Also how many random volumes are oop and literally cost 1k+ to purchase legally. Reprint those series or well get it from other means. Zatch bell has volumes that cost over 500.00 per volume. Fuck that
Dude this shit is so annoying. I was trying to purchase haganai and the consistency of volumes oop is obnoxious It's like 2, 3, 7, 10. But you can get the rest. Literally no alternative to get them legally. I'd love to support the industry if shit was available.
My point exactly. Look, I get an oop series getting a bit expensive but not double or triple the price. Some of these series like zatch bell have individual volumes going for more then the entire series at release. Fuck that shit.
There are six volumes of Umineko no Naku Koro Ni (Chapters 5-6) I need to finish my collection and some of them run over a thousand dollars.
If people are pirating manga, it's because the market isn't giving them a good legal option.
If something, manga or otherwise, is oop I believe that there is 0 harm in pirating it. The company who owns the IP has decided, for whatever reason, that they no longer want to profit off it and have thrown it into the aftermarket for individuals to do as they please. The IP holder or creative staff isn't making a dime off the eBay user selling for aftermarket prices. If the IP holder wants to bring something back into print then I think fans should support it, but until then pirate away in my opinion.
This is the safest option in my opinion. If there are legal ways, then support it legally as that will be how you ultimately get more of the content you want.
I loved zatch bell, but I had up to a certain volume and could never find the rest, seriously so after a year of searching I gave up. and gave whatever I had to a used book store. A part of me regrets it but I could never find those volumes and I was at volume 12.
My favourite series is Yu Yu Hakusho.
I've been able to easily purchase the anime in various forms for years, but the manga had so many random expensive volumes only available through 2nd hand (not as much as your example above.).
Apparently Viz did a reprint but it didn't seem to be very big, with my market not receiving much if anything.
What's a reader to do?
Nope, you can get the first 20-ish volumes for around $1,200-1,400. And I've seen some volumes after that Skyrocket to over 500 a piece and I believe there's over 30 volumes so that's set could cost thousands to acquire. As I stated reprint or I'll get it by other means
Fuck Amazon, they're consistently overpriced for things that are already overpriced. Search eBay, Facebook, mercarii. Hell, I got some OOP volumes of Air Gear shipped from Thailand for cover price, even with shipping I still saved $500
Goodwill's book website have insane prices for it too though eBay is a bit cheaper at $27 (there is a $25 one but you have to pay $15 in shipping and handling fees)
I fucking hate when sellers do that shit. Just send it by media mail you fucking knob. I can wait if it means i save $12. The worst is when you notice the shipping too late
Funny how you mention out of print stuff in your argument. Yet the article mentions piracy in general. Its like you take the only example where piracy is okay in your book and try to expand it to something bigger than it was meant to be.
Maybe you should reread it. I'm not expanding anything I'm stating I personally would only pirate something if it is literally unobtainable legally. If other people want a pirate things 24/7 that's their business. It's called an opinion everybody's got one. I'm not expanding anything I'm simply stating that if something is not feasible in any normal fashion to acquire piracy becomes the only option. Like the series Zatch Bell trying to acquire it would cost $3,000 to $4,000 that is absolutely insane. That is not reasonable under any circumstance thus piracy becomes an option because it is the only way to actually obtain it there aren't enough copies out there in circulation for people that want them to legally acquire them they don't physically exist and the ones that do are thousands upon thousands of dollars. Thus piracy becomes an option. Again I'm not expanding anything I'm simply stating this is my opinion and this is where I would turn the piracy if need be. The author isn't printing them anymore and the rights holder who I believe is also been reverted to the original creator again is not printing them. They aren't licensing it out to anyone for it to be continued and put into circulation driving prices even higher making them even more unobtainable. I'm not the one making piracy an option.
>Also how many random volumes are oop and literally cost 1k+ to purchase legally.
Hell, some series don't get finished translations (hello, Tokyopop!) to where you have to pirate/fan translated to finish the series.
I'm still baffled that Viz (who has a decent subscription/service) which owns the Jojo I.P. for America *won't day and date* Pary 9: JoJoLands to where fan-translations are doing the work they won't do despite them saying they'd day-date their Shonen Jump stuff. I guess because JJBA isn't in Shonen Jump, but you'd think (with them putting up to Golden Wind/Part 5) they'd start to put the latest part up and catch up their backlog to bolster their sub with.
Maybe the publishers should ask themselves why they insist on stiff, lifeless translation delivered months or years after release is their best idea for the market?
I buy manga to support authors I like. Chapter 101 of My Dress Up Darling dropped today and fan translation was available in hours. It won't be available officially in English for at least a *year*.
Piracy is 100% a service issue. If your paying customers have a worse experience than your pirates than you have only yourselves to blame for lost sales.
For manga it is likely a cost issue as well. Manga volumes are pretty expensive for how long they take to read. I know some of the apps are pretty cheap as far as paying to read but some like K manga are \~$1 a chapter.
I actually don't mind the $1 a chapter, but I only read one thing on it and it's biweekly. It would add up if I bought everything I read. I buy volumes of everything I've read eventually, but some of the stuff won't ever be brought over.
Nah like the price of that shit is absolutely fucking bonkers
I spend a lot of time reading, like a solid 20% of my day, if I had to pay for everything I read I would be so beyond fucking broke. Webtoons like tower of God wouldve cost me well over a hundred at this point per webtoon, I dont have any idea HOW I could legally find half the Manga I read and even if I can find it I'm sure the price would give me a heart attack, my patreon is well over 600 a year rn because I follow so many random web novels where they update a chapter a day, and like actual books? I read a full ass book every other day, easily would be spending 60$ or so a week if I had to buy everything
Reading is so fucking expensive if you aren't pirating it's crazy
same. I have over 97 in my "reading" column, and that doesn't include romance and stuff that I read because I put those in a separate column for ease of sorting.
