September 23rd, 2015 
AstroNerdBoy Today’s Missing “UQ Holder” Review, Courtesy of Crunchyroll!
I’d like to personally thank the management and owners of Crunchyroll for their awesome commitments to quality control and providing the product they’ve promised right on time. It is refreshing to see a company so dedicated to customer service and making sure that there are as few problems as possible. Further to that, on those next to never times there are a problems, Crunchyroll is Johnny on the spot, making sure to fix those problems in a flash. Crunchyroll is pure awesomeness!
Oh wait, all that is a lie
Yeah, so this week’s simulpub for titles, like Fairy Tail and UQ Holder, weren’t published when they are supposed to be (Wednesday, 09:00 Tokyo time). Fairy Tail came out 24 hours later, but as is pretty standard for Crunchyroll, when it comes to UQ Holder, we get a giant middle finger. As such, there’s no translated chapter for us.
I know I’ve ranted about Crunchyroll before, but this makes things even worse for me. I’m REALLY angry about it because I’m paying good money for manga to be published on time and they aren’t providing what I’m paying for.
In the meantime, here’s a tease from the raw chapter which has a lot of people talking. (Yep, more Negima! bait. 😉 )
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Well, the pactio card pretty much solidifies that Negi is still alive. And i really hope that is actually Chachamaru and not one of those robots based on her, she’s my fav character from Negima. Maybe we should learn french since Pika Edition seems to be more on point then CR.
I’m pretty sure it is Chachamaru. We’ve already seen Chachazero do a couple of cameos recently, so Chachamaru getting a cameo makes sense.
It’s times like this that I wish I was fluent in Japanese and could read the raws.
I tell you, though, like I said over on the CR forums, it’s a good thing their anime service is good (at least their apps; I don’t really use the website), because if all I did was read manga there I would have cancelled my subscription already.
Oh, duh, I should go read the raws. Now I feel like an idiot.
Yes. 😉
You and me both.
This is going to be my dead horse from now on, but the difference between uq holder and fairy tail is that one is scanulated by manga stream and one isn’t what so ever, and the results show the effect.
Well, this problem goes beyond those two titles. Those are the only two I read on Tuesdays though. (Or rather, attempt to read on Tuesays. 😉 )
*sigh*
I don’t know if you’ve seen any of the CR forum threads since the one you participated in… this is the second followup I posted to one of their “Brand Managers” cheerfully telling us a week prior that they’d keep things like the manga server going down for 2-3 days (accounts vary) from happening again: http://www.crunchyroll.com/forumtopic-918365/when-trying-to-view-manga-i-get-the-message-error-sorry-an-error-occurred?fpid=51530959
The next night it went down for “maintenance” again, this time for a day and a half. (>_<)
With the current issue I tried to keep from being so negative, and to make the criticism as oblique as possible – but I did reiterate that I'm worried (and I assume others are as well) that the way things have been going isn't a good sign: http://www.crunchyroll.com/forumtopic-920215/tuesday-chapters
Downtime, delays, dead silence, and broken promises? I’m very used to those. Heck, anyone who’s followed scanlations has experienced those for anything from days to months, or even years. (^_^);;; But being lied to about the “maintenance” is really galling after being lied to by the CEO close to two years ago about their “new investor” having actually bought out the company… and being mocked for worrying that their real priority would be using CR’s streaming tech to “expand into other genres”, not anime or manga. (Their original target was Hulu.) Boy, I sure am glad we were wrong about that.
I’ve been so massively busy on this road trip, I didn’t go to those threads until you pointed them out. I was actually going to look for them, then I nodded off and went to bed. So thanks for giving the links. Saved me having to hunt. 😀
Wait… So Chachamaru and Class Pres from Negima?! How did that happen… It’s like Luvia and Sakura teaming up. Gosh.
Speaking of which, I think I’ve forgotten- which timeline is this, the one where Asuna woke up late or the timeline where she came back minutes after “leaving”?
Sigh… Alas, all I can do is wait for the chapter to finally be released. Irritating.
Chachamaru and Ayaka being there together can easily be explained. At the end of Negima, both of them offered their help for the tower project.
Chachamaru became Negi’s secretary and Ayaka offered her family’s money and connections.
While working on the project with Negi they probably became close friends i guess.
Yep. And once Negi “died” (or went missing), Chachamaru became the elderly Ayaka’s caretaker to continue the work in their own way.
From Ayaka’s artifact it’s still active, so it’s safe to say he’s actually missing.
He’s “trapped” (or helping) the Lifemaker, as is Nagi — at least, that’s how I see it.
