We’ve released chapter 15 of Again!! for your reading pleasure. But that’s not all, for this release post is a bit different.

For your additional reading pleasure, we are taking this opportunity to clarify a few things by means of a gigantic wall of text.

If you have an affinity for scanlator e-drama, then please continue reading. If you just want to read Again!! 15, then don’t continue reading.

Prologue: Derek

We generally do not care for “scanlator babby e-drama o noes,” but at the very least we would like to defend ourselves in this matter.

VISCANS hired Derek to be a proofreader and a typesetter for the group. He was extremely slow at proofreading and he would very often not typeset lines that should have been typeset. (In other words, he freaking didn’t typeset entire lines and bubbles all the time.)

Furthermore, Derek had been asking around within the channel if any translators wanted to translate Haruwaka for his group, Renzokusei. Now this may sound trivial, but let us try to put this into perspective. You own a group, and some newbie joins your group and starts trying to recruit your translators for his own group. (Note that translators are generally considered high demand.) This is like being hired by a company and then trying to recruit employees from that company for your own company. What the hell.

While it is true that translators are free to hold positions at more than one group, we are pretty sure that joining a group and then soon afterwards fishing around for people for your own group is a questionable practice.

Derek was eventually fired for all the abovementioned reasons. Yes, he was fired by ZeroDC. ZeroDC is VISCANS’ group leader, after all.

～FIN～

Derek: The Revenge

These days, lots of movies and series have been getting sequels and continuations. We all thought that Derek Monogatari would end after his removal from the group, but it seems that scanlator e-drama is not so easily allayed.

We do want to get to the real meat of the story, but first some additional backstory is required.

Derek wanted to do a joint with a certain series with ImangaScans. However, this joint did not happen because Derek, first of all, tossed aside a lot of the hard work that ImangaScans had already done, and second of all, because ImangaScans’ administrators received notice of Derek’s past issues in VISCANS. ImangaScans went ahead and released on their own. This apparently enraged Derek, who posted a one-page response and justification for his own release of the chapter much later. It also seems that Derek believes that ZeroDC was the one who discussed Derek’s shortcomings with ImangaScans (not true), adding fuel to Derek’s fiery hatred of ZeroDC. These events occurred near the end of July, 2012.

Fast-forward to August 2nd. We (all of us at VISCANS) woke up that morning (in-sync and simultaneously, obviously) and noticed that our MediaFire account for our work-in-progress (WIP) files had been completely deleted. One folder remained with the name: “I accidentally the delete button.” Later, a plain-text file (named “lolohyou.txt”) was found in the empty MediaFire account, which contained the following:

Your passwords are so easy to guess lolol so bad
Good job for stealing my projects, asshole.
Enjoy your life while you can, you’ll see what’ll happen now.

“It couldn’t be…” we thought to ourselves. “Could it?” Yes, some of us felt that Derek could have been the culprit. But we had no proof.

Now, we do admit that the password to the MediaFire account was passed around liberally, but never had we encountered such maliciousness in near four years of operations.

One of our members decided to submit a support ticket to MediaFire to request that they help us restore our files which had been deleted in malice. We received a reply from a MediaFire representative who said that they, unfortunately, could not help us restore our files due to the nature of scanlations. However, the representative did mention that they did not condone the actions of the person who committed the deed:

… While we obviously do not condone what this person did …

The above quotation is an excerpt from the MediaFire representative’s email response. Note that the “this person” contains a hyperlink to http://whatismyipaddress.com/ip/108.196.113.23, effectively informing us of the culprit’s IP address. Damn, thanks, bro. You’re hella broski.

(We considered responding with a message of “Thanks” and a subsequent invitation of whether he would like to join us in the lynching of the owner of the IP address.)

However, we still could not be sure of who the owner of the IP address was. But the WhatIsMyIPAddress.com page indicates that the IP is located in Alabama. ZeroDC was quick to link Derek’s user profile on Batoto. “Alabama” was listed as his location. But this was not the smoking gun necessary; it could have just been a coincidence.

We tried /WHOIS’ing Derek’s IRC nickname (“`Derek”), but noticed that Derek was using a virtual hostmask (“~Derek@i.do.stuff.or.something”) so that his IP could not be readily identified without the help of an IRC oper.

However, one of VISCANS’ most beautiful, most sexy, and most best staff members recalled that `Derek had joined VISCANS’ main channel earlier in the day to download a number of our new chapter releases from ViscanzMKII, one of our distribution bots.

Now, a brief explanation for those of you who are not very good at computers: Generally, IRC users’ hostmasks contain that person’s IP address. However, if a person is using a virtual hostmask on IRC, that person’s real hostmask is masked by a “virtual” hostmask by the IRC server, and these virtual hostmasks can be set to be any text. In Derek’s case, his virtual hostmask did not contain any indication of his actual hostmask and IP address. However, even if a user has a virtual host mask, it is possible to determine his IP address by establishing a direct connection with him—for example, a file transfer.

