It's been almost three weeks since the the first issue of Shonen Jump Alpha, the VIZ Media's digital-only manga weekly version of Shonen Jump Magazine made its debut. Many North American readers greeted this new arrival warmly, while some were skeptical, and others were downright hostile. This was pretty much how any new product is greeted in anime / manga fandom. I've yet to see a single launch of a new title or publishing initiative that was met with 100% approval from fans.
But emotions ramped up considerably over the weekend, when scanlation website Mangastream posted an announcement on their site, telling readers that they would be pulling down and discontinuing their translation/posting of seven popular Shonen Jump manga titles, including several featured in Shonen Jump Alpha.
Needless to say, several fans who were used to getting their free 'fix' of the latest chapters of Naruto, Bleach and One Piece from Mangastream were surprised and disappointed. Other fans became downright angry, and unleashed their fury upon the Shonen Jump Alpha comments section, VIZ Media's Facebook page, and Twitter feeds with comments expressing their confusion and frustration.
As I tend to do, I jumped into the fray with a flurry of comments and conversation on Twitter over the past day. But if you're on Twitter, you know that there's a limit to what you can say in 140 characters. So in case you missed all the fun, here's my 'editorial' about the whole Mangastream vs. Shonen Jump Alpha kerfuffle.
Essentially, I try to share some background on the situation to get newbies up to speed with the controversy, share a few choice verbatims left by fans on VIZ Media's webpages and via Twitter, and expand upon the things I said on Twitter with my take on the situation.
Anyway, give my rant a read, and when you're done -- why not share what you think? Add your comments below and let's see where this conversation takes us!
Oh? You haven't checked out Shonen Jump Alpha yet? You can check out a free preview on VIZManga.com.
Image credits: TORIKO © 2008 by Mitsutoshi Shimabukuro/SHUEISHA Inc. / © Mangastream
Comments
I think the big reason for the outcry is people do not like having stuff taken from them, and the big argument is why take it? This I think boils down to perception, and perception is anecdotal, and anecdotal is bullshit until facts are involved.
Scanners perceive themselves as an ancillary force for the market, providing the kind of exposure and outreach at no direct cost.
But Viz sees them as a direct competitor, providing their illegitimate service as an alternative to their own, taking away their market share of their product.
And what do they get out of this? Sure it has been illegal for MS to have been doing what they were doing, providing nothing for the creator other than a bunch of people who have read his work. At the same time now you have this contingent of angry fans who are now possibly discouraged from buying product because now they have lost all interest.
In the end the outcry is because people don’t like stuff being taken away from them. The same happens when TP shut down, or when Viz stopped Gintama.
And as there is no direct impact MS feasibly had against Viz (more likely against WSJA but not for their print runs), the benefit of this is also unmeasurable.
What we do see a bunch of angry fans. Grats, now you have an angry fanbase to work with. Your customers are in that mess. Have fun figuring out how to sell to that crowd now.
*sigh*
First, I want to say that I appreciate Viz and Shueisha’s efforts to make their titles available to fans as soon as they legally can.
That said, the manga publishing industry is years behind the anime industry in making English-translated works available to the public.
Scanulations and fansubbing are equally troublesome, illegal and prevalent. Yet through the incredibly arduous efforts of organizations like Crunchyroll, Viz Anime, Funimation, Nico Nico Douga and The Anime Network, many shows are simulcast hours after their premiere on Japanese television. Most of them are made available for free viewing, with ads, a week after they air. These include shows that are unlicensed by American anime distributors.
My questions to Shueisha and other manga publishers are:
1. Why they won’t try ad-supported models for their manga properties?
2. Why are we limited to titles that have been officially licensed in the U.S.?
3. If I want to know what the latest arc in Gintama, Beezlebub, Sket Dance or any one of numerous unlicensed or dropped manga series are about legally, why do I have to wait until they are animated and released on Crunchyroll to find out?
Viz has first dibs on many popular manga titles due to their backing by Shueisha and Shogakukan. So if they choose to drop a title, as they did with Gintama in 2011, North American fans have no recourse to read these titles legally at all. That feels almost monopolistic to me.
