Finding うぶんちゅ！ chapter 15

source

In 2016 I stumbled upon うぶんちゅ！, a Creative Commons licensed manga about Ubuntu, published between 2008 and 2013. Over the years I’ve been translating chapters 9 and onwards at a snail’s pace of one chapter per year. This year, I thought I’d complete the series with chapter 14.

For translating chapter 14 I wanted to find out the intended reading of 壱宮—the school in which the story takes place. Spelled out in full, 県立壱宮高校, the school was only mentioned on the author’s website until late 2015, but with no indication of its reading.

Searching around I found that the French Wikipedia had an article on the manga. While it doesn’t contain a hint to the school’s name, I noticed it lists a fifteenth chapter titled Ubuntu Touchは見た!?. I was only aware of 14! Searching the web for the chapter’s title I found … nothing. The only Google hit is the French Wikipedia article itself, nothing on archive.org, and the edit adding the info to Wikipedia is by a user with no contact information. Why Titan2016, why?!

All the chapters I knew of at that point are freely available online. Chapters 1–11 on the author’s page—even including PSD source files—, and chapters 12, 13, and 14 on the page of Ubuntu Magazine Japan—albeit only though archive.org because the site closed in 2017.

I carefully searched the Ubuntu Magazine Japan page for any traces of the ominous chapter 15. For all issues, when released online, there’d be a blog post with a table of contents (example). Volume 10 including うぶんちゅ！ chapter 14 being the last of them at the very top of the page didn’t give me much hope. Besides issues 1–10, the page mentions a “2013 Summer issue”, but on the cover there’s no mention of うぶんちゅ！, and the description only names some of the contents plus a vague いつもの連載も掲載しています.

Following the “2013 Summer issue” lead though I found this blog post stating about the issue “[Story about Ubuntu Touch]. 「うぶんちゅ！」でも取り上げられてますしね.” A few clicks later I found the issue on BOOK☆WALKER which has a preview of not only the cover but also the first few pages and lo and behold … THERE IT IS! Add to cart, proceed to check out, LET’S GO!

So yeah, Titan2016 turned out to be a trustworthy source. ^_^ Ubunchu chapter 15, うぶんちゅ！ 第15回 Ubuntu Touchは見た!? exists and can be bought here. Which also means I’ll put out one more translation next year. Keep a lookout for it here.

For a nice overview, here are the sources for chapters 1–15.

2021-10-24