Kenrantaru Grande Scène

The first attempt (I believe) at filling the gap Batoto will leave behind it was launched yesterday, at mangadex.com. The platform is still in its infancy both feature-wise and content-wise, but hopefully it can develop well and earn the support of the community.

There won't be any new chapter from my part for a while, still, but I've created pages (and uploaded available chapters) for La Magnifique Grande Scène and my "group," Kenrantaru Scans, if you want to follow the series/me there.

Either way, if mangadex turns out not to be fruitful, I'll still post the series directly through reddit and imgur as per my previous comment.

Cheers.

Thank you so much for scanlating this! It's so refreshing to see a ballet manga that has actual ballet in it. I get so tired of the cliches where the girl picks up ballet and becomes a stunning master in a few days and everyone is so stunned by her. Like, you could literally switch any other performing art or sport with it and there would be no difference. Ballet has stereotypes of being all frills and no work. I'm glad I came across this, because it's a joy to read something that has actual roots in ballet.

That said, what's going to happen when batoto closes?

Glad you're enjoying it.

As for the issue with Batoto, hopefully another platform similar to it will emerge before the next volume is released (which should be around April or May), but otherwise I will be posting them on imgur and reddit under this username (if at all, that is). I don't have anything else planned for now, unfortunately.

Feel free to reach out to me on reddit, MyAnimeList or at [email protected], though.

Thank you so much for scanlating this! It's so refreshing to see a ballet manga that has actual ballet in it. I get so tired of the cliches where the girl picks up ballet and becomes a stunning master in a few days and everyone is so stunned by her. Like, you could literally switch any other performing art or sport with it and there would be no difference. Ballet has stereotypes of being all frills and no work. I'm glad I came across this, because it's a joy to read something that has actual roots in ballet.

That said, what's going to happen when batoto closes?

I'm glad you're enjoying the series, but while I'm aware the series is a few chapters ahead of what I've scanlated, my preferred way of consuming ongoing series is through volumes, so I hope you'll be able to indulge with it. :/

Thank you very much for scanlating! 

Ello... There's a site that has chapter 47-52.... I'm still on the search for the other volumes but... I seriusly can't find them

I'm glad you're enjoying the series, but while I'm aware the series is a few chapters ahead of what I've scanlated, my preferred way of consuming ongoing series is through volumes, so I hope you'll be able to indulge with it. :/

Thank you again for your disgustingly fast releases.

 

I want volume 10 already but it doesn't exist (not even up for preorder).

 

Unrelated to thanks, honestly I wasn't completely sure what threw Shouko off in this latest chapter. Did she feel she hadn't been taking things as seriously as Kanade apparently has been? That's happened before, I think.

Ello... There's a site that has chapter 47-52.... I'm still on the search for the other volumes but... I seriusly can't find them

Why is this manga so good???? It's making me inspired to... do something but idk what exactly

I thought this ballet manga was on the lighter side, compared to Subaru or Moon. And then this happened...

Spoiler

Don't do it, Shouko! There's plenty worth living for!

Thank you again for your disgustingly fast releases.

 

I want volume 10 already but it doesn't exist (not even up for preorder).

 

Unrelated to thanks, honestly I wasn't completely sure what threw Shouko off in this latest chapter. Did she feel she hadn't been taking things as seriously as Kanade apparently has been? That's happened before, I think.

My interpretation is that Shouko hasn't figured out, or even given any thought, to what she'd like to do beyond becoming a professional dancer. As if becoming one was her end goal.

During her dinner after the Swan Lake performance, Shouko says that she'd "always been surprised that Kanade could say those things so casually," in reference to performing professionally, and at the end of the chapter she realizes that Kanade hasn't changed at all. Becoming a professional dancer is a given for Kanade, and she's instead started thinking about what she'd like to do as a professional ballet dancer and what would be the best way to get there.

She'd also asked Sakura the same question, and despite her being closer to that goal, questioning her purpose at one point, and asking herself how Kanade would act in situations she realizes she should change, it doesn't look like she's given it too much thought, either, as far as we can tell. Could just be the tsun, though, lol.

Also no problem.

...and that's the end of the volume already. That'll be it for this time, hope you enjoyed it. Sorry for the tease at the end.

Thank you again for your disgustingly fast releases.

I want volume 10 already but it doesn't exist (not even up for preorder).

Unrelated to thanks, honestly I wasn't completely sure what threw Shouko off in this latest chapter. Did she feel she hadn't been taking things as seriously as Kanade apparently has been? That's happened before, I think.

