Onemanga Shutting Down

[TheBladeChild]

""There is an end to everything, to good things as well."

It pains me to announce that this is the last week of manga reading on One Manga (!!). Manga publishers have recently changed their stance on manga scanlations and made it clear that they no longer approve of it. We have decided to abide by their wishes, and remove all manga content (regardless of licensing status) from the site. The removal of content will happen gradually (so you can at least finish some of the outstanding reading you have), but we expect all content to be gone by early next week (RIP OM July '10).

So what next? We're not really sure at this point, but we have some ideas we would like to try out. Until then, the One Manga forums will remain active and we encourage all of you to continue using them. OMF has developed into a great community and it would be a shame to see that disappear.

You can also show us some love in this moment of sadness by 'liking' our brand new Facebook page. It would be nice to see just how many of you came to enjoy our 'better than peanut butter and jelly' invention.

Regardless of whether you stay with us or not, on behalf of the One Manga team, I would like to thank you all for your unwavering support over the years. Through the ups and downs you have stuck with us, and that is what kept us going.

As a certain Porky was fond of saying... That's all folks!

Time for me to go lay down and let this all sink in.

- Zabi"

comments: Shame to see one of my favorite online manga sites go down. Anyone have any alternatives they would like to suggest?

[NeoCybercoin]

Well there is http://www.1000manga.com/ but I don't know how long that will be up. I mean more sites could go down because of this.

But really it's a pity since Onemanga was my primary manga site.

[Marik]

1000manga is owned by OneManga. It's where they put all the manga they considered ecchi, so it's probably going down too.

---

Edit: Yup. 1000manga is done as well.


And for some of you who were wondering, yes, 1000Manga will have its manga removed as well.

Also like to slip in my own thanks to all of you people here too for all the overwhelming support you have given us. We honestly never thought we'd get this far when the site opened up. But hopefully we'll be able to figure something out for the site's future so this may not goodbye just yet.

EDIT TO ADD:
The forums will remain open and active, nothing is going to immediately change here. There is a suggestions thread here (http://forum.onemanga.com/showthread.php?t=86396) for folks to offer ideas about what OneManga.com should do with the front page, but for the forums it's going to be business as usual.

There's an article on ANN (http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/news/2010-07-22/manga-scan-site-says-it-will-remove-manga) about this as well.

[NeoCybercoin]

Yeah thought that might happen. Then...perhaps MangaFox?

[Buffalobiian]

www.mangafox.com
www.mangavolume.com
www.mangahelpers.com (see below)
www.mangastream.com
www.mangatraders.com
www.mangatoshokan.com (that's going down too.)

[Marik]

www.mangatoshokan.com (http://www.mangatoshokan.com) that's going down too.

Indeed.

MangaHelpers stopped hosting and linking to scanlations last month. (http://mangahelpers.com/news/details/376) They are opening a site called OpenManga, (http://mangahelpers.com/news/details/377) so you can cross them out.

That Manga Volume site has removed a lot of manga as well.

[DarthEnderX]

Oh man. I loved OneManga. This makes me a sad panda.

[LobsterMagnet]

Awwww I'm really rad to see onemanga go I really really liked it. But if anything manga fandom cannot be denied strike down one sight and two more will replace it.

[RyougaZell]

Time to start adding direct scanlation sites to favorites. And if those die as well, then IRC.

ANN loves to add news like this. And their users are complete and utter hypocrites. You only need to read their forums to know they supposedely 'wait' for licensed releases and hate fansubs. But they always know about the new series, new characters and all.

Yes. Onemanga and all those sites are illegal. But thanks to them many manga got licensed since users started to like them. Without them, no one would know some.

If the main problem is that scans get released before their official release in Japan, simply ban all access from Japan. The same way japanese ero-game sites banned the rest of the world when all the Rapelay-fiasco happened.

What I hate the most about this, is that its the same crap Funimation pulled with One Piece. They tried to shut down the fansubs sites to only allow their crappy site to stream the episodes, but won't stream worldwide.

In my case I buy most of the manga I read scanned. Naruto, One Piece, Negima, Skip Beat, .hack, Fairy Tail, Shugo Chara.

The only manga I read that I don't buy is Bleach.

Others aren't even licensed like The World Only God Knows, High School of the Dead, Bakuman or even Cross Game (when it was published).

Heck... and what about licensed but out-of-print series? Like Rave. I tried to buy all the volumes only to find I couldn't get them through ANY god damn site. Not even Viz has them on sale. And Del Rey only plans to publish the last 3 volumes, not the rest of the series.

The biggest problem, in my case, is that I need to travel to another country to buy manga. Or import them through Amazon... though Amazon has become so low quality that the books always arrive two months late and all beated up, because they refuse to use a good international carrier.

I'm not happy with this, but whatever. Like I said... if even the scanlation sites die, we'll always be able to hunt down the chapters on IIRC. We'll just need to work 'a bit more' to get them.

