Site Update - 14th of May 2025

[jetabyss13]

the virgin "eww i have to dig thru billions of slop to find the right manga i like" the chad sigma "I pick manga to read based on how cool their cover art is "

 

[SaivonLapsi]

Mangadex should probably shut down now if they're willing to roll over and immediately comply with a dmca request of this magnitude without even giving a warning to their users to be able to back up stuff.

Also lmao at the bootlicker in this thread posting walls of text against piracy on a piracy site.

 

[xEternalSoul]

Honest opinion, I think the people arguing against the marketing and visibility effects of piracy are the ones who don't buy anything and are projecting their own behaviour on to others. I buy games on steam after trying out pirated versions, I buy ebooks of novels I really like, I buy Slime Tensei merch because I like the WN I read that was translated unofficially. Pretty sure I'm not the only one because others have mentioned doing these things too. I remembered a reddit AMA from an indie dev mentioning how he offered his game for free because some regions really couldn't afford to purchase games. After which, he reported increased sales from other regions based on the seller statistics he received from Steam. People who vehemently deny all this are probably the ones who don't pay for stuff that they cannot imagine others supporting creators after receiving free products.

 

[Chloraphorae]

These companies sending all of these dmcas are seriously idi- stu- foolish. Instead of nuking everything, they should just wait until there’s a really good fan-translation then buy it for a fraction of the price it would cost an “official” translator who just produces a steaming pile of garbage.

 

[bondejeger]

Mangadex should probably shut down now if they're willing to roll over and immediately comply with a dmca request of this magnitude without even giving a warning to their users to be able to back up stuff.

Also lmao at the bootlicker in this thread posting walls of text against piracy on a piracy site.

It’s almost like there’s a difference between scanlations and piracy in general. Wonder what that could be.

 

[BestBoy]

all have this insane ego

I wouldn't say "all." I don't have much issue waiting. I sometimes wonder why it's so slow, but there's lots of other things to read or do in the meantime. I've waited years for new chapters of the manga. I can wait a few more.

 

[hahanaho]

It’s almost like there’s a difference between scanlations and piracy in general. Wonder what that could be.

Wait, what’s the difference?

 

[Wanderer00]

Well, shit....so much of the manga i followed gone

sigh

And i'm not tech savvy enough to "back it up" either....what to do now?

 

[bondejeger]

Wait, what’s the difference?

It’s similar to a lot of people switching to windows 10 iot ltsc to get windows 10 support until 2032, even if they have to pirate it.
Hint: Both are not normally available to most people.

 

[Malkraz]

Well, shit....so much of the manga i followed gone

sigh

And i'm not tech savvy enough to "back it up" either....what to do now?

Download Neko and Mihon on your phone
https://github.com/nekomangaorg/Neko
https://mihon.app/
Import your MangaDex follows into Neko
Create a backup
Restore the backup with Mihon

 

[hahanaho]

Well, shit....so much of the manga i followed gone

sigh

And i'm not tech savvy enough to "back it up" either....what to do now?

1. Download what you can now. Using hakuneko for example.
2. Track the translator’s website from baka/mangaupdates. Check if they have download links.
3. Check dekai manga archive on nyaa. Follow the instructions.
4. Check other torrents on nyaa, btdig, bt4g, etc.

 

[RonBWL]

Pirating manga is like sneaking on the bus, the bus is going regardless, but if enough people sneak on the bus it’ll be unprofitable and the bus route will have fewer routes or the bus route might be removed completely. Same for manga, it’ll get axed if people don’t pay for it. If you actually care for the manga and want to continue reading it, you should buy and support it.

Your analogy is completely BS. Lemme rephrase it:

There's a bus that drives from point A to point B that has a fixed 50 seats, which they charge $15 each, requires you to be a resident of that town, and has no Wi-Fi, no AC, the driver is rude and trash talk you all the way. People either get on it, or walk because there's no other choices. Then one day, another bus shows up that has 150 seats (because let's say it's triple-sized), is open to everyone and isn't charging anything (because they don't have a bus license), provides free Wi-Fi, AC, bus driver is kind to everyone. All of a suddenly, people jumps on that bus, some will still walk, and others still ride the usual bus because they have a yearly subscription or something. The bus company then sued the "illegal" bus and force it to stop running - but now people who tried it isn't going back due to inferior service and more expensive price, the people who didn't ride it continue to ignore it, and the people who are already locked in didn't give a damn. The bus company saw a significant drop in revenue, getting angry, but can't figure out why.

 

[RonBWL]

You can’t make this argument and then go on to acknowledge the existence of MTL-ing because then it’s just disingenuous. You can use Google Translate, DeepL (which is actually pretty good), Papago and other apps to look something without going through the rest of the process in disseminating the work by bypassing payment methods or violating copyright laws.

Again, I'm going to assume you're delusional to even THINK that on an individual level, someone find a raw page, think "hmm, this looks fun, I wonder what the series is like", go through the effort of OCRing all of the text and MTL them. No, they either look up to see if there's a scanlated version somewhere, or move on to something else in their feed.

As for not knowing what’s interesting—some webtoons sites post a teaser chapter for free, but also sometimes you have to be unafraid to take a chance on a story. If you don’t like it there are resale sites, but like this thing of ’but stealing is okay because it might not be good quality so I have to test it first’ is just not it. It hurts the industry, it hurts artists, it’s also not fair to readers.