...and that's the end of the volume already. That'll be it for this time, hope you enjoyed it. Sorry for the tease at the end.

Obviously I meant they're having them dance in the same way soccer coaches are having their kids play soccer. But ballet classes are a lot more personal. Individual classes are shorter and more specific, and are just that, a teacher guiding their students and helping them out individually become better. etc.

I dont know. I simply cant buy a 13 year old girl immersed in that environment for 5 days/week in 2017 is not curious and doesnt care to know more than she actually needs to of her burning passion. It's too passive. I mean no wikipedia? No prominent etoiles of the present? not even her own studio's website, or pamphlet? And when she hears about these things, she is shocked of all things? I cant buy it. 

No wait. "Just having them dance" doesnt make any sense wwhatsoever. Dancing is not gymnastics or calisthenics. Dancing is an athletic activity with a purpose, as in any sport. And she knows it is, because she knows what happens in a dance performance, she knows the meaning of the movements, she knows that there is a story going on. She didnt fall in love with people "just dancing". She fell in love with a performance. 

 

Visualize her as if she was a boy that like to play soccer, a 13 year old boy. No matter how that boy likes to kick the ball in different ways, and stops the ball on the fly, and trains to kick corner kicks and what have you, at the end of the day he will be told about soccer rules such as offsides and hand touch, tactics (as rudimentary as they may be), important teams and players: and probably if he REALLY loves soccer he would already know him himself, because that's what people that love an activity do. Yes, we might go for a stretch of imagination that this peculiar one-in-a-million snowflake of a kid never made the connection between the act of kicking a ball and playing in an actual soccer match, or discovering what a championship is, and some if not every team name such as Italy Germany Brasil France Spain Barcelona Real Madrid Juventus Bayer Monaco Chelsea River Plate (and maybe maybe even some player's name like Pelè Maradona Messi Ronaldo etc) are because all he really cared was the simple act of mastering the complex act of kicking the ball and nothing else, but let me be a bit taken back and look at this very specific vision tunneled kid as if might need some special care. 10 yo kids around my place know 70% of all the major league players of every team, and play soccer, and when the world cup comes around they suddendly become experts just like the adults about players from nations they cant place on a map. 

 

I am quite sure the example keeps up even worse with young musicians. 

 

Now, dancing is a very strange activity to do. It's not Pilates. You train for a purpose. You dont like dancing because you like training. You like dancing because you like performing. You train in order to be a better performer. All you do is finalized to a certain performance. A 13 yo kid that does nothing all week but "thinking about dance" cannot not know of things like almost all things in balet comes from France. Not Zimbabwe, not Honduras, not saint Kitts and Nevis: France, one of the few places even a Japanese kid knows something about. 

 

I mean, i know it's just a manga, and i know this is borderline nitpicking, but it nags me. A 13 yo with a totalizing passsion should be a total nerd about it. And the error is the mangaka's, because she resorted to having her discover all these things as if all she did was pirouetting for the past 6 years.

Obviously I meant they're having them dance in the same way soccer coaches are having their kids play soccer. But ballet classes are a lot more personal. Individual classes are shorter and more specific, and are just that, a teacher guiding their students and helping them out individually become better. There's little room for socializing.

Here's a full class of beginners for example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Eq-REqEdro.

Someone really into ballet would take several lessons in that format a day, and then still practice on their own. So instead of being with the same group of people for a couple hours of practice at a time like you would with soccer, you're switching classes, teacher and peers with it, and still doing pretty much absolutely nothing but following instructions.

Not to mention the Japanese put a lot more pressure on performance and education than the average soccer nerd around me ever had.

And then you have the fact that soccer, basketball and all those sports have huge social circles. It's not hard to find someone else you can talk about soccer in any environment. I'll hear random people talk about the last game and whatever statistic they're fed on TV over a break all the time.

But ballet? Ballet doesn't hinge on megastars. People get into ballet after watching local performances, and there's often very little information you can find about that. And there's still no readily available resource aggregator at the pro level. Literally nobody at her school practices ballet other than herself, and she doesn't even meet with Shouko beyond the studio (because they're always there anyway (and also always active)). She has nobody else but herself, and occasionally her neighbour, parents and teachers—who have other obligations—to feed her extra knowledge. But the free time she actually gets home she mostly uses to watch performances she's interested in and may have heard about, and practices further, because she's excited to try something new tomorrow, because she really fucking loves to dance.

Also I'm pretty sure you're underestimating just how much musicians may be practicing single, individual pieces for, which would eat into one's time to acquire knowledge of history and whatever just as much as practicing ballet five hours a day would. Time spent looking for information that won't make you better at performing X is time lost practicing X.

