Site Update - 14th of May 2025

[Bentoki]

can someone confirm that there is now a new button / checkbox for uploads:

”click here to confirm you have received permission from the copyright holder/author.”

if this is how its going to be from now on this site is finished.

it should be clear that almost no one has the permission here. with that checkbox MD can now shift blame to the uploader if they get legal complaints on uploaded content. they might then even give out whatever personal info they got stored on the uploader and ban the account for violating the sites rules.

i am truly disappointed. "scanlator friendly" should include protecting scanlators and their work as well.

It’s true, you can test it yourself by trying to upload something to any series. They haven’t appeared to change their content policy though. It appears they might try to pass blame onto scannies and just say that “people agreed that they had permission to upload it so it isn’t our fault lol”

 

[xEternalSoul]

Starting a discussing with "white guys" is a good way to discredit yourself, but I don't think you're that intelligent. Anywho...



Sorry that doesn't work. Before Amazon forces me to upgrade Kindle and move to their DRM-infested ebook, I was buying YAC every month for scanlating purpose. Now they suddenly lost me as a customer, while at the same time gaining no new ones because those who didn't care already didn't care. Business 101: Instead of convincing people to buy, let's convince your regular customers NOT to buy.



It's shown time in time again that the people who are "complaining" aren't going to buy REGARDLESS - they aren't buying before, they aren't buying now, they aren't buying in the future, period. Again, business 101: Let's make it harder for regular customers to buy and they'll stop buying, while the ones already don't buy don't ever buy. Smart.



If they aren't making money from the Western Audiences anyway, can you say we steal from them, since they never let us give them money in the first place?



Again, we aren't even paying them (because we can't) so we can't steal what we didn't give lol.



Nor are those publishers. Stop white-knighting.

Same issue with Korean novels from Kakao. Many of such works have no plans in sight to cater to the international market despite overseas interest. How should people pay them if there isn't a translated version being offered officially? There's also the problem of how big of an interest is required that he failed to address about his point of publishing companies doing surveys. If we are going by survey results then does that mean the more niche genres or series are never going to be translated? I could enjoy a top 100 series and be willing to pay for it but publishers never get to it because it is 'too far down' the list.

 

[bladestorm91]

I've grown beyond caring about people who call sites like Mangadex and their readers thieves and pirates. The publishers literally have one of the most easy to export good on the planet, cheap to host and desirable, yet they do NOTHING with them. Actually scratch that, they shoot down smugglers trying to do the service THEY are supposed to be doing. They don't WANT to solve this problem and for that I have no sympathy for them and only disdain.

 

[lolfacesayshi]

mangadex got too popular

I'm blaming the people who openly talk about and link to Mangadex to official posts, authors, and artists. Absolutely zero tact shit like "I read your series on Mangadex!" like congrats?? Why you telling them that their work is being pirated????

 

[Basic_human]

Literally no new update no nothing but Indonesian chapter

This is insane....

 

[RonBWL]

There’s no defense here, it’s just entitlement in action. You have internet, you have resources, you just don’t know how to use them and don’t care enough to figure out how.

If the business don't care to let me pay them, why would I invest my time and potentially even more money to buy into their business?

Y’all, we have the internet, publishing companies do surveys. If we don’t say anything at all so that they know we want shit they’re never going to do it. I’m rounding up a crew of folks who used to scan to form an LLC and looking into purchasing licenses (wheeee KARMA) we gotta do it ourselves if they won’t. Anything is better than fucking over artists.

You know why these survey fails? They never actually reach the AUDIENCES. Polling only the people in your ecosystem while the mass market with money to burn are out there drowning in safe mainstream stuff is a good way to turn even more potential customers away.

It’s pretty simple: Authors who have poor sales get dropped and license holders can decide to drop a series if it’s not selling well. If you don’t pay for the content you risk losing it altogether.

