UTOON

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Ah, yes. Nothing says "we are a legitimate scanlation team" like putting a bunch of articles on your blog that sound like they were written by an AI. Or by someone only somewhat fluent in English. Which might be worse.

Also, you'd think they'd want to cover their tracks a little better, if they were trying to dodge a C&D, instead of reuploading their old chapters. Or, you know, change the watermarks. Or at the very least have the courtesy to upload the same versions of their old chapters to their new site. But no, instead they seem to have ripped them off some aggregator...that adds it's own watermarks. Classy.

...Then again, that does have me questioning if this is really ManwhaFreak (surely they'd have the original files), or just someone pretending to be them, so maybe that's more feature than bug. Though why you'd want to pretend to be a rather despised group that just shut down, I haven't the foggiest. I just hope that, if it is a copycat, they don't mimic how prudish the original group was. We don't need even more censored cleavage and thighs, thanks.
 
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...Then again, that does have me questioning if this is really ManwhaFreak (surely they'd have the original files), or just someone pretending to be them, so maybe that's more feature than bug. Though why you'd want to pretend to be a rather despised group that just shut down, I haven't the foggiest. I just hope that, if it is a copycat, they don't mimic how prudish the original group was. We don't need even more censored cleavage and thighs, thanks.
took a quick look at their website, mostly same layout (even with that radio widget thingy). there's also few locked/paid chapters already uploaded.... yeah it's definitely them rebranded, rather than someone else taking inspiration or pretending.
 
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It's the same group and they are not doing a very good job of covering their tracks. Look at the Commissioning Guidelines page on their mangas, you'll see the same set of rules about them not accepting NSFW series, dropping the work if you don't pay up, etc
https://files.catbox.moe/kd7z73.jpg

And I looked in their discord chat. A few members are complaining about having paid for "coins" which is their virtual currency for the paywalled content for MF, but it's not being transferred to utoon (which also has paywalled content).

The flow of the conversation doesn't make much sense because many of the comments have already been censored by a Discord moderator.
https://files.catbox.moe/aa54vp.jpeg
https://files.catbox.moe/qqa00p.jpeg
 
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took a quick look at their website, mostly same layout (even with that radio widget thingy). there's also few locked/paid chapters already uploaded.... yeah it's definitely them rebranded, rather than someone else taking inspiration or pretending.
Oh, I know. But I'm still baffled by why they'd rip their own work from an aggregator site, complete with additional watermarks, then upload it to what is ostensibly a website unrelated to their old group, unchanged. No editing, no attempts to hide anything, and, to make matters worse, out of all the options on the table, they chose a site which has awful image quality. One that, let me reiterate, adds it's own watermarks. So everyone who reads will know exactly where they got it.

Why? Just...why? Even if they deleted their original files for some reason, and didn't have the foresight to snag them from their old site before nuking it, Mangadex is literally right here. If they had to download them off another site, why not one with clean images? But no. They picked the worst, most obviously ripped source they could have. That displays what I will charitably describe as a staggering level of incompetence. I am equally impressed and depressed by their abilities.
 
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Oh, I know. But I'm still baffled by why they'd rip their own work from an aggregator site, complete with additional watermarks, then upload it to what is ostensibly a website unrelated to their old group, unchanged. No editing, no attempts to hide anything, and, to make matters worse, out of all the options on the table, they chose a site which has awful image quality. One that, let me reiterate, adds it's own watermarks. So everyone who reads will know exactly where they got it.

Why? Just...why? Even if they deleted their original files for some reason, and didn't have the foresight to snag them from their old site before nuking it, Mangadex is literally right here. If they had to download them off another site, why not one with clean images? But no. They picked the worst, most obviously ripped source they could have. That displays what I will charitably describe as a staggering level of incompetence. I am equally impressed and depressed by their abilities.
report them for the excessive use of watermarks... aggregator website watermarks arnt allowed by site rules.
edit: apparently they removed the excessive use of watermarks from their site rules. and UTOONS is currently an aggregator website pretty much due to everything you said so hopefully MD does something here for once regarding this group.
 
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It baffling that Mangadex still allows this group (manhwafreak) to be in the site, despise them creating alt groups to evade blocks (so they can try to scam advertise their paywalled shit under a new name) and the freaking defacing of chapters (aka censorship).
 
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It baffling that Mangadex still allows this group (manhwafreak) to be in the site, despise them creating alt groups to evade blocks (so they can try to scam advertise their paywalled shit under a new name) and the freaking defacing of chapters (aka censorship).
should start reporting those chapters for troll entries to be moved to their own section, then we can ignore those. since i really dont see this as anything other than trolling at this point by them.
 
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When I started seeing this group around it was kinda confusing, since it was obviously related to manhwafreak from how it was previously nonexistent and suddenly picked up all their series.

Kinda looking forward to the next chapter of something where they delete a character's cleavage randomly, to see if that's what makes anyone go "hey wait a minute, these are those guys!"
 
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Is there a thread somewhere that lists them and their derivatives?
I know Freakscans and Freakcomic are ones of theirs and I suspect RiohanLibert is, too. Didn't know this was as well.
 
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It baffling that Mangadex still allows this group (manhwafreak) to be in the site, despise them creating alt groups to evade blocks (so they can try to scam advertise their paywalled shit under a new name) and the freaking defacing of chapters (aka censorship).
I don't think they just changed names to purely evade blocks, at least this time (unlike with Freak Scans). They took down their website, Patreon, Ko-fi, Discord, pretty much everything with the manwhafreak name on it, and picked a brand new name with no relation to their prior one. I suspect they may have gotten hit with a Cease & Desist from someone official.
 
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when i saw many of the same titles and inconsistently censored cleavage i knew this was manhwafreak
question is why is there an aggregate site called manhwafreake engaging in the same thing that led to the whole "lets censor cleavage and put chapters behind a paywall" premise
imposters?
hopefully imposters
 
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Riobahn had a release with Utoon watermarks, pretty safe to say they're all Manwhafreak.
 
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still a shitty group with ridiculous censorship. i wish i could somehow report them for copywrite (on their site) since they are profiting on something without licenses
 

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