9 ms·

Pirate site traffic surges with help from manga boom

77 points by gslin 5y ago

Blackthorn 5y ago
This is one of those cases where the pirates really are providing a superior product. Same-week translations that are often superior to the official ones, which come months (or worse) later. Some publishing houses like alphapolis are so backwards they don't even license English releases at all. Even ones that have gotten a popular and officially translated anime adaptation.
- QuikAccount 5y ago
  Not only is the product better, manga scanlators have a "code of honor." If a manga is licensed in English they will typically drop the manga no longer scanlating because there is now a provider in English. Of course, not all of them do this but more often than not it is adhered to.
  - MichaelZuo 5y ago
    Yes, this means that some clever folks realized they could have a legit manga website that removes the unlicensed translations the moment an official release is available. And they never allow uploads in the original copyrighted language. See mangadex.org Idk who the founders are, or if it was a bunch of scanlation groups that combined their efforts, but it's a pretty smart way to get around the copyright problem.
    - falcolas 5y ago
      And until there is a company who has the license to publish in English, there's a benefit to the Japanese rightsholders - free and extensive market research.
- unicornporn 5y ago
  > This is one of those cases where the pirates really are providing a superior product. Product? Are they sellings these files?
  - BigBubbleButt 5y ago
    You make a good point. Their product is better and cheaper!
  - Blackthorn 5y ago
    Not the question you asked but to make it clear, I don't mind paying for things. I've had a Crunchyroll premium account for years and I have a whole bookshelf filled with official translations. But sometimes they come years later and you want to actually discuss the series that's going on right now with fellow fans, just like you would for an English book. Or you want to be able to read it at all (see: alphapolis).
    - thaumasiotes 5y ago
      An interesting story: Long ago, I downloaded a fansubbed anime series. My sister is interested in anime as a genre and has been interested in watching that series. When I asked her recently why she hadn't already watched it, she said "because it's not on crunchyroll". In the pirate ecosystem, you can watch what you want to watch. The "legitimate" ecosystem seems to breed learned helplessness.
    - xemdetia 5y ago
      The worse part is when you see translation rights being bought and then the translator never following through to the end even if I put my money into it. I feel that's why I'm mostly ambiguous to the whole situation on what could be done better. I just know I would not be exposed enough without the pirates.
  - fluoridation 5y ago
    The word "product" refers not only to things that are sold, but also to things that are produced (made, fashioned, fabricated, etc.).
- thaumasiotes 5y ago
  Viki licenses Asian film and lets the community provide subtitles. The results are excellent. Viki doesn't do any translation themselves. For one show I liked, Viki lost their license to show it. Instead, the show (and its second season) are available on youtube. English subtitles are provided, but they are so bad that it's clear there was no human input to or review of them. The show is unwatchable. (Think I'm exaggerating? See what you think: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LAOdWOS49RE&list=PLvBtqeytAL-apdb_1yIVtfN0jRKt3CYbj https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LAOdWOS49RE&list=PLvBtqeytAL... ) I'm not sure how this could have happened, but there are failures at several levels. Viki got high-quality subtitles without paying for them. People who couldn't speak the language got to watch foreign shows. NoahMob is attempting to show a series with subtitles that aren't better than nothing. They could have real subtitles for free! It's not like I'm going to branch out into their other videos based on the experience of being unable to watch the show they ruined.
- teawrecks 5y ago
  People will always choose the product that best meets their needs (price, convenience, content, etc). Therefore, the only piracy that ever happens is that which provides a superior product.
dmix 5y ago