And it's pretty simple. If publishers aren't interested in reaching a wider audiences by giving them access to their library, there will only be safe mainstream stuff going forward. There aren't enough otakus in Japan to rocket sales for all titles. But I guess this is irrelevant to the topic at hands.

 

[RonBWL]

Same issue with Korean novels from Kakao. Many of such works have no plans in sight to cater to the international market despite overseas interest. How should people pay them if there isn't a translated version being offered officially? There's also the problem of how big of an interest is required that he failed to address about his point of publishing companies doing surveys. If we are going by survey results then does that mean the more niche genres or series are never going to be translated? I could enjoy a top 100 series and be willing to pay for it but publishers never get to it because it is 'too far down' the list.

A manga we are translating (Gaguru Girl) ran into the exact problem: There isn't enough sales in Japan because the otakus only buy the isekai harem trash, but the MD community is clearly interested, and many would happily buy IF it's easy to do so. The author even dropped by to beg us to buy the Japanese raw to help avoiding axe-kun - but guess what, buying Japanese raw is a chore to begin with (You need a valid JP address to even purchase on Amazon, and Bookwalker being Japanese-only didn't help for people who can't blind-navigate). At one point, we even tried to run a giveaway with a sponsor basically spending money to buy as many copies as he can, but you can't even gift ebook and Bookwalker placed a 10-giftcode limit every 180 days.

You just can't win, lemme tell you.

 

[Basic_human]

A manga we are translating (Gaguru Girl) ran into the exact problem: There isn't enough sales in Japan because the otakus only buy the isekai harem trash, but the MD community is clearly interested, and many would happily buy IF it's easy to do so. The author even dropped by to beg us to buy the Japanese raw to help avoiding axe-kun - but guess what, buying Japanese raw is a chore to begin with (You need a valid JP address to even purchase on Amazon, and Bookwalker being Japanese-only didn't help for people who can't blind-navigate). At one point, we even tried to run a giveaway with a sponsor basically spending money to buy as many copies as he can, but you can't even gift ebook and Bookwalker placed a 10-giftcode limit every 180 days.

You just can't win, lemme tell you.

Fr can't stress it enough that Otaku there only eat slop harem. Tons of potential manga were axed, we could only watch

 

[dmy96]

can someone confirm that there is now a new button / checkbox for uploads:

”click here to confirm you have received permission from the copyright holder/author.”

if this is how its going to be from now on this site is finished.

it should be clear that almost no one has the permission here. with that checkbox MD can now shift blame to the uploader if they get legal complaints on uploaded content. they might then even give out whatever personal info they got stored on the uploader and ban the account for violating the sites rules.

i am truly disappointed. "scanlator friendly" should include protecting scanlators and their work as well.

Awesome! With the DMCA, the number of upload to this will too go down.

 

[bladestorm91]

Here's how they would forever solve this problem by making a Steam equivalent for anime, manga and light novels:

1. Users could download and use the app for free
2. Users could read 1/3 of all early chapters of any serialized work for free, same for anime or light novels though rate adjusted
3. For free users, recent works would have their second most recent chapter/episode free
4. All series can have bonus chapters, media or just plain extra stuff on their main page that users can only get through purchasing it
5. Old (say 10 years) completed series/works have a one time purchase lock for all chapters/episodes.
6. Prominent donation buttons for authors and artists, especially helpful for independent creators
7. News and events sections on all the main pages of series works to inform readers/watcher for anything new related on the series or author(s)/artist(s)
8. A subscription service that unlocks all chapters/episodes except for 4. (author/artist controlled option) and 5. (5. doesn't apply if subscriber already read/watched the series already)
9. Depending on what subscribed users read/watched that month, their authors/artists get a cut of the subscription fee (app owners get fixed %, maybe 30%?), the % rate affected by the amount of pages read/time watched. (I'm unsure if there's a perfect system for this, because there is a worry that authors/artists would start to do some shitty stuff like padding out chapters and episode time so there would be more filler that would affect the % rate. However, the below point would probably mitigate this stuff.)
10. Same review and comment system as Steam, so users can not only point out good/bad series, but also warn users of authors/artists trying to implement bad practices like the weaselly stuff in the above parentheses.