With this knowledge in mind, VISCANS’ most beautiful, most sexy, and most best staff member proceeded to log into VISCANS’ server to check ViscanzMKII’s log files:

** 2012-08-03-05:00:45: listen on port 45249 for `Derek (i.do.stuff.or.something on irchighway)
** 2012-08-03-05:00:45: XDCC AutoSend : requested `Derek (`DEREK!~DEREK@I.DO.STUFF.OR.SOMETHING on irchighway)
** 2012-08-03-05:00:53: XDCC [197:`Derek on irchighway]: Connection established (host=108.196.113.23 port=1024 -> host=67.228.185.146 port=45249)
** 2012-08-03-05:01:46: XDCC [197:`Derek on irchighway]: Transfer Completed (14224 kB, 52.804 sec, 269.4 kB/sec)
** 2012-08-03-05:01:46: Log: Pack 706, Nick `Derek, Network irchighway, Sent 14224 kB, Recv 14 kB, File Sore_wa_Totsuzen,_Unmei_no_Aite_ga_vol03_ch10_[VISCANS].zip

In case you missed it:

** 2012-08-03-05:00:53: XDCC [197:`Derek on irchighway]: Connection established (host=108.196.113.23 port=1024 -> host=67.228.185.146 port=45249)

All right, so we had clear proof that Derek was the culprit as his IP address matched the IP address provided to us by MediaFire. We decided to compile an image that would contain a summary of all the events and the evidence supporting our deduction that Derek was indeed the one who wiped our MediaFire account.

～THE END～

Derek: Episode III

NOPE. The next day, all of us at VISCANS again woke up in the morning (again, all at exactly the same time because we are in-sync and stuff) and discovered that our WIP FTP had been deleted of all files barring one remaining file titled “lolohyou.txt”:

Your passwords are so easy to guess lolol so bad
Good job for stealing my projects, asshole.
Enjoy your life while you can, you’ll see what’ll happen now.
There’s a spy in your channels, careful now ;o

INTRUDER ALERT—A (RED/BLU) SPY IS IN THE BASE.

Anyway, unfortunately, we could not have changed the password for the FTP account because the owner of the FTP account is MIA.

(Here is a visual summary of the series of events.)

TO BE CONTINUED…?

Epilogue

Derek responded via a post almost as long as this one on his scanlation group’s internet website. We don’t have much to say about his claims other than 99% of them are not grounded in any truth.

Also, the fact that he made a really freaking hilarious blunder and tried to concoct a lie that would tarnish our reputation, but his beginner-level computer knowledge foiled him.

Derek claims the following in his post:

Also, for those that have seen the image that [VISCANS has] passed around, yes, they did not actually take any projects we were doing, or plan on doing so, but they were however in the process of sniping 2 projects from 2 other groups. Omamori Himari from Vortex, and Monster Musume no Iru Nichijou. There were raws and translations for both series on their FTP. I didn’t take a picture of the Monster Musume stuff, but I did however grab pictures of the Omamori stuff.

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/60724232/01.jpg　[mirrored link: 01.jpg]
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/60724232/02.jpg　[mirrored link: 02.jpg]

02.jpg is valid. Yes, we did probably have those raws in there, because one of our group administrators, elcausa, does scan that series for Vortex (elcausa is a raw provider for them). Also, one of VISCANS’ staff members works on Monster Musume no Iru Nichijou with the anons at Monster Musume (what they call themselves).

But dat 01.jpg. Take a good look at 01.jpg.

All right, so there’s a list of files, e.g. “omamori51.txt”, and they look like translation scripts for Omamori Himari.

Notice anything blatantly stupid? How about the 0 byte file sizes?

Or, how about the “Last Modified” metadata? For ALL of the text files.

“8/2/2012 5:44″.

Our FTP was wiped prior to the morning of August 3rd, 2012 (8/3/2012), but not before August 1st, 2012 (8/1/2012). Now look at the bottom right of Derek’s screenshot. Note the time.

“5:46 PM.”

Now look at the Last Modified values again.

“8/2/2012 5:44″.

LOLLOL

We think that this speaks for itself, for Derek’s expertise with computer technology, and for Derek’s ethical values.

[12:46:18] <ZeroDC> http://vi-scans.com/files/lolderek.png
[12:46:55] * !`Derek shrugs
[12:47:05] <ZeroDC> so you dont deny it?
[12:47:08] <!`Derek> got what you deserved, Zero \o/
[12:47:20] <@renkin|sleep> O_O
[12:47:22] <ZeroDC> what about everyone else in viscasn
[12:47:28] <ZeroDC> viscans*
[12:47:30] <!`Derek> well, if they follow you
[12:47:31] <!`Derek> so be it

If anyone would like to hear the true story of ZeroDC’s rise to power in VISCANS, feel free to join us on IRC and ask.

Also, Derek has not returned our files to us.