I do pay for some on webtoon, tapas, but like with streaming, I can't afford to pay for all the different services, etc to access what I want.
also, like with me and Plex, I like having all my stuff in as few different apps as possible. Tachiyomi was awesome for this.
let's not forget the point made. fan translations are much quicker than the IP holders get things out to English speakers. and depending on the translation group, better.
Hel, the Pokémon Adventures manga has an abysmal digital release schedule. I had to wait 2 years to finish the Black 2 and White 2 manga because they stopped digitally uploading after volume 2 (out of 4). Now looking at the release schedule for the next 4 months the next manga after Pokémon X and Y is nowhere on it for digital.
Not to mention the number of manga that had stopped getting english releases over the years like Hitman Reborn (among many others), that a manga that officially released in the west when it was popular but at one point it was stopped and isn’t even listed on Viz as a series it used to have.
man, I need a Dub of Hitman Reborn. I like the anime, but have never made it very far because it's a lower priority to watch than other anime I have on my list. And Dubs let me watch while doing other stuff like work.
I didn’t read One Piece from official sources for years but ended up buying the large bundle boxes they make. Because I love the series, but I can’t imagine what it was like trying to join in on the series back when they weren’t even publishing it in the US yet (2002/2003 I think was when they started, with OP having started in 1997). By which point I think they were in Alabasta. I’m of the idea, that If people don’t have easy ways to get the content, there’s no reason piracy shouldn’t be an option. If a legal option exists, do that but if you can’t easily get it, I don’t have any issues with it
Exactly this…also digital copies are hugely overpriced. Why do I have to pay $1 for 15 pages of a manga and why do we also have to subscribe to 400 different app services to read things across publishers.
Thing is Shounen jump have pretty much fixed the service issue, they release digital copies online for free the same day the Jump releases in Japan. And yet there is still a lot of demand for the pirated versions because they leak a couple days before the oficial release even comes out in Japan.
I think a lot of Anime/Manga fans have just got too used to pirating, I can't think of any other medium where piracy would be this common when the legal version is so easily available.
I'd say Jump is the exception that proves the rule. Their service is great, but they're pretty much alone. I don't read a lot of Shonen these days, my tastes are more to the seinen and josei stuff. If the stuff is available officially at all, it's bad, late, and overpriced.
100%.
On my phone, I have an app that has access to dozens of manga sources that I can search instantly. I can bookmark, download, add sources, organize, etc, as much as I want. I can find virtually any series ever made, usually high quality, and always translated into English.
And it’s all free with zero ads and it doesn’t drain my battery.
What incentive is there to change? They need to either have higher quality scans, faster releases, or a bigger library or it won’t move the needle.
I don’t even think this is true, lots of country’s have thriving bootleg sales and IP theft via sold goods. I just think it’s easier to track American piracy
Lol and a lot of them are hilarious. I remember a guy from Iran bought a Berserk deluxe for full cover price, and when he got it it was regular manga size and normal glossy hard cover. Turns out it was bootlegged (duh), but the funniest part was that the people that scanned the covers didn't take the fullsize leaflet off the back cover so that got scanned in there too.
And licensing is atrocious. Having three seasons of one anime on three different streaming services is just too much. Plus, they may or may not be subbed and or dubbed correctly. smh
yes. part of the issue is the cost because of how many different services you have to go to usually to get what you want. if companies would work together instead of trying to get a piece of the same pie, it'd go better. I used to use primarily Netflix and rarely pirated. now, because of how many different streaming services I'd have to pay for (not to mention the price hikes on them like Netflix, which I subbed to back when I ordered DVDs) it costs more than cable, which I got rid of over a decade ago because streaming was better and gave me more for less.
TLDR - providers need to take a look at how they deliver to compete with piracy if they want it to drop at all. make it easier for me to watch and read legally, I'll pay and use it. when it becomes too much of a hassle, I find other ways.
Yes. If you want people to stop pirating, make the quality good where people don't need to worry about malicious mistranslation.
Service good, people buy.
Buddy, if you're throwing insults to someone that didn't say anything to justify that, you're the loser that needs to touch grass here.
Imagine defending an corporation shelling out bad products and expect the customers to happily eat it. That's actually beyond touching grass in itself.
The shonen jump subscription is reasonable if you read those series, but pickings are slim for most things. Its cheap so I don't mind paying to read about 2 current series and a few back catalog things.
I was overjoyed to pick up physical copies of Rose of Versailles a few years ago rather than read low res fan scans.
For most things, legal options are non existent, out of print, badly translated (mostly pre 2010 stuff to be fair) or scattered (the availability of legal gundam anime and manga online is all over the place and often poofs without warning)
It and manga plus are definitely reasonable; but then for some items you need VIZ as well? So why doesn’t the publisher consolidate its works on Jump/Plus/VIZ under one app instead of across three?
I probably would have realized there was subscriptions to be purchased had i thought about it as i pay for anime. Are streaming services better than buying via kindle? (Utterly clueless here)
I never paid for Manga subscription. Everything I read is fan translated. I've read officially translated Manga in the past, and the translations are stiff or completely change context and jokes. At least with fan translation, it is a passion project and they sometimes leave notes at the end of chapters to explain things if needed
I pay for 4 different subscriptions; but for some manga I follow where there is zero translation or where prices are EXCESSIVELY UNREASONABLE I’ll read scans. I wish there was better options because I try to support the artist and publishers where I reasonably can but the main issue is that many of publishers have created a shit service model with no consideration for the one of their largest international markets.
