According to this ANN article and Watanabe Michiaki’s blog, Shchelkunchik ended this friday.
I had trouble reading Watanabe’s last entry – because I was upset, kinda, but also because he’s a terrible typist (he writes ellipses with commas) – and he actually apologizes for the abrupt ending. I’m not sure what’s the cause of the sudden interruption in the story, but according to the comments on his previous entry, it appears he’s been suffering from health or stress issues… lots of people were telling him to rest and take it easy! It’s all very worrying.
He also spoke a little about a possibly hilarious love story for Cornet and Trom (maybe an extra for the last volume?) and that his computer had some sort of trouble while he was writing a script… it’s all kind of confusing, pretty much a stream-of-consciousness entry.
In any case, the future of Shchelkunchik remains bleak and uncertain, mostly because I’m pants at reading so much kanji and katakana put together in a block. Running text is so completely different from friendly morsels of dialogue! A better japanese reader is welcome to make sense of this entry and correct me, hopefully with better news. But until then, let us mourn together. This was sudden and unexpected and the story was not at all ready to be finished. There were so many irons in the fire!
However…
Hope is not alltogether lost! I can’t do anything to make Shchelkunchik stop stopping, but I can do THIS
I can see the screentones! OH MY GOD.
Thanks to these great raws a little fairy has provided me. EVERYONE GO EXPRESS YOUR THANKS NOW NOW NOW