ManhwaFreak

[DreadKaiser]

yeah they seem to have just rebranded after too many people caught onto how trash they are

 

[azywrckt]

I love to see the reaction.. Good thing I am not the only one having a bad headache from reading their work..
Anyway, one good thing I can get from this trash of a group is take recommendations from the titles they tried to snipe before blocking them. Just sharing this as others might benefit from the same thing as well.

 

[Amplify]

To be honest I didn't care THAT much previously, their chapters only getting mass uploaded here every 4 to 6 months was annoying but I could live with it and the translation quality was just passable enough to not get bent out of shape over if I turned my brain off somewhat, but holy hell their """"work"""" if you can call it that on Easygoing Territory Defense by the Optimistic Lord: Production Magic Turns a Nameless Village into the Strongest Fortified City should be considered a fucking crime. The translation is actually the second worst fan translation I've seen that wasn't meant to be a joke and they're actively defacing and censoring the artwork themselves. Actual scum.

 

[whatthewhatiswhat]

They were trash.

Roll that round in your head for awhile: a group paywalling their releases. It doesn't matter if they "eventually" release it, they're literally making revenue from an IP they have no ownership of. If you think this is reasonable, you are as scummy as them.

They are 100% MTL. They are not native English speakers and it showed constantly in grammar, typesetting, and language.

They CONSTANTLY sniped. Almost every series they worked with was one they snuck in and started "working" on. They did this because they looked for popular series to maximize their paywall potential. There aren't many groups accepting commissions for translation because it's a shady practice with huge potential for malicious behavior. Like, for example, accepting payment for doing half-assed MTL.

They're a collection of shitty scammers, and the site is better without them. You would admit this if you weren't a 4-post sock puppet.

Before I say anything, I don't read manga, I read manhwa. You guys act like you are some sort of saint, and MF is some big evil for making people pay to read obsolete stories that nobody cared about. Almost all of their popular stories weren't paywalled and even then, your guys' idea that "its scummy to make a profit out of pirated shit" is complete virtue signalling, i mean we all read pirated stories, is that not scummy? To some degree, translation work is also work, and i mean, most people won't be willing to work for free, sooo... Also what's with this double standard, every other scanlation site makes money off of ads, but the second they start charging money directly instead of getting it indirectly, it becomes evil. I'd rather they do that than be spammed with dogshit ads that even adblock doesn't stop. I do admit the quality of a lot of their old translations were shit, but most of their new pickups are decently translated and don't feel like you are reading mtl garbage. Even though they sniped a lot, they also had many that only they were translating, with no one having translated it before.

 

[IonDrako]

Before I say anything, I don't read manga, I read manhwa. You guys act like you are some sort of saint, and MF is some big evil for making people pay to read obsolete stories that nobody cared about. Almost all of their popular stories weren't paywalled and even then, your guys' idea that "its scummy to make a profit out of pirated shit" is complete virtue signalling, i mean we all read pirated stories, is that not scummy? To some degree, translation work is also work, and i mean, most people won't be willing to work for free, sooo... Also what's with this double standard, every other scanlation site makes money off of ads, but the second they start charging money directly instead of getting it indirectly, it becomes evil. I'd rather they do that than be spammed with dogshit ads that even adblock doesn't stop. I do admit the quality of a lot of their old translations were shit, but most of their new pickups are decently translated and don't feel like you are reading mtl garbage. Even though they sniped a lot, they also had many that only they were translating, with no one having translated it before.

Paywalling content along side editing out stuff they consider fanservice form series they did (like editing the actual page content), it's just hyper scummy actions considering the amount of groups that don't do that stuff.

 

[Amoorhen]

making people pay to read obsolete stories that nobody cared about.

which makes people care about them even less. and why call them "obsolete"?

I do admit the quality of a lot of their old translations were shit, but most of their new pickups are decently translated and don't feel like you are reading mtl garbage.

their newer translations are still shit. if i didnt turn my brain off when reading manga, i would get annoyed at the wrong tense (very common with mf) or whatnot being incorrect.

 

[Lostsoul]

hmm I completely forgot about this group and was quite surprised seeing them flooding mangadex. I ditch them when they decided to "temporarily" paywall all new chapters on their site, was it several months ago? my english suck but still some of their "translation" can give me a headache figuring out what's what and often made my brain do autocorrect while reading so not that big of a loss ditching them lol. seeing some of the comment here mentioning Utoon was the potential rebrand of their group, I guess I'll be avoiding that group as well.

