Site Update - 14th of May 2025

[jasohn07]

You're essentially saying something to the effect, "Well someone should just make a really awesome, great website that does all the cool stuff like MangaDex, AND doesn't care about DMCA or ethics like Batoto."

But that's not how it works because of the way these two conflicting ideas come together. 20 years of manga reader websites have taught us this. This is why I suggested earlier that scanlator uploads could fracture completely.

Forgive my ignorance, but isn't this exactly what Weeb central does? According to the guy there, he isn't affected by DMCA... and in my opinion the site is pretty user friendly... though I certainly can't speak about how upload friendly it is...

 

[JBreezy]

I knew i had to backup my library the last time the site went down but i got complacent, the wrtiting was on the wall

 

[larcek]

if they took down chapters in preperation to release a manga reading system of their own, with english translations being available, this might actually be a fair solution for me. while the prices might be a hurdle, getting good official translations would still benefit more people totally, since authors rarely benefit from people reading their works here. if mangadex could turn into an official publisher for western audience, this could be just as interesting, albeit there'd be work involved in a whole another dimension.

at the very least i'd like to know which series/chapters i've lost now.

 

[JVick]

Between Amazon making you pay each chapters twice if you're not careful, the mangaplus website that only allows you to read old chapters with your phone, the country-locked website, the official translators doing one chapter each 4 months, the editors' dogshit websites that don't even care about showing the release planning. Yeah this will be great.

 

[youdontknowwho]

Well, the reason why mangadex still stands is because they follow the DMCA requests - which is fair since the IP owners are the publishers.

Biggest issue always on the IP owners who are not willing to distribute their works "legally". Piracy only happens when there's a service issue.

Which, the Japanese publishers haven't put one proper iota of thought on how to reach to their international audience without compromising their rights as the IP owner.

It's surprisingly simple. Just make it more accessible? With actual decent translations for the translated languages? With preferably no censorship whenever possible? And make their system that seems fair?

It's just baffling how a good portion of the DMCA takedowns didn't even have official translations for people to even READ or PURCHASE WITH THEIR WALLETS.

Hell, some of the "official English chapters" are app only, and not distributed with paperbacks. Ridiculous.

The thing is Japanese publishers want us to pay per half a chapter like their domestic audience. Otherwise it's not worth the investment to them.

 

[Robinisback]

They even took away Rent-a-Girlfriend, Life isn't going to be the same anymore, guys.

 

[T-sama]

Forgive my ignorance, but isn't this exactly what Weeb central does? According to the guy there, he isn't affected by DMCA... and in my opinion the site is pretty user friendly... though I certainly can't speak about how upload friendly it is...

Yeah but according to some Weebcentral, Batoto and so on are eeeeevil, so it doesn't matter if the site is user friendly

The thing is Japanese publishers want us to pay per half a chapter like their domestic audience. Otherwise it's not worth the investment to them.

They really think that would pass in the west lol, and honestly? Even if it did work I feel in the long run they would just give up, manga is just not as big in the west as in Japan, people are too used to read for free, they simply can't win

 

[JVick]

Yeah but according to some Weebcentral, Batoto and so on are eeeeevil, so it doesn't matter if the site is user friendly

They really think that would pass in the west lol, and honestly? Even if it did work I feel in the long run they would just give up, manga is just not as big in the west as in Japan, people are too used to read for free, they simply can't win

Winning is easy, you put mangadex but with official release with a subscription. But it's clearly impossible.

For the casual audience, the physical release is either for the big titles and when they know it's good. There is too much shit nowadays to blindly buy something

 

[evergreen_oak]

May as well pack it up. MD is done. Explain to me what exactly the point is in hosting FAN-TRANSLATED content when at any time without warning or notice the FAN-TRANSLATED content can be removed en masse by greedy and shortsighted publishers. These dedicated scanlation teams are the one and only reason anyone outside of Japan is even aware of your licensed series. These DMCA trolls always bite the hand that feeds.

 

[b-no]

Damn. The mangas that I worked on were completely wiped. Destiny Lovers and Social Survival Rabbits.

 

[Owlstra]

Man this sucks. Life is pain!! I hate life !!!

I hope all the mangas affected can find peace elsewhere and that scanlator groups hold strong v_v

 

[Deadhunt]

Folks on Reddit are making a list of what manga is gone.

