Site Update - 14th of May 2025

[hahanaho]

I've been reading manga since 2006 and I'm pretty sure a lot of them would rather the filthy gaijin never got to lay eyes on their treasures than be paid for it.

sad gaijin noise

 

[T-sama]

I think you should just stop reading manga and do something you enjoy and respect enough to pay for.

And I think you should shut the fuck up, stop putting your nose in other people problems and go pay attention to your own life lol

I read what I read because I enjoy it, even if it's because of how much of a trainwreck it is.

I won't pay for various reasons, respect was never in the equation because respect doesn't pay my bills nor it puts food in the table.

It's literally all a you problem cause you're worried about what other people do, nobody cares that you feel that way and it won't stop us from pirating mangas, period.

You're not convicing anybody.

 

[T-sama]

The second main issue is that all of those official publishers somehow seem to suffer from worsening translations in general, official translation quality has been worse and worse over time instead of improving somehow, a case in point for that is Risou no Himo Seikatsu if it wasn't for the scanlation group doing it I'd have missed a ton of important stuff from the story due to the official translation being simply bad and incomplete at times.

I think I can explain that part, I follow Saving 80,000 Gold in Another World for My Retirement, it has two releases, the app version as chapters come out in Japan and later the proper volume version.

What I noticed is that app version of mangas tend to be low quality translation, no idea if AI, but they're definitely worse, later the manga release has proper better translation, I know cause I compared with the series I mentioned, at bare minimum the wording ca be very different even if they're technically saying the same thing.

It might or not be partially intentional, but I think it's mostly to cut costs, won't be surprised if in time a lot of those apps use mtl and only volume version is translated by an actual person.

The worst part is that a lot of series that are in apps probably won't get manga release if they're not popular enough, so the only official translation avaliable will be super bad.

​

 

[bondejeger]

And I think you should shut the fuck up, stop putting your nose in other people problems and go pay attention to your own life lol

I read what I read because I enjoy it, even if it's because of how much of a trainwreck it is.

I won't pay for various reasons, respect was never in the equation because respect doesn't pay my bills nor it puts food in the table.

It's literally all a you problem cause you're worried about what other people do, nobody cares that you feel that way and it won't stop us from pirating mangas, period.

You're not convicing anybody.

You’re convincing us enough for of both us.

 

[twinklecake]

Kakao: Puts out press release saying "We're working together with Japanese publishers."
Japanese publishers: Puts out press release saying "We're working together with Kakao."
Both of them: Take pictures of themselves working together.
You: But there's literally no proof of any connection between them!

That's either a pretty serious level of denial there, or incredibly poor reading comprehension.

They're reading this thread and touching themselves, aren't they.

 

[T-sama]

You’re convincing us enough for of both us.

No, not really, piracy won't change because of you or me, much less for moral reasons, stop deluding yourself.

Piracy will only truly stop when publishers give better service, until then scanlation will continue as usual.

 

[bondejeger]

No, not really, piracy won't change because of you or me, much less for moral reasons, stop deluding yourself.

Piracy will only truly stop when publishers give better service, until then scanlation will continue as usual.

As you have clearly shown and convinced us, piracy is not a service issue, it’s a I don’t want to pay issue.

 

[T-sama]

As you have clearly shown and convinced us, piracy is not a service issue, it’s a I don’t want to pay issue.

I honestly can't tell if you're really that dense or just trolling.

 

[bondejeger]

I honestly can't tell if you're really that dense or just trolling.

Not everyone thinks that we’re entitled to get everything in life for free. Especially at the expense of others.

 

[T-sama]

Not everyone thinks that we’re entitled to get everything in life for free.

Man you do a lot of projection and assumptions.

 

[jetabyss13]

I think you should just stop reading manga and do something you enjoy and respect enough to pay for.

ngl I've actually started to really like IchigoReader. I actually can finally read the rest of Immortal Ridge after buying Volume 7 of Immortal Hounds. After all those years since 2019... I can finally finish the story ;w; after all those years, it is like a weight is off my back

granted this is a very niche edge case for me, lol. cuz not every series get's screwed over like Immortal Hounds or Immortal Ridge. Like Murcielago's licensed translation does get updated pretty decently. I just still cannot trust English licensed publishers because they basically can just 'kill' a franchise on any whim. Especially if they don't even offer both digital and physical (due to FOMO). If English licensed publishers were competent, I would 100% buy manga from them. But unfortunately, they are not. I want to support my favorite artists but why would I want to support them thru a company that doesn't even do their jobs?

So yeah if SHTF, the option of buying manga raws and either learning Japanese/putting them thru a translator for your own personal enjoyment is probably the most safest option... Hell, more money probably goes to the original artist anyways since you don't need a third company to handle the translation anymore.

tho ngl, gonna miss the social aspect of posting a manga online and people chatting about it and having some camaraderie
idk i think that's gonna be the biggest causality of MD if S really did HTF.

I mean sure, people can use 4chan, Reddit, etc. to discuss them but there's something upfront about how MD has the comments/forum section directly in the manga's page.

 

[Dor1tos]

As you have clearly shown and convinced us, piracy is not a service issue, it’s a I don’t want to pay issue.

You're right, I don't want to pay.
Convince me I should without appeals to emotion, because I'm not going to fork over any amount of money for substandard work, nor will I pay the gaijin tax that Japanese shops willing to ship internationally charge. The product that is currently available is simply not worth the cost from a pure math standpoint, and if a company wants to stick to its guns and overcharge then the product is free.

 

[xEternalSoul]

Also felt, but at the same time publishers are opening lines of communication and have been for a long time. If people are reading here en masse and not going to publishers en masse with ‘here’s a cool thing I would love this in my language’ then it’s wasted opportunity.

