June 1, 2000

Well, hard as we tried to get these May stories up in the month of May we just weren't able to do it. We're still extremely busy (as if you couldn't tell) but we're going to keep working and may be able to udpate again this month. ^_^;;;

Here's what we've got:

The Short of the Week is May Fly, a cute (and long) story about Hiei running away from home and Kurama luring him back.

New to both sides is May Showers by Seono Shou. The true rainy season has come: Kurama is frustrated, and Hiei is...shrinking? Yes, he's getting younger by the hour and Kurama had better figure out why or he'll end up with three kids instead of two.

That's it, plus the nice pic of Hiei with sword and tear gem by Po. We'll do a manga excerpt next time for sure!

April 20, 2000

Hello at last! And thanks to everyone who has written--yes, we are alive (more or less) and we do so much appreciate all the support! We're sorry about our recent tardiness in updating. The explanation is simple but devastating: jobs exams stress pressures family reallifereallifereallife.

We're all basically exhausted and way way way overworked. Plus various other personal pressures that make it hard to find time for this wonderful but demanding hobby. ^_^  But we're determined to keep updating somehow.

Anyway, happy Easter to everyone! This week we have:

PuiPui Meets FuwaFuwa-kun by Mikoyan Nakajo. How PuiPui the black bunny who loved fighting was tamed by Fluffy-kun the fox and came to live with him in his house shaped like a teapot. For all who loved and feared these two from last Easter, well, here's a lovely long story about them.

Mini-rabbits, the Short of the Week. A one-pager by Fuji Shinichi that seemed to fit the theme. Sort of. Heh.

The manga chapter this time is Volume 4, Part 4: Shoulin = Randou?! Kuwabara has to fight the innocent-seeming Shoulin--but gets a nasty surprise when his opponent turns out to be a sadistic demon who far outclasses him. Poor Kuwa-chan has a bad time of it, but it offers Yuusuke a chance to burn with indignation for his hurt friend.

And that's it! Thank you for your patience; there's more in the works. ^_^

March 26, 2000

Big announcement! We're moving--or to be more accurate, we've moved. The site will be mirrored at the old address for another week or two, but you'd better change your bookmarks! Here's the new address, and we're there already:

http://www.yyhdjs.com/general/index.html

See you there!

Meanwhile, we've decided that it's more exciting for nobody to know exactly when our updates will be. More exciting for you, because it makes an unexpected pleasure, and certainly <gasp, sweat> more exciting for us.

Seriously, we're all horribly busy and probably will be for a while. But we're determined to keep updating, and this week's is actually a pretty substantial one.

New to both sides is another page of pics in Po's Corner. She'll be putting up additions here regularly from now on.

Also new to both sides is a story we did by popular request. The response to our text translation of Fuji Shinichi's lovely cat story (found in the Fuji Shinichi Pro Manga section) encouraged us to do a teaser for this volume. So here, in manga scans, is 'Let's Stay Together, ne?' a very sad, very sweet tale about how darling Suke met his owner Sei-chan for the first time.

New to the member's side, as promised, is the end of Hiyaku Act 1: Separation. Youko Kurama has captured Hiei and now he does what his human counterpart fought so hard not to do...makes Hiei his completely. Warning: this section involves forcible rape.

The Short of the Week is a cute little tidbit from Seono Shou of Tide/ Real called 'Hobby.' Come and see what the Ike Ike Youko folks do in their spare time.

The manga selection for this week is two chapters, summarized in text, pics, and manga scans: Volume 4: Parts 2 and 3. Read the explanation there for why we're doing it this way.

That's it! Sorry for being late, but this ought to keep everyone busy for a bit. ^_^

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March 10, 2000
Well, we didn't have a Valentine's Day story on February 14, but we're making up for it by having both a Valentine's Day story and a White Day story for March 14. White Day, of course, is an entirely Japanese invention, the day that men (supposedly) return the chocolate given to them by women on Valentine's Day. The 'white' stands for 'white chocolate,' which is one of the things they're supposed to give--check the story for details on the other options and their significance.

Oh, yes--it's a Slam Dunk story. >.<  We hope nobody minds, but it was the only White Day story we've seen, and it's by Fujiyama Hyouta, which means it's cute and funny. ^_^ Also it goes with the Short of the Week. So you're getting a lot of Slam Dunk this time and we've given it its own section, the Slam Dunk Djs in English Section. :-P

Read them in this order:

What Happened on February 14 and What Happened on March 14, by Fujiyama Hyouta. (Shorts of the Week.) It's Valentine's Day and kawaii Rukawa timidly offers Sakuragi his love-love chocolate.

White Day, by Fujiyama Hyouta. Sakuragi suavely returns Rukawa's precious gift and they share a tender moment.

<Po: Are we talking about the same stories here?>

Special Update: Po's Corner
For your enjoyment we'd like to introduce a new gallery section: Po's Corner. This is a place for Po to put art that's YYH but not dj-related: pics from LD covers, cards, posters, CDs, memo pads...all that kind of stuff. This week there are some beautiful new cards from the Yu*Yu*Hakusho Perfect Collection cardset, including an extremely yummy gypsy Hiei.

