I'm new here, obviously. And really, I SHOULD be doing my homework/writing a paper right about now, but I got excited at seeing someone re-releasing this amazing, amazing anime.
And then I saw on your site that you guys couldn't find any Japanese versions of the manga.
Tsk-tsk. Way ahead of you guys.
I have at my disposal (and for my personal perusal) the entirety of the Japanese manga... in the original Japanese! Chuuka Ichiban vol.01-05, then Shin Chuuka Ichiban vol.01-12, for a total of 17 volumes of Cooking Master goodness.
Now, I'm not gloating here. Well, maybe I am a little. But I did want to point out that it isn't impossible to get Japanese, fairly HQ raws of the manga... and people
have been releasing chapters.
I got interested in translating the manga when I found out that Solaris-SVU had
stopped releasing chapters, so I did a little hunting a couple years back and came across the raws all on my own. Coincidentally, I entered my third year of studying Japanese not too long afterwards, and me and my classmates decided we would all do our best to translate manga as a means of studying the language. We formed the umbrella group "Nihongo Renshuu Dan" ("Japanese Practice Brigade"... Suzumiya Haruhi had been released recently...), and I buckled down and did my best to convert middle-school level Japanese into easy-to-read English. So, I started translating chapters, but only got chapters
08 and
09 out. I have chapter 10 finished, but I lost access to the FTP, so no more releases for the moment.
Now I have moved onto translating
other manga, but seeing this has revitalized my passion for CMB.
I just want to say this... I fully support you guys in your effort to improve the quality of CMB releases, and will be working hard alongside you!
...Also, anyone willing to host my chapters would be super-appreciated.
