Welp, it’s been a good run, but it is seeming more and more likely that the age of MangaDex is over. With the wave of over 7000 takedown requests and policy changes requiring explicit rights or permission to upload, scanlators have largely stopped using the site.
So, what comes next? I don’t know, but let’s chat about it. Additionally, feel free to use this thread like you would any other weekly general thread by sharing about what you read this past week, asking for recommendations, or questions.
Like normal, please be careful with spoilers. I wrote a guide about spoilers in case you need a refresher on how to handle them (also linked in the sidebar).
First things first, this whole situation sucks, and not just for us (users of MD). It is going to suck for these publishers as well. Without sites like MD spreading manga to international audiences, those audiences are simply going to stop reading it and consume some other form of entertainment. The official avenues to get this content largely don’t exist in many parts of the world, and where they do exist kinda (very much) suck. As readership drops, the value of their IP for licensing will also decrease.
I have a lot more understanding for these companies issuing takedowns for IPs that have been licensed, but the vast swath of unlicensed content (that is almost guaranteed to never be licensed) makes this feel punitive to the community as a whole and vindictive.
As for the future, I fear that scanlators are going to go a couple different routes:
- Some scanlators will likely just stop.
- Some will move to uploading to a different aggregator.
- Some will only upload to their own site.
- Some will probably only post on less public forums or chatrooms like a discord server.
In any case, it is inevitably going to fragment the community.
Going after the only pirate site that leads the readers to the official sources is such a fucking dumb idea.
I’ve split this thing into two parts to avoid a huge wall of text. Why did MD have to die right as I got into reading multiple new series and have stuff to post again? Mwheeeee…
Mangadex thoughts
I’m gonna be honest, this is pretty much what I expected the moment news about mass DMCA dropped. I already started migrating some of the series in Mihon to Bato even before that happened simply due to the fact they weren’t updated on MD anymore - looks like I’ll just have to bite the bullet and move everything else, if only until I find some other source.
One thing I really hope for is that there will be one major aggregator site (new or otherwise) that steps up after the dust settles. Partially because of my laziness, partially because it’s the best way to find new things to read (outside of asking for suggestions) and partially because I hate Discord and refuse to join any community that’s gated behind it (sooooo many previously public and easily searchable resources are gone because some people thought app made for ephemeral discussions is the best place for documentation, it’s frustrating).
MD had a good run, better than expected honestly considering their size. The whole transitional period is going to be rough.
Thanks Mangadex, it was fun. Imma pour one out for you.
Also… F the companies who can’t even provide decent enough experience to convince people to use their product and would rather destroy what works.
Reading part
I caught up with S-Class Hunter Doesn’t Want to Be a Villainous Princess and I like it more than I have initially. The humorous and drama parts are great, so is the art - it’s a really solid series over all.
I still don’t really care for the power fantasy parts of the story as something about them just doesn’t connect with me. I think it has to do with the complete lack of challenge for the MC. With Beware the Villainess, Melissa had at least some difficulties in various parts of the story - where they huge? Not really but they existed. With Renée I never had a feeling she’ll have to deal with anything problematic beyond system forcing romance novel tropes onto her.
Still, the hilarious moments overcome the dullness of an overpowered MC so far and that’s good enough for me.Besides that I started checking out the list of villainess themed series graciously provided to me by @PrincessKadath@ani.social as well as few titles I’ve read in the past but never finished for one reason or another.
The first one is A Wicked Tale of Cindarella’s Stepmom - I love it.
No power fantasy, no special skills, no epic drama, just a simple story of a single mother doing her best to prepare her daughters for live in aristocratic society. It’s full of love, charm and reading it makes me feel all fuzzy inside.
I actually ended up binging it in a few days and now I’m waiting for more.Next on the list is May I Ask for One Last Thing? - MC’s engagement with the Second Prince is annulled suddenly and publicly in the most disgraceful manner. MC starts blasting (with her fists).
This one is a bit weird for me. I love the concept, I love how unhinged and happy MC is about beating people up and I like the writing for the most part. Despite all that I can’t really get invested in it for whatever reason. It’s not bad so I don’t really want to stop but I’m just not feeling it enough to binge like I do with other titles.
