Well, I'm sure most people who came accross this blog/profile/whatever and don't know Mangaschool have probably left with a question... "What IS this?".

Well, I decided to finally make a small (...in theory) entry regarding mangaschool, it's history, it's people, and any other assorted crap I think of.

First, you'll have to excuse me but personally I didn't join Mangaschool (henceforth reference to as MS for short) till 2 years past it's creation... So I know bugger all till the point I joined. Hopefully one of the older members can fill in that gap... At any rate, this is my history with MS:

Before I joined, all I know is that MS was started by GeminiDomino, somewhere around October 2002, the 18th or so I believe.

I joined around November/December 2004 after lurking the website which was recomended to me by a friend from Jedi Academy (ironicly a game I still play), by that point a fair ammount of proverbial water had passed under the bridge and MS was set up, on it's feet, and going rather well... When I joined it had a fairly active userbase whereas the problem was inactive "Senseis" (or teachers/moderators if you prefer). Back then the "teaching" system was rather diferent, and it issued a rather dramatic workload on the Senseis...

Each Sensei had to take care of an entire "level" ("begginer/medium/advanced") of classes. So this meant doing all of the tutorials for said class, with homerwork, and thereafter correcting ALL of the homework for that whole "level". This presented a problem for the Senseis, which, by the way were not, are not, and there are no plans for them to be, paid for their massive ammount of work. This also became terribly extenous on the teachers to constantily correct and teach the very same issues over and over and over again.

But, at that point, the comunity lived as a balanced ecosystem, mostly through "C&C" (comments and critiques) which became sort of "our thing".

This is what people who remain from that time refer to as "golden era" of MS... Because, as to all good things, tragedy struck.

A hacker attack on the company that hosted us (that was in no way directed at us by the way... Just for the extra kick in the balls of being caught in crossfire) ended up deep frying our forums... And fortunetly, like any good group that consisted mostly of artists, we were totally unprepared (i.e.: there were no backups).

This was a devastating blow to both members and staff, as all the work done, our entire userbase earned over the course of 3 years was completely nuked... And for a few weeks, we expected the worst... Hell, most of us had already dug it's grave and attempted to salvage whatever we could like refugees. Several small independant ex-MS-user run forums were set up as "shelter"...But it was hardly the same.

Eventually the good news came through, Gemini wasn't done with us just yet, and set everything up for another go.

Mind you, however, that "everything" should be understood as "everything he could", which was basicly limited to the forums, and directly contacting a handful of members (such as the current team of "the staff") who stubbornly refused to accept MS's death. There was a lot left to do, a lot to re-build...

Most of us that also "survived" that era can tell you, it was the darkest point in MS's life... Simply enough a lot of people got busy, mostly staff, we never recovered a great deal of our userbase (who probably has since considered us dead), of our tutorials and lessons, we switched boards as an "upgrade", but that cost us our "trademark look", we tried something softer, more "chilled", and overall, many of us were tired, and felling in the dirt due to the recent blow... I wouldn't say we "survived" then as much as we lingered, or "vegetated"... Like a coma patiente really...

And then, Murphy Law's struck again... "When you think nothing else can go wrong, something will"...

As fate would have it, the harddrive hosting our website burned... And conviniently enough, there were no backups... So once again we were back to point 0... Except this time it was diferent... I don't know if it was the whole "going back to the origins" deal, or if it was just a good time for it to happen... But we needed it... I never saw the few "surviving members" (as we know call the group of people that stuck through hellfire and brimstone since MS I) more organized and dedicated to getting MS back together... And so we did... We laid down the plans and we worked tirelessly to restore it's former glory...

No, I'll risk say more, we worked... work... To go further than what we used to be... And slowly, we're getting there.

Our biggest problem ever since the first crash, was re-gaining the "advertisement" we somehow generated on our own on the first MS, simply through "word-of-mouth". And that's mostly what we're trying to accomplish here. Just... Reach out again, let the world know we exist, we're still here, we still welcome people, we still help people.

So basicly, visit us, post here, e-mail us... We're here, we're not going anywhere, and if you like anime, manga or just drawing in general, you should at the very least check us out.

Without further to do.

See ya soon.



-Dark Angel.


Edit: Those of you interested, the dAMN chat is up, the bot isn't exactly perfect yet, but you can use most commands, etc... Providing the bot is up at that point off course.