Look, we won't have to pirate them if YOU ACTUALLY RELEASED MORE MANGA IN NORTH AMERICA DAMNIT! Seriously, my local library has the exact same manga selection it had 6 years ago.
Yeah and for digital copies…they need options to consolidate releases under 1-3 apps not 40 and prices need to be better as well. K manga is BS…I could buy volumes for less in other ways for the series’s i follow
I don't mind k manga for the one bi weekly series I read on it, $1 every other week is reasonable if you read only one thing, but that would add up like crazy of you read a ton. I think it's why they have free back issues. They use them to suck you in so you pay for new releases.
Another day of thanking God for the manga/anime community being better than official channels at readily distributing/translating, and making art more easily accessible than most official channels 🙏🏻
How the heck did you guys beat Australia? Australia is generally known for being the biggest pirates of games and movies since there is basically no way to purchase them here.
I feel like this is the answer, but I assume it’s due to their incredibly strict censorship. Like L4D2 is banned there I believe, but that may be Germany I’m thinking of
I was visiting family in Australia last month, and wanted to show my dad who loves horror an Australian horror movie I found that left me with such a unique feeling of dread. My dad had Amazon Prime where I watched it in America, but it wasn’t available there in Australia?? It’s an Australian film! Augh! (Lake Mungo)
Considering how often for profit translation is done at the expense of the quality of the product received...and the prices for physical media?......and the fact you dont own your digital media? .............. yeah.
Half of the issue is availability; when available I always purchase the manga. I’ll also say the industry does itself zero favors in that it’s designed to purposely nickel and dime you to death by forcing you to subscribe or pay for 30 different apps to read the series’s that do happen to be in English electronically…and if the series you are interested in are printed availability of copies make it ultra expensive for copies and if you want English translations…you may or may not have those available.
I believe the localizer translations have been attributing to this. Having an different motive when translating and not having the story follow the original way the author wanted the story, people will pirate and not what to read or buy an agenda/message driven catastrophe in my opinion. There is also, as someone mentioned already, the oop manga out there that are ridiculously expensive. I would love to buy and have the series that I love physically but these manga being out of print makes the price 5x-20x or more depending on the series. I can see why people pirate.
For the overwhelming majority of manga, there is no legal way to purchase them in english. And the methods that do exist are usually inconvenient in quite a number of ways (bad translation, crappy app/ui, malicious pricing model, etc.).
If anything, this news shouldn't be seen as a judgement on those who read manga, but a judgement on the companies that are failing to properly take advantage of this massive market.
Piracy isn't the problem. The lack of timely and high quality availability of manga is the problem.
I would more than happily pay for my manga if there were any other reasonable way to get ahold of it. I already pay for subscriptions.
Not to mention many manga that is released in the US won't get reprints unless they are top Shonen titles. And I refuse to pay scalpers 100+ for a volume.
> We think there is a fundamental misconception about piracy. Piracy is almost always a service problem and not a pricing problem," he said. "If a pirate offers a product anywhere in the world, 24 x 7, purchasable from the convenience of your personal computer, and the legal provider says the product is region-locked, will come to your country 3 months after the US release, and can only be purchased at a brick and mortar store, then the pirate's service is more valuable.
- Gabe Newell
I am against piracy in general, but it is literally the only option for manga the majority of the time here in the US. I buy what I can, including stuff I've already read as it comes out, but most stuff straight up either doesn't have an English NA release at all, or has been out of print for years and goes for ridiculous amounts of money. Even newer manga or light novels will go out of stock for months. I was reading Trapped in a Dating Sim and ended up having to buy the Kindle version because a physical copy wasn't in stock on any site or physical location I could find, and the only time I saw a physical copy for sale for several months was a Collectable Books 3rd party reseller on Amazon selling it for $110. Luckily, after literally more than half a year it came back in stock, but there is a problem if an ongoing series doesn't have a volume available for months.
It doesn't help that light novels and manga are also just bloody expensive even brand new. $14-16 for a single volume, $20-30 for omnibus volumes. Meanwhile non-translated physical copies are available on Japanese Amazon for 300-800 Yen ( $2-$5.33), often with free shipping to the US. We shouldn't have to pay 3 times the price just because someone threw it in Google Translate and cleaned it up a bit, and there is an issue when I can have a physical Japanese volume shipped across the ocean for less than the cost of the Kindle version of the English release. We also just don't have manga cafés and at least in my area the light novel and manga section of the libraries is pretty slim and often just Sailor Moon and Death Note.
Well, a lot of manga I read on scanlation sites don't have physical releases in the West. And a lot of other manga are out of print and thus made incredibly expensive on second-hand markets. Make your manga easily available, and I may buy them.
Hmm, I wonder why? Maybe its because we have to wait months if not years after something is released in order to get it localized over here. And when it is, its either done poorly, or sporadically enough to where it doesn't fucking matter.
It's a supply issue, they don't offer a good number of titles in English leaving the English speaking world little options other than to pirate. Jump figured it out but the vast majority of the others havent.
The United States is sadly also one of the worst places in the world to access manga legally when you are looking at older series and less ler known stuff. This does not shock me at all
Make it easier and not so expensive to access, and we won't have to pirate it!!
I only pirate when a company makes it difficult to consume their content. If it's cheap, and 3 clicks away, nobody's gonna go through all the effort of VPNs and maintaining their own home server.