I hope I’m being reasonable. I know that the anime industry and the manga industry are fundamentally different. I just really do not understand how we can narrow the gap between what fans want and whats profitable for Viz, especially when Viz seems to have the final say over which Shueisha and Shogakukan titles are published and/or made legally available in North America.
You fail to realize that at least for me, I was never going to buy the volumes either way. I got into Bleach precisely because it was hosted. It’s not money VIZ was missing out on. It’s not ‘either I read it online, or buy the product’– If the product wasn’t there for free, I would never have seen it. I would never have bought it (not that interested, too many volumes, too overwhelming, too much money). Therefore, I wouldn’t have become a fan, or even enjoyed it. I spent thousands of dollars on official Bleach merchandise thanks to Mangastream. This is money VIZ would otherwise not have made.
I actually watched Fade to Black online in 2009. Wanted to buy but there was no official NA release date for OVER FOUR YEARS. As long as things like this continue to occur, VIZ has no freaking chance in hell to combat pirates.
Free manga online, IS the ‘try before you buy’ and never underestimate the power and importance of this. If you have a good product people are interested in, people WILL give you money. Web comics are a PRIME example of this. To me, offering it free is a completely viable option. I personally think this is the future. You make money on merchandise, collectors packs, box office, cds, dvds, etc. People who like the product are willing to spend money. The only reason VIZ will get subscribers is because they’ll be riding on Mangastream’s success. Mangastream got people hooked on Bleach, VIZ will keep them. You bet your sweet bibby that had online scanlators not existed, VIZ wouldn’t even have a 1/4 of the subscribers they will now have.
Besides, as a rule, they’ve already lost my money. I’m in Australia. I can’t subscribe to their online JUMP. I won’t be buying any more Bleach merchandise, either. Joke’s on them, I guess.
This is a great article. Very, very informative. I just hope people eventually understand this perspective, that the world isn’t as simple or black and white as they make it seem. These things are very complicated and its unfortunate then that many of the people that hurt these series don’t realize they are doing it. Hopefully people can come away from reading this with a different perspective.
The truth is without sites like mangastream, mangafox, and onemanga the American manga industry would not be a fraction of what it is today. This is how it has been since the beginning of manga’s introduction to America. Yes they provided an unauthorized service, but they also provided free exposure with easy access to all who are interested with no cost to the publisher. People who would spend money to read the manga still buy comics to support the artist as well as buy items, clothing, games, movies, etc. They should learn from and learn to work with these talented people, not piss them off.
I find it funny that these “Japanese readers” are actually trying to defend the translations… How much Japanese do you really understand? I have refuse to buy official English copies of the manga due to translations that I simply cannot force myself to read. I’ve been buying my manga direct from Japan for over a year now and my Japanese skill has vastly improved because of it. It was nice to have fan translations to fall back on and to see chapters that are being released in the magazine in Japan before they came out in tankoban format, but I would rather give up that luxury and fight for others that don’t understand Japanese than give in and support this.
And no, I do not feel sorry for Mangastream. I feel nothing but awe and pride in the quality of work and service they’ve provided for years. I feel sorry for the fans, the artists, and most of all I feel sorry that Viz doesn’t have the common sense nor skill to provide a comparable product to those who are willing to work for free.
I find your argument one sided. Linking to Alpha’s website at the end didn’t help. This whole ordeal wouldn’t be a problem if the for-pay service was as good as the free version, but it’s not even close. Assuming that pissed off fans will pay for a service they used to get for free when quality is no where near equal is just plain stupid.
Sadly your argument is terribly one sided, and appears to be based on already formed opinions, that refuse to allow you to look at all facets of the argument.
Nikki, mangafox doesn’t scanslate anything, in fact a lot of scanslators are against it.
There are a lot of things I want to say about this issue both as a manga fan and a scanlator. As a fan, I say true fans show their support through rewarding creators with money. I think if you are reading scanlations, whether you read Japanese or not, you have an obligation to buy at least one volume of the Japanese version of your favorite series. You have the translation, so the “I don’t know Japanese” excuse isn’t valid.
