Phil Christie

Non-award-winning letterer for Viz • Yen Press • Kodansha • Seven Seas • Square Enix • Udon Ent. • Vertical

[Phil Christie @kernedout]

@madison_js_ @melshardae @theastralj Sick photos! Especially that one in the rain.

[21g ♨︎ BOOTH通頒中 @21g_yaseru]

池袋で広告流れてた

[BlookstR_ 🏮 @BlookstR_]

told my friend whos on a trip in japan to keep an eye out for kagurabachi and look what she sawwww

[Phil Christie @kernedout]

Color page from Dai Dark 9 🔥

[Phil Christie @kernedout]

@EditorTiina @kanamanga_us Happy New Year, Tiina!

[Phil Christie @kernedout]

All the books I lettered in 2025.

83 in total (88 counting omnibuses) & almost 200 simulpub chapters.

It's been a busy year (20,000+ pages)—not much sleep, but thanks to everyone I work with, the localisation community and all the readers!

Happy New Year to everyone!

[Phil Christie @kernedout]

It's Probably not well-known, but in some cases a SINGLE PAGE of manga takes 3-4 hours to letter.

Get 2 pages like this and your day is fucked.

Meanwhile, you might only have 7 days to finish the book.

The amount of work going into some books is absolutely mind-boggling.

[Minedor @minedo_r]

Earlier today, volumes 5-6 of Baki the Grappler released in English. Vol. 5 completed the first major story arc of the series, and started the Kid Saga, which I released unofficially before.

These two new volumes are great, with the highlight being Baki's house fully translated.

[Edo of the Shadow Realm @edomonogatari]

Are there any JP-EN manga translators who haven’t worked with me yet but would like to on a future project? If so, please reply with 2-3 genres or topics you’re passionate about!

(Don’t say “anything” or “everything.” That only makes my job harder.)

[Metatron 🩵 | Fujimine's Husband 🦋🔪🩸 | #TENOÍ @SamuraHypeGuy]

Now this is cinema

[Phil Christie @kernedout]

@PikkuProgram @SamuraHypeGuy Thank you! 🙏

[Phil Christie @kernedout]

@copiipasta ❤️ thank you!

[Phil Christie @kernedout]

Yay!

[VIZ Media @VIZMedia]

Announcement: A decade before Nana, Ai Yazawa wrote this breakthrough hit about the journey of love into adulthood. I'm No Angel, Vol. 1, by Ai Yazawa, releases Summer 2026.

[Yen Press @yenpress]

Sometimes, letterering for manga means working in tandem with the Japanese SFX instead of rewriting them!

In CLAMP Premium Collection Tokyo Babylon, Vol. 7, letterer @kernedout skillfully blends the English "ZWOOSH" text with it's Japanese counterpart for a seamless reading experience!

That was our last #LettererAppreciationMonth post 😢 But don't worry, pick up any volume of manga to appreciate the hard work all of our letterers put in to every book!

[Rae First @Chronically_Rae]

I'd kindaly ask that people keep in mind, as the editor of this series, that sometimes we don't know the English title despite all attempts to communicate and figure things out sometimes up until the last second. That and most editors don't ask their letterers to come up with something like I do. John Hunt, if I recall, didn't have much time and wasn't used to the request I gave up. Most letterers will use a simple font until there is an official logo (like Otr of the Flame is a font). I kindly ask people to not insult the work of letterers, including John Hunt. They don't have much time to work on chapters like this and work really hard to put things together and then internally we have very little time to keep things going as well. I was finishing this week's chapter when I got the next one, for example.

The new logo by Paul, the designer for Ichi, is absolutely stunning and I have volume 2 going and my one hint is that it still looks absolutely stunning. But please do not insult letterers when this isn't even their job. That's all I ask. They all work hard, John Hunt included. And their work ins't easy. So until you've done the work of any freelancer on a serialization or editor, or even like a copy editor or alt. editor and whoever else looks at things during the week, please keep rude comments about peoples' work to yourselves.

Not saying this person said anything rude. You do did not. You are correct we have an official logo that looks AMAZING. Like literally I was in the hospital in July and snuck on to my work email to look at the mockup choices for it and Paul absolutely just....omg his designs for everything were amazing, it was so hard to choose. But I did see some rude replies So just keep that in mind

(Melon, you're good. I'm not angry with you and thank you for letting me know I can now be like OMG ICHI'S LOGO!! to everyone after a nap I took before continuing more work on Kingdom).

[Phil Christie @kernedout]

@HaunterPrigg Sadly, I didn't translate this, but for the vowels removers, we letterers thank you 🙏

[Phil Christie @kernedout]

A strange thing about lettering manga is, the speech balloon/line count on average is almost always 1400.

Lots of dialogue = less SFX.
Lots of SFX = less dialogue.

But for some odd reason it always comes to around 1400 lines of text.

(Or maybe it's just what I work on?)

[Phil Christie @kernedout]

@kenz_carnahan I wish lol.

[Phil Christie @kernedout]

@Chronically_Rae Hahaha. Seriously, some artists need to chill on the sound effects 🤜

[Phil Christie @kernedout]

@polishalexman Yeah, I can definitely see the appeal of having romaji names because they sound cool.

[Phil Christie @kernedout]

Some insight on why Kagurabachi simuls look different.

∙Simuls are lettered within 24 hours
∙Some letterers do 2-3 simuls (same day)
∙Chapters can arrive at random times
∙Corrections are done in-house, & text needs to be editable
∙It needs to be a font we have a license for

[Phil Christie @kernedout]

@polishalexman Sorry, I don’t have much say in the matter, but I can definitely mention it.