It's over 300 already, bros
https://www.reddit.com/r/mangadex/s/a3nqFm5KkR

 

[sarusa]

So, I've been using PMDL to download every chapter I cared about from MD since - as an ex Batoto member (the previous incarnation) - I knew this would eventually happen. I've got 3 TB of manga chapters, but no idea where I could even possibly upload those. I guess we just all have to go to shitty aggregator sites now? Thanks Viz/Jump, you've sure protected your shitty inferior scanslations so now I have to go to China for the good ones.

What really hurts is the death of all the comments for our chapters, there was some really good stuff.

 

[jasohn07]

Yeah but according to some Weebcentral, Batoto and so on are eeeeevil, so it doesn't matter if the site is user friendly

Yeah I don't really get that.

I don't see why MD and WC can't merge together and basically keep the platform MD has (the interface for users and scanlators/uploaders, the commenting system, ect...) while retaining WC's ability to avoid the DMCA's + the funding thing (or if possible merge MD & WC's different ways of being funded and do both, after all neither use the ads some of these aggregator sites are notorious for).

There very well could be a legit reason why it can't be done, but someone would have to explain it to me because I can't imagine why it couldn't be done. I would think the only thing that needed to be changed would be which country the websites server is hosted (at least virtually) and then that would fix MD's issues with DMCA'S, they wouldn't even have to merge with WC in that case.

Idk, it's just really disappointing to me to see all this go down when there really aren't very many other sites that provide the same catalog and reliability I've come to love MD for. Wish I had a time machine where I could go back and read all the stuff I was cataloging for later, that's now gone... Wait... Would the way back machine work in this instance?

 

[JVick]

So, I've been using PMDL to download every chapter I cared about from MD since - as an ex Batoto member (the previous incarnation) - I knew this would eventually happen. I've got 3 TB of manga chapters, but no idea where I could even possibly upload those. I guess we just all have to go to shitty aggregator sites now? Thanks Viz/Jump, you've sure protected your shitty inferior scanslations so now I have to go to China for the good ones.

What really hurts is the death of all the comments for our chapters, there was some really good stuff.

No you don't understand, you NEED to pay for the part 1, 2 and 3 of the latest chainsaw man 8 pages chapter in glorious 800x340p resolution where nothing happens for the 15th time in a row, think of the poor GPT API call that translated it...

 

[pepperonimadness]

I survived the death of Onemanga. I can survive this. Shitty publishers can't even provide people all around the world a good site that has all manga series regardless of companies, that's not region locked or chapters split into parts, and no shitty lolcowlization. Unless they can give us a better experience than here and other piracy sites, pirated manga won't stop.

Backing all my reading list to other aggregator sites is a pain in the ass though

 

[besbin]

if they took down chapters in preperation to release a manga reading system of their own, with english translations being available, this might actually be a fair solution for me. while the prices might be a hurdle, getting good official translations would still benefit more people totally, since authors rarely benefit from people reading their works here. if mangadex could turn into an official publisher for western audience, this could be just as interesting, albeit there'd be work involved in a whole another dimension.

at the very least i'd like to know which series/chapters i've lost now.

With how prevalent AI (reads MTL) is, most likely those new translations will be trash. This is another sad day for the community.

 

[kn4ll]

The first manga I ever did a scanlation of got struck
Honestly why, it's four years old, got axed at three volumes, and never got licensed.

 

[Shot8manga]

What really hurts is the death of all the comments for our chapters, there was some really good stuff.

It still on MD forums but I have no idea how to easily accessed them unless through one's comments history since chapters discussion search doesn't filter by series name.

MD forums by far the best part that aggregates site doesn't have.

 

[Owlstra]

So, I've been using PMDL to download every chapter I cared about from MD since - as an ex Batoto member (the previous incarnation) - I knew this would eventually happen. I've got 3 TB of manga chapters, but no idea where I could even possibly upload those. I guess we just all have to go to shitty aggregator sites now? Thanks Viz/Jump, you've sure protected your shitty inferior scanslations so now I have to go to China for the good ones.

What really hurts is the death of all the comments for our chapters, there was some really good stuff.

The death of comments is going to be sad. I really missed reading all the comments under random anime episodes back before those sites were taken down too