First off, I want to make the following clear:

The doujinshi scans and translations hosted on this website are not in any way intended to infringe upon the rights of the original authors or artists.

If at any point any of these creators asked to me to remove this content, I would, no questions asked. In an ideal world, I would contact each an every one of them and ask for explicit permission. However, many of the books I cover are over 40 years old. Old pen names make it impossible to know who certain artists are, and I have to believe that the vast majority stepped away from the doujinshi scene a long time ago.

I am not a lawyer, but from my understanding of the legal perspective, doujinshi are a gray area, as are fan translations. As far as I know, there are no laws stating that I can’t translate old fan content. It once again comes down to respect between myself and the artists, and in the vast majority of cases, artists that I can’t contact in any way.

This puts me in a difficult situation. Do I continue my work preserving and translating these works, with the possibility that I could upset the original creators? Or do I remove everything, as there isn’t a way to get permission from every single person in every single anthology? I’ve seen arguments from both sides.

I’ve come to accept there isn’t a perfect solution. After a lot of deliberating with myself, here’s what I plan to do going forward.

I’m going to keep preserving what I can, and as I’m able to, I’ll translate it too. Not because I don’t care about the feelings of the original creators, but because of how much I respect what they’ve done.

Of course by continuing this, I understand this doesn’t truly solve the original problem, but I want to emphasize again that I will remove anything if asked by anyone who worked on these books.

I think a doujinshi published over 40 years ago is much more than just a book put together by a couple of friends. These fan works are a part of Gundam history, from a period that both defined the franchise as a cultural milestone and changed the landscape of the doujin community and the BL genre. One only needs to look at how many early authors eventually moved on to publishing manga and novels of their own. Plus, once the remaining physical books degrade, they will be gone forever. There are many other archivists out there, but one person can only own and scan so much. This is a community effort, and I feel like I can do my part to at the very least archive the things that I own.

One could argue on the value of preserving something fan created, but I have too much love for these artists to let their contributions be lost and forgotten. By doing what I do, I am ensuring they are remembered and appreciated, as they deserved to be. We, as modern Gundam fans that interact with or make fan creations of our own, owe so much to them.