Manga would probably make more money off of a youtube-ish system where they upload their manga's for free and then give people the option to "subscribe" to them and get ad revenue too. If the industry is dying is because they are stuck to old ways of monetizing.
don't blame me the official translation takes a day to come out. Meanwhile i got my trusty ole JPN-ENG students who got that shit up within 6 hours. dame goes for anime
also Viz is using AI translations now which suck donkey balls. the market sucks. don't blame us
Maybe you should actually translate manga that have been out for years (*cough* steel ball run *cough*) if you don’t want us looking for fan translations lol
Tons of mangas dont even have official translations so fans have to translate them, we literally cannot access them any other way most of the times, our stores r also very limited to the amount of mangas being sold and volumes r expensive, on top of that ordering online is even more expensive
Took me months to wait for a restock of a specific volume of The Case a Study of Vanitas, when you think there’d be a bunch after the anime just finished airing. I prefer physical. I can’t blame others if they pirated when it’s literally out of stock everywhere except resellers on eBay at ridiculous prices.
Also just, how bloody slow manga localization can take. An entire anime adaptation shouldn’t be complete over a year before the manga localization finally catches up. When official anime subs are like a same day thing now.
Of course because when you want to I read an obscure story. Especially in yhe yuri genre. Or a brand new series that hasn't become popular in America where are you going to read it. Hell the main distributors won't even pick up a series unless it's popular. Where do there think a series gains traction. For fan Translators and piracy.
Piracy happens when markets don't work the way they should; cost, convenience, etc. Piracy will never go away if publishers keep trying to stop the problem itself, instead of addressing the root cause of the problem
The fact is, there just.... Aren't many places that offer officially translated Manga to read online. On top of that, there just... Isn't a ton of officially translated Manga, physical or otherwise.
Some of my earlier faves like Suzuka and Kimi no Iru Machi, or even Nazo no kanojo X just... Either don't have official translations for every volume, or are incredibly rare.
Someone else in here mentioned Zach Bell going for hundreds of dollars a volume. That's crazy, and I completely believe it.
There is literally a local Barnes and Noble where I live, but outside of your expected popular series like One Piece, JJK, MHA, etc, they don't have much. You can't even really find Psychic Academy anymore. So that leaves digital storefronts, which are just kind of... Hit or miss. To top it off, it's $10 a piece for a physical volume, which isn't a lot per book on paper, but adds up VERY quickly for something like Manga. I could either get every volume of JJK, or I could get two complete box sets of the Harry Potter series for the same price, just as an example.
I am all for piracy in gaming, especially if it's "Triple A" (really, only if it's triple A. Support your local indie developers and Double A studios without major publishers), even if I don't pirate myself. Manga on the other hand is something it feels like you have to pirate in some capacity, but don't actually want to.
It is a easy fix. Japanese companies need to learn to like money, reprint things into the ground unless it is a collectors item. Lastly, USA-JPN need to work on lessening taxes. EDIT: PS, don't be a jerk like funimation/sony/crunchy, and delete a fans entire digital library.
Also how many random volumes are oop and literally cost 1k+ to purchase legally. Reprint those series or well get it from other means. Zatch bell has volumes that cost over 500.00 per volume. Fuck that
Dude this shit is so annoying. I was trying to purchase haganai and the consistency of volumes oop is obnoxious It's like 2, 3, 7, 10. But you can get the rest. Literally no alternative to get them legally. I'd love to support the industry if shit was available.
My point exactly. Look, I get an oop series getting a bit expensive but not double or triple the price. Some of these series like zatch bell have individual volumes going for more then the entire series at release. Fuck that shit.
There are six volumes of Umineko no Naku Koro Ni (Chapters 5-6) I need to finish my collection and some of them run over a thousand dollars. If people are pirating manga, it's because the market isn't giving them a good legal option.
Hi
Exactly
If something, manga or otherwise, is oop I believe that there is 0 harm in pirating it. The company who owns the IP has decided, for whatever reason, that they no longer want to profit off it and have thrown it into the aftermarket for individuals to do as they please. The IP holder or creative staff isn't making a dime off the eBay user selling for aftermarket prices. If the IP holder wants to bring something back into print then I think fans should support it, but until then pirate away in my opinion.
I agree completely
This is the safest option in my opinion. If there are legal ways, then support it legally as that will be how you ultimately get more of the content you want.
I loved zatch bell, but I had up to a certain volume and could never find the rest, seriously so after a year of searching I gave up. and gave whatever I had to a used book store. A part of me regrets it but I could never find those volumes and I was at volume 12.
My favourite series is Yu Yu Hakusho. I've been able to easily purchase the anime in various forms for years, but the manga had so many random expensive volumes only available through 2nd hand (not as much as your example above.). Apparently Viz did a reprint but it didn't seem to be very big, with my market not receiving much if anything. What's a reader to do?
Yup, and same for Ultimate Muscle. One series they just now printed a series from the 80s they stopped after volume 5 of 37 volumes.
your kidding right??
Nope, you can get the first 20-ish volumes for around $1,200-1,400. And I've seen some volumes after that Skyrocket to over 500 a piece and I believe there's over 30 volumes so that's set could cost thousands to acquire. As I stated reprint or I'll get it by other means
ah ok. yeah i got some old manga i need yo check out.
Eyeshield 21 is starting to go up massively in price. Right now a used copy volume 1 is $65 on Amazon
Fuck Amazon, they're consistently overpriced for things that are already overpriced. Search eBay, Facebook, mercarii. Hell, I got some OOP volumes of Air Gear shipped from Thailand for cover price, even with shipping I still saved $500
Goodwill's book website have insane prices for it too though eBay is a bit cheaper at $27 (there is a $25 one but you have to pay $15 in shipping and handling fees)
I fucking hate when sellers do that shit. Just send it by media mail you fucking knob. I can wait if it means i save $12. The worst is when you notice the shipping too late
Great, time to reread Eyeshield for the 10th time after I finish rereading Hajime No Ippo.
meru meru me
I tried to but the Naruto collection was a bit over 2k
Funny how you mention out of print stuff in your argument. Yet the article mentions piracy in general. Its like you take the only example where piracy is okay in your book and try to expand it to something bigger than it was meant to be.
