TL;DR — The show is going on an infinite hiatus. No, I do not know when I'll come back to resume working on it.
The long version:
Those of you who had been following both my blog and my previous Twitter account will likely already know about this—well, some of it, maybe. This is mostly meant for the people who do not browse Twitter and just strictly follow this blog only.
I've been enjoying whatever I've finished so far of Tantei Monogatari, but truthfully speaking, tackling this show for subbing was way overwhelming than I would have ever imagined. The longer episode run-times, the shitty optical audio, the dialogue, there being no JP subtitles to work off of... consequently, this was a project that I quite frequently stalled on and also took a long time to work on since I wanted everything to be perfect. This isn't something I really mention often but I really did struggle trying to get the first few episodes out.
A couple episodes later into the project, I got in touch with some translators who said that they were interested in translating the rest of the show for free—OLDB1BA and rudluff, respectively. Considering 99% of my solo projects consist purely of commissioned translations, I didn't want to let this opportunity slip, so I happily accepted them into the project. With their help, plus with the help of a native JP user, I was convinced that the rest of the project would go smoothly.
I think this occurred, what, last year? Somewhere around there. Fast forward sometime later into the future...
rudluff started becoming offline more frequently due to IRL priorities. (I don't blame him for this.) I could no longer rely on the native JP user for TLC'ing the harder lines in this show for reasons I would rather not disclose here since mentioning them publicly on this blog won't fix or change anything. This left just OLDB1BA, who went on to do the rest of the show by himself, surprisingly enough.
I'm not sure if this had happened after he finished the show, but AvistaZ had begun offering a large bounty for anyone who could submit an upload of the entire show, subbed. OLDB1BA & I had talked about this and the conversation can be summed down to exactly this:
He felt it was unfair that I was taking such a long time to release each episode, considering he had gone and done the whole show for free. Additionally, he wanted to be the one to fulfill that site's bounty request for the show, but he wasn't sure if that would have been possible due to how frequently I was putting out these episodes. Ultimately, we compromised—since he did do the whole show for free, I agreed to let him release the rest of the episodes that I hadn't yet put out under the "LonelyChaser" label.
Now, here's the thing... OLDB1BA wrote on the description for that upload (on AvistaZ) that the subs for these "unreleased episodes" (we'll call them "beta" subs, since that's how they're referred to on there) were to remain exclusive on there and couldn't be uploaded anywhere else. Some torrent sites out there do actually have rules regarding exclusivity and all, so I genuinely thought those subs really were exclusive to the site.
Well, as it turns out, some user on Twitter decided to download these beta subs and release them publicly on a now-deleted tweet that got a shit ton of reposts, all in the name of "preservation". It gets better—when I discussed this incident with some other users, they explained to me that AvistaZ does not, and never had, any such "exclusivity" rules on their site, so the "Do not share elsewhere" warning that's on that upload really doesn't mean jackshit.
All things considered, this greatly upset me. Not only was I pissed that the beta subs made their way into the public this way, but I also got frustrated over the so-called "exclusivity" of those subs. I don't know, it just irked me that I was assured that they couldn't be re-posted elsewhere when that was totally moot from the start. All of this happened a few months ago, but after that entire fiasco, whatever motivation I had left to continue working on the show just kept shrinking day by day until it got to where we currently are now.
So, what happens next?
Despite everything, I'm not dropping the show. I do want to resume this at some point and see it through the end. I'm happy that OLDB1BA was able to finish it on his own, but contrary to what the torrent page's comments for those beta subs says, the project could still benefit from extra QC'ing and it absolutely still needs lots of TLC'ing IMHO. Nevertheless, considering what recently happened (and the fact that I'm juggling way too many projects right now), I just simply have no interest in working on it at this moment. Maybe I'll resume once I have less stuff to work on or once JP subs for this show pop up, if the latter ever happens.
Note to self: if a translator offers to translate an entire show for you, do not accept it.
I apologize to anybody who had been keeping up with this project from the start and was looking forward to any future releases.