[Yukimura]

What concerns me most about this trend is that there is a niche that the loss of all the big aggregation sites may leave open for a while. I'm referring to is the practice of 'amateur' scanslators who don't have sites or irc channels or any other way to distro their product but big ddl aggregators. MangaFox for instance has a strong community of 'amatuer' scanslators who often exclusively upload to MF thinking that their work will be preserved indefinitely. These little operations are generally one or two people and trend more towards the more feminine titles but they are still a part of the overall community and it would suck for them to give up on scanslating because they had no way to spread their work the rest of the community.

[Sidnne]

This is terrible news! Manga publishers are complete fools. If it weren't for manga scanlations, I wouldn't have even heard of ANY mangas at all!


Stop Tazmo has a pretty good listing of manga and doesn't have any indications that they might shut down, but I don't know who owns them.

http://stoptazmo.com/
http://stoptazmo.com/downloads/manga_series.php

you can add that to the list, I guess.

[Archangel]

Well... this sucks

[Carnage]

I personally don't like onemanga so much, but it is a shame nonetheless. Hopefully they don't directly after the scanlators of the big 3, such as mangastream.

[Kraco]

What a thing to find when coming back from a vacation. Not that this wasn't expected, of course, with the news back then of publishers adopting more draconian measures. Those measures naturally had to happen in practice or those companies would have ended up all talk (not that I'd have minded that alternative).

I just pray MT won't go under. Though I expect that to be only a matter of when, not if, because those bastardly publishers will hardly be satisfied so soon now that they have tasted the blood of their enemies.

[toonice714]

With the exception of gettin weekly releases from IRC's its gonna be hard to read OP etc weekly.....does this mean we will be doomed to the anime threads? Their predictions are the WORST! If the only releases we can look forward to are weekly anime releases then that will probably lead to more fighting over manga readers spoiling things accidentally etc. Also do the small nuances that some people pick up from reading the manga happen in the animes? The anime is pretty much geared to advancing the story. Whereas the manga is free to interpretation because everything is already laid out. How many times have you re-watched an anime episode and was like "oh he was shown earlier in the series...etc". In one piece I always wondered how luffy got that scar under his eye. Then I read the manga and found out that he stabs himself in the face. Long story short it would suck to be doomed to exclusively watch the anime. I just don't wanna miss anything

[Dark Dragon]

whoa, relax.

You can get one piece from mangastream (http://mangastream.com/) and read it online when new chapters come out. One Piece is a popular enough manga that a few websites going down won't change things. Websites that are too big and too public are in danger of being shut down, but there will always be newer ones to take their place.

[RyougaZell]

Hmmm. I was browsing through the APForums thread concerning OneManga shutting down.

The people over there are blaming MangaStream on the current situation regarding scanlations.

Reason? Mangastream's APP to read manga on Iphone and Ipad.

It seems Viz and many other american publishers pushed the war against scanlations when that APP became the last straw.

[Sidnne]

Hmmm. I was browsing through the APForums thread concerning OneManga shutting down.

The people over there are blaming MangaStream on the current situation regarding scanlations.

Reason? Mangastream's APP to read manga on Iphone and Ipad.

It seems Viz and many other american publishers pushed the war against scanlations when that APP became the last straw.

That sounds like a pretty stupid reason. What's the difference if I'm reading the manga on computer/laptop/netbook or an Iphone?
I think the people saying that really don't have a clue what they're talking about and are just looking for someone to blame and pretending they have some type of inside information on the situation.

[Death BOO Z]

I don't know, maybe the big companies are planning to make an app for this stuff, like manga hulu (streaming anime).
there probably is a market for this stuff, soldiers, students, and people on business trips.

[RyougaZell]

That sounds like a pretty stupid reason. What's the difference if I'm reading the manga on computer/laptop/netbook or an Iphone?
I think the people saying that really don't have a clue what they're talking about and are just looking for someone to blame and pretending they have some type of inside information on the situation.

No no... they say the companies were already working against scanlations. They say, though, that things got ugly when the last straw was pulled. The APP.

But wheter this is true or not, the fact remains that sites like OneManga were making money from the advertisers. Don't really know how things work for an APP though.

[Carnage]

Hmmm. I was browsing through the APForums thread concerning OneManga shutting down.

The people over there are blaming MangaStream on the current situation regarding scanlations.

Reason? Mangastream's APP to read manga on Iphone and Ipad.

It seems Viz and many other american publishers pushed the war against scanlations when that APP became the last straw.

If the last straw was Mangastream's APP then MANGASTREAM would have immediately faced Viz's wrath alongside onemanga.

[depthcharge]

I foresee many threads being made asking - where do I find XXX manga?

It may become a reality that in future, we have to go to iTune/App stores/... to find manga to read.(yeah that is how powerful Apple company has become)

[Sidnne]

I foresee many threads being made asking - where do I find XXX manga?