 

[whatthewhatiswhat]

which makes people care about them even less. and why call them "obsolete"?

their newer translations are still shit. if i didnt turn my brain off when reading manga, i would get annoyed at the wrong tense (very common with mf) or whatnot being incorrect.

i mean i did say i dont read manga, their manga could be trash, i wouldn't know, but their manhwa is decent and doesnt have many errors (the new ones). Also why do you care if some story you have 0 interest in is paywalled? its not even fully paywalled, only new chapters are paywalled, so what if you are a week behind?

 

[whatthewhatiswhat]

Paywalling content along side editing out stuff they consider fanservice form series they did (like editing the actual page content), it's just hyper scummy actions considering the amount of groups that don't do that stuff.

idc abt the fan service editing since its probably from a manga, as i said i dont read manga. Besides, they probably have their own reasons for doing that, whether it be religious or legal. Im saying this again, but they only paywall NEW content, you will be a week behind, so what? Other groups don't paywall new chapters on stories nobody cares abt, instead they force pop-ups on you. I'd rather have them paywall 10 stories i have 0 interest in rather than spam me with ads. At the end of the day, you are only gaining, regardless of if you like their ethic or not, you guys hate on them, but still read their work, because they are the only people translating the stories you read. So wtf is up with this hate? I bet nobody here has payed to read that story with the guy wearing a dog muzzle on their website, and that's the only pay walled manhwa i remember. So why is everyone acting like they got robbed? So what if they paywall garbage, are you gonna read it? probably manga readers have low standards, but thats besides the point. the other side of this coin: "Its so scummy that they paywall trash and edit fanservice!" is "it's so scummy to read pirated work, imagine stealing from artists and writers who make little money!" Its like a robber saying a carjacker is a bad person.

 

[_Arch]

They were trash.

Roll that round in your head for awhile: a group paywalling their releases. It doesn't matter if they "eventually" release it, they're literally making revenue from an IP they have no ownership of. If you think this is reasonable, you are as scummy as them.

They are 100% MTL. They are not native English speakers and it showed constantly in grammar, typesetting, and language.

They CONSTANTLY sniped. Almost every series they worked with was one they snuck in and started "working" on. They did this because they looked for popular series to maximize their paywall potential. There aren't many groups accepting commissions for translation because it's a shady practice with huge potential for malicious behavior. Like, for example, accepting payment for doing half-assed MTL.

They're a collection of shitty scammers, and the site is better without them. You would admit this if you weren't a 4-post sock puppet.

Look, I see that you are angry. But you missed my point completely. If you look closely, I'm not a sock puppet. I am read-only for many years. I just got interested where they have gone and came here.
I don't approve anything Manhwafreak does. I just say two things.

1. They are readable. There are plenty of unreadable MTLs, manhwafreak are readable. When did I say they were good?
I am also not a native english speaker, so what? My posts are 100% MTL?

2. The most important thing is - Mangadex won't be better without them. They will profit from their site even more and you won't get anything from that.
Do you think they care about you and Mangadex? They don't even upload chapters here themselves.
I don't approve sniping. I don't approve paywalling scanlation. I just read what I can get. And I do pay for official releases and buy books so stop with personal insults please and understand my point.


Also, an additional topic to discuss.
I don't have a very deep knowledge in this one. Please name one project that was closed because of their snipe. Because I can name two projects they have done and no one else:
Dimensional Mercenary and Shoukoku no Altair spin-off.
Also, don't get me wrong, Manhwafreak are one of the most unethic group there is; but don't almost all major webtoon groups get profit from scanlation? Of course, their translation quality is better; does it make them legal and righteous? Everyone of them ask for donations. Most of them profit from ads. Some of them sniped too. I don't want to name them and get into another holy war, but if you insist I can in another reply.

uhhh
"We focus in better quality of the projects we working on them."

read that nice and slow, and tell me with a straight face that they even speak English.

there is no "maybe MTL Assisted", MTL assisted would be miles better than these chumps.

how much they pay you to shill?

Why do you all take it so personal? Why no one with a "righteous" position can refrain from insults?

I always found it amusing how The_Ghost speaks. Thank God he doesn't do translation.

Do you both know the difference between MTL and MTL-assisted?
I named a reference. Comicstar - it was godafwul. Horrible. No typesetting at all. He sniped. Changed nicknames every month and still asked for more money for this. Also many unnamed manhua translations, I don't even know them.
Yes, Manhwafreak is (was) better than this. I never said they are good. You just don't know what "the worst" is.

Why is it when I say they are bad many times but don't paint everything in black and white and find some good sides I'm immediately a sock puppet and a paid shiller?

 

[IonDrako]

"Its so scummy that they paywall trash and edit fanservice!" is "it's so scummy to read pirated work, imagine stealing from artists and writers who make little money!" Its like a robber saying a carjacker is a bad person.