1- It came as a surprise to me as well, but I can see it happening… robot nursing the head of the Yukihiro group… they were quite involved in Negi’s project after all (and are probably two of the few left from 3-A… /:)
2- It’s the timeline in which Asuna sleeps.
3- Yes, I know what you mean… but I can tell this from the raws!
3.1- I am really interested in Ayaka’s granddaughter! She said something about a fiancee?! XDDDD
3.2- I am REALLY interested about Honoka-chan and Isana-chan! Just… HOW did they come to be?!
3.3- Oh, right, and the village normal girl as well lol
I dunno, she seems to be someone who might have changed over the last few months…. would be funny she if was connected to 3-A in some way.
We don’t know which timeline it is, even if it is any of the timelines created in Negima.
Yeah, whenever that will be. *_*
All things considered, this does make Akamatsu-Sensei look bad. He campaigns against piracy and I assume promoting legal digital avenues of consumption. Yet his series that is only available exclusively via legal means that people pay for, is not available to those paying customers.
I do hope he’s aware, if he complains then the American top brass would bend over backwards.
Something interesting to note, is attack on titan is similpuped 2-3 days before the illegal scanulation!
But in truth screw you crunchyroll, anime monopoly will never be healthy.
Yeah, this whole thing is very irritating.
Astro : Hahaha! The irony is that for once the French trad is available it. ^^
I would like to give you a short, but I’m afraid I do not master English well enough for that.
However, I shall confine myself to giving some information that can interresser you:
1. mini Konoka andmini- Setsuna are REALLY granddaughters of Konoka (and thus probably also Setsuna, unless the mini-setsu was adopted but it astonished me. Looks like they are twins, despite their physical differences.) and they ship is call the “white crow”, so this is probably the old ship of Setsuna!
Still, the fact that Konoka and Setsuna have had children, that brings back the possibility that Kuromaru and Setsu are actually related, not in the direct sense but in the sense that Setsu would belong to the same clan as him, the yata-garasu. And therefore, Setsu would choose to be a man in his 16 years.
I know that many said that Setsuna had a Tengu, s but I remember correctly, was never specified. It just says that she comes from the “tribe of crows”, but yatagarasu also, are crows youkai.
So Setsu could very well be of the same clan as kuromaru (which suddenly, justify the resemblance between them).
After I do not read kanji, perhaps someone like Hata-san or reader which understand Japanese, may refuted or confirmed my theory on the fact that it was never stated explicitly that Setsuna was a Tengu?
Also Ayaka and her grand-daughter, serch Tota.
VA released !!!
I am speculating that Isana and Honoka are actually clones of Setsuna and Konoka and were created as part of the ultimate experiment that created the homunculus Touta. I will bet that Kuroumaru is not related to them.
Setsuna was identified as an uzouku (烏族). 烏 by itself does read as “karasu”, which is the same thing from Kuroumaru, but in Negima, she was not identified as a tengu.
To be honest, I thought comparing the way CR has been handling things to a Vocaloid energetically flipping someone off was really funny – but might have been a bit strong.
Then I saw the UQ Holder page this morning. Chapter 94 is now followed by a countdown placemarker for Chapter 96, with nothing in between.
Nice.
I probably wouldn’t have responded quite so icily to getting a flipoff of my own were it not for this. Flip me off, I’m just darkly amused. Flip everyone off, not so much.
Yay, more dark amusement. (If my ranting gets tiresome, please do let me know.)
“All of the issues brought up in these posts are known and documented.”
Glad to know you were already aware there have been major issues for months. It would be better to know you’ll start doing something about them.
“I’m sorry to hear the manga service has been less than your expectations lately.”
I guess it is pretty unreasonable to expect any better than multiple unaddressed failures and stonewalling.
“Isn’t it technically maintenance though? This seems like an odd issue to have…”
Maintenance is taking your car in to get the oil changed. Maintenance is not getting it towed after your engine seizes up.
“We are very actively working on new systems for better communication…”
That seems to be a pretty common theme in politics, law, and corporate policy lately. “We could have easily fixed this problem long ago if we were using the system we had, but that’s hard. Let’s create a new system and declare the problem fixed.”
You are fine. 🙂
Hopefully, they can rectify this issue…hopefully.
BTW, almost all professional websites have “maintenance” pages that go up automatically when there’s a problem with the site. After all, for the unwashed, seeing “maintenance” on a website is better than seeing the dreaded 404 error. 😉
Thank you for the information, I wasn’t aware it was widespread. If this succeeds in the long term, it definitely wouldn’t be the first time a concept has been redefined. Living languages are in a constant state of flux, and can be manipulated.