I could go on, but just the above would completely transform the market as Steam did eventually. Sad thing is, I can never see this happening unless something cataclysmic occurs because these publishers will never cede their control. For this to realistically happen, the publishing companies would have to band together to make a new association which would be the ones responsible for creating and maintaining this Steam equivalent. Corporate greed will always kill this idea and prevent any outsider or private company from trying to do what Steam did.

Even if it happened, the monetization would only be in the interest of the publishers instead of the users. You just have to see what happened with Netflix and that scene to see how this usually turns out. Steam is unfortunately a super anomaly that emerged at just the perfect time to become entrenched, unstoppable and impossible to ignore while also being helmed by the best possible people imaginable.

The above is pure fantasy basically and we are stuck with this cat and mouse DMCA game for the long unforeseeable future. The only hope we have is that the anime/manga/light novel market crashes and again hope for a miracle that someone smart can pick up the pieces.

 

[mmosimca]

I see both sides of the argument, and generally feel that they're both correct.

I have certainly read fan translated series on MangaDex, seen an official English translation for the series a year or two later and not bought it because I've already read it. This isn't because I'm a jerk or trying to be a dick to authors; it's because I already spend $200+ on books/light novels/manga/etc each month.

I'm going to tend to prioritize things I haven't read and things I absolutely loved. Things that I'd give an 8 out of 10 and probably not re-read likely wouldn't get a buy from me. That's technically lost money on the part of the publisher. They aren't completely wrong that this is a real thing that does happen.

It doesn't help that manga volumes are often $14-16 here and contain 4-6 chapters, even bought fully digitally (as I am not interested in filling my small living space with hundreds and hundreds of physical objects). That's a really rough value proposition for a digital good. Many full-length novels are half that. I would love to use a subscription-based service (and am subbed to Lezhin, a Korean platform). However, I primarily enjoy Yuri, which as you can likely guess has next to zero representation on the official JP publisher apps' English translations.

It's just not popular enough.

A lot of Yuri manga will never see official translation, and I rely on MangaDex to fuel my Yuri obsession in a way that doesn't benefit illegal aggregators that steal official TLs. Thankfully, the genre is niche enough that I feel like most of my favorite series were not hit by the DMCA wave (most of that which was lost is translated officially as well).

I guess my best hope for the future is that the JP publishers try to focus more on subscription-based manga services and expand their extremely tiny English catalogs.

 

[Septazia]

A manga we are translating (Gaguru Girl) ran into the exact problem: There isn't enough sales in Japan because the otakus only buy the isekai harem trash, but the MD community is clearly interested, and many would happily buy IF it's easy to do so. The author even dropped by to beg us to buy the Japanese raw to help avoiding axe-kun - but guess what, buying Japanese raw is a chore to begin with (You need a valid JP address to even purchase on Amazon, and Bookwalker being Japanese-only didn't help for people who can't blind-navigate). At one point, we even tried to run a giveaway with a sponsor basically spending money to buy as many copies as he can, but you can't even gift ebook and Bookwalker placed a 10-giftcode limit every 180 days.

You just can't win, lemme tell you.

Ah thanks for bringing it up, I myself bought a copy and was wondering how do you buy more copies

At one point, we even tried to run a giveaway with a sponsor basically spending money to buy as many copies as he can, but you can't even gift ebook and Bookwalker placed a 10-giftcode limit every 180 days.

Oh wow, I had no idea, tha'ts a great idea, what a shame it was hindered by big companies creating obstacles to their own profit, reminds me how you can't gift anything XBOX outside of your own country, meaning that someone in France can't gift Doom through Xbox to someone in Spain where the prices would be the same, can't imagine how much money they are losing every year with people using Steam instead.