The same logic applies to publishers. In the past, many would gamble on making translation for niches title and gauge audience's interest, then either stop or carry on. Good luck convincing the big guys to even consider MTL their IPs and put on their app nowadays, because everyone's lazy.

On the subject, demos and sharewares were a thing in the past for customers to "try before you buy", but they stopped that, and guess what people do, pay for the full version to try? Nope, sail the high sea we go.

You’re not giving people enough credit: If we have internet we have email, phone, social media at our disposal. Seven Seas hates being contacted directly but if we can figure out how acquire raws and scanlate shit we can figure out how to get through to them.

My counter argument is the same. There is an already established market out there that people are well connected with and share stuff that blows up over night. If publishers aren't willing to go with that, then good luck with their ecochamber - we have better things to do.

You’re way overshooting the mark here and also not giving anyone here or any of our readers enough credit. If you like something—maybe you stumbled on a panel on Twitter and clicked ‘translate’ under the tweet and got a good vibe from what the author had to say and want to see officials, it’s worth lobbying for. If you see an anime you like and it’s based on a manga that’s not licensed and you want to see more, that’s worth lobbying for. You can do all that without stealing from an author.

Here's what people do when they find stuff interesting on X: Click Like and Share it, and some may drop a few bucks to Author's fanbox if they could find it.

But also if your reason for scanlating is thinking you have this mandate to ‘sift through tens of thousands of series that are possibly low quality slop to find something worth lobbying about’ then that’s not about the work itself that’s about clout-chasing—in which case why not just apply for a job and go legit.

Ever wonder why scanlating cover all kind of popular to shit that nobody cares about? Because we don't actually dig for stuff that encourage people to donate - we just stumble upon something we like and scanlate them, and they are either appreciated by the niche audiences they target or blow up into something real big. That's the beauty thing of scanlation: Free For All.

Again, because you go on to bring up MTLing, you don’t have to know Japanese or Korean to see what’s up, but also this is just arguing for complacency, lack of accountability, and sheer entitlement.

Actually we do, going back by your logic of seeing stuff on X - a single panel does nothing to pique anyone's interest, and if they can't find a good translation already provided by the scanlation scene, they mark it as "not interested" and move on.

You find something you like online somewhere—a few free pages on Renta or a sample on Amazon or Bookwalker, you hold up your phone camera to the screen and you fire up an app and see what you think. Maybe you order it or you pitch it to a publisher, but you always lobby for a licensed translation because committing a felony or disrespecting authors should not be your default.

Stealing is not only a felony but incredibly disrespectful to creatives.

No, we choose what we want to support and if the publishers haven't earned our respect, tough luck on them. There is no stealing whatsoever, you can never prove that.

 

[bondejeger]

Your analogy is completely BS. Lemme rephrase it:

There's a bus that drives from point A to point B that has a fixed 50 seats, which they charge $15 each, requires you to be a resident of that town, and has no Wi-Fi, no AC, the driver is rude and trash talk you all the way. People either get on it, or walk because there's no other choices. Then one day, another bus shows up that has 150 seats (because let's say it's triple-sized), is open to everyone and isn't charging anything (because they don't have a bus license), provides free Wi-Fi, AC, bus driver is kind to everyone. All of a suddenly, people jumps on that bus, some will still walk, and others still ride the usual bus because they have a yearly subscription or something. The bus company then sued the "illegal" bus and force it to stop running - but now people who tried it isn't going back due to inferior service and more expensive price, the people who didn't ride it continue to ignore it, and the people who are already locked in didn't give a damn. The bus company saw a significant drop in revenue, getting angry, but can't figure out why.

And now you don’t have a bus and have to walk.
To me, scanlation is something I do to make something available to others that otherwise is not available, not because I want to pirate it and distribute for free.
It’s probably more correct to say that I do it despite it being piracy, not because of it being piracy.

 

[Malkraz]

whatever moralfag cope gets you to distribute more chapters for my entertainment, scanmonkey 😌

 

[bondejeger]

whatever moralfag cope gets you to distribute more chapters for my entertainment, scanmonkey 😌

Yeah, about that…

 

[shoujocon]

Ever wonder why scanlating cover all kind of popular to shit that nobody cares about? Because we don't actually dig for stuff that encourage people to donate - we just stumble upon something we like and scanlate them, and they are either appreciated by the niche audiences they target or blow up into something real big. That's the beauty thing of scanlation: Free For All.

Where can we find the content you make on your patreon for free?

 

[shoujocon]

 

[RonBWL]

Where can we find the content you make on your Patreon for free?

Funny, since the only paywalled contents on my Patreon are the clean version of R18+ Omake pages for my comic, which were paid by me (with commercial permission, of course). Otherwise all of our releases were free to everyone.

 

[shoujocon]

Funny, since the only paywalled contents on my Patreon are the clean version of R18+ Omake pages for my comic, which were paid by me (with commercial permission, of course). Otherwise all of our releases were free to everyone.

Yeah, doesn't really matter what that is, why make people pay for this before they can see it and decide if it's worth supporting? Just upload it to md.