Viz Media coerces Mangastream into dropping 7 mangas

Mogtaki said:
I don't get it.

You're angry because a distributor is stopping people from reading FREE manga? Do you have any idea how much a manga artist gets paid for their work? How many hours they put into their work? Any idea why the suicide rate is unbelievably high for manga artists? Buy the god damn manga.

It's not a rotten decision if it's trying to protect an industry where the artists have to work up to 18 hours a day, drawing constantly while others seem to stamp their stuff up on the internet and let people read it for free like it's worth nothing.

Buy the god damn manga.

lucjan said:
If I want to support a manga artist, I'll buy the manga straight from Japan, and use online scanlations to read it.

Lauriet said:
I don't care about any of those.

@Mogtaki: Good thing is, all of those manga's respective authors aren't going bankrupt and on the evrge of suicide. I do support buying manga and doujinshi work for exactly that. Which reminds me of the manga koimoku which is centered around drawing manga. It's rather... depressing.

Wasabi said:
Oh damn it. No more shounen trinity!? Who are the next best scanalators for the big three?

Mogtaki said:
I don't get it.

You're angry because a distributor is stopping people from reading FREE manga? Do you have any idea how much a manga artist gets paid for their work? How many hours they put into their work? Any idea why the suicide rate is unbelievably high for manga artists? Buy the god damn manga.

It's not a rotten decision if it's trying to protect an industry where the artists have to work up to 18 hours a day, drawing constantly while others seem to stamp their stuff up on the internet and let people read it for free like it's worth nothing.

Lauriet said:
I don't care about any of those.

@Mogtaki: Good thing is, all of those manga's respective authors aren't going bankrupt and on the evrge of suicide. I do support buying manga and doujinshi work for exactly that. Which reminds me of the manga koimoku which is centered around drawing manga. It's rather... depressing.

VongolaXEspada said:


Thank you, I was going to state the same thing these manga artist work their asses off to release a manga every week. Yet these people get all mad when the series get taken off of a website. MangaStream had a good two years and I'm sure Viz media was aware of their website for awhile and just took action now. I think though MangaStream and Viz media should work together so Shounen Jump Alpha comes out earlier, I don't wanna wait two weeks.

Gogetters said:
<---- Manga Discussion that way

lucjan said:

The circumstances are different with Mangastream. They're not like Onemanga. It was sad, but Onemanga had shut down for valid reasons. Mangastream, no. Which is why Mangastream's derision of Viz was painfully obvious in their statement. Even they thought Viz were full of shit.

VongolaXEspada said:


MangaStream in its prime is like the 600th most visited site in the world according to Alexa, but I doubt 80% of those people even buy the manga, it's annoying. If more people bought the manga, we wouldn't have to deal with this, but PEOPLE AREN'T!!! I bet most of the scanlators at MS make more froms the ads on their website then the scanlators at Viz.

VongolaXEspada said:


MangaStream in its prime is like the 600th most visited site in the world according to Alexa, but I doubt 80% of those people even buy the manga, it's annoying. If more people bought the manga, we wouldn't have to deal with this, but PEOPLE AREN'T!!! I bet most of the scanlators at MS make more froms the ads on their website then the scanlators at Viz.

VongolaXEspada said:


MangaStream in its prime is like the 600th most visited site in the world according to Alexa, but I doubt 80% of those people even buy the manga, it's annoying. If more people bought the manga, we wouldn't have to deal with this, but PEOPLE AREN'T!!! I bet most of the scanlators at MS make more froms the ads on their website then the scanlators at Viz.

Lauriet said:
I don't care about any of those.

@Mogtaki: Good thing is, all of those manga's respective authors aren't going bankrupt and on the evrge of suicide. I do support buying manga and doujinshi work for exactly that. Which reminds me of the manga koimoku which is centered around drawing manga. It's rather... depressing.

Mogtaki said:
I don't get it.

You're angry because a distributor is stopping people from reading FREE manga? Do you have any idea how much a manga artist gets paid for their work? How many hours they put into their work? Any idea why the suicide rate is unbelievably high for manga artists? Buy the god damn manga.

It's not a rotten decision if it's trying to protect an industry where the artists have to work up to 18 hours a day, drawing constantly while others seem to stamp their stuff up on the internet and let people read it for free like it's worth nothing.

Omnimalevolent1 said:
I pretty much refuse to buy licensed manga released in English for various reasons. One is that it is nice to own a book in it's original format... another is that they often release sub-par translations, and seem to have little respect for the community. I usually read these shounen series online each week... if they were to cut that off, I would cease to read these... PERIOD. FULL STOP.

They equate people reading manga online as being lost sales, which is utter rubbish. I would prefer to give my support to the actual authors, rather than the vultures which exploit the industry. If manga was not available for me to read online, I think it would be highly unlikely that I would have even a fifth of the manga I own. I can't stand the stupid argument about lost sales.... some will say that I am just a spoiled brat because I want everything free, but I am calling them out on this claim.



And how many scan readers do what you do? 0.000001% at best.