It may become a reality that in future, we have to go to iTune/App stores/... to find manga to read.(yeah that is how powerful Apple company has become)

No, Apple is not that powerful... Do you really think people aren't going to keep putting the scans online for others? Everything will always be available somewhere else on the internet. It's not like Itunes is the only place to get mp3's.

[depthcharge]

Apple is looking at us, waving the iPad.

IMO, I dont wanna have too much to do with Apple, but I will leave the rest of my Apple comment out of here.

Unfortunately, the way things are going, I would prefer to use a system that pays the original content creator directly(yeah without Apple-tax, Amazon-tax Publisher-tax ect ect) Move to an affordable, efficient and direct system. Let the inter-web rule!!!

[Assassin]

I seem to recall onemanga stepped out of the 'reading manga's business. Where else do you guys go to read manga? A short list of viable options would be appreciated. Thanx.

[Sapphire]

http://somemanga.com/

[Archangel]

Online readers suck hairy balls, download your shit off Manga Traders

[enkoujin]

MangaFox and MangaReaders is where I get my goods from aside from the translators' direct online readers (e.g. RedHawk, imanga, MangaStream, etc.).

[DarthEnderX]

Online readers suck hairy balls, download your shit off Manga TradersUm...no?

Why would I download a bunch of shit I'm never gonna read twice when I can just flip through the pages with a click of the mouse?

[Archangel]

Because you have to wait for loading, readers compress the pages and make them look like shit, you can't use your own reader so you won't be able to customize your experience, you're bound to get stuck with the first group who released said chapter instead of the one who took a while longer and actually did a decent job, etc.

[RyougaZell]

Because you have to wait for loading, readers compress the pages and make them look like shit, you can't use your own reader so you won't be able to customize your experience, you're bound to get stuck with the first group who released said chapter instead of the one who took a while longer and actually did a decent job, etc.

Except mangatraders and direct download sites are blocked at my office, where I usually read my manga fix, therefore online readers are the way to go.

[enkoujin]

Some people do things differently.

I know that when my time is constrained, I wouldn't want to spend a whole lot of time or labour waiting for downloads (especially on those file-hosting websites that tempt you with their premium services). Then you often have to unzip the compressed chapter, which takes more clicking.

If you think about it, it'd take about four clicks to get to a certain chapter of your liking (reader homepage, search, find title, click on chapter) and thereafter, you can use arrow keys to navigate through the pages.

When you're downloading chapters, it would probably be the same as above - except that unless it's a DDL, you'd probably have to go through a series of waiting, clicking and folder organization unless you've pre-programmed everything to do your bidding. Even so with DDL.

Really, in the time it takes you to download a chapter, unzip the compressed file and started reading them, I could be done reading 1.8 chapters.

Ultimately, consider the average and casual anime-manga fan. Streaming and readers are the method of choice among us. I'm lazy and I choose not to do this just for higher-quality pages. I skim through the content and get my entertainment's worth, but to each their own opinion.

[Yukimura]

People like you would benefit from a comic reader enkoujin. Mangameeya or one of it's similar cousins removes all the decompression issues and in aggregate will let you flip through the pages faster than if you were on an online reader with the waiting compressed into the up front investment in the download. But yes, I know first hand that manga readers are, by and large, extremely lazy people and don't care about quality that much compared to minimizing their level of expended effort. They care about being able to expend the minimal amount of effort to get their entertianment fix, and for them online readers are the way to go. Downloading is more for people who care somewhat more about the manga than just the short term entertainment value i.e. very much a minority.

[David75]

You also have people who do not love manga that much, they like some of them, and online reading is enough for them.
Also, no download to manage, less exposure to legal trouble etc...
It also is provides a good way to discover some manga.

For example, I try to follow Initial D. The manga isn't stellar in anything from scenario to art quality and is mainly composed of two cars chasing one another, most pages are filled with that. So there isn't much interrest in downloading in that case.

[Buffalobiian]

I'm primarily a downloader, not necessarily because of quality issues, but time.

It might be possible that the final time required to finish reading a chapter is longer in some cases, but that's not how downloading manga works for me anyway. I click a link, let it download, comeback to it later. Instead of waiting for pages to load as I read online, I can go do something else while the download process completes itself, and come back for a quick and easy manga-reading experience.

Downloading is also great for commuters. Mobile internet is still relatively expensive, and in my case, slow. Not to mention it uses extra batter life.


At the end of the day, unless I had special requirements I just use whatever I get my hands on.

[Ryllharu]

Ever have that feeling that comes from wanting to re-read a series, only to find that the site you read it on complied with a takedown notice and now you can't ever read it again? I have. With great difficulty I tracked down the old volumes, and downloaded them for safe keeping. By the time you want it, there is a surprisingly good chance you'll be unable to find it again easily. That's why I download every time.

That and the internet does go down from time to time, or becomes inaccessible (travel, etc.), and I like to read a lot.

I tried online readers before, and the convenience was almost worth it...and then Onemanga died.