If the work is unlicensed and people go right to scans instead of lobbying for a license, publishers won’t assume a translation is necessary and nothing gets done.

I feel that your argument with RonBWL conveniently fails to acknowledge what he said about people who can't read Japanese/Korean not knowing what series are interesting. There's no point to 'lines of communication' when you can't use them to begin with. Do you really expect people to sift through tens of thousands of series that are possibly low quality slop to find something worth lobbying about? Titles that are already massive locally won't need lobbying because publishers would already be taking actions based on statistics alone. Other series that may be good but more niche; how would you expect people who do not know Japanese/Korean to find out about them to lobby for? Assuming that raws are available online and someone actually goes to MTL each series one by one to find a gem (which is ridiculous), you get a couple of outcomes:

1. MTL is at a pretty good quality enough to read, so why lobby for translation?
2. MTL is bad, you mistake a gem for a trash because you didn't understand the story.
3. MTL is bad, but you still see potential somehow in the story.

1st outcome is basically no different from the visibility benefits of piracy that he has been arguing for and you against, so unless you want to change your argument, we won't discuss how people arriving at the 1st outcome will lobby for translation. This leaves 3rd outcome as the only possibility for lobbying for translations. However not only do you have to convince other people that this story is good enough to lobby for despite you not fully understanding the bad translation, you also need to convince enough people to show active, visible support towards the publisher for them to consider taking any action. Not to mention how you would have to share the shitty MTL of this story to convince them which again leads back to piracy. You need to get pass (1)people who hate MTL and refuse to give it a shot, (2)people who despite your efforts don't share your opinion and think story is shit, and (3)people who are satisfied with the shitty MTL and don't want to lobby for a paid official one (looping back to 1st outcome). To emphasize again, the publishers would need a large enough showing in their 'lines of communication' to consider taking action. After all that has been said, do you still think these 'lines of communication' do anything without the contribution of scanlations? It's crazy effort to look at raws on your own but many people here fail to also mention the time involved. Unless you are a neet who also have no other hobbies, who has the time for this?

 

[T-sama]

Convince me I should without appeals to emotion

You got him there

 

[DreadOp]

Any news on a BM exporter? Hopefully they ping the discord when it comes out and don't just post it to the forum.

PS - Sorry, I'm sure this has been asked hundreds of times.

 

[Bok3tto]

Man, the amount of people i've seen excusing piracy and saying that reading manga should be free to read completely after this is kinda yucky to me. I agree that having them online helps some authors, but at the same time, you're kinda being entitled to consuming free books and not supporting anything. I always support the official release, but obviously, a lot of them that were hit do not have an official release. But legally, it's theirs. It's definitely a very grey area, and one that is hard to discuss. Scanlations are what made manga popular in the US at first, after all.


If I were an artist and hundreds of my hours were put online for free i'd be very upset, though.

Yeah, when you look at the timeline of when fan translations became a thing, like 50 years ago according to Wikipedia, it makes sense that passing these around would be helpful when resources were more limited—nobody would have imagined all the websites, payment platforms, methods of dissemination—but in 2025 it’s really more about calling attention to individual works than it is pushing the genre forward. Our taste for manga has far outpaced publishers’ reach at this point, but going ‘oh, well, I’ll do it myself‘ isn’t all the friendly, especially when you look at how in Japan publishers and fans have this crazy social contract where derivative works can be approved of on a case by case basis or you have Comiket, and stuff.

But also it’s REALLY annoying how westerners need to use proxys to get merch and Bezos is so busy sending Katy Perry into space he can’t figure out how to get Amazon JPN to accept our credit cards?

And yeah, the artist thing—artists get paid shit and get zero respect and we’re kinda perpetuating that. Like scanlation is fun and stuff but it’s not really kind to creators, you know?

 

[T-sama]

And yeah, the artist thing—artists get paid shit and get zero respect and we’re kinda perpetuating that. Like scanlation is fun and stuff but it’s not really kind to creators, you know?

You think Japanese publishers are kind to creators? lol

Saying that we are the ones perpetuating them getting paid shit and get zero respect literally makes no sense, cause buying official translation won't change Japanese publishers attitude.

If anything I honestly wonder how many mangakas actually get any money from westen released unless they're some big name, cause many mangaka apparently don't even make a living out of manga.

Honestly, I imagine mangaka gets more money if we buy raw than licensed version since the profit goes through less hands.

Or at least use Fanbox and whatnot if you really want them to get money.

 

[Dor1tos]

You got him there

That's usually all it ever comes down to; "they worked hard on it" or "they jeed to make a living" or some such nonsense, and it always ignores that everyone involved has their own agency.
Simply working on something doesn't entitle you to compensation for your efforts if you efforts amount to garbage. Most official releases are horribly localized and that localization strips them of some of the character that made the series popular in the first place, and no one should be paying for something that doesn't respect the work it's based off of.

 

[bondejeger]

You're right, I don't want to pay.
Convince me I should without appeals to emotion, because I'm not going to fork over any amount of money for substandard work, nor will I pay the gaijin tax that Japanese shops willing to ship internationally charge. The product that is currently available is simply not worth the cost from a pure math standpoint, and if a company wants to stick to its guns and overcharge then the product is free.

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.

 

[bondejeger]

That's usually all it ever comes down to; "they worked hard on it" or "they jeed to make a living" or some such nonsense, and it always ignores that everyone involved has their own agency.
Simply working on something doesn't entitle you to compensation for your efforts if you efforts amount to garbage. Most official releases are horribly localized and that localization strips them of some of the character that made the series popular in the first place, and no one should be paying for something that doesn't respect the work it's based off of.

You wouldn’t be paying regardless then. It’s an I don’t want to pay issue, not a service issue.