The manga chapter this week is Volume 4, Part 1: Death Match in Darkness!! It offers the first glimpse of rei ken as Kuwabara battles an overwhelmingly strong foe, and also introduces a new idea in YYH: tournament fighting. Ooh, what a concept.

As for Hiyaku, please be patient! We'll bring the end of the first volume next time--promise. Opening new sections and starting new volumes of the manga takes extra time, so we had to skip it this week.

<Po: That's all very well, but we're going to have to change the name of the site, you know.

Panthea: Dare I ask?

Po: Well, this week we have two dj stories, but they're not YYH. And a new gallery and a manga chapter that are YYH, but they're not djs.

Panthea: I think people will make allowances.>

Please make allowances. ^_^

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If you're looking for the old updates, they're now here!

And now for: Thanks!   Many, many thanks to the kind people who have helped us with this project: A-ko for emergency research, Tim-kun for web tips, and Po's Sis and Karen ("Runs with Bunnies") G. for scanning, checking and emotional support.

Eternal thanks to our wonderful translators, without whom there would be no project. Each of them provided so much more than the mechanical translation of words, drawing on her own cultural insight, humor, and sense of poetry to bring home the true meaning of the stories.

Very special thanks to Susan, Mimi, and Kevin for providing the administration and security for this site, not to mention the kickoff and original materials for it. Also to Mary Kennard, the source of much of this wonderful stuff. Absolutely endless thanks to the multitalented M.J. Johnson,* who went far beyond the call of duty with her linguistic, philosophical and cultural tips. Her literary gifts were invaluable to us.

Finally, the most heartfelt of thanks to the inspired people who created these stories, the doujinshika. Some of the stories made us laugh out loud, others made us blink away tears. All of them brought us pleasure. We hope to be forgiven if anything we've done in translating and rendering them here causes offense. We did all of this out of love, have not made and never will make any kind of profit from it, and did our best to treat their wonderful works with the awe and respect they deserve. If we did anything stupid or clumsy in the process we apologize deeply.

* AKA Jeanne, the author of those wonderful Papuwa and Eroica stories, and of many of the interesting footnotes to be found in these pages.

A bunch of little notes to try to explain the things we know someone is going to ask:

Why are some of the sound effects translated in footnotes? And others aren't? And some stories have lots of footnotes, and others don't?
Well, different people edited different stories, and what one person thought was obvious, another thought needed explaining. For the most part, we tried to include translations of sound FX that aren't just onomatopoeia: for instance, kaaa = blush, nuru = greasing, kara = empty, etc. If you have suggestions or corrections, we'd love to hear them.

 Again, we've recently added a list of Common Sound FX Translated, which might help with the sounds we haven't explained in the stories. There are not only sounds but Japanese and Yu*Yu*Hakusho words defined here. Many thanks to Jeanne, Masae, K-san, and W-san for all their help in creating it.

What about those little scribbly comments in the stories? Did you write any of them, or are they all the djka's?
Anything within the page proper of a story is a comment by the djka. At times, we've tried to make this clear by putting the djka's initials afterward, or putting the note in parentheses, but whether you see those things or not, they're still the author's comments.

(It's called Twenty.) Or else they're typed, in Times Roman, as footnotes below the page itself. Almost always they're simply translations of sound FX or short explanations of something in the story. If anybody is saying, 'Don't get childishly jealous, Kurama' or 'This picture didn't turn out right,' it's not us, it's the djka. ^_^     By smacking each other frequently, we managed not to editorialize. Much.

How come you translated those little scribbles by the djka at all?
Whimsy. Plus we wanted to know what they said. If they were really, really boring, like long rants about what kind of toner was used, we left them out of the version posted here.

Are you going to do any Hiei X Kurama stories?
We've only just laid hands on some djs with Hiei X Kurama stories, and we're eager to get them translated. Meanwhile, there's 'Midnight Illusion' in the shorts section, and 'Silent Call' in the main djs section. ^_^;;

Where can I get printed copies of the stories?
Um, right at the moment, you can't. For now, they're online only. And yes, we realize that the files here don't print well. That's because they're sized for viewing on a computer screen, not for printing.

Did you know you made a mistake?
We're sure we've made lots of mistakes, of all kinds. If you find one, please let us know--we appreciate any help, suggestions, corrections or general kibbitzing! And if you like something, let us know that, too. ^_^

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Note on the images to be found here: please don't take them and post them publicly without permission. Not that you ever would, but we have to say this just in case.

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That's it. Enjoy!

Panthea, Po, and Ikuko

Panthea, Editor in Chief             Po, Artist in Chief            Ikuko, Technician in Chief

...and the word is dithering. As you may know, dithering is the thing that can make graphics look all grainy, and it happens because Internet browsers support only 256 colors (and not even all the same 256) and/or because many graphics cards can't do 16- or 24-bit color. The computer tries to put pixels of different colors adjacent to each other to 'simulate' colors it doesn't support...and the result can look terrible. Arina Toshimi's gorgeous satiny fleshtones come out looking as if Kurama's got the measles. We've tried hard to minimize dither, but <weep, gnash teeth> we can't get rid of it entirely unless we make all the pics into giant non-dithering gifs that would take years to download. Between the three of us we have five computers utilizing three different browsers, and we have discovered that some pictures look awful on at least one of them, no matter what we do.