January 17, 2012

Negima manga -- unpacking

Well, you see, there was this torrent which was a complete set of the Negima manga up through chapter 335. And I kind of downloaded it.

I spent about 2 hours unpacking it. Sheesh. Between inconsistent file naming, and weird directory organization, and the fact that about half of it was in RAR files (instead of ZIP), it was a real pain. But I finally got it all organized, into a series of directories, so that alphabetic order is also chronological order. And now I'm reading it.

I'm up to chapter 7, and I remember something I heard: When Akamatsu finished off Love Hina and wanted to do something new, the magazine told him he had to do another harem comedy. He didn't want to do a harem comedy, but they insisted.

So early on, Negima had all the trappings of a harem story. But he eventually morphed it into an action-adventure story, which turned out to be even more popular.

However, that hasn't happened yet as of chapter 7, and I can't say I really like this part. Where does it start getting serious? I'd like to do some skipping.

UPDATE: Looks like chapter 16 is where the Eva arc kicks in, and that's a pretty good choice.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste in General Anime at 07:48 PM | Comments (13) | Add Comment
Post contains 213 words, total size 1 kb.

1 "about half of it was in RAR files (instead of ZIP)"
But RAR files compress better than ZIP files.  (Apparently for the kind of people who use RARs, that's the only consideration.)

Posted by: RickC at January 18, 2012 07:28 AM (6gf75)

2 It depends on how you do the zip. They're both using the same kind of compression, and most zip programs allow you to choose a compression setting.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste at January 18, 2012 07:37 AM (+rSRq)

3 The only nice thing I can say about RAR as a format is that the unpackers are less likely to mangle kanji and kana in file names (ZIP tools are usually not character-encoding-aware). Since most of the RAR files I see have already-compressed data in them, there's no significant storage savings. I wouldn't be surprised if, in addition to the fun Steven had with filenames and directory structures, he also found an inconsistent mix of PNG and JPG.

-j

Posted by: J Greely at January 18, 2012 09:24 AM (2XtN5)

4

Yeah, that was the case, too. Lots of both, but no consistency. And you're right: PNG and JPG are already compressed.

None of the files had Japanese characters in their names, though. And I unpacked everything using 7-Zip.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste at January 18, 2012 09:39 AM (+rSRq)

5 The last time I did a mass download of a couple entire series, I wanted to strangle someone after hours of trying to deal with different folder and file naming conventions. For one series it was bad enough that I gave up on the available torrent and went to the the website one scanlation group and just downloaded all their chapters individually, but even then they weren't consistent over time, as apparently they didn't always get their raws from the same place and wouldn't rename whatever the raw group gave them.

I actually gave serious thought to writing an application to produce a defined folder and file naming scheme from a collection of archives, but decided that I didn't have the time. But the next time I need to do a 'home software project' to polish some skills, it's at the top of my list.

Posted by: David at January 18, 2012 11:22 AM (+yn5x)

6 Also on topic for this thread: Negima is the next series on my list to catch up on.  I've been reading it in actual paper form, but with the change in publisher that recently happened, it's now even more ridiculously behind compared to what's available online.  I figure I'm going to download the whole series for a re-read and continue to the present.  I'm not looking forward to the download and unpack part.

I recall enjoying the first part of the series, with some chapters being better than others.  I very much remember that when the action really started, the ability to go back to the block of chapters dedicated to an individual haremette to refresh myself on character design and such was very helpful, especially in the sections where there might be a dozen or so very similarly drawn characters running around in the chaos of a busy page.

Posted by: David at January 18, 2012 11:30 AM (+yn5x)

7 I still have nightmares of trying to organize Detective Conan manga, but nowadays has gotten much better (save for some bloody exceptions). Thankfully Traders for the most part let's me download neatly organized zip files.

Posted by: Jaked at January 18, 2012 02:46 PM (sQpfj)

8

I have a utility called "batchname" which you can drag-and-drop large numbers of files and it will perform certain operations on their filenames for you.

/images/05023.png

It's not super-sophisticated, but it's good enough. There's another one that's vastly more powerful, but I don't need its abilities, and it's a lot more confusing.

It got used heavily in this particular process.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste at January 18, 2012 03:53 PM (+rSRq)

9 Do you have a link where I might find that piece of software? I tried a Google search, but got buried under SEO crud.

Posted by: Boviate at January 19, 2012 03:43 PM (q39AX)

10 It's here.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste at January 19, 2012 05:46 PM (+rSRq)

11 Ooh, I can definitely use that program!  Thanks, Steven!

Posted by: Toren at January 19, 2012 07:00 PM (lsTaT)

12

There's a different program called Bulk Rename Utility which is a lot more powerful, but also more confusing. I have it, but it turns out that Batchname serves for most of my needs.

But I thought I'd mention it, just for completeness.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste at January 19, 2012 08:38 PM (+rSRq)

13 Thanks, Steven. I'll be sure to check them out too, hopefully they'll turn helpful in emergencies.

Posted by: Jaked at January 19, 2012 10:41 PM (jV/tp)

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