Site Update - 14th of May 2025

[Sprocket]

No grudge here, the decision is totally understandable
Just a bummer how fast this site's dying ;_;

 

[xEternalSoul]

So is the site abandoned already? Still no official word on what has been hit and all we have is a community list?

 

[Bentoki]

So is the site abandoned already? Still no official word on what has been hit and all we have is a community list?

I don't think its worth it for scannies to upload to the site and they don't seem to want them to. If you want to read twitter slop, this is your go-to site, otherwise go elsewhere prob.

 

[DreadOp]

Any word on a Bookmark exporter yet?

 

[hahanaho]

If you want to read twitter slop, this is your go-to site

I thought that's /r/manga. For the longest time I thought those short or one-page twitter comics bought reddit upvotes or something. But now I realize people just love slops.

 

[Bok3tto]

I have written several times about this, in this thread even.

Don’t beat yourself up here, it’s hard being Cassandra in the Void (heh. That would be an awesome manga title or a good band name)—particularly when there are like 55+ pages of comments. But yeah, there’s been a definite push to MTL by bigger publishers that I don’t love as someone who has publishing experience and values the human element in these works. It’s more work for editors but it’s also shit for readers. Guess it’s time to rage against the actual machine.

But really, not surprised. Soft skills and art are being devalued and scanlation contributes to the latter anyway—we’re working around the artists so can’t really be upset when the bigger companies do the same thing in the interest of getting content out faster or whatever. 🤷🏻

It's been two weeks since the dmca, is there any comment from the mangadex team? I've seen some brief q&a somewhere but can't find it anymore in announcement list, were there any extensive comments on the future of the site or maybe some general idea on what kind of manga got taken down and what didn't? Just wanna have a good overview of the damage done

Based on other comments it seems like their response has been to post their own DMCA guidelines and disavow responsibility for what is posted here going forward. Or something.

 

[Dragnos]

quick question: why does mangadex still have the support thing pop up? what happened to it?

 

[T-sama]

I do hope people are wrong about publishers dumping a lot of mtl in the future
But if it do happens I hope it at least fails miserably
Either because translation is obviously super bad
Or because the service is as usual overpriced garbage where we pay to read parts of a chapter
Chances are it'll be both if we go by how those services have gone so far

quick question: why does mangadex still have the support thing pop up? what happened to it?

Cause they still want people money? lol

Any word on a Bookmark exporter yet?

At this point I suspect it'll just not happen at all

 

[T-sama]

And another group I was following the work of has left MD even though they weren't hit with a DMCA... 😞

(Your Deer Friends for anyone wondering)

Can't blame them though, at this point uploading to MD means you accept that your release can and will be nuked without notice, and many simply chose not to risk :v

So is the site abandoned already? Still no official word on what has been hit and all we have is a community list?

I don't think its worth it for scannies to upload to the site and they don't seem to want them to. If you want to read twitter slop, this is your go-to site, otherwise go elsewhere prob.

To be honest I'm surprised it's not more groups leaving at this point
Just the dmca would already make some leave since I imagine everyone expects another attack this year
After all why would Kakao stop here?
But then they updated the upload page so now there's a checkbox to say you have permission from the publisher to upload here
And then comes the faq saying that Mangadex is under new management
Seriously, is it any surprised at all that not only some groups stopped uploading on Mangadex
But that some went as far as remove all translations they made and delete their group too?

The 7k dmca hit was big enough, but the upload page change and faq ensured we lost way way more series than 7k
If Mangadex was crippled due to the dmca the owners themselves finished killing it with the changes they made
One way or another Mangadex is dead in the long run

 

[chemy1347]

Official translations is your dad who left when you were a kid, then came home after you grew up and demanding you respect him as your father.

 

[shoujocon]

I do hope people are wrong about publishers dumping a lot of mtl in the future
But if it do happens I hope it at least fails miserably
Either because translation is obviously super bad
Or because the service is as usual overpriced garbage where we pay to read parts of a chapter
Chances are it'll be both if we go by how those services have gone so far

We? Didn't you say that you're not paying.

Most of the scanlations are low quality mtl anyway, people will read official rips instead of scanlations, not much difference for piracy readers.

 

[shoujocon]

Based on other comments it seems like their response has been to post their own DMCA guidelines and disavow responsibility for what is posted here going forward. Or something.

Remember that this specific defense only works if the site is working like YouTube. They have to actively cooperate with the copyright holders and remove copyright infringing stuff. If they don't it's just legal fluff bullshit anyway, you can't really just dodge the copyright law like that when you operate a site that's clearly for piracy.

 

[shoujocon]

To be honest I'm surprised it's not more groups leaving at this point
Just the dmca would already make some leave since I imagine everyone expects another attack this year
After all why would Kakao stop here?
But then they updated the upload page so now there's a checkbox to say you have permission from the publisher to upload here
And then comes the faq saying that Mangadex is under new management
Seriously, is it any surprised at all that not only some groups stopped uploading on Mangadex
But that some went as far as remove all translations they made and delete their group too?

The 7k dmca hit was big enough, but the upload page change and faq ensured we lost way way more series than 7k
If Mangadex was crippled due to the dmca the owners themselves finished killing it with the changes they made
One way or another Mangadex is dead in the long run

You say Kakao but it's not like Kakao can do anything about stuff they have no rights to, so it's not purely them not sure why fixation on Kakao only specifically?

 

[T-sama]

We? Didn't you say that you're not paying.

You know exactly what I meant so don't be a smartass

Most of the scanlations are low quality mtl anyway

Source: trust me bro

, people will read official rips instead of scanlations, not much difference for piracy readers.