It's one thing to fan translate and ask for donations or have a few on site ads to keep it running but putting someone else's legal work you don't own behind a paywall is hyper scummy add to that they were inconsistent as hell unlocking chapters, I watched some chapters be locked for months because they didn't have a script to auto unlock them after a duration and they forgot about them. And they weren't editing fanservice out for religious or legal reasons what? They did it to keep more ads on their site and they were culling even some basic sfw levels of fanservice.

Also fan translations are basically the only way to read and enjoy a majority of series for non-local or fluent in other language fans. Fan translations have actually generated more revenue the series creators wouldn't have gotten since series reach more people and some of those people will buy official merch or books for the series they've read.

 

[_Arch]

How exactly editing fanservice helps with getting more ads?
(Genuinely curious. I hope that you won't miss my previous post and won't think than I'm defending MF like two people before)

 

[Khazar123]

How exactly editing fanservice helps with getting more ads?
(Genuinely curious. I hope that you won't miss my previous post and won't think than I'm defending MF like two people before)

Because sites get rated for advertisers. If your sites get an adult rating, the available ads and pay-outs will lower.

 

[whatthewhatiswhat]

It's one thing to fan translate and ask for donations or have a few on site ads to keep it running but putting someone else's legal work you don't own behind a paywall is hyper scummy add to that they were inconsistent as hell unlocking chapters, I watched some chapters be locked for months because they didn't have a script to auto unlock them after a duration and they forgot about them. And they weren't editing fanservice out for religious or legal reasons what? They did it to keep more ads on their site and they were culling even some basic sfw levels of fanservice.

Also fan translations are basically the only way to read and enjoy a majority of series for non-local or fluent in other language fans. Fan translations have actually generated more revenue the series creators wouldn't have gotten since series reach more people and some of those people will buy official merch or books for the series they've read.

If you really are that mad that you couldn't see some tits, im sorry for you, genuinely. It seems like my point is flying over your head, over and over again. The paywalled stories garnered 0 interest. My other point is that regardless of how you go around it, pirating someone's work and making money off of it is scummy, which makes all scanlation sites scummy (since sites use ads). IT DOESN'T MATTER HOW THEY MAKE MONEY, it is scummy regardless and you consume pirated content while calling it scummy, which is peak hypocrisy. Just because fan translations are the only way to read the stories you want, doesn't cancel out the fact that it is scummy to be pirating work from people who make barely any money, sure you have the odd couple of people who actually care enough to go and support the author/artist, but the impact that makes is miniscule in the big picture. I genuinely didn't know about the ad thing, but I don't see how them censoring fanservice is so disruptive to your reading. Imagine you are doing something as a job, and you have to pay people as well, you'd want to maximize profits, especially since other shitty websites keep stealing your work and posting it on theirs, which prompts people to read on those sites, and then you lose out on a large portion of your ad-revenue. Now I'm not saying MF is good, or that you are wrong, I'm just saying you are unnecessarily hating on things. It's like getting something for free and then complaining about it, it just doesn't make sense, you have lost nothing, yet you act like you guys were robbed in broad daylight. You also can't be saying "this is scummy," while ignoring that what you are doing and what you are reading is also scummy, I mean it's pirating at the end of the day, its stealing, most scanlation sites don't paywall their content, instead they spam ads to make money, while on MF they have ad's that don't make you question your life choices but instead make you pay to read stories that genuinely nobody cares about.

 

[Eliminateur]

i'm blocking these gobshites, they're BUTCHERING the original art because of [whatever non-reason], what's worse is that their "translation" is near unintelligible, even a non-native english reader realizes this.

 

[Deinhart]

Since you wanted to know how censoring disrupts reading. It certainly makes you stop and wonder wtf is going on.

Next, yes from the outside scanlation groups and readers are both scummy practices but pay walling something that's not your own is on a different(lower) level.

"make you pay to read stories that genuinely nobody cares about."
If nobody cares then why bother with paywalling it?
If paywalling why not give the user the best possible Quallity instead of this shit?

You call scanlation a job, I call it a side hustle at worst and a hobby at best. If it's a job and you try to grab/snipe every project to maximise profits I at least expect a good quality. If it is a hobby you pick 1 or 2 series and learn/improve with each chapter.

 

[Ovnidemon]

Before I say anything, I don't read manga, I read manhwa. You guys act like you are some sort of saint, and MF is some big evil for making people pay to read obsolete stories that nobody cared about. Almost all of their popular stories weren't paywalled and even then, your guys' idea that "its scummy to make a profit out of pirated shit" is complete virtue signalling, i mean we all read pirated stories, is that not scummy? To some degree, translation work is also work, and i mean, most people won't be willing to work for free, sooo... Also what's with this double standard, every other scanlation site makes money off of ads, but the second they start charging money directly instead of getting it indirectly, it becomes evil. I'd rather they do that than be spammed with dogshit ads that even adblock doesn't stop. I do admit the quality of a lot of their old translations were shit, but most of their new pickups are decently translated and don't feel like you are reading mtl garbage. Even though they sniped a lot, they also had many that only they were translating, with no one having translated it before.