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As for the reading scanlations as a try before you buy option, reading 1 or 2 volumes of a multi-volume series in scanlation is understandable. However, reading all 59+ volumes of something online is not “try before you buy”. There is no reason to have an entire series online in scanlation when the series is licensed and available for purchase.
As for the quality of a translation, if you don’t know Japanese, then you have no authority on the matter of Japanese to English translation. However, you can complain about the English adaptation in terms of word choice and flow. I admit that I continued to learn Japanese because after learning a little Japanese and seeing all the stuff that was edited out of Americanized versions, I felt cheated. At the same time, though, I realized many scanlations had numerous errors. I felt that I had to learn Japanese in order to fully enjoy manga. I’m not one of those people who’s gonna tell you to learn Japanese if you really love manga. It took me 3-years and $7200 in lessons at UCSD Extension just to get to an intermediate level. However, what I’m going to say is the Japanese is hard to learn for native English speakers (and vice versa), so please recognize the difficulty and appreciate the effort. Viz is doing its best to write in a way that appeals to American sensibilities. If you don’t like the English Adaptation, then please let the license holders know and be specific. To be constructive, quote a line and then suggest a better way to write something. Just don’t tell someone “it sucks” or “I hate it”. Feedback like that is not actionable.
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Yes, I realize that scanslators rely on leaked manga for their content, but they were still only ahead of Japan by a few days. They usually would release the chapter on Thursday, while it officially came out in Japan on Monday. Are you telling me that VIZ can’t work something out with Shounen Jump Japan so that they can provide the English version of the chapter on the same day or at most a few days after the Japanese release? Yes, I realize two weeks is far better than what we’ve gotten in the past, but I can’t imagine its too much to ask for them to be faster, especially since they’ve gotten to the point where they can provide subbed versions of the anime in the same week they release. Really, this is the only big issue for me.
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As for MangaStream itself, as a scanlator I believe groups need to be humble and they need to promote the purchase of legitimate manga in order to support the artists. Groups exist at the mercy of the mangaka and the publishers. When they ask you to stop the first time, then stop and move onto another series. There’s no need to cause a bunch of drama and strut about, especially when to trained eyes, there is no reason to brag. It reflects poorly on the scanlation community in general and thwarts the cause of more legitimate manga for everyone. The original point of scanlation was to make unknown manga series and mangaka visible so these works could get licensed and we can give our favorite mangaka money. Once a series is licensed, our job as scanlators is done. Yes, I understand the frustration of being years behind in a series and in my mind, have the latest chapters of series that years behind will not have such a big impact. However, still having volumes online that are available for purchase is not helpful.
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On the subject of legitimate digital manga, we are still at the forefront. As someone who in her past work life experienced a major Japanese publisher from the technology side, I know that the digital transition is something that has been looming over the publishers heads for at least 7 to 8 years. There are business and cultural forces in Japan at play here. It’s not very easy to unravel a system that has worked for many years and the Japanese, as a culture, are not historically good at change or accepting risk. My feeling is if you want to accelerate the digital transformation, then support the current efforts. Show the Japanese publishers that there is money to be made with very little risk. In other words, send a message with your dollars and warm encouragement.
As for the future of scanlation, I hope for the day that scanlators and publishers can work together to provide manga in every language for a reasonable price in a user friendly manner.
Why would I want to pay for something (forget translation, speed and US-only issues) that I don’t even get keep??? It’s ridiculous!
btw, “Soul Eater Not!” is not a sequel, it’s a side story.
Sadly, the comments seem to resolve around creators/publishers/distributors asserting their right to control what happens to their creations versus fans asserting their right to control what happens to someone else’s creations. This leads me to conclude that fans couldn’t care less about the actual creators of the works they say they love.
As a fan I get disappointed when I can’t get my favorite manga. So scans are helpful in that regard, and I have discovered a lot of manga I wouldn’t have known existed. But, unlike webcomics, these scans spit in the face of creators by telling them “We don’t care what you want, we are going to steal the stuff which you pour your heart & soul into and do something with it that you don’t want us to do with it.” Then, when people stop publishing manga because it’s not profitable, these are the same people who complain that these companies aren’t translating and printing EVERY title they license.