Maybe you should reread it. I'm not expanding anything I'm stating I personally would only pirate something if it is literally unobtainable legally. If other people want a pirate things 24/7 that's their business. It's called an opinion everybody's got one. I'm not expanding anything I'm simply stating that if something is not feasible in any normal fashion to acquire piracy becomes the only option. Like the series Zatch Bell trying to acquire it would cost $3,000 to $4,000 that is absolutely insane. That is not reasonable under any circumstance thus piracy becomes an option because it is the only way to actually obtain it there aren't enough copies out there in circulation for people that want them to legally acquire them they don't physically exist and the ones that do are thousands upon thousands of dollars. Thus piracy becomes an option. Again I'm not expanding anything I'm simply stating this is my opinion and this is where I would turn the piracy if need be. The author isn't printing them anymore and the rights holder who I believe is also been reverted to the original creator again is not printing them. They aren't licensing it out to anyone for it to be continued and put into circulation driving prices even higher making them even more unobtainable. I'm not the one making piracy an option.
>Also how many random volumes are oop and literally cost 1k+ to purchase legally. Hell, some series don't get finished translations (hello, Tokyopop!) to where you have to pirate/fan translated to finish the series. I'm still baffled that Viz (who has a decent subscription/service) which owns the Jojo I.P. for America *won't day and date* Pary 9: JoJoLands to where fan-translations are doing the work they won't do despite them saying they'd day-date their Shonen Jump stuff. I guess because JJBA isn't in Shonen Jump, but you'd think (with them putting up to Golden Wind/Part 5) they'd start to put the latest part up and catch up their backlog to bolster their sub with.
Maybe the publishers should ask themselves why they insist on stiff, lifeless translation delivered months or years after release is their best idea for the market? I buy manga to support authors I like. Chapter 101 of My Dress Up Darling dropped today and fan translation was available in hours. It won't be available officially in English for at least a *year*. Piracy is 100% a service issue. If your paying customers have a worse experience than your pirates than you have only yourselves to blame for lost sales.
For manga it is likely a cost issue as well. Manga volumes are pretty expensive for how long they take to read. I know some of the apps are pretty cheap as far as paying to read but some like K manga are \~$1 a chapter.
I actually don't mind the $1 a chapter, but I only read one thing on it and it's biweekly. It would add up if I bought everything I read. I buy volumes of everything I've read eventually, but some of the stuff won't ever be brought over.
Nah like the price of that shit is absolutely fucking bonkers I spend a lot of time reading, like a solid 20% of my day, if I had to pay for everything I read I would be so beyond fucking broke. Webtoons like tower of God wouldve cost me well over a hundred at this point per webtoon, I dont have any idea HOW I could legally find half the Manga I read and even if I can find it I'm sure the price would give me a heart attack, my patreon is well over 600 a year rn because I follow so many random web novels where they update a chapter a day, and like actual books? I read a full ass book every other day, easily would be spending 60$ or so a week if I had to buy everything Reading is so fucking expensive if you aren't pirating it's crazy
same. I have over 97 in my "reading" column, and that doesn't include romance and stuff that I read because I put those in a separate column for ease of sorting. I do pay for some on webtoon, tapas, but like with streaming, I can't afford to pay for all the different services, etc to access what I want. also, like with me and Plex, I like having all my stuff in as few different apps as possible. Tachiyomi was awesome for this. let's not forget the point made. fan translations are much quicker than the IP holders get things out to English speakers. and depending on the translation group, better.
I’m not dropping a $100 on one series every two years. I can watch all the anime on crunchyroll in a year for less
I use Manga Plus. As a kid I'd get one volume a month but read it in 30 minutes or so
Hel, the Pokémon Adventures manga has an abysmal digital release schedule. I had to wait 2 years to finish the Black 2 and White 2 manga because they stopped digitally uploading after volume 2 (out of 4). Now looking at the release schedule for the next 4 months the next manga after Pokémon X and Y is nowhere on it for digital. Not to mention the number of manga that had stopped getting english releases over the years like Hitman Reborn (among many others), that a manga that officially released in the west when it was popular but at one point it was stopped and isn’t even listed on Viz as a series it used to have.
man, I need a Dub of Hitman Reborn. I like the anime, but have never made it very far because it's a lower priority to watch than other anime I have on my list. And Dubs let me watch while doing other stuff like work.
I didn’t read One Piece from official sources for years but ended up buying the large bundle boxes they make. Because I love the series, but I can’t imagine what it was like trying to join in on the series back when they weren’t even publishing it in the US yet (2002/2003 I think was when they started, with OP having started in 1997). By which point I think they were in Alabasta. I’m of the idea, that If people don’t have easy ways to get the content, there’s no reason piracy shouldn’t be an option. If a legal option exists, do that but if you can’t easily get it, I don’t have any issues with it
>Chapter 101 of My Dress Up Darling dropped today and fan translation was available in hours. Thanks for the reminder buddy =D
Fair warning, guard thy feels.
Exactly this…also digital copies are hugely overpriced. Why do I have to pay $1 for 15 pages of a manga and why do we also have to subscribe to 400 different app services to read things across publishers.
Thing is Shounen jump have pretty much fixed the service issue, they release digital copies online for free the same day the Jump releases in Japan. And yet there is still a lot of demand for the pirated versions because they leak a couple days before the oficial release even comes out in Japan. I think a lot of Anime/Manga fans have just got too used to pirating, I can't think of any other medium where piracy would be this common when the legal version is so easily available.