 

[Hunter_Main]

Here's how they would forever solve this problem by making a Steam equivalent for anime, manga and light novels:

1. Users could download and use the app for free
2. Users could read 1/3 of all early chapters of any serialized work for free, same for anime or light novels though rate adjusted
3. For free users, recent works would have their second most recent chapter/episode free
4. All series can have bonus chapters, media or just plain extra stuff on their main page that users can only get through purchasing it
5. Old (say 10 years) completed series/works have a one time purchase lock for all chapters/episodes.
6. Prominent donation buttons for authors and artists, especially helpful for independent creators
7. News and events sections on all the main pages of series works to inform readers/watcher for anything new related on the series or author(s)/artist(s)
8. A subscription service that unlocks all chapters/episodes except for 4. (author/artist controlled option) and 5. (5. doesn't apply if subscriber already read/watched the series already)
9. Depending on what subscribed users read/watched that month, their authors/artists get a cut of the subscription fee (app owners get fixed %, maybe 30%?), the % rate affected by the amount of pages read/time watched. (I'm unsure if there's a perfect system for this, because there is a worry that authors/artists would start to do some shitty stuff like padding out chapters and episode time so there would be more filler that would affect the % rate. However, the below point would probably mitigate this stuff.)
10. Same review and comment system as Steam, so users can not only point out good/bad series, but also warn users of authors/artists trying to implement bad practices like the weaselly stuff in the above parentheses.

I could go on, but just the above would completely transform the market as Steam did eventually. Sad thing is, I can never see this happening unless something cataclysmic occurs because these publishers will never cede their control. For this to realistically happen, the publishing companies would have to band together to make a new association which would be the ones responsible for creating and maintaining this Steam equivalent. Corporate greed will always kill this idea and prevent any outsider or private company from trying to do what Steam did.

Even if it happened, the monetization would only be in the interest of the publishers instead of the users. You just have to see what happened with Netflix and that scene to how this usually turns out. Steam is unfortunately a super anomaly that emerged at just the perfect time to become entrenched, unstoppable and impossible to ignore while also being helmed by the best possible people imaginable.

The above is pure fantasy basically and we are stuck with this cat and mouse DMCA game for the long unforeseeable future. The only hope we have is that the anime/manga/light novel market crashes and again hope for a miracle that someone smart can pick up the pieces.

I wonder how much of one piece would be considered early chapters. Also, even if this did exist it would probably have a shit UI.

 

[DracoSafarius]

Here's how they would forever solve this problem by making a Steam equivalent for anime, manga and light novels:

1. Users could download and use the app for free
2. Users could read 1/3 of all early chapters of any serialized work for free, same for anime or light novels though rate adjusted
3. For free users, recent works would have their second most recent chapter/episode free
4. All series can have bonus chapters, media or just plain extra stuff on their main page that users can only get through purchasing it
5. Old (say 10 years) completed series/works have a one time purchase lock for all chapters/episodes.
6. Prominent donation buttons for authors and artists, especially helpful for independent creators
7. News and events sections on all the main pages of series works to inform readers/watcher for anything new related on the series or author(s)/artist(s)
8. A subscription service that unlocks all chapters/episodes except for 4. (author/artist controlled option) and 5. (5. doesn't apply if subscriber already read/watched the series already)
9. Depending on what subscribed users read/watched that month, their authors/artists get a cut of the subscription fee (app owners get fixed %, maybe 30%?), the % rate affected by the amount of pages read/time watched. (I'm unsure if there's a perfect system for this, because there is a worry that authors/artists would start to do some shitty stuff like padding out chapters and episode time so there would be more filler that would affect the % rate. However, the below point would probably mitigate this stuff.)
10. Same review and comment system as Steam, so users can not only point out good/bad series, but also warn users of authors/artists trying to implement bad practices like the weaselly stuff in the above parentheses.