But at least for now, I believe the majority still understand the definition of “maintenance” to be “keeping something in good condition so that it shouldn’t fail”, not “fixing something after a failure”. Until people accept this as the new definition, calling unplanned downtime “maintenance” conveys false information – and I would wager that 9 times out of 10 it does so by design. “Conveying false information by design” is an almost perfect fit to what I believe “dishonest” means.
Yep. It has been that way for years. I know because generally, Sunday is the maintenance day (from early morning to late night). So we would put up maintenance pages for that (obviously), but if websites crashed, the front end would automatically throw up maintenance pages because stuff on the back end was down. (More inside baseball. 😉 )
As a consumer, if you go to a site and get a maintenance page, you think, “Oh. They are just doing some work” and technically that is true. However, if you see a 404 page or cannot connect to a website at all, consumers may start to see the company as unreliable and take their business elsewhere. But if you put up maintenance pages, it has a less negative psychological impact. 😉 (More inside baseball for ya. 😛 )
Yeah, I noticed that at the time too. Really irritated me.
Well, the new chapter is finally up. Only took ’em three days.
That was better than I thought it would be.
Seems that the translated version is on sites like mangamint and mangahere. crunchyroll has it now. But meh.
Yeah, everyone grabs it from CR.
Crunchyroll has the chapter up- and it’s got a fair share of stuff to mull over!
Yes indeedy. ^_^
I didn’t intend to rant on your page again about the appalling attitudes you can see from the paid CR staff if you’re quixotic enough to hang out in the CR Help forums, but I think you deserve to know this since you’re a fellow subscriber.
For a while now, there have been a disturbingly-large number of reports that have the same root cause*: Compromised accounts. CR’s official stance, possibly true and possibly not, is that all of them happened because people chose easy-to-crack passwords and/or some other website must have been hacked and people used the same password for both websites, because CR accounts are a “hot commodity”**.
Issue 1: One of the forum denizens, respected enough to have been given his own title by the CR staff, has suggested more than once that CR should (as a first step) stop sending email notifications only to the new account when someone changes the email, and if at all possible include a link in a notification to the old email that allows the change to be reverted. They’re ignoring even him.
Issue 2, which I only figured out when I got disturbed enough by this to try to take my card information out until the next time to renew: They don’t allow you to delete card information unless you provide a new valid card. And they allow someone who’s taken over the account to charge anything they like to it, and send it wherever, with (as far as I can tell) no verification at all. The only saving grace is that they don’t display the whole number so that the intruder can use it elsewhere. (All the rest of your identifying information, but not the number.)
I had planned to continue my account indefinitely despite the atrocious service and apparent lack of intent to change, because they did pay for the rights for many anime/manga I like even if they don’t offer them in a usable form. This might be the final straw. 🙁
* – Many of them start off with wording that shows they don’t understand what’s happening, like “I tried to log on a week ago and my password was changed and it said my email doesn’t exist so I can’t reset my password, and customer support won’t respond, can someone help?”.
** – Yes, seriously.
Sometimes, one just needs to vent, so have at it. 😀
I was not aware of compromised accounts and the like. I do know that every time I raise a ticket regarding UQ Holder being published late, the response e-mail is always asking for things like my credit card number and such. The first time, I told them that this wasn’t relevant since I wasn’t having a billing problem. After that, I just ignore their automated response.
As to them saving the CC information, I can certainly understand your concerns there. I do have safeguards in place on my credit cards, but if someone takes over an account, that is a problem.
I guess what really gets me about it isn’t worry about my own finances – even several hundred dollars in fraudulent charges wouldn’t do any damage to me personally, given that I can get it back eventually. I’ve learned, as I would guess you have, that always keeping a moderate reserve in checking is one of the best possible ways to reduce stress (and save a ton of money in fees) in this economy. That is, if you make enough that you can do so.
What really gets me about it is watching user after user who lives from paycheck to paycheck (or the equivalent) beg for help because they haven’t heard back from customer support in days or weeks – and they’ve been helpless to stop the continuing charges from running up overdraft fees, possibly keeping them from buying necessities and paying bills, and definitely not doing their credit any favors. The fact that CR enables this by helping the intruder lock them out (by not sending the old email a reset link or even a notification when the intruder changes their email to keep them from resetting the password), and keeps their card information on hand and authorized to buy anything in the store (not just pay for the subscription), knowing that a disturbing number of accounts are being compromised in exactly this fashion, is simply inexcusable. At least IMO.
Yeah, I hear ya. 🙁