I recently got to try out an IPTV service on a smart TV and was amazed at the amount of content you get for about $15/month (I ended up buying a $75 android TV box which is way faster than a TV and has Kodi w/ torrent search + streaming). It has 4000+ channels but also has two additional sections for on-demand movies and TV series. Each of these has a Netflix/Paramount+/Disney+ etc section that contains every movie/show on all of these platforms (hundreds for each) available with a single click and max quality. I subscribe to 3 different paid media streaming platforms primarily for content-discovery. The only thing missing in the IPTV app is the recommendation algorithm and the 'featured/trending' movies. Using a single IPTV service sounds nice, I'd love to be able to just use that...but the recommendation/reminder side seems to be a gap in the market, although I'm not sure there's enough of a market to justify a standalone service (ala last.fm vs Spotify). IMDB does a poor job of recommending stuff, even though I rate every movie I watch. Seems to be a major oversight on their behalf.
- aerostable_slug 5y ago
  IPTV is a hoot to explore: Emirati horse racing? Got it. 24/7 Bob Ross? Yep. Seemingly endless podcasts about bass fishing and bird shooting? Right over there. Ecuadorian soccer league? ¡Si! Some universities have excellent channels that stream lectures, demonstrations, performances, and all kinds of other content.
- metadat 5y ago
  > I ended up buying a $75 android TV box which is way faster than a TV and has Kodi w/ torrent search + streaming What product is this? It sounds freaking amazing!
  - dmix 5y ago
    Amazon is full of these boxes, you can use any of them that support new android versions + 4k/8k. The software I use for torrent streaming is a Kodi add-on called "Elementum". For a similar app that crawls all of the steaming websites see "The Crew". https://howtomediacenter.com/en/install-elementum-kodi/ https://howtomediacenter.com/en/install-elementum-kodi/ https://kodi.expert/best-kodi-addons/the-crew/ https://kodi.expert/best-kodi-addons/the-crew/ It really changed the way I download movies. No need to keep a NAS or collections when you can just stream anything on demand (unless you use private trackers w/ bandwidth caps where streaming doesn't make sense).
kiawe_fire 5y ago
As a manga reader, one of my biggest frustrations is with censorship. 10 years ago, Viz and Tokyopop dominated English published manga, yet they each had very spotty records with regards to translation quality, editorial decisions and censorship. I didn’t want to read Full Metal Alchemist or Dragon Ball or Initial D knowing that random instances of blood would be erased or religious symbols replaced or weird editorial changes would change the tone. And unlike the edited anime airing on TV, there was no “uncut” version I could buy and even finding lists of changes was difficult. So, I kind of learned to avoid buying North American manga. Only recently have I started buying some releases from publishers like Kodansha and Dark Horse that, from what I can tell, have a better track record. But ultimately that’s the problem - you shouldn’t make a customer guess what they’re getting. I want to collect way more manga than I do, but my confidence in the industry was shaken very early on, and that’s hard to gain back.
- HalcyonicStorm 5y ago
  I pay Viz and Shonen Jump as a subscriber in their apps. Whats frustrating is that I only get a tiny subset of their catalogue. I can't ready some of their older series. I'm even willing to buy them if given the option but I'm only offered new stuff that I'm not really interested in.
  - kiawe_fire 5y ago
    It is frustrating when you want to do the right thing and pay for a product that you have great demand for, but which nobody is offering to you.
- cogman10 5y ago
  Translation really is a major problem with Anime/manga. The unfortunate thing is the pirated versions often have better translations and translation notes vs the official release. Why? Because it's mostly just a bunch of nerds trying to share what they love. It seems like the studio translators are very often just trying to churn out a translation as fast as possible. It gets a little better when dubbing is involved (because someone ACTUALLY has to speak the line, which makes bad translations/awkward phrases a lot more apparent)... But, like you said, there's often a lot of editorial choices to make sure things are palatable to the widest portion of the English speaking population.
