No more manga scanlations?

That's from Zabi, onemanga's admin or something.
I checked mangastream, but didn't see anything about it.

My friend, the one who alerted me about this, said

I'm checking a scanlating forum right now for more news, but nothing yet.

Opinions?

 

From what I was told, only onemanga is being closed down. A friend told me that English companies are complaining that onemanga doesn't leave profit for them. As for other websites, I'm not too sure. If every other website is being closed down as well then...we'll have to wait until the volumes are out in the US which will suck.​

 

Damn if that happens what will i do for my Bleach and naruto manga! Japan is so far ahead then the US . <_<

 

From what I've seen, it seems like Onemanga is the only one that is being shut down at the moment. It really sucks that they are also removing manga regardless of their licensing status because while Onemanga does host some of the bigger names in manga like Naruto, Bleach, One Piece, Fullmetal Alchemist and etc., it also hosts those small and almost unknown titles that will never make it to the US and I like some of those. Also people don't really have to worry about waiting for the volumes to come out in the US because Onemanga only hosts the scans. Just because the hosting site is gone, that doesn't mean that scanlation groups out there will just disappear. Manga scanlations have always been up for download, people just need to find them.

 

Ugh if they close down Onemanga.com I will be destroyed D: I love to read manga on there and if I have to wait for them to come out in the US I will be pissed because Japan is so far ahead than the US

 

The main website is use for Bleach and Naruto is MangaStream ( pretty small site not much manga just Bleach and Naruto and a few others) And for others I use MangaFox. I don't use OneManga unless I totally HAVE to. I hope it doesnt have to happen to any of the other sites! *fingers crossed*

 

Yeah, I saw that today when I was looking at some Bleach scans. If this is any consolation, the Bleach and Naruto ones generally can be found Wednesday nights by googling it, since Japan is already into Thursday by then. I use MangaFox and BleachExile. I haven't used OneManga in a while. But, like someone said above me, people will still put these up for download and they'll continue to do illegal things on the internet. Just snoop around a little bit.

 

This started at the start of June with high up publishers forming some sort of council to confront scanlation on the net. I find it unusual that One Manga have started this now. What Mangafox have done is that they took down all the mainstream manga i.e. death note, naruto, etc and left everything else.

 

I know a few people near me who will be absolutely devastated, but I'm one of those people who will buy manga and anime, because I like being supportive, so I don't use onemanga too often. Still, I use it to see what some manga are like, so it will be hard on me for that.

 

Well it has been officially confirmed that onemanga will shut down at the end of the month.=(
To be honest I mainly used onemanga to find unlicensed manga that probably will never be published in English.
I will miss that connivance, but I defiantly see where the publishing companies are coming from.
I'll just look elsewhere for interesting manga to read, like my local library which I know has manga volumes.

 

Drat, and I go there to read manga, too. I agree with some of you are saying, it's too long of a wait and too expensive to buy the manga in the U.S. You only get about five chapters every six months to a year. (Sorry if my numbers are off, I haven't bought a manga in ages.)

Onemanga and other websites are a lot more convenient for people like me who like to keep updated on the Japanese versions of the manga. I used one manga a lot, I guess I'll have to find a new place to go and read it.

Kind of reminds me of the music industry and the whole downloading issue about ten years ago. IPod solved the issues a few ways with the IStore, but it still happens a lot. I guess it'll have to be a standard now that'll happen with manga too.

 

Just because you CAN do something doesn't mean you SHOULD. Still, this crackdown wouldn't have started if the people that simply download and ignore the English releases would buy the English releases as well as download.

That is the only disagreement I have with this whole situation. I've read REALLY good series that have little chance to be licensed and its because of scanlators that I was able to do so. There's some good stuff that will never be licensed, but at the same time, it is still illegal, even if it is laughable for the Japanese distributors to expect their foreign fans to import everything they want that isn't available in their home countries.

Still, I'm not surprised. I was hearing rumors about this three months ago (not to mention that the rumors apparently started floating around almost a year ago) and started seeing the effects at the beginning of June. Mangafox has purged most of their licensed series, Mangatraders has always purged on request, Mangahelpers is trying to sort things out with the Japanese distributors to get unlicensed work to foreign fans and One Manga/1000Manga is closing their doors on manga hosting. I am happy to see Mangahelpers taking such measures to try and make scanlations legit, while Mangafox has apparently changed their policy of "purge until the distributors aren't watching" to "purge and keep purged."

Of course, it doesn't change the fact that most communities are crying about how the distributors are corrupt and greedy when they can't afford to NOT be greedy. In my experience on this forum, I'm not really surprised by the fact that most people here can see the point of what the distributors are doing, but most communities are crying about how manga is overpriced, too hard to find or that there isn't enough variety available.

