Thank you. You got an awesome collection there.
Particularly, I do like when titles are released in the original right-to-left format.
Thanks! So do I.
Do you know anything about Chuang Yi's Ash & Pikachu?
What about those Chuang Yi's Pokémon Pocket Monsters/Pokémon Ruby-Sapphire manga? Are they right-to-left? Do you know if they are censored?
Ash & Pikachu
I don't really know anything about the Chuang Yi edition in particular. It was published after Golden Boys, which was published in the original format, so if I had to guess I'd say that it probably wasn't flipped. There are complete Japanese RAWs available online though, in case you want to see what it looks like. I would personally never buy it and probably not read it even if it would become available online in English. Just some random anime episodes from the Johto and Hoenn series that got direct adaptions. I'd rather just watch the original episodes. (The Electric Tale of Pikachu isn't a direct adaption though, so this personal guideline of mine does not apply to it).
Pokémon Pocket Monsters /
Pokémon Ruby-Sapphire
Same here, I don't really know anything about the Chuang Yi edition in particular. It was published at about the same time as Golden Boys, which was published in the original format, so if I had to guess I'd say that these probably weren't flipped either. I've read a scanlation of the first chapter. The puns weren't funny (might be because it's hard to give accurate translations to some Japanese puns while still keeping them funny) and the artwork was terrible.
Chuang Yi usually never censor their manga, Pokémon or other:
Chuang Yi said:
Do you do any form of censorship to the manga you publish?
Answer : In compliance with the censorship laws in Singapore, some graphic scenes may be edited and sent to the publishers/authors for approvals before print. However, we make it an effort to keep these cases to an absolute minimum to preserve the author's original art as much as possible. (Anything that is too perverse or requires extensive censorship is probably something we won't look into publishing in the first place.)
We are pleased to inform our readers that less than 2% of our current publications have had to undergo this "makeover".
(
source)
As far as I know the only Pokémon manga that Chuang Yi has published that might contain censorship is
The Electric Tale of Pikachu volume 1. They used VIZ's translation for volume 1 and I think I remember that they used VIZ's censored scans as well (though I might be wrong there). However, the rest of CY's EToP volumes are uncensored.
Another issue with Chuang Yi's Pokémon manga editions are that they back in the day used to cross-translate from Chinese editions, which sometimes led to errors. At least Pokémon Adventures volume 8-22 have been cross-translated from Chinese. Volume 1-7 are VIZ's Japanese --> English translations and volume 41+ are Japanese --> English translations.
In CY's Golden Boys editions Silver is called Black and Chuck (the fighting Gym Leader) is named Fergus, so either the author took some creative liberties or Chuang Yi messed up that part, probably because they cross-translated it from Chinese without any JP - ENG TLC. Chuang Yi never removed the sfx, so if anyone is interested I could probably ask one of the translators at Team Special Scans to take a look at it.
I have a friend that owns almost all Pokémon manga that has ever been published in volume format by VIZ, Chuang Yi and Shogakukan (+ a lot of VIZ's monthly magazines), so I could ask her stuff like this, or just ask her to join the conversation here.