temp8964 5y ago
Another reason for me to download stuff and put in a home streaming server is that I get to control what my small kids watch. There are so many stupid stuff on YouTube and other streaming services, so I just download good cartoons for my kids to watch.
jbm 5y ago
On a related note, I am ever grateful that I still have my Amazon.co.jp account and a Japanese kindle / Japanese credit card, and a VPN for Amazon Prime Japan. The situation for legal product in foreign languages has barely improved in Canada. When I was studying Japanese in the early 2000s, you were basically locked into ridiculous 60s-80s era material by Tuttle Publishing. The only way to be culturally fluent was Aozora Bunko and piracy - which is probably why it is less common to find 40+ year olds in the west who are fluent non-Japanese Japanese speakers. Considering the near zero cost of publishing ebooks, you'd think some enterprising Japanese company would sell their books abroad for the same price as in Japan, but I guess that's not happening.
itsthecourier 5y ago
dayvid 5y ago
Manga's tough because it's so easy to pirate and there are so many older titles out there. Viz has done an amazing job by having access to a decent Shonen Jump library for only $2/month that hopefully will grow, but it's dead simple to go to a manga fan translation aggregator site and read a larger range of comics (and from non Shonen-Jump titles). I'm a subscriber and read titles they have there. The image quality is better than fan sites unless you download torrents or something. The obvious solution for this era is to have a Netflix or crunchyroll-like approach with Manga. Also for some newer titles, they're creating the translations to be released when the title is released in Japan.
- johnchristopher 5y ago
  > The obvious solution for this era is to have a Netflix or crunchyroll-like approach with Manga. But there's a very vocal group here that says Netflix is not the solution because not everything is available through Netflix because evil rights holders don't want to and so it's okay to pirate content. Some go as far as to say they are forced to pirate content not available on Netflix because it's the right holder's choice. Viz is already the Netflix of manga. And that includes the justified pirating stance.
cercatrova 5y ago
Somewhat related, Tachiyomi really is a great Android app for manga, it makes it very easy to read on the go.
- yesco 5y ago
  I'll add the only reason I pay for a viz subscription is because their site works with tachiyomi. Honestly most subscription services require you install their own specific shitty app that's such a downgrade it just ends up not being worth it, it's frustrating really.
techwiz137 5y ago
I cannot believe manganato/manganelo has 100m monthly visits. I mean I just finished catching up to manga(s) and it's my only source but damn, considering the simplicity of the platform, I could have never imagined. Their search function is also buggy, does not include/exclude categories i am interested in.
PebblesHD 5y ago
The ongoing and rather poorly executed merger of Funimation and Crunchyroll certainly isn’t helping in my circles. After years of subscribing to Animelab, which merged into Funimation in rather poor fashion, I was abruptly told no new content would be added and that I should sign up for Crunchyroll, never mind that my annual subscription had renewed a month prior. Crunchyroll then announced that annual subscribers would be given credit for their remaining time, but no timeframe was given and after waiting months, I ended up getting a refund last week and am now looking for another company to give my money to. Unfortunately they all seem to be owned by the same group now, with ongoing concerns around quality and conditions for the voice actors working on their content, so for now I have started buying physical media again from the Japanese distributors to at least register my interest in these shows in some way. Content in Australia has aways been a bit of a mess and I can’t see the market improving, meaning to me the conditions that I believe drive piracy are only set to continue and expand. We really need less exclusivity in the market and more of a competitive landscape for sourcing existing content. I’m happy to deal with a few extra players for original content, but needing 5 different subscriptions to watch all of Stargate, Star Trek, and Star Wars is never going to work for me.