What those people don't realize is that the anime and manga industry is only about 2% of all entertainment. If things kept going the way they were, the industry would die. Of course, the common response to this is "I don't care if the industry dies, it just means that the corrupt corporations can't get in the way." Well, if anyone thinks like that, they're idiots. The reason why Japanese distributors tolerate scanlations is because its free advertising to nations outside of Japan. If the foreign anime and manga industry were to die, then the Japanese distributors would have no reason to tolerate scanlations and would likely start cracking down as scanlations are also breaking Japanese and international copyright laws.

Really, there's no other fanbase with more entitlement issues I've ever encountered.

 

I can of course see why they'd do this, but it's still a shame for those people who live in areas where they don't sell mangas, or are at least very hard to find. However, they pretty much have to do this, they really need that money.

 

Hmm... Now that I think about it, I think I heard a few months ago from a friend of mine who's trying to get into the V/A industry that Anime's are having the same problem.

They don't have enough money to afford the actors and other such things. It was especially a worry in the Video Game industry. I thought of it as a rumor, it probably is, still. But if Manga is having problems, probably later on the anime will, too.

I'm about the same on anime as with manga. Though anime I'm more distant from due to all the fillers that come with it. I watch it on Youtube because of how expensive it is for people like me who don't have easy access to Bleach every week.

 

Well, there's actually some legal alternatives to Youtube for anime streaming. FUNimation puts quite a bit of stuff on their website and Japanese distributors work with Crunchyroll to simulcast streams of stuff like Naruto and Bleach. All you have to put up with is some advertisements. The ad revenue helps pay for the streams and the streams bring the anime to an audience that otherwise has problems watching. Hell, Crunchyroll and FUNimation's website are a lot easier to use than Youtube, even.

 

yeah i could totally see why they're doing this. Sad to say it was gonna happen sooner or later .

I've read some of the mangas online but only like 3 , I buy most of the ones i like . Yeah they're expensive but it helps the industry know that u like a series and that they're able to obtain other titles for us to read . Because like anime , 3 major went out of bussines due to the lack of sales or money to finace the projects . ( Geneon , ADV and possibly BangZoom , no more dubbing, if things dont get better ) Some of them had some great series. Sad to let them go .

 

Actually, while anime is pretty damn expensive (which is why I mostly stick to manga), manga is actually quite cheap. While manga is a bit more expensive outside of Japan due to license and translation costs, its still dirt cheap, especially when you compare it to American comics.

For example, a single issue of Green Lantern will cost either $3 or $4, depending on how generous DC was being that particular month. This means that, since Brightest Day is always $3 an issue and a bi-weekly release, I spend about $15 to $18 a month on four series. Compare this to the English release of Shonen Jump, which is, if I remember correctly, either $10 or $5 a month, depending on if you subscribe or not. Shonen Jump currently serializes four series, the big three, plus Stan Lee (Yes, that Stan Lee*) and Hiroyuki Takei's Karakuridoji Ultimo. For about the same amount of content, if not more, you're spending $5 to $13 less.

But let's forget about single issues and magazines (which there really should be more of) for a moment. A trade paperback, which is usually between six and twelve issues compiled, costs between $15 and $40 (or more if you're taking collector's editions into account), depending on size (Green Lantern Rebirth is $15 for the compiled six issue mini-series while the paperback version of the twelve issue Watchmen is $25), cover type ($25 for the paperback Watchmen, $40 for the awesome hardcover), cover art (most comic shops will charge extra for variant covers as they are meant as collector's covers with the chances of getting one being one in 15, one in 25 and so on and so forth,**) publisher (DC's six issue trade paperbacks are usually $15, Dark Horse six issue paperbacks are usually $20) or edition (Absolute Green Lantern: Rebirth is $75, which is insane for any trade outside of the biggest collector editions... Which Absolute Rebirth is.) Since manga rarely, if ever, comes in hardcover, collector's editions or with variant covers, let's cut those out. Let's look at the $15 to $25 paperbacks. Compare these to single volumes of manga, which are generally between $8 and $15, which generally depends on the publisher. Now let's add in the multi-volume omnibuses priced between $15 and $20. Of course, to be fair, manga is rarely printed in color and is also almost always printed in a smaller format than western comics, but those variables aside, manga is actually quite a bit cheaper than western comics and really not that expensive in actuality.



* Not that it really matters since Stan Lee only have the original idea while Takei does the art and actual writing. Not to mention that Ultimo's not that good anyway.

** I once saw a variant cover for Green Lantern: Sinestro Corps War Volume 1 at the book store priced the same as the normal cover, so this is something of a comic shop trait. This is because bookstores don't really care as much about collectors as the comic stores do, nor do a lot of collectors go to the book store for their comics (I usually only search Barnes and Noble or Borders for graphic novels when I can't find the one I'm looking for at the comic shop.)