment with one. So in 1997 I have version 6 and in 1998 I will have version 7. The version in January 1998 will be called version 7.0, in February you'll have 7.1. The letter after the numbers indicates intermediate updates.

On of the biggest disadvantages in the Usenet MAnga Guide was not having an index on authors/entries. I created such an index and my script put the correct bookmarks so that you could navigate in the WebGuide. This version (6.2c had 163 authors and was 322 kB big, 9000 lines) was the first good one I created. I decided not to make the site known to the big public. (its better to make yourself known when you really have something to show)

This address was still based at my ISP-provider. I had to move because I took a yearly subscription. Advantage: I had now 1 MB of webspace (ROTFL a year later).

The first WebGuide was quite different of the one put up later: it consisted of one big file. Much the same as was the Usenet Manga Guide.

I saw that Iain made a strong point in saying that a lot more people would read a HTML-version than a normal textversion. But I don't like HTML and updating such a bunch of files would be hell even with something like Frontpage. Fortunately I had begun putting a more rigid structure into the Guide. I saw that it would be possible to write a script that reads the textversion line by line and inserts the appropriate HTML-codes. So off I went creating the script.

I had some Webspace (512 kB, how miserable) at my ISP, I decided to put the Ascii version there. (v 6.1)

After a period of making up my mind (calculating if I could take over the Guide, I have a job too :)) I began updating the textversion which appears sometimes on rec.arts.manga. It wasn't my intention to create a Webversion of the Guide (I don't like HTML).

One of the biggest changes I decided to make: the inclusion of the dates of publication in the Guide per volume.

I contacted Iain Sinclair for the first time and mailed some updates he could enter in the Usenet Manga Guide. This resulted in the last version of the Usenet Manga Guide (v6.05) For the history: version 6.05 contained lists for about 80 authors and was in its textform about 220k big.

At the same occasion, Iain asks me if I wouldn't be interested in taking over its maintenance.