Proposal – Comic Scanning Project

Introduction

Have you ever wanted to contribute to the exciting and rewarding world of scans and yet not found yourself able for a number of reasons? Is the thought of scanning hundreds to thousands of pages something you dread? Would you be embarrassed if a close friend or family member were to discover a pornographic H-comic in your room with strange content? Could you get in legal problems if the customs agency of your nation were to inspect your package from Japan and were to discover H-comics? Do you not know enough of the Japanese language to locate books online much less navigate the often confusing Japanese shops or even more confusing and difficult to use, but very rewarding, Japanese auction sites? If you answered “yes” to any of these questions or combinations thereof, there’s no need to worry. With this newly proposed Comic Scanning Project, you can contribute to scanning by simply allowing our experts to find what you want, paying for the item itself, and paying a fair, reasonable fee to have your requested item purchased, scanned, processed, uploaded to E-Hentai for your viewing enjoyment.

Who are we?

As of now, there are two main members of this proposed Comic Scanning Project. With a combined total of 13 years of locating, purchasing, scanning, and sharing experience, we are seasoned veterans of the Japanese scanning scene having contributed greatly over the years even perhaps to your very enjoyment. We are deeply fond of Japanese comics and have had great success in scanning not only new or popular books but also many rare and old books that other people may be discouraged from ever finding. We have found many of the rarest of books, items published over 20 years ago and items published in quantities of less than 100 units. Although neither of us lives in Japan, the person handling the scans lives in a nation that is permissive when it comes to the importation of H-Comics. So you can rest assured that customs will not be seizing your requested comics that you’ve paid for. We are also able to find items that even Japanese otaku whom we have spoken to have considered the items that we wanted (and often eventually purchased and scanned) as being nearly impossible to find.

Pricing

As highly experienced buyers from Japanese online stores and auctions, we always try to find the lowest priced item for you. However, some things must be said about pricing. First, there is the price of the item itself. This is obvious. What are not so obvious are the other necessary, additional costs. There are two types of shopping to distinguish for the sake of this section. The first are those sellers that ship outside of Japan. The second are those sellers that do not ship outside of Japan.
For all shops, those that ship outside of Japan and those that do not, you will have the same set of the following additional costs. First and foremost, Japan charges a small sales tax on items sold through normal shops. Therefore this fee is included irrespective of whether the item seller ships or does not ship outside of Japan. Second, there may be a tax fee for importation of items from Japan into the nation of the scanning member. This fee is also low and, if many books are purchased simultaneously among a group of buyers, the tax will be evenly distributed over all members. Third, there is the fee for shipping the items from Japan to us. Like the import tax, this fee will be evenly distributed over all members items contained within the package. We will always try to combine shipping when possible to make the prices as low as possible for our contributors.

For shops that do not ship outside of Japan, we have to use a contact of ours within Japan who receives the item(s) for us and then ships it (them) to us. This person charges a small, reasonable fee for his service. Next, there is shipping fee within Japan from the seller to our contact. And finally, there is a fee for the bank wire service used by the contact to purchase the item from the seller. Sadly, the use of convenient debit or credit cards to make payments is not as common in Japan as you may think. All of these extra fees increase the price of an item by quite a lot but when it comes to auctions, often the best way to get the rarest of items, we have no choice but to pay these fees. And even with these fees, the price of the item may be less than what you would expect to pay for such a rare item compared to many other overpriced sellers that sell their items in the West on EBay or their own private, online shop.

Finally, there is the fee for scanning your item. For normal sized doujinshi, anything under 100 pages or so, we charge a flat $10.00. For a normal sized commercial publication, anything around 180-250 pages or so, we charge a flat $20.00 fee. For exceedingly small items, we may combine them with other purchases you made or charge a lesser fee. For very large items, we may charge more than $20.00 but it will go by a case-by-case basis. Before we obtain the item for you, we will let you know the fee for scanning the item. Of course there are some items that don’t even require scanning such as doujin CG but this may require special hardware, in the case of old floppy disc materials compatible only with old Japanese computers, or even special expertise with new stuff protected by DRM. Again, we will do our best to let you know in advance of such complications.

What we scan

It is our goal to try to help you get any comic related item including but not limited to doujinshi (h or non-h), commercial h-comics, commercial non-h comics, commercial magazines (even old back issues), doujin CG, commercial CG, light novels, and anything else with comic related drawings such as calendars, shitajiki, telephone cards, posters, and more. We scan any H contents - everything from normal straight sex to loli, shota, yaoi, furry, and even weird stuff.

Our purpose

As huge fans of Japanese comics, we wish to preserve them online for our own future viewing pleasure and for the enjoyment of others. We also are firm believers in digital preservation and wish to spread knowledge of great comics and otaku culture around the world. Due to increasing technological advances of digital storage and communication through the internet as well as superior digitization technology, it is now possible, far more than former years, to form such a scanning community as this proposed Comic Scanning Project and be highly successful in spreading our work with a large community of fans.

Examples of purchasable items

Suppose a person, using the Doujinshi & Manga Lexicon website, locates the following book by authors Ebi Fly and Neriwasabi called Matatabi Carrot 3. Suppose further that this person is a fan of these authors and is interested in getting any books not yet scanned by them. This is an old book from 1990 and checking this book’s availability on both E-Hentai and hashdb.com will not result in any hits, which makes it safe to conclude that this book is probably not scanned and shared online. Therefore, this is a candidate for this person’s purchases. We of the proposed Comic Scanning Project can then search for this book and find that it is currently for sale on Yahoo Japan Auctions (http://page2.auctions.yahoo.co.jp/jp/auction/b93214621) for an initial bid price of 800 yen and buy it now price of 1000 yen. All this fan has to do is pay money to the Comic Scanning Project to have this book purchased, scanned, processed, and uploaded to E-Hentai for that users enjoyment.

Here is another example regarding a much newer publication. Another person likes the following work previewed on Pixiv, [www.pixiv.net] http://www.pixiv.net/member_illust.php?mod...ust_id=19006076. Members of the Comic Scanning Project can locate the book for sale on a number of places such as Yahoo Japan auctions with a starting price of 890 yen and buy it now price of 990 yen (http://page11.auctions.yahoo.co.jp/jp/auction/n120302671), Nagomi Anime Recycle for 630 yen (http://nagomiweb.jp/cgi-bin/detail.cgi?user=et080948&id=A1-CK0335-N0042), and Suruga-Ya for only 450 yen (http://www.suruga-ya.jp/database/ZHOU10354.html?gcsct=0ChMIuIyfkpDEuAIV4kGmCh0uXgAAEAE). Although these shops or auction sellers may not ship out of Japan or have troubles due to the “language barrier”, the members of the Comic Scanning Project can order these books for potential buyers without any problems due to our expertise in this matter.

What you need to do if interested

Simply tell us what you are interested in purchasing. You can leave a message here or send a private request. All requests and purchases, if written in a private message, will be kept confidential. No personal information of collaborators will be revealed by us. We would be happy to help you find even the rarest of items. You can give us as much or as little information to go on when trying to find your item. For those who are looking to get the rarest of materials, we can even teach you how to look online so that if the item ever does appear, which it often will with enough persistence, you can tell us immediately upon appearance to buy the item so that you do not miss it.