I’ll keep going for now and see how things turn out in the future, might change my mind one way or another eventually.Last but not least, The Perks of Being a Villainess.
The comedy of errors and MC acting like a great villainess due to anxiety rather than being an arsehole are a hilarious mix that keeps me reading. I was a bit worried her inside voice cringing and worrying about what’s going on around her would get a bit annoying or tiring but it hasn’t become a problem so far.
I’m still fairly early on with this series but it did end up on the “binging” end of the spectrum which is a good sign.
Time to start creating local backups, I guess. Not like I lack the space at least.
I am splitting stuff between Bato and Comick, but I am leaning more towards the first since it has a public comment area for the community.
Got a bit of a problem, though…
About villaines. May I Ask for One Last Thing is in my top 10 (variable, lol) manga of all times, regardless of it being a villainess story.
Ooof, my list is way shorter thankfully (only 47 titles left on MD) but that’s mostly because I tend to limit the number of things I read at once. Heck, even with all the bookmarked series not in Mihon I’m nowhere near these numbers - past me’s laziness in looking for new things finally paid off!
May I Ask for One Last Thing is in my top 10 (variable, lol) manga of all times, regardless of it being a villainess story.
She is a villainess for a few moments and from a specific point of view if you squint a bit. That’s good enough for me!
No, no. Those are the ones I have on MD. I have almost double on other sources.
Professional reader, I see. Forgive me for underestimating your power your grace (シ_ _)シ
Can’t have princess turn into a villainess after all…
I’m surprised it existed at all. But I guess Japan now sees the international markets as worthy.
Decentralize. Ideally: federate, with redundancy.
If it’s piracy then let’s fucking act like it.
Sucks since Mihon sucks ass at keeping its shit together when a source removes shit. If i have a chapter downloaded it should fucking stay listed in the manga.
Yeah I’m not sure why it shits the bed so badly. If it helps you can move the folder under
local(rather thandownloads/<source>) and it’ll show it again
Finished reading Fullmetal Alchemist this week, and I’ve got to say reading that climax to the soundtrack of Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood was a 10/10 experience. What a great time.
Since I finished one long series I decided to start another. I’ve had all 28 volumes of the Japanese edition of Kaguya-sama: Love is War on my shelf for over a year now, but I’ve been too afraid to start it - until now! Anyways, turns out my fear was well-justified.
POV: you thought you were ready for Kaguya-sama’s vocab just because you’ve read a few other seinen manga before
So that’s been fun. Been learning all sorts of interesting words like 潮騒 (roar of the sea waves), or 純愛 (pure love), or 輪廻 (cycle of death and rebirth). The vocab shown off here makes Fullmetal Alchemist look simple (it wasn’t) by comparison.
Blue Box also had a nice chapter this week, so that’s been fun. I don’t like it quite as much as Kaguya-sama: Love is War, but it’s still consistently been one of my favorite love stories in manga. It might be the best shounen love story I’ve seen, though Dandadan also competes pretty hard! We’ll have to see where both of them go from here.
Speaking of Dandadan, it’s currently in the part of the arc where lots of stuff is happening and everything is absolutely insane. I’m really looking forward to seeing how that all gets resolved.
With the news of MangaDex’s demise it looks like I’m going back to the old RSS feed + aggregator sites method. I already followed some series that way because of publisher region locking BS (Viz…), this just makes me switch all of my active series to this method.
Even if an official source is available in your region, it is still pretty bad. Kodansha’s K manga was available in my region from this year, so I wanted to read official translations to support the manga, but their convoluted payment system with all the coin/ticket/exp/premium system is atrocious. Compared to them Viz’s app is god sent. And they wonder why people pirate this stuff.
Also, I have a feeling that all this massive DMCA was a result of their push in new markets.
My currently reading list hasn’t been affected that much. Only a dozen or so no longer have any chapters. More don’t have older chapters, but that’s okay-ish for me (sucks for others that haven’t caught up though).
I haven’t checked my plan to read list in a while though, so I’m dreading that one.