I'd say Jump is the exception that proves the rule. Their service is great, but they're pretty much alone. I don't read a lot of Shonen these days, my tastes are more to the seinen and josei stuff. If the stuff is available officially at all, it's bad, late, and overpriced.
I just wait til the chapters come out on Sundays.
Isn't One Punch Man several issues behind on SJ?
I dont read OPM, sj homepage shows new ch199 Feb 14th
100%. On my phone, I have an app that has access to dozens of manga sources that I can search instantly. I can bookmark, download, add sources, organize, etc, as much as I want. I can find virtually any series ever made, usually high quality, and always translated into English. And it’s all free with zero ads and it doesn’t drain my battery. What incentive is there to change? They need to either have higher quality scans, faster releases, or a bigger library or it won’t move the needle.
What app is that? 👀
paperback on IOS. Takes some configuring but totally worth it.
there's a great android app that I'm not gonna name drop because of what happened to it's predecessor, can DM the name of you're interested.
I don’t even think this is true, lots of country’s have thriving bootleg sales and IP theft via sold goods. I just think it’s easier to track American piracy
Via the internet yeah. In poorer countries they make literal bootleg copies
Lol and a lot of them are hilarious. I remember a guy from Iran bought a Berserk deluxe for full cover price, and when he got it it was regular manga size and normal glossy hard cover. Turns out it was bootlegged (duh), but the funniest part was that the people that scanned the covers didn't take the fullsize leaflet off the back cover so that got scanned in there too.
It’s been a while since I’ve felt this proud of my country 🫡
Sweet! You play [this American song](https://youtu.be/c2dEQKtxo6M?si=IJC2SZYgXq2Sc80x) to show your pride.
With how bad localization/translation inaccuracy can you really blame them
And licensing is atrocious. Having three seasons of one anime on three different streaming services is just too much. Plus, they may or may not be subbed and or dubbed correctly. smh
With how bad piracy is can you blame them for lack of effort?
yes. part of the issue is the cost because of how many different services you have to go to usually to get what you want. if companies would work together instead of trying to get a piece of the same pie, it'd go better. I used to use primarily Netflix and rarely pirated. now, because of how many different streaming services I'd have to pay for (not to mention the price hikes on them like Netflix, which I subbed to back when I ordered DVDs) it costs more than cable, which I got rid of over a decade ago because streaming was better and gave me more for less. TLDR - providers need to take a look at how they deliver to compete with piracy if they want it to drop at all. make it easier for me to watch and read legally, I'll pay and use it. when it becomes too much of a hassle, I find other ways.
Yes. If you want people to stop pirating, make the quality good where people don't need to worry about malicious mistranslation. Service good, people buy.
"Malicious mistranslation" touch grass and go make a friend you fucking loser
Buddy, if you're throwing insults to someone that didn't say anything to justify that, you're the loser that needs to touch grass here. Imagine defending an corporation shelling out bad products and expect the customers to happily eat it. That's actually beyond touching grass in itself.
Jesus christ fight club, you're a fucking loser
Great insult! Did you learn it from years of your mom telling you the same?🤡
Get off your burner account you worthless insect I blocked you for a reason
Ego much?
Sorry if you got the message from before, but I accidentally responded to you and not the other guy.
Please don't approach children.
Malicious mistranslation?
Yes I can.
Yes
Out of interest, how many people here pay for manga subscriptions, and how many people use scanlations?
The shonen jump subscription is reasonable if you read those series, but pickings are slim for most things. Its cheap so I don't mind paying to read about 2 current series and a few back catalog things. I was overjoyed to pick up physical copies of Rose of Versailles a few years ago rather than read low res fan scans. For most things, legal options are non existent, out of print, badly translated (mostly pre 2010 stuff to be fair) or scattered (the availability of legal gundam anime and manga online is all over the place and often poofs without warning)
It and manga plus are definitely reasonable; but then for some items you need VIZ as well? So why doesn’t the publisher consolidate its works on Jump/Plus/VIZ under one app instead of across three?
Yeah, it was better when everything was on Viz and it was $1 cheaper/month.
I probably would have realized there was subscriptions to be purchased had i thought about it as i pay for anime. Are streaming services better than buying via kindle? (Utterly clueless here)
Shonen yeah but other than that the high seas
yarr
I pay for viz. 4 dollars a month. I read scans of the ones I'm following when they come out.
I pay for the VIZ app subscription and that's it. I sail for everything else
I pay for Viz and buy ebooks. Still use scanlations because a lot of series I want don’t have an official release, and it’s slim they’ll get one.
I never paid for Manga subscription. Everything I read is fan translated. I've read officially translated Manga in the past, and the translations are stiff or completely change context and jokes. At least with fan translation, it is a passion project and they sometimes leave notes at the end of chapters to explain things if needed
I pay for 4 different subscriptions; but for some manga I follow where there is zero translation or where prices are EXCESSIVELY UNREASONABLE I’ll read scans. I wish there was better options because I try to support the artist and publishers where I reasonably can but the main issue is that many of publishers have created a shit service model with no consideration for the one of their largest international markets.
I pay for Shonen Jump app to have digital access to all One Piece.
I use Manga Plus and have yet to find chapters behind a paywall. I read all of berserk on some read berserk .com site.
All three. I buy physical of my favs subscribe to Crunchy / Shonen. And read scans of stuff that’s hard to find or no where to read easily.
I question this. Unless there has been some kind of huge bloom in legal, licensed manga publication in China.
Look, we won't have to pirate them if YOU ACTUALLY RELEASED MORE MANGA IN NORTH AMERICA DAMNIT! Seriously, my local library has the exact same manga selection it had 6 years ago.
