Is It Legal to Read Manga on Manga Rock

Lists of official English language digital manga stores with simulpubs:

• https://wherecanireadmanga.com/
• https://github.com/otakulogy/manga-reading
• http://simulpub.tsundokulife.com/
• https://world wide web.animenewsnetwork.com/bbs/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=258212

In March I did a post about some new official manga reading apps publishers Viz Media and Shueisha had released to fight piracy. Now I'm doing a more than general mail on what that mural is similar in the light of something of a bombshell that just hit — the endmost of Manga Rock. In many aspects manga companies are still way behind pirates, but they're making the correct first steps in communicable up to them.

If you don't know, Manga Rock was seemingly the nigh widely-used app and website for reading fan translations — "scanlations", of Japanese manga and probably other Asian comics. It had an extremely slick interface that fabricated it actually like shooting fish in a barrel to find, read, and stay updated on thousands of manga in multiple languages. It did this by pulling chapters and volumes from other scanlation websites. Google searches of manga oft bring upwards a link to Manga Rock earlier or correct next to the official release, and Apple featured the app at least once on the iOS App Store.

Information technology even had premium features locked backside a subscription. Many of Manga Rock's users seem to accept actually thought it was a legit source. I'yard honestly surprised information technology lasted as long as it did. The subscription was an specially brazen move, which I imagine drew enough negative attention to it for the company behind Manga Stone to voluntarily shut it downwardly.

The CEO of manga company Irodori Comics posted a lengthy tweet thread bringing Japanese attention to Manga Rock, and I guess that's what got the dominoes falling. This video from Zach Godin (@uchuuself) also alleges some other incidents, like a western artist'due south work showing upwards on Manga Rock without them getting paid. As of this writing Manga Rock is still up, but the visitor behind it appear plans to take downward the app and the site with a huge amends post laying out future plans.

This sounds like the kind of situation that leads to another Napster-to-iTunes situation, or more relevant for the anime and manga globe, a Crunchyroll situation. Crunchyroll started out years agone as a site that grabbed fan translations of anime to stream all in ane place, information technology drew enough attention for anime companies to shut information technology downward, it came back  as a legit anime streaming service, and is now ane of the biggest. Yous can probably credit Crunchyroll with starting the current era of "simulcast" anime, where you can now watch a plurality of new anime shows there or on its competitors at the same fourth dimension they're airing in Nippon. The same needs to happen to manga.

Crunchyroll itself really already hosts manga, but like other English digital manga sources, its library is currently express. In response to Manga Rock, Godin started work on a page list places where you can legally read and buy digital manga in English. It includes the apps I mentioned in my March mail — Viz'southward Shounen Leap and Shueisha'south Manga Plus, along with more.

Part of the whole problem is the manga translation industry hasn't washed the best job of advertising all the places where you can get their products. I had no idea yous can read the entirety ofMobile Conform Gundam: The Origin for free, legally, in English, at ComicWalker. Independent fans like Godin and others have had to build and curate lists of official manga stores. Even some scanlation websites point users towards official releases.

From what I tin can tell, the main sources other than Viz seem to be Crunchyroll, Book Walker, and Amazon's ComiXology (which links to Kindle). A lot of major publishers seem to just sell all their work at those places as well every bit their own official sites. Crunchyroll, Shounen Jump, and Manga Plus take subscriptions for their whole libraries and ComiXology has a premium subscription that includes a clamper of its library. ComiXology and Book Walker also allow yous subscribe to some individual series or buy new chapters as they come out for effectually $ane or $2 per chapter.

The biggest problem with these stores though is that their libraries are nonetheless pretty small. Shounen Jump and Manga Plus mostly just embrace the most popular shounen series likeDragon Ball,Kimetsu no Yaiba, orDr. Rock. The other three same stores take a wider pick, but like I said in March, it still feels like less than a drib in the bucket compared to all the manga Nihon is producing that people outside Nippon want. If y'all go to the ComicWalker site linked above, you'll observe it has around 50 manga in English simply around 2000 in Japanese.

Furthermore, and probably more than chiefly, most of what you tin can get in English language now is in trade books. The existent reason people read scanlations is they want to keep up on the latest capacity as they testify up in Japanese magazines, and scanlators can provide that within a thing of hours. The official sources I'one thousand linking have "simulpubs" for a relative handful of series (like Assault on Titan), only buying most series in English, including all the ones I currently read, means waiting for merchandise books that might be months or years behind the Japanese trade books. Whenever a new affiliate ofBerserk drops it seems every bit if the whole manga world takes notice, but Dark Horse still merely releases trade books that are a whole yr behind Japan. As far as I can tell everyone just reads scanlations and then some people buy those new deluxe hardcover editions Dark Horse is putting out.

As it currently stands, if you want to go along up with the latest chapters of one of the current flagship shounen manga serial, you can do that at a number of places at present. Any English trade book you might want is broadly available to buy online. But if you want to keep upward with chapters of almost anything outside those flagship shounen, yous probably nevertheless have to rely on scanlations.

That's non even mentioning the thousands of series scanlators do that volition probably never come out in English language. That supply lone ensures scanlators will always be effectually. Even with Manga Rock going away, there are probably half a dozen apps simply similar it ready to take its place, hosting an ocean of unlicensed manga. Scanlation communities are already adapting to the vacuum Manga Rock is leaving behind.

The electric current official Manga translators demand to keep growing their libraries of simulpubs and become the discussion out near what they accept. They need to reach a point of marketplace penetration like to what Crunchyroll, Amazon Prime, Hi-Dive, and Funimation currently accept for streaming anime.

Just here'due south the real kicker: I've just  been talking near manga you tin can buy and read in English. Most of the news articles and a skilful portion of the tweets I'm finding most Manga Rock's demise are actually in Spanish. All this piracy is happening not just because in that location's an unserved English language language audience, but because there are unserved audiences for manga in probably a dozen languages, and in many countries where a legit manga industry might not even be.

BULLETS:

• Why the Marvel Sony Spider-Human deal didn't surprise the Russo bros.: https://www.ign.com/articles/2019/09/06/the-russos-on-why-the-marvel-sony-spider-man-divide-didnt-surprise-them
• GamerSyde finally has a loftier-bitrate download of that newCyberpunk 2077 video. It's 4GB: https://ift.tt/2Uvnpew
• The last omnibus ofBlade of the Immortal comes out in November: https://www.darkhorse.com/Books/3002-377/Blade-of-the-Immortal-Coach-Book-10-TPB

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Source: https://noplatform.wordpress.com/2019/09/06/on-the-downfall-of-manga-rock-and-where-to-read-digital-manga-legally/

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