I could go on, but just the above would completely transform the market as Steam did eventually. Sad thing is, I can never see this happening unless something cataclysmic occurs because these publishers will never cede their control. For this to realistically happen, the publishing companies would have to band together to make a new association which would be the ones responsible for creating and maintaining this Steam equivalent. Corporate greed will always kill this idea and prevent any outsider or private company from trying to do what Steam did.

Even if it happened, the monetization would only be in the interest of the publishers instead of the users. You just have to see what happened with Netflix and that scene to see how this usually turns out. Steam is unfortunately a super anomaly that emerged at just the perfect time to become entrenched, unstoppable and impossible to ignore while also being helmed by the best possible people imaginable.

The above is pure fantasy basically and we are stuck with this cat and mouse DMCA game for the long unforeseeable future. The only hope we have is that the anime/manga/light novel market crashes and again hope for a miracle that someone smart can pick up the pieces.

This just sounds like gating out content in a free to play gacha game unless you shell out per node so you're left with only being able to play under half a story chapter. If it's free you don't gate content.

What they'd have to do is make it free but with ads on sidebars, maybe a moving banner on the home page or manga page, and an ad at the start, end, and middle of a chapter (you can't have tons of them as then you end up like those horrible webtoon scan sites). If not that, then you make it a subscription service but you can't make it overly expensive like streaming sites or Marvel/DC's monthly sub. Publishers cannot be trusted to do either in a good way.

 

[sivuliike]

Ahh this was terrifying to wake up to 😭 Thank God my comfort series is still alive
Are series from MangaBox safe? The first 2 physical volumes of the comic I love and helped translate missing chapters of were published by Kodansha but they dropped it after Vol 2 bc no one gaf about the series. There are still 2 extra chapters from the physical release me and my friend need to scanlate but those are unfortunately chapters from the Kodansha-published volumes so idk if it's safe or not due to its messy release history 💀

 

[alrightcock]

Still mourning... smh

 

[FateXBlood]

I was here.

 

[shinya78]

Over a thousand titles and counting... my follows list certainly took quite a beating. The next question is, how many more will be gone when the next big wave eventually comes? This is certainly not an 'if', it's 'WHEN'. Sure, aggregator sites exists, but I'd rather wade in our muddy waters barefoot than the tar pits even while wearing a hazmat suit.

While I don't mind having to go to official sites to read raws, the only real drawback for me is if I forget to check after a while and find out the backlog is now pay-walled, Lord Gaben's words truly hit the mark in this regard, the issue of it all being a matter of service. I'd buy physical raws whenever I get the opportunity inside their actual stores, but if had no idea of what those title were on account of them being unavailable whenever I am outside Japan, then why would I spend my money on the product in the first place?

Funnily enough, a similar thing happened to me but this time involving ASMRs of the r18 variety. There was a time when you could look them up on yt very easily, download them on the app, and listen whenever. This soon led to me going to dlsite to actually buy my favorites, that I otherwise wouldn't just from the trial versions, which often cuts off way too early. Then the crackdown on ASMR content happened, my old playlist gone, reduced to atoms. I thought it was fine, I could just continue to buy officia- then the whole "foreign cards being denied" incident happened. You can use the cards again, but it now comes with a region lock that hid their other contents that you could not buy directly with said cards. Effectively getting a "lesser" version of their entire catalogue if you're browsing from outside the country, haven't bought a new one ever since.

 

[IceDBear]

If only Mangadex could become what Crunchyroll became for anime.

 

[Septazia]

If only Mangadex could become what Crunchyroll became for anime.

and illegally steal customer's data? (see the lawsuit) Or maybe get bought by Sony so they have even more control over Anime and Manga. Or maybe they could do like Fakku and take the moral high ground and act like crusaders against piracy.
Sorry I am so jaded, maybe there is a good compromise,