Yes difference if the official translation is mtl garbage

You say Kakao but it's not like Kakao can do anything about stuff they have no rights to, so it's not purely them not sure why fixation on Kakao only specifically?

If you gotta ask that then I guess you didn't really follow this and the other discussion, multiple people already talked about why it's probably Kakao in a partnership with Japanese publishers

 

[shoujocon]

You know exactly what I meant so don't be a smartass

Source: trust me bro

Yes difference if the official translation is mtl garbage

If you gotta ask that then I guess you didn't really follow this and the other discussion, multiple people already talked about why it's probably Kakao in a partnership with Japanese publishers

What's your source then? Do you really believe that stuff that's uploaded on md or elsewhere is made by people who know original language? And are natives in English or other language they translate to? If you're in scanlation from the scanlator side at least a bit and see what's going on you know that most of the stuff is made by MTLers who aren't even English natives. There's absolutely no reason to believe that average scanlation isn't mtled stuff, really. Thinking that scanlation quality on average is anything good is simply deluding oneself.

There's also nothing preventing people from continuing scanlation of licensed series with official translations, plenty of shitty groups do this stuff.


About Kakao, you say it yourself, it's not just Kakao, Japanese publishers joined them, do you not blame them just Kakao?

 

[T-sama]

What's your source then? Do you really believe that stuff that's uploaded on md or elsewhere is made by people who know original language? And are natives in English or other language they translate to? If you're in scanlation from the scanlator side at least a bit and see what's going on you know that most of the stuff is made by MTLers who aren't even English natives. There's absolutely no reason to believe that average scanlation isn't mtled stuff, really. Thinking that scanlation quality on average is anything good is simply deluding oneself.

You're sure coming from a really weird angle just to bash other groups, really comes out of nowhere since nobody was talking about that except for Asura and the few other groups directly attacked by Kakao since they're known to be garbage and doing low quality work to get easy money from suckers.

Not to mention that's literally irrelevant, fan translation quality doesn't change the fact that official translation being mtl is unacceptable.

There's also nothing preventing people from continuing scanlation of licensed series with official translations, plenty of shitty groups do this stuff.

Never said otherwise.

About Kakao, you say it yourself, it's not just Kakao, Japanese publishers joined them, do you not blame them just Kakao?

Because Kakao basically started it and since last year has been taking action, like for example attack the people who worked on Tachiyomi.

 

[Manko-sensei]

Asking an English native to learn a language other than theirs is already a tall order, let alone those who get dizzy by using words with more than two syllables. And if we're considering nowadays ones, even with more resources they're likely to do a poorer task.

 

[shoujocon]

You're sure coming from a really weird angle just to bash other groups, really comes out of nowhere since nobody was talking about that except for Asura and the few other groups directly attacked by Kakao since they're known to be garbage and doing low quality work to get easy money from suckers.

Not to mention that's literally irrelevant, fan translation quality doesn't change the fact that official translation being mtl is unacceptable.

Never said otherwise.

Because Kakao basically started it and since last year has been taking action, like for example attack the people who worked on Tachiyomi.

I'm simply active in scanlator discussions which you're clearly aren't, you simply believe that average scanlation is made by people that actually know Japanese and speak English natively, etc.

You say Kakao started it, but still the Japanese publishers tagged along it's not like Kakao forced them.

 

[shoujocon]

Asking an English native to learn a language other than theirs is already a tall order, let alone those who get dizzy by using words with more than two syllables. And if we're considering nowadays ones, even with more resources they're likely to do a poorer task.

It's actually funny that there's not that much English natives translators really, they already know English as natives and it's just one language to learn for them. There's plenty of translators with English as their second language and Japanese as their third for example.

 

[Bok3tto]

Remember that this specific defense only works if the site is working like YouTube. They have to actively cooperate with the copyright holders and remove copyright infringing stuff. If they don't it's just legal fluff bullshit anyway, you can't really just dodge the copyright law like that when you operate a site that's clearly for piracy.

‘Remember that specific defense only works’—gurl, don’t need a lecture was just reporting back what was in other comments, in the end totally agree that whole legal fluff thing is bullshit.

LikeManga monetized our shit and their ‘DMCA’ is ‘We don’t own anything we’re not selling something we made we’re reposting something someone else did so you can’t touch us’ like are you fucking serious with this entitled boy energy? 😂

Asking an English native to learn a language other than theirs is already a tall order, let alone those who get dizzy by using words with more than two syllables. And if we're considering nowadays ones, even with more resources they're likely to do a poorer task.

Yeah, like all sarcasm aside not everyone has an acuity for languages, the time, or patience, all most of us know is ‘I want this thing and it’s hard to get legally and The Man won’t listen so fuck it we ball’.

But back to the resources: In 1970 when Wikipedia says fan translations first became ‘A Thing’ the first email was sent in 1971, online communities were still a few years off in 1975, and the first flatbed scanner for personal use was commercially available in like 1984 (hah.) but MTL apps were still years off. So like people were buying Japanese books, cracking the spines like your mom cracked your dad’s while she was making you, and using dictionaries and shit. Maybe talking to Japanese people, I dunno I wasn’t there.

In 2025 we literally have all the resources to get what we want legally we just lack a fundamental understanding of accountability and publishers have reinforced that by playing nice instead of meeting us where we live.

Like we all know this DMCA takedown is not going to stop the scans from being passed around and new ones being created, we’re just not interested in fixing the problem so we’re perpetuating it. 🤷🏻