I don't know man, I may be exaggerating, but I can definitely see it happening more frequently than you'd think.

What makes you believe her peers already know about history and traditions? There's no cohort or curriculum in a ballet studio. Everyone joins different classes at different intervals and frequency based on their level and what they want to do. There are plenty of kids of varying age at her level or higher who take fewer classes or are less interested in pursuing a career as a dancer (remember how only six of them participated at the YAGP?).

 

Just this chapter we've realized that Shouko had been taking pas de deux classes for three months. Do you really think that, perhaps, Kanade missed out on an history lesson or something?

 

The teachers are only there to make them dance. Of course she mostly associates herself with those who are interested in pursuing ballet as a career, who may or not be more knowledgeable than her, but what you view as Kanade being shocked by revelations I see as her being fascinated by new information, because she loves everything ballet that much.

No wait. "Just having them dance" doesnt make any sense wwhatsoever. Dancing is not gymnastics or calisthenics. Dancing is an athletic activity with a purpose, as in any sport. And she knows it is, because she knows what happens in a dance performance, she knows the meaning of the movements, she knows that there is a story going on. She didnt fall in love with people "just dancing" (as in pirouetting about). She fell in love with a performance. 

Visualize her as if she was a boy that says he likes to play soccer, a 13 year old boy. No matter how that boy likes to kick the ball in different ways, and stops the ball on the fly, and trains to kick corner kicks and trains 5 days a week with his team and by himself and what have you, much much earlier than when he's 13 he will has been told about soccer rules such as offsides and hand touch, tactics (as rudimentary as they may be), important teams and players: and probably if he REALLY loves soccer he would already know him himself, because that's what people that love an activity do.

Yes, we might go for a stretch of imagination that this peculiar one-in-a-million snowflake of a kid never made the connection between the act of kicking a ball and playing in an actual soccer match, or discovering what a championship is, and some if not every team name such as Italy Germany Brasil France Spain Barcelona Real Madrid Juventus Bayer Monaco Chelsea River Plate (and maybe maybe even some player's name like Pelè Maradona Messi Ronaldo etc) are because all he really cared was the simple act of mastering the complex act of kicking the ball and nothing else, but let me be a bit taken back and look at this very specific vision tunneled kid as if might need some special care. 10 yo kids around my place know 70% of all the major league players of every team, and play soccer, and when the world cup comes around they suddendly become experts just like the adults about players from nations they cant place on a map. 

I am quite sure the example keeps up even worse with young musicians. 

Now, dancing is a very strange activity to do. It's not Pilates. You train for a purpose. You dont like dancing because you like training. You like dancing because you like performing. You train in order to be a better performer. All you do is finalized to a certain performance. A 13 yo kid that does nothing all week but "thinking about dance" cannot not know of things like almost all things in balet comes from France. Not Zimbabwe, not Honduras, not saint Kitts and Nevis: France, one of the few places even a Japanese kid knows something about. 

I mean, i know it's just a manga, and i know this is borderline nitpicking, but it nags me. A 13 yo with a totalizing passsion should be a total nerd about it. And the error is the mangaka's, because she resorted to having her discover all these things as if all she did was pirouetting for the past 6 years.

Thats why i said it was nice for you to have found a proper term as "tunnel vision", because, well, it is. I would like to think that a profesisonal teacher would have hinted at somethingas important as history and tradition of dancing in the due course of the years, since it's what constitutes 80% of the job, and the proof is that everyone of her chohort but her already know about most of them. I just start to find annoying her being shocked by "revelations" that shouldnt really be shocking in the first place. I have nothing against her, poor child, and she doesnt even have a comedic persona like Asta or Naruto, so he continuously being shocked as a storytelling mechanism just makes her look poorly.

What makes you believe her peers already know about history and traditions? There's no cohort or curriculum in a ballet studio. Everyone joins different classes at different intervals and frequency based on their level and what they want to do. There are plenty of kids of varying age at her level or higher who take fewer classes or are less interested in pursuing a career as a dancer (remember how only six of them participated at the YAGP?).

Just this chapter we've realized that Shouko had been taking pas de deux classes for three months. Do you really think that, perhaps, Kanade missed out on an history lesson or something?

The teachers are only there to make them dance. Of course she mostly associates herself with those who are interested in pursuing ballet as a career, who are likely more guided and may or may not be more knowledgeable than her, but what you view as Kanade being shocked by revelations I see as her being fascinated by new information, because she loves everything ballet that much.

