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Discussion Guidelines
Everybody should feel free to post and ask questions–it’s what makes book clubs fun! But please do not post until you are familiar with Spoiler Courtesy!
Spoiler Courtesy
Please follow these rules to avoid inadvertent ネタバレ. If you’re unsure whether something should have a spoiler tag, err on the side of using one.
Any potential spoiler for the current week’s reading need only be covered by a spoiler tag. Predictions and conjecture made by somebody who has not read ahead still falls into this category.
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Chapters 4 and 5 basically sum up what I love about this series so much
And just so it can maybe help someone, the way I deal with situations where I can’t read the parts of a word, it doesn’t have furigana and maybe it’s even written very much unlike a computer would, is that I have a handwriting keyboard (specifically gboard) installed. If you just draw what you think you see, the keyboard will most likely be able to guess what you want.
Gboard is nice because it doesn’t care about stroke order and it has a full screen option that makes it very simple to copy out kanji.
I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again. I am eternally grateful to 五等分の花嫁 for its many varied and weird fonts, including some puzzling handwriting. Since reading that one on my own, the only fonts I’ve struggled with have been ones intended to be calligraphic or a certain whale’s handwriting
五等分の花嫁 gets kind of a bad rap for some reason, but it’s definitely got stuff in that’s good for learning. Lots of weird font practice and some very fun expressions (and also pretty cute when it wants to be)
I may have lied last week about webry having all the chapters for free I could’ve sworn I looked ahead, but now it looks like just chapters 1-3 and then the last few months of current chs are free. Oh well, the first week was at least for people who wanted to try it out.
Cute chapters, and much more normal language this time.
Technically spoilers for **way** in the future (currentish chs):
I had no idea they introduced this character so early, I legitimately thought he appeared out of nowhere in like chapter 380 because I thought surely I would remember seeing a character with hair this weird but no HE’S BEEN HERE THE WHOLE TIME
for those that remember the read-aloud discussion from last week (or for anyone who has interest), followed up with some scheduling polls on the main post!
Really enjoyed these chapters! I haven’t read or watched this series in any form before so experiencing it this way is a lot of fun. Luckily the handwriting didn’t trip me up too bad!
Page 30
只野くんは逃げだした！ しかし逃げられない‼︎
I’ve played a few Pokemon games in Japanese and IIRC 逃げられない is the exact phrase used when you fail to run from battle - and the tone of these lines makes me wonder if this isn’t a reference.
Hey guys, looking forward to joining you guys in the thread for week 3 this Saturday!
For any of you guys in the Intermediate and Advanced book clubs, I’ve a question about text extraction. Recently I discovered that if you open a screenshot of a page of manga as a google doc, it will create a doc not only with the image attached, but it will have extracted a decent amount of text. Given that it’s trying to extract text from a page of manga, the results themselves vary in quality, but were I do to do with with an actual Japanese book, where the text is clear and neatly presented, it should work.
Anyways, my question for the people who’ve experience with ‘real books’ so to speak is do you use anything in particular to extract the text?
For manga I use japanese.io. I upload the manga and it OCRs it. I can click on words and it’ll give me a translation (like Yomichan). For novels I extract the text with Calibre and upload it into japanese.io as well.
I tried Window’s own OCR onanga and it didn’t work to well. By the time one fiddle’s around with an OCR for manga, it might be easier to just transcribe it by hand. For actual novels, I will look into Calibre, however. Japanese.io looks good but I’m tryna keep things free. Thanks!
Mokuro is also one option, if you want to mass extract the text from one or possibly multiple manga. It creates a html reader you can flip through the images in and hovering over text shows you the OCRd result.
I’m not sure if it was yourself but somebody in response to me recently noted a way to upscale the quality of images using AI. I already have Komi Can’t Communicate downloaded through book walker, so I can’t extract the file itself, but I wonder if I were to use a script to instead screenshot every page, and then run it through an upscaler Might be a bit more effort than it’s worth for this book, but maybe the next one.
Ideally, I’d love to have all the text ready to go, so it might be better to just wait till I get to actual books to do this. That way I can use a script to format it into the exact layout for reading with YomiChan, and then also put it into the exact layout I need for our book club, without having to type the line breaks or the [details] every single time. At least the book layout operation is one I can do now
One caveat I want to mention right off the bat. This manga is full of moments, where you see handwritten-like japanese, for example on blackboards, signs, paper, etc. These are important to the plot, the only things that don’t have furigana, and they potentially don’t get recognized by the OCR, so need to test first.
(With this one I physically can’t zoom in more, that’s how big the text is)
Otherwise I just use a model from this site, specifically “MangaScaleV3”, because it handles text better than the other options in my experience, alongside Chainner which is a very intuitive image editing and upscaling workbench.
I loved the reading this week. I especially liked the last scene of chapter 5 where Tadano wanted to give Komi a tissue because he thought she was crying but she just got hiccups Also, very wholesome in general!
p. 33
Komi even went ahead and included the kanji version for this word on the next panel of the same writing: うまく → 上手く
I mean, you have seen the speed she writes stuff on the blackboard.
She had the time to get a piece of chalk, write 待って on the blackboard and then catch Tadano while he was trying to get away. Girl’s a typewriter. She probably just cleaned that bit off and redrew it in the time tadano read the rest.
(and also pretty cute when it wants to be)
I could’ve sworn I looked ahead, but now it looks like just chapters 1-3 and then the last few months of current chs are free. Oh well, the first week was at least for people who wanted to try it out.
Might be a bit more effort than it’s worth for this book, but maybe the next one.