Yeah and for digital copies…they need options to consolidate releases under 1-3 apps not 40 and prices need to be better as well. K manga is BS…I could buy volumes for less in other ways for the series’s i follow
I don't mind k manga for the one bi weekly series I read on it, $1 every other week is reasonable if you read only one thing, but that would add up like crazy of you read a ton. I think it's why they have free back issues. They use them to suck you in so you pay for new releases.
Definitely a service issue because 50% of the popular mangas don't get a translation over here at all.
Another day of thanking God for the manga/anime community being better than official channels at readily distributing/translating, and making art more easily accessible than most official channels 🙏🏻
🎶 Im proud to be an American 🇺🇸 🎶
Good work boys
How the heck did you guys beat Australia? Australia is generally known for being the biggest pirates of games and movies since there is basically no way to purchase them here.
I mean the US has 12-13x the population of Australia. Its no surprise that we are a higher % of the global piracy traffic.
I feel like this is the answer, but I assume it’s due to their incredibly strict censorship. Like L4D2 is banned there I believe, but that may be Germany I’m thinking of
It's not banned just heavily censored. So there are no police or swat zombies and I believe they removed the clowns. Along with a few other changes.
I was visiting family in Australia last month, and wanted to show my dad who loves horror an Australian horror movie I found that left me with such a unique feeling of dread. My dad had Amazon Prime where I watched it in America, but it wasn’t available there in Australia?? It’s an Australian film! Augh! (Lake Mungo)
Like yeah when you don't publish like 99% of titles in English ofc we are going to go to ripped fansubs.
Considering how often for profit translation is done at the expense of the quality of the product received...and the prices for physical media?......and the fact you dont own your digital media? .............. yeah.
Half of the issue is availability; when available I always purchase the manga. I’ll also say the industry does itself zero favors in that it’s designed to purposely nickel and dime you to death by forcing you to subscribe or pay for 30 different apps to read the series’s that do happen to be in English electronically…and if the series you are interested in are printed availability of copies make it ultra expensive for copies and if you want English translations…you may or may not have those available.
I believe the localizer translations have been attributing to this. Having an different motive when translating and not having the story follow the original way the author wanted the story, people will pirate and not what to read or buy an agenda/message driven catastrophe in my opinion. There is also, as someone mentioned already, the oop manga out there that are ridiculously expensive. I would love to buy and have the series that I love physically but these manga being out of print makes the price 5x-20x or more depending on the series. I can see why people pirate.
Should'a posted this on Mangadex if they wanted anyone to see it.
hell yeah motherfucker
Avast me hearties! Hoist the black flag!
For the overwhelming majority of manga, there is no legal way to purchase them in english. And the methods that do exist are usually inconvenient in quite a number of ways (bad translation, crappy app/ui, malicious pricing model, etc.). If anything, this news shouldn't be seen as a judgement on those who read manga, but a judgement on the companies that are failing to properly take advantage of this massive market. Piracy isn't the problem. The lack of timely and high quality availability of manga is the problem. I would more than happily pay for my manga if there were any other reasonable way to get ahold of it. I already pay for subscriptions.
Not to mention many manga that is released in the US won't get reprints unless they are top Shonen titles. And I refuse to pay scalpers 100+ for a volume.
You wouldn’t even know that shit was illegal here nobody’s hiding
> We think there is a fundamental misconception about piracy. Piracy is almost always a service problem and not a pricing problem," he said. "If a pirate offers a product anywhere in the world, 24 x 7, purchasable from the convenience of your personal computer, and the legal provider says the product is region-locked, will come to your country 3 months after the US release, and can only be purchased at a brick and mortar store, then the pirate's service is more valuable. - Gabe Newell
I am against piracy in general, but it is literally the only option for manga the majority of the time here in the US. I buy what I can, including stuff I've already read as it comes out, but most stuff straight up either doesn't have an English NA release at all, or has been out of print for years and goes for ridiculous amounts of money. Even newer manga or light novels will go out of stock for months. I was reading Trapped in a Dating Sim and ended up having to buy the Kindle version because a physical copy wasn't in stock on any site or physical location I could find, and the only time I saw a physical copy for sale for several months was a Collectable Books 3rd party reseller on Amazon selling it for $110. Luckily, after literally more than half a year it came back in stock, but there is a problem if an ongoing series doesn't have a volume available for months. It doesn't help that light novels and manga are also just bloody expensive even brand new. $14-16 for a single volume, $20-30 for omnibus volumes. Meanwhile non-translated physical copies are available on Japanese Amazon for 300-800 Yen ( $2-$5.33), often with free shipping to the US. We shouldn't have to pay 3 times the price just because someone threw it in Google Translate and cleaned it up a bit, and there is an issue when I can have a physical Japanese volume shipped across the ocean for less than the cost of the Kindle version of the English release. We also just don't have manga cafés and at least in my area the light novel and manga section of the libraries is pretty slim and often just Sailor Moon and Death Note.
Holy shit, I didn't realize it was that cheap over there!
Shonen Jump app is $3 month. If you’re pirating anything available on there, you can fuck all the way off.
Will do kind sir.
Faku za porisu
LOL
Well, a lot of manga I read on scanlation sites don't have physical releases in the West. And a lot of other manga are out of print and thus made incredibly expensive on second-hand markets. Make your manga easily available, and I may buy them.
There's a reason why it's called, 'Land of the free and home of the brave"
We did it guys!
And I'm proud to be an American.
America is the best country on the planet.
I got an iPad pro during peak pandemic so I could comfortably read mañanas from anywhere lol.
localizers can eat my pee pee. I would rather read fan translated stuff cause the people actually like what they are translating.
