I mean, it's pretty clear that these people don't understand that the only way that we ever would have heard of these mangaka in the US is through illegal websites. It's obviously targeting the Japanese audience. That being said, don't they have libraries in Japan like the US? Is reading a manga at the library piracy too? People like owning physical copies, that will always exist. The reason that e-readers didn't become a smashing success like people originally thought is testament to that. People like physical books.
I also can tell this is obviously not targeting American readers, saying you can buy it for 500 yen. That's like less that $4. Digital copies of manga here cost like $8 minimum. Fuck I went to buy Iruma yesterday and they have upped physical copies to like $13 each, the cheapest being $10 from whoever does Frieren, bless them. Seven seas and Kondasha are especially bad at making overly expensive manga. And then you have the quality of the copy as toilet bound hinako shows the worst paper quality on the planet, and finally some series that we have to hope for the anime to do well for us to ever see in this country (like maidens, mysteries and mommy milkers mysterious disappearences.) Or we can just get the fierce mononokean or Kong ming that are licenced but will never print. Or oli oli soup that I know will never ever get a translation and I can't even buy on Japanese Amazon.
This is also just manga, I haven't even gotten to the cesepool that is light novel translations. Holy fuck, they have the nerve to charge $18 a book for some twilight level English at best and then have like 10 volumes. We don't even get pay per chapter aspect that drives that market in Japan, only unfiltered crap
Just ranting because I spend a lot on manga in English and japanese and still don't have what I want and rely on "illegal sites" I know I'm preaching to the choir. Whatever, we should ask people if they like Shakespeare because we never would have it if some early pirates didn't sit in a play and write the words down