I think it's simpler than that, and something that's been observed by other characters before. She's not stupid, she just loves dancing. It's a double edged sword because with dancing itself she's way into it and mostly excels and enchants, but she neglects everything else (acting, production history, those around her, her studies). That's why...honestly I don't think he's been named(?) but the guy teaching her right now has said that she'd be difficult for people to work with because she's a little too wild. It's ALSO why Garrel wants to recruit her to his school, where her range of dancing can increase.

 

When she's focused she's almost a genius, but she needs focus, hence she's a pain to deal with. If you'll recall she started dancing for fun and passion and didn't even realize that you could dance professionally. I wouldn't call her dumb, just generally ignorant of anything that doesn't directly concern her because she's that into dancing ballet.

Thats why i said it was nice of you to have found a proper term as "tunnel vision", because, well, it is. I would like to think that a profesisonal teacher would have hinted at somethingas important as history and tradition of dancing in the due course of the years, since it's what constitutes 80% of the job, and the proof is that everyone of her chohort but her already know about most of them. I just start to find annoying her being shocked by "revelations" that shouldnt really be shocking in the first place. I have nothing against her, poor child, and she doesnt even have a comedic persona like Asta or Naruto, so he continuously being shocked as a storytelling mechanism just makes her look poorly.

It's so nice of you finding a proper elegant term to describe Kanade, cos i was stuck with "duller than a sack of hammers". 

 

Now she's amazed by the fact that her balet teacher had actually danced, and that balet terms are in french. No shit sherlock. Nice of you noticing after you decided to make a living out of it. 

 

The way the author has chosen to explain balet concepts to laymen is harming the series' MC reputation. She's turning into the Naruto of classic dancing.

I think it's simpler than that, and something that's been observed by other characters before. She's not stupid, she just loves dancing. It's a double edged sword because with dancing itself she's way into it and mostly excels and enchants, but she neglects everything else (acting, production history, those around her, her studies). That's why...honestly I don't think he's been named(?) but the guy teaching her right now has said that she'd be difficult for people to work with because she's a little too wild. It's ALSO why Garrel wants to recruit her to his school, where her range of dancing can increase.

When she's focused she's almost a genius, but she needs focus, hence she's a pain to deal with. If you'll recall she started dancing for fun and passion and didn't even realize that you could dance professionally. I wouldn't call her dumb, just generally ignorant of anything that doesn't directly concern her because she's that into dancing ballet.

Ah. The faceplant. I hope that Cuvie delves more into pas de duex.

Sakura's plights and struggles continue to thoroughly enthrall me.

 

Kanade has a bad habit of tunnel vision, so I'm immensely glad that Garrel gave her the long, detailed sell on not placing all her bets on one school

It's so nice of you finding a proper elegant term to describe Kanade, cos i was stuck with "duller than a sack of hammers". 

Now she's amazed by the fact that her balet teacher had actually danced, and that balet terms are in french. No shit sherlock. Nice of you noticing after you decided to make a living out of it. 

The way the author has chosen to explain balet concepts to laymen is harming the series' MC reputation. She's turning into the Naruto of classic dancing.

The one thing that sticks out to me about this chapter, oddly enough, is the realization that Takimoto-sensei is going to continue to age as the series goes on, and it makes me strangely sad. I doubt she'll die before the end of the series at least, so that's nice.

The text seems to suggest it was a recording of one her best performances, which they disguised as one of their own so she wouldn't throw it away.
 

Yeah, that's what it is. To be honest, Takimoto-sensei says more explicitly that Eugène and Abigail "must have switched tapes" in the panel with the lone cassette tape on page 33, but it sounded lame to be that explicit given she'd already made it pretty obvious that they were the tapes she thought she'd gotten rid of on the previous page, so I twisted that line a bit. It just means she'd never gotten around to watching them.

Seeing Abby and Eugene dancing together brought all that back to Ludmilla.

The text seems to suggest it was a recording of one her best performances, which they disguised as one of their own so she wouldn't throw it away.
 

Spoiler

You know you've seen a trope too many times when the first thought upon seeing such an image is "she's an assassin!"... in a ballet manga.

Especially if she knew a fellow student named Natalia Romanova.

Let me offer my own speculation:

Abigail and Ludmilla were contemporaries, rivals and competitors, not only for the roles and positions, but for Eugene. When Ludmilla had her career-ending injury, Abby got all the roles, positions, that Ludimilla was destined for, as well as Eugene. Seeing Abby and Eugene dancing together brought all that back to Ludmilla.

Spoiler

You know you've seen a trope too many times when the first thought upon seeing such an image is "she's an assassin!"... in a ballet manga.