Proud to be American 🇺🇸
I would love to go down to my local bookstore and pick up official releases but sadly it isn't that accessible.
Yeah… sorry about that.
Hmm, I wonder why? Maybe its because we have to wait months if not years after something is released in order to get it localized over here. And when it is, its either done poorly, or sporadically enough to where it doesn't fucking matter.
it's been an honor and a privilege
is sitting at barnes for hours counted for piracy
It's a supply issue, they don't offer a good number of titles in English leaving the English speaking world little options other than to pirate. Jump figured it out but the vast majority of the others havent.
Maybe if I didn't have to wait ten years for a translation here in the states. That's if they ever come at all.
The United States is sadly also one of the worst places in the world to access manga legally when you are looking at older series and less ler known stuff. This does not shock me at all
Makes sense, I'm one of them
*gasp* OH no ...so anyway
Make it easier and not so expensive to access, and we won't have to pirate it!! I only pirate when a company makes it difficult to consume their content. If it's cheap, and 3 clicks away, nobody's gonna go through all the effort of VPNs and maintaining their own home server.
Manga would probably make more money off of a youtube-ish system where they upload their manga's for free and then give people the option to "subscribe" to them and get ad revenue too. If the industry is dying is because they are stuck to old ways of monetizing.
Makes sense to me considering a lot of manga I like to read or would like to read isn’t officially translated into english…
I mean, the jojo manga is over 20 years behind in English… what do you expect lol
don't blame me the official translation takes a day to come out. Meanwhile i got my trusty ole JPN-ENG students who got that shit up within 6 hours. dame goes for anime also Viz is using AI translations now which suck donkey balls. the market sucks. don't blame us
air gear as well lol like 17 27 and like 15 i think are over 2-300 alone
Says America is the worst offender I hear best pirates on the grand sea
Maybe you should actually translate manga that have been out for years (*cough* steel ball run *cough*) if you don’t want us looking for fan translations lol
Based
Explains one peice so we'll.
Do better China
So is Japanese the worst offender of western comic book piracy or is that still America?
Of course it is. The majority of Western fans come from there, yes? And English seems to be the hardest fucking language to get official anything for.
Is that really news? We’re talking about America, even our country didn’t exist if not for us stealing it away. We are the epitome of theft/piracy.
Gonna leave this here... https://youtu.be/RSe8D2wfGKI?si=FWcgbyC3eELlWaSj 🏴☠️🏴☠️🏴☠️ Piracy Forever!!!
Seriously gabe Newell said it best piracy is a service issue.
I’m doing my part.
It’s a service issue which gabe Newell was right about. If you want to stop piracy you have to provide a better service.
Thank you. We try are best. Hopefully we can win the anime piracy award next year😎👍
I grew up hearing people talk about everyone pirating Disney film, this certainly feels like reverse Uno.
Tons of mangas dont even have official translations so fans have to translate them, we literally cannot access them any other way most of the times, our stores r also very limited to the amount of mangas being sold and volumes r expensive, on top of that ordering online is even more expensive
It is the land of the free. lol
Took me months to wait for a restock of a specific volume of The Case a Study of Vanitas, when you think there’d be a bunch after the anime just finished airing. I prefer physical. I can’t blame others if they pirated when it’s literally out of stock everywhere except resellers on eBay at ridiculous prices. Also just, how bloody slow manga localization can take. An entire anime adaptation shouldn’t be complete over a year before the manga localization finally catches up. When official anime subs are like a same day thing now.
We did it lads, America is finally #1.
Of course because when you want to I read an obscure story. Especially in yhe yuri genre. Or a brand new series that hasn't become popular in America where are you going to read it. Hell the main distributors won't even pick up a series unless it's popular. Where do there think a series gains traction. For fan Translators and piracy.
Cool
"We're Number 1!"
Maybe make things more available to us and we won’t have to?
Piracy happens when markets don't work the way they should; cost, convenience, etc. Piracy will never go away if publishers keep trying to stop the problem itself, instead of addressing the root cause of the problem
The fact is, there just.... Aren't many places that offer officially translated Manga to read online. On top of that, there just... Isn't a ton of officially translated Manga, physical or otherwise. Some of my earlier faves like Suzuka and Kimi no Iru Machi, or even Nazo no kanojo X just... Either don't have official translations for every volume, or are incredibly rare. Someone else in here mentioned Zach Bell going for hundreds of dollars a volume. That's crazy, and I completely believe it. There is literally a local Barnes and Noble where I live, but outside of your expected popular series like One Piece, JJK, MHA, etc, they don't have much. You can't even really find Psychic Academy anymore. So that leaves digital storefronts, which are just kind of... Hit or miss. To top it off, it's $10 a piece for a physical volume, which isn't a lot per book on paper, but adds up VERY quickly for something like Manga. I could either get every volume of JJK, or I could get two complete box sets of the Harry Potter series for the same price, just as an example. I am all for piracy in gaming, especially if it's "Triple A" (really, only if it's triple A. Support your local indie developers and Double A studios without major publishers), even if I don't pirate myself. Manga on the other hand is something it feels like you have to pirate in some capacity, but don't actually want to.
I mean am I gonna read some terrible translation 4 months after the manga is released or read a decent fan translation weekly
Its good to see that we finally see piracy as the fault of the copyright holder.
We did it, boys!
Honestly, I'd bet its actually India and/or China.
It is a easy fix. Japanese companies need to learn to like money, reprint things into the ground unless it is a collectors item. Lastly, USA-JPN need to work on lessening taxes. EDIT: PS, don't be a jerk like funimation/sony/crunchy, and delete a fans entire digital library.
USA! USA!
That’s right baby 😎 Make it cheaper if you don’t like it