Here’s an idea: Go get a job and work 10-16 hours/day for years and let me know where you live. I’ll break into your house and steal your money and everything you’ve bought during those years and give it to middle-class kids who deserve it only because breathing entitles them to free stuff just because they “want it for free”. Then I’ll listen to your complaints of how disastrous your life is because people aren’t letting you steal because you somehow deserve the privilege of reading free manga.
I really enjoyed reading the twitter debate over the past few days. I am also pleased with the direction things are going with digital publication and look forward to seeing how things shake out. I guess I just have a few points that I don’t think anyone has raised yet.
1 – To the scanlators. I guess I am a bit uncomfortable that they are doing this work for free. They have a skill and talent that are being used to put money in someone else’s pocket. I realize there is a feeling of accomplishment/pride, etc. But that doesn’t pay the rent.
2 – Someone is making money on scanlations. And it isn’t the mangaka who use their time/talent to create the product people want so deparately. And it isn’t the scanlators who are using their time/talent to meet the demand.
3. To the people who read scanlations. Would they want to do work and not get paid? Would they go to a restaurant, eat, and then just walk out? It takes time and effort to make and translate manga. Those people who put in that time and effort deserve to earn money off it.
Basicially, I hate seeing people do work and not get paid, and then someone else makes money off it.
@Nikki: When you say this is how its been since beginning of manga’s introduction to America ~ exactly what time are you talking about? When was Mangafox founded, 2007? Mangastream, 2009? Onemanga, 2006? Naruto was a hit for Viz in 2004 ~ how exactly did they do that before they were founded? The reality is that the scanlation scene had much smaller reach before the founding and growing popularity of the big scanlation aggregator sites that you are used to.
And scanlators used to have similar ethics to fansubbers, dropping series that got licensed, even if they were YEARS behind (as they almost always were).
@Cooper ~ talk about fan entitlement syndrome! There was a time when fans complained about having it “like in Japan”. “Like in Japan” for manga is a 200p weekly serial on cheap paper for $3 or so. People THROW THEM AWAY when they are done with them! If they want to collect, they collect tankoubon. $0.50/wk to $1/wk for six chapters is only POSSIBLE because the royalties are set at temporary access rates. Just like in Japan: if you want to collect the series, by the volumes.
However, Viz does not get off scot free here, either.
(1) Pricing. The price LEVELS are reasonable, but the choices between per issue or annual subscription is silly. Crunchyroll has month, quarter, and annual rates ~ SJAlpha should have per issue, quarterly, and annual subscription plans. If per issue is $1/wk, and per year is about $0.50/wk, then quarterly ought to be about $0.75/wk … so the natural price is $9.95 for a three month subscription.
(2) Manga reader. Anybody with a massive screen is fine with the most primitive possible reader. However, when the screen gets smaller, things get worse. Viz’s manga reader needs:
* an option to lock the zoom, so page turns do not reset the zoom to full page
* in locked zoom, when zooming up or down, if the inside (panelside) corner of the top and right margins get pushed offscreen, its panned back to the top right corner of the display
* in locked zoom, same thing on a NextPage page turn
* in locked zoom, if the inside corner of the bottom and left margin gets pushed offscreen by PrevPage, its panned back to the bottom left corner of the display
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That level of page reader would be excellent service from a scanlation aggregator, since you don’t expect as much from a bootleg site. Manually sliding around each page on a smaller screen device ~ well, hey! its free! And if you don’t like it, find a torrent download and get a screen reader you like better! (eg, PerfectViewer is about as good as a manual zoom and slide viewer gets, and I use it for public domain golden age comics).
But a profession level site ought to deliver a higher quality experience:
* There should be two settings for page transitions: “single page” and “four corner”. On a small screen device, single page would be the el-cheapo screen reader that Viz currently uses that offers such an incredibly bad User Interface when SJAlpha is used on smaller screen devices.
“four corner” reads in an “right to left N” from the top-right corner to the bottom-right corner to the top-left corner to the bottom-left corner then to the next page. If the “next corner” is *visible*, then its skipped by the next page, which goes to the next corner that is out of sight, or else to the next page.