Seriously, yes it sucks that it got taken down but they had every right to do so. I just wish people would stop hating on companies for trying to make money, especially in an industry as niche as anime/manga.



Granted, the leeches won't buy manga anyway...but when exactly did it become okay to read scans for free just because "you wouldn't buy it anyway". You don't buy something you don't get it, thats generally been a rule in business for..i don't know...ALWAYS?

Masakisu said:
I can understand why Viz have done this - MangaStream is one of, if not, the most popular scanlation groups around, and their scans are professional level, probably even better than Viz's official translations, and with Viz bringing out their own digital manga magazine, they could hardly ignore MangaStream.

Still, it is somewhat pointless: MangaStream are just about the only scanlation site that don't keep an archive, and it's really just giving a massive middle finger to non-American English-speaking fans, since as far as I know Shonen Jump Alpha is only available in the US and Canada. This isn't going to change their sales, it's just going to piss people off because arguably we've lost the best scanlators these series have ever had.

Find it ridiculous if you will, but try to understand Viz's position as well.

Drunk_Samurai said:
I laughed. Hard. Professional? They put fucking watermarks on their scans trying to indicate they own the manga.

Drunk_Samurai said:

I laughed. Hard. Professional? They put fucking watermarks on their scans trying to indicate they own the manga.

lucjan said:

Like every other scanlation and fansub group, they watermarked the work they put in. Mangastream only took it to the next level — watermarking every page — because so many sites stole the chapters without giving credit to mangastream. Please tell me you were just ignorant of this, rather than not possessing the capability to mentally figure this out.

Drunk_Samurai said:


Every other scanlation or fansub group? Most scanlations do not watermark but instead include a completely separate file as a credit page. It can easily be removed. As for fansubs they usually just put it in the OP which nobody pays attention to anyway. Also you can't steal a scanlation. They're already committing copyright infringement. Very rarely do scanlations put watermarks on the pages claiming that the manga is theirs and ruining the artwork.

lucjan said:

Because of Viz's rotten decision, I've decided I'm not buying anything from Viz Media again. If I want to support a manga artist, I'll buy the manga straight from Japan, and use online scanlations to read it. What a bunch of assholes (and I'm talking about Viz, not Mangastream).

lucjan said:

Like every other scanlation and fansub group, they watermarked the work they put in. Mangastream only took it to the next level — watermarking every page — because so many sites stole the chapters without giving credit to mangastream. Please tell me you were just ignorant of this, rather than not possessing the capability to mentally figure this out.

ezikialrage said:


You are going to fault a company for trying to protect their interests? That just makes you look like the douche not the company.

Monad said:
Well lets be honest watermarking a pirated material is ridiculous.

lucjan said:

Many scanlation groups watermark their projects (The Hellsing Project, Toriyamaworld, Binktopia, orangetangerine, Crunchy Cheese, ect...). Most generally add a credits page in the beginning, with a few that add it towards the end. If you're claiming Mangastream was taking ownership of the manga in someway, it's kinda the same thing with the other groups, since in the end, every scanlation group is crediting themselves in some way. Anyways, the fact that you even thought Mangastream was claiming ownership of the manga(s) is ridiculous. Use your head. Either you barely have a clue what Mangastream is, or — for some reason — can't comprehend that maybe they're watermarking their product because they're sick of other manga sites stealing the chapters without giving credit (Mangareader has a habit of doing this). And I say "stealing" in a very liberal way. Taking the work of Mangastream and redistributing it without their permission, and a lot of the time, without credit. The whole reason Mangastream felt they were legit was because they didn't archive their work; and then other sites sabotaged that by archiving their work, even though MS's FAQ stated that they didn't want that.

Mogtaki said:
I don't get it.

You're angry because a distributor is stopping people from reading FREE manga? Do you have any idea how much a manga artist gets paid for their work? How many hours they put into their work? Any idea why the suicide rate is unbelievably high for manga artists? Buy the god damn manga.

It's not a rotten decision if it's trying to protect an industry where the artists have to work up to 18 hours a day, drawing constantly while others seem to stamp their stuff up on the internet and let people read it for free like it's worth nothing.

lucjan said:

Their interests? Mangastream wasn't Onemanga. They weren't Mangafox. They never archived their work. By the time Viz released such and such volume, the chapters were off Mangastream's page. That's why I'm faulting them.

Drunk_Samurai said:
Sounds more like few. Plus most of the ones you mentioned don't scanlate anymore. In fact, Orangetangerine hasn't scanlated since like 06. A watermark implies they own the art. A lot of artists add watermarks to their work. A credit page is the only proper way to do it.

Jack_Rav said:
The fact they didn't archive their work is irrelevant. It still distributed copyrighted work, which was then subsequently archived. It facilitated that.

lucjan said:

A recreation of an art piece will typically carry the faux artist's signature. That doesn't mean the new artist created the original piece. Bad example, though. We're not talking about montages; we're talking about manga. It's plain as day that Mangastream wasn't claiming these mangas as their own. And if you honestly believed they were claiming ownership of them, you're pretty dense. Otherwise, you're just rubbing salt in a wound that doesn't exist. You don't have to like the fact that they watermarked their product, but don't make up excuses. Their intention was never to claim ownership. That was clear as day.