There is a big difference between gaining money from piracy and distributing it freely. Sure it's illegal and morally wrong in both case, but the first one is a lot worse. It's the difference between reselling a copied DVD/CD on the market and distributing it freely.

In one case, it's gaining money from a media without giving the cut to the original author; while the other case, it's making a media available to more people.

If you want a better example: it's the difference between selling a fan game using the game engine and distributing it freely.

Sure you can donate to help the devlopment of the game, and I don't exclude ads on the game page. But the content if available freely if you don't want to give something. It's not mandatory, it's up to your choice.

Also, ManwhaFreak had ads in addition to paywall if I am not wrong.

 

[jaklcide]

If you really are that mad that you couldn't see some tits, im sorry for you, genuinely. It seems like my point is flying over your head, over and over again. The paywalled stories garnered 0 interest. My other point is that regardless of how you go around it, pirating someone's work and making money off of it is scummy, which makes all scanlation sites scummy (since sites use ads). IT DOESN'T MATTER HOW THEY MAKE MONEY, it is scummy regardless and you consume pirated content while calling it scummy, which is peak hypocrisy. Just because fan translations are the only way to read the stories you want, doesn't cancel out the fact that it is scummy to be pirating work from people who make barely any money, sure you have the odd couple of people who actually care enough to go and support the author/artist, but the impact that makes is miniscule in the big picture. I genuinely didn't know about the ad thing, but I don't see how them censoring fanservice is so disruptive to your reading. Imagine you are doing something as a job, and you have to pay people as well, you'd want to maximize profits, especially since other shitty websites keep stealing your work and posting it on theirs, which prompts people to read on those sites, and then you lose out on a large portion of your ad-revenue. Now I'm not saying MF is good, or that you are wrong, I'm just saying you are unnecessarily hating on things. It's like getting something for free and then complaining about it, it just doesn't make sense, you have lost nothing, yet you act like you guys were robbed in broad daylight. You also can't be saying "this is scummy," while ignoring that what you are doing and what you are reading is also scummy, I mean it's pirating at the end of the day, its stealing, most scanlation sites don't paywall their content, instead they spam ads to make money, while on MF they have ad's that don't make you question your life choices but instead make you pay to read stories that genuinely nobody cares about.

I haven't had McDonalds fries in years but I can guarantee they probably aren't as salty as this commenter.

 

[_Arch]

There is a big difference between gaining money from piracy and distributing it freely. Sure it's illegal and morally wrong in both case, but the first one is a lot worse. It's the difference between reselling a copied DVD/CD on the market and distributing it freely.

In one case, it's gaining money from a media without giving the cut to the original author; while the other case, it's making a media available to more people.

If you want a better example: it's the difference between selling a fan game using the game engine and distributing it freely.

Sure you can donate to help the devlopment of the game, and I don't exclude ads on the game page. But the content if available freely if you don't want to give something. It's not mandatory, it's up to your choice.

Also, ManwhaFreak had ads in addition to paywall if I am not wrong.

You gave a very compelling answer and I agree with most, however, paying for paywalled chapters is not mandatory either, they are free to read after some time, aren't they?
(MF are not consistent in when the chapters become free, and it's a shady practice, but still the user has a choice to read everything without paying. And yes, they had ads)

 

[whatthewhatiswhat]

There is a big difference between gaining money from piracy and distributing it freely. Sure it's illegal and morally wrong in both case, but the first one is a lot worse. It's the difference between reselling a copied DVD/CD on the market and distributing it freely.

In one case, it's gaining money from a media without giving the cut to the original author; while the other case, it's making a media available to more people.

If you want a better example: it's the difference between selling a fan game using the game engine and distributing it freely.

Sure you can donate to help the devlopment of the game, and I don't exclude ads on the game page. But the content if available freely if you don't want to give something. It's not mandatory, it's up to your choice.

Also, ManwhaFreak had ads in addition to paywall if I am not wrong.

Man, you people are genuinely mentally unable to comprehend basic english then complain about MTL. Nobody is distributing anything for free, none of the pirated content is distributed "freely," the ads you watch are your payment. There is money being made off of your views from pirated content. IT IS THE SAME THING. Both MF and other scanlation sites are making MONEY off pirated content. I said this, but ig Ill say it again, MF has ad's, but they aren't as annoying as other scanlation sites (when you can't tap on your screen without going to a corn redirect).