The “four corner” setting works with landscape displays, portrait displays, irregular layout manga, 4koma … basically setting the zoom level sets how the page flips work. If you have 4koma zoomed up in a 5″ smartphone to see half a single page, you’d be doing a next/prev/next/next/next/prev/next shuffle, but there would at least be no sliding, no resetting the zoom each page ~ none of the hard work and eyestrain that the badly thought out Viz reader imposed on readers with smaller screen devices.
In my opinion, if you’re reading the manga that Shonen Jump Alpha provides, you need to pay for it. We need to let the folks producing and licensing this stuff see that they can make money by making it available to us for a reasonable fee. The cost involved is very reasonable.
Right now, go and sign up for Shonen Jump Alpha and show your support for this inchoate industry. If you do, there’s a good chance we’ll see more of this type of offering in the future. We need that.
A broader comment on why ease of access st SJAlpha matters to people who care about the health of the commercial industry.
Like any other strategic action, actions to degrade the quality of service offered by bootleggers should be focused on best cost/benefit ratio. So “suppress all piracy” is rarely a strategic objective that makes much sense. There may well be some net benefit to an action to shake loose a large group of bootleg consumers clustering at a pirate bay, but its of most use if there are a number who would prefer some aspects of your service if they tried it out, but are clustering there by habit.
So even when a strategic action to degrade the quality of service provided by a bootlegger makes sense, it makes the most sense in the context of a broader strategy to deliver superior service to a broad range of target markets. Which is why not just meeting, but beating the online reader experience for as many devices as possible matters.
I love the idea of getting digital media, and would have no issue in signing up to something I would definitly read, my only issue is I am English and for some unknown, unfathomable reason this digital media can only be got in NA. Forgive me, but isn’t the point of digital media so you can expand to a wider audience.
This Shonen Jump Alpha only stops me reading these manga until, if ever it gets released on paperback here. if they are going to release something that stops thousands of fans reading, at least make it globally available so people aren’t left out.
@Matthew ~ the primary point of digital in this case is to get distribution without the expense of a print run, unsold copies, and even worse returned copies. The closure of Borders took a big slice out of the economic viability of the print Shonen Jump Monthly, and even before Borders closed, there were “dead spots” scattered all around the country that were out of reach of a convenient print SJM outlet.
So Shonen Jump Alpha is already expanding to a wider audience in North America.
But rights are unbundled in manga, so its not like Viz can go to their parent companies in Japan, organize a deal for a package of global English digital first access rights, and just go. They’ve got to get the manga-ka to sign on. Getting enough high profile manga-ka to sign away global digital distribution rights for ongoing series straight out of the gate seems like far too much to expect.
Of course, if getting a number of high profile manga-ka to agree on something is like herding cats, and the way you herd cats is with a delicious smelling slice of bologna. If SJalpha is promising enough to convince the manga-ka, then Viz will be able to expand their coverage area. And odds are that the first step will be UK&ireland, Australia&NZ and South Africa, like so many of the recent Crunchyroll anime rights deals.
I wonder why they don’t go about this as Youtube goes with their videos? All the music/clips/whatnot you see on that site is for free, but in a way, you’re still paying them. The site get paid, the respective companies get paid, creators get paid etc. YT is available for everyone all over the world.
Now, I understand VIZ pov. In a way, what MangaStream has been doing is wrong and, not to mention, illegal. But MS still provided the mangas ASAP and for everyone. Now VIZ is cute and all for fans living in NA but… what about the rest of the world? Countries who don’t bother to go through all the trouble to “license” all the manga because majority of their people doesn’t read or even know what manga is? So, what about the people in those countries who DO read manga?
Oh. Sucks to be them.
Viz will call those fans, what? Collateral damage? MS on the other hand gave those people opportunity to still read their weekly manga fix.
As for me, if it weren’t for MS I wouldn’t even have started reading manga. I wouldn’t have become a fan. I wouldn’t have bought all the volumes of my favorite manga because that’s the ONLY way I can support my favorite manga-ka I love so much. I wouldn’t have bought all the merchandise, I wouldn’t have become hooked on so many other mangas, which in turn, had me buying their volumes/anime/cds/other stuff.