Drunk_Samurai said:
Do you even know what a watermark is? Using a watermark is claiming ownership. That is what they are used for. Regardless if they did not intend for that to happen it still means they are claiming to own it. Besides that fact the watermarks ruined the artwork. Also how ignorant and asinine do you have to be to call a scanlation a product?

Amaranth-Sparrow said:
Just because some of you buy actual physical manga does not in any way mean that even a miniscule fraction of the million viewers who visit mangastream every day do. In fact, I'm sure the vast majority of people who read scanlations do not and never will buy physical copies.

If you weren't aware, VIZ is owned by Shueisha and Shogakukan. Shueisha is the company that owns those manga and published all the JUMP anthologies in Japan. Shogakukan is another major Japanese publishing company.

I also know for a fact that the creator of Mangastream had contacts at VIZ Media and was allowed to operate with impunity up to now, so long as they didn't archive their old releases and release them for viewing on mobile devices using apps. They were also very well aware that this would come and were prepared to discontinue those manga. With VIZ's launch of WSJ Alpha, VIZ (likely under direction from its parent companies) decided it was time to act.

Naturally, anyone who does a google search looking for those manga is pretty much guaranteed to get mangastream as the #1 result. That's obviously not good when the license holder is trying to launch a new service to sell manga online (for a very affordable rate, at that).

One of Mangastream's former translaters also posted on mangahelpers to urge people to support VIZ, while also defending Mangastream by saying it's not an aggregate site and that they weren't doing it for ad revenue.


There are also other issues to factor in, such as Mangastream's raw providers breaking the Japanese street date so that their scanlations go online almost a full week before they hit Japanese new stands. For example, WSJ 2012 #11 went on sale today in Japan, but was leaked online last Tuesday and the translated chapters were on Mangastream by Wednesday morning.


And while Mangastream was definitely one of the best scanlation groups, their quality was honestly not anywhere near the quality of VIZ's chapters in Weekly Shonen Jump Alpha. While Mangastream has to deal with cleaning raw scans of a magazine printed on poor quality paper, WSJA's raws are straight from Shueisha, in pristine quality and with no advertisements or catch copy covering the images.


Mangastream's translations also tended to be rather inconsistant and were not always great (in just One Piece's Fish-Man Island arc, you can see them inconsistently translating attack and character names and switching between Japanese and English terminology frequently).

VIZ's translations are frankly of a much higher and more professional caliber, not just in terms of consistency but in terms of grammar and quality dialogue.

And while a lot of people claim that VIZ's manga is "poorly translated" or "less accurate", I think that's just bullshit. I used to scanlate (unlicensed series), and I often read the Japanese spoiler scripts when they're posted on ni-channel by ohana.

VIZ does a great job, especially in recent years -- and they also stopped censoring their manga quite a while back, too.

Even little things -- people say "Shadow Doppelganger" in Naruto is wrong, except that bunshin is ACTUALLY the Japanese word for doppelganger. Just because Toriyama World translated it as "Shadow Clone no Jutsu" 11 years ago doesn't mean they were right. Just look up Bunshin in Japanese dictionaries or on the Japanese wikipedia -- it'll even redirect you to the doppelganger article.

Sure, they sometimes translate things more liberally... "Seven Warlords of the Sea " instead of "Oka Shichibukai", or "crew" instead of "nakama", but isn't that what I'm paying them for? I buy a manga in English, I want it in English. I'm not some wapanese teenager who needs to see a bunch of untranslated words. I can read the Japanese version if I want to see that.


If you honestly think Mangastream's translations OR images are of a higher quality, you're just mistaken.

All they really had over VIZ was speed. And I guess price, if you're too cheap to spend $25 for 48 issues of WSJA.


And hell, VIZ even extended my subscription for free because my access to the first issue was delayed a couple hours. That alone was enough to cement for me the fact that they were a good group of people trying to get their consumers a good, affordable product.


There's my $0.02

lucjan said:

Their interests? Mangastream wasn't Onemanga. They weren't Mangafox. They never archived their work. By the time Viz released such and such volume, the chapters were off Mangastream's page. That's why I'm faulting them. It was a completely selfish and hoggish decision on their part. And I want no part of a company whose defining characteristic is corporate greed. .

ezikialrage said:




I hate to tell you this and ruin what ever little everything is supposed to be free utopia you live in, but anytime a company makes something its all about corporate greed.That is what drives the creation of anime and manga. The people who work for anime and mango companies do not make that stuff out of the kindness of their heart. They do it to make money otherwise known as corporate greed. This is why companies go after sites that that show or have copyrighted and licensed material and this is why companies go after people who make counterfeits or knockoffs.

Monad said:


Well yes but who told you that the existence of such companies is even desirable in the first place. If mangaka could publish their works and had a way of making them known to the public without having this companies as middlemen and taking most of the profits then not many will cry over them.