It's not that I, as a burgerclap, particularly mind paying $10-$12 USD to buy a licensed, translated physical copy. (Which, by the way, is a HUGE privilege for me in particular to have - affordable access. ) And yeah, I might grab the volumes when they go on sale, or when I get a coupon from an online retailer. I do like having a physical copy. (Except when the publisher dies, thanks for expiring before my high-school self could finish "Grove Adventure RAVE" Tokyopop.)
What gets me is the existential question, "will I care two years from now when we finally get to this point and potentially beyond?"
Yeah, I'm interested now, but life happens. If I have to sit around, waiting and half-caring for two years, can I even say that I won't have something else I'd rather buy?
This is the one things I'm not a fan of in terms of the global north's model of manga distribution, is that they are consistently outperformed in speed and quality by amateurs, very frequently doing it for free. As soon as that license got picked up, the NA publisher should be digitally simulpublishing the current chapters on a one week-delay. They can't pretend people who have been reading scanlations in parity to the Japanese market aren't a market they're trying to serve. Even Jump comics knows that you're only going to keep people interested in your product by making it constantly available. And while I find mangaplus a nightmare to navigate, having that available from the publisher communicates to me that they know they at least need to make an effort.
OH also, F*** not giving the manga artist a couple of cents (or more) off of every non-Japanese volume that gets sold. Whoever said five or so pages back in the comments to contribute to an artists patreon, or comparable, so that publishers, who's only ability is having a large amounts of capital to invest, can become less of a thing, is right.