If only MS, Viz and SJA could meet somewhere half way to make all the fans happy again.
@GretJoz ~ but it was Mangastream that decided to cut off the readers outside of North America, it wasn’t Viz that made that choice.
If Mangastream actually wanted to serve the audience outside of North America, they could have put in a a region lock that redirected North American audiences to the shonenjump.viz site for those manga. Then they would have been respecting the “Cease and Desist” on infringing on Viz’s license for digital distribution in North America.
Indeed, if Mangastream had done that, they would have given Viz extra leverage in getting wider distribution rights down the track, once the North American distribution of SJalpha has had a chance to prove itself both to their owners in Japan and to the manga-ka who ultimately hold the digital distribution rights. So doing it that way would have helped support the move toward global, legal access.
I used to be on the side of scanlators. When I was growing up, one of the only ways to get certain series was through scanlators, as print manga was expensive (~$16/volume) and there were not a whole lot of series being published. So when this started being an issue, I didn’t see a problem with it at first because I had always used scanlations to find new series and then support them when they (eventually, years later, sometimes never) came out in America.
But there is a HUGE difference in what scanlations used to be and what they are today. And the entitlement of some of the fans is just mind-boggling; a whole two weeks for an issue to be translated?? We used to have to wait months, sometimes years between volumes!! And we supported the artists by buying the volumes when we could.
A lot of damage has already been done to the industry, and I hope beyond hope that these new evolutions can help save it. Although it may never be what it used to be.
The price is an important point here. If someone is complaining “the price is too high” ~ well at $16/volume, that’s pretty high.
But Gen Manga is $2/month for a monthly magazine. Its at issue 8, and access to all issues already published is included on the site. And if you can’t afford the $2/month, the first six are already collected into a collected issue at $3 for 900pp. That’s less than half a penny a page.
SJalpha is $1 an issue for 4 weeks access … to a 120pp weekly issue. That’s less than a penny a page. Buy the annual subscription at about $30 for 48 issues, and its half a penny per page.
YenPlus is $3/month, and gives access to the current month and the previous month’s issue, and I’ve read somewhere they are the same basic page count as the print, so that’s 400pp, or under a penny a page.
So for $9/month you can get 1,000pp of manga a month, which is very much like following a biweekly and monthly serial.
Now, if you are not interested in enough of the series, then you’d say its not worth it ~ but then don’t subscribe to those. The problem in that case is not price, its selection, and the solution is to subscribe to what interests you so that the publishers can see there’s a market for more of stuff like that.
Ah.. Simply put… This whole ordeal pissed me off. I read one person’s comment about how if they had never seen mangastream they wouldn’t have spent so much money on Bleach’s merchandise. I’m the same way, I read bleach first, liked it, saw it on TV in english, liked it more, went out and bought hundreds of dollars worth of Bleach items.. No.. Not just Bleach, there was also, Naruto, One Piece, and more.. All of the ones taken down by VIZ. I say screw them, Mangstream was extremely dedicated to their translations and earned VIZ a lot of money from it. If I ever meet up with a VIZ employee I’ll rip his tongue out through his gut. With all due respect to the authors of the manga’s of course.
From a legal standpoint, Viz holds all the cards. They are the ones with the license, they are the ones with the lawyers, they are the ones who are allowed to print Shonen Jump in NA.
As a struggling artist myself, I can definitely understand the sting of having your work ripped off. While it’s great that more and more people can enjoy the work you do, it does hurt the pocket when the don’t pay for it.
(Oh, wait – no it doesn’t. The mangakas all work on contracts; they get paid just for giving their manuscripts to the publishing company. That’s whose losing money, not the original creators)
The publishers of these series are definitely losing some severe money though. When you charge anywhere from $7 to $16 per volume, and people aren’t buying, you must be taking a loss somewhere.
(Except that Viz is not a conduit – while I don’t know the exact proportions, it’s safe to say that most of the profit from sales goes to Viz, with a significantly smaller portion actually going back to Japan. So it’s Viz that really gets hurt by scanlations in NA, not so much the companies back in Japan)
Still, it’s horrible for someone to call themselves a fan if they don’t even try to support the system by buying the volumes, or subscribing to SJA.
(Although supporting a system that is broken doesn’t help anyone – indeed, it was through so many people not buying the manga and complaining that new opportunities such as SJA even came into existence. If everyone just quietly bought the manga as Viz originally provided, we wouldn’t have these “quantum leaps”)
The translations aren’t as bad as some people like to make it out. They flow nicely, they’re approved by multiple editors and translators, and they’re official. One would hope they would be of higher quality then four people putting their heads together online.
(Which makes it so sad when they’re not. And most of the complaints I here from fans aren’t that the Viz translations don’t flow, it’s that they cater to a younger audience then even what Shonen Jump is aimed at, and certainly a younger audience then what actually reads it. And many people feel there are times where the intent behind a translation is shifted because of Viz’s word choice, or that implications may be lost because Viz was attempting to keep the flow going – there is an important difference between “That’s the kind of man I think you are” and “That’s the kind of man you are in my heart”. The first choice being Viz’s.
And when there are other problems ranging from inconsistency [Such as in the Bleach volumes when Byakuya Kuchiki's command for unlocking his sword's power changes from 'Attack' to 'Scatter', the latter being long accepted by fans who understood Japanese], to downright mistranlation [In Katekyo Hitman Reborn, I'm sure Tsunayoshi never actually says "Holy Ham on Rye with Kraut!". In fact I'm pretty sure no one has ever actually said that in seriousness], there is more then a little room for people to complain about the quality of Viz’s translations.)
There is no greater or noble purpose behind scanlating manga.
(Unless you count trying to get out quality product to people who genuinely enjoy the series).
Fans who believe so need to get a reality check.
(The same reality check people who are against scanlations need to get if they think Viz doesn’t have catching up to do.)
As others have said, this issue is not black and white. What that means is, as much as neither side may like it, the group on the other side of the fence has some logical points to bring to the table. That doesn’t mean you get to write a blog post with the closest criticism of Viz being “Well it used to be worse.” That doesn’t mean people in the comments can write off scanlators as lazy and the fans who read their work as self-entitled. And that doesn’t mean you can walk around with a chip in your shoulder because big bad Viz sucks.
I do believe the day when scanlations no longer exist is a day we MAY one day see (not tomorrow, however certainly before I turn fifty) – but I hope it’s because Viz decided to tighten its’ belt and improve the quality of their product, creating a more comprehensive and enjoyable experience, instead of just waving around their license and saying “We’re the only ones who can do this, you’re not allowed to play!”
(Because until they do that? Scanlations will keep popping up. No matter how tight people think internet restriction is, no matter how often people may be shut down, no matter what surface changes Viz makes, unless their is a fundamental shift in the way translations are officially provided to a North American audience, fans – real fans who do love the series and genuinely care for the work and the mangaka – will post their own translations of the work.)
I find it horribly ironic and hypocritical that someone who complains about groups like MangaStream making money of scanlations from Google Ads and not giving back to the creator HAS ADS IN THEIR SIDEBAR FOR MANGA SCANLATIONS.
I don’t like it either, and have asked about.com to remove those ads, to no avail. :-\
I don’t see the problem just a bunch of freeloaders upset they can’t get something for free anymore that they shouldn’t have in the first place. the industry needs support not just in consumption but consumption backed with profits they cant just make this stuff for free. I mean its one thing if an american company isn’t able to or distributing it but they are so support them and the artists
The truth is there are tons of poor kids who will not be able to buy anything for any amount of money. I myself was one of those kids. I had absolutely no access to Manga other than my school computer, and all my friends were in the same position. We would always buy the books or other products if we could ever find any or had money for the scarce products. there is simply nothing manga anywere near where I live. I drew becuz Manga inspired me, and I got pretty good, story telling and even morales. It helped keep me off the streets too. If not for that free online Manga I would be a different person, a worse person. I am living proof that there needs to be free Manga at esey easy access for kids like those especially