77 points by gslin 5y ago

This is one of those cases where the pirates really are providing a superior product. Same-week translations that are often superior to the official ones, which come months (or worse) later. Some publishing houses like alphapolis are so backwards they don't even license English releases at all. Even ones that have gotten a popular and officially translated anime adaptation.

QuikAccount 5y ago
Not only is the product better, manga scanlators have a "code of honor." If a manga is licensed in English they will typically drop the manga no longer scanlating because there is now a provider in English. Of course, not all of them do this but more often than not it is adhered to.
- MichaelZuo 5y ago
  Yes, this means that some clever folks realized they could have a legit manga website that removes the unlicensed translations the moment an official release is available. And they never allow uploads in the original copyrighted language. See mangadex.org Idk who the founders are, or if it was a bunch of scanlation groups that combined their efforts, but it's a pretty smart way to get around the copyright problem.
  - falcolas 5y ago
    And until there is a company who has the license to publish in English, there's a benefit to the Japanese rightsholders - free and extensive market research.
unicornporn 5y ago
> This is one of those cases where the pirates really are providing a superior product. Product? Are they sellings these files?
- BigBubbleButt 5y ago
  You make a good point. Their product is better and cheaper!
- Blackthorn 5y ago
  Not the question you asked but to make it clear, I don't mind paying for things. I've had a Crunchyroll premium account for years and I have a whole bookshelf filled with official translations. But sometimes they come years later and you want to actually discuss the series that's going on right now with fellow fans, just like you would for an English book. Or you want to be able to read it at all (see: alphapolis).
  - thaumasiotes 5y ago
    An interesting story: Long ago, I downloaded a fansubbed anime series. My sister is interested in anime as a genre and has been interested in watching that series. When I asked her recently why she hadn't already watched it, she said "because it's not on crunchyroll". In the pirate ecosystem, you can watch what you want to watch. The "legitimate" ecosystem seems to breed learned helplessness.
  - xemdetia 5y ago
    The worse part is when you see translation rights being bought and then the translator never following through to the end even if I put my money into it. I feel that's why I'm mostly ambiguous to the whole situation on what could be done better. I just know I would not be exposed enough without the pirates.
- fluoridation 5y ago
  The word "product" refers not only to things that are sold, but also to things that are produced (made, fashioned, fabricated, etc.).
thaumasiotes 5y ago
Viki licenses Asian film and lets the community provide subtitles. The results are excellent. Viki doesn't do any translation themselves. For one show I liked, Viki lost their license to show it. Instead, the show (and its second season) are available on youtube. English subtitles are provided, but they are so bad that it's clear there was no human input to or review of them. The show is unwatchable. (Think I'm exaggerating? See what you think: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LAOdWOS49RE&list=PLvBtqeytAL-apdb_1yIVtfN0jRKt3CYbj https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LAOdWOS49RE&list=PLvBtqeytAL... ) I'm not sure how this could have happened, but there are failures at several levels. Viki got high-quality subtitles without paying for them. People who couldn't speak the language got to watch foreign shows. NoahMob is attempting to show a series with subtitles that aren't better than nothing. They could have real subtitles for free! It's not like I'm going to branch out into their other videos based on the experience of being unable to watch the show they ruined.
teawrecks 5y ago
People will always choose the product that best meets their needs (price, convenience, content, etc). Therefore, the only piracy that ever happens is that which provides a superior product.

dmix 5y ago

I recently got to try out an IPTV service on a smart TV and was amazed at the amount of content you get for about $15/month (I ended up buying a $75 android TV box which is way faster than a TV and has Kodi w/ torrent search + streaming). It has 4000+ channels but also has two additional sections for on-demand movies and TV series. Each of these has a Netflix/Paramount+/Disney+ etc section that contains every movie/show on all of these platforms (hundreds for each) available with a single click and max quality. I subscribe to 3 different paid media streaming platforms primarily for content-discovery. The only thing missing in the IPTV app is the recommendation algorithm and the 'featured/trending' movies. Using a single IPTV service sounds nice, I'd love to be able to just use that...but the recommendation/reminder side seems to be a gap in the market, although I'm not sure there's enough of a market to justify a standalone service (ala last.fm vs Spotify). IMDB does a poor job of recommending stuff, even though I rate every movie I watch. Seems to be a major oversight on their behalf.

aerostable_slug 5y ago
IPTV is a hoot to explore: Emirati horse racing? Got it. 24/7 Bob Ross? Yep. Seemingly endless podcasts about bass fishing and bird shooting? Right over there. Ecuadorian soccer league? ¡Si! Some universities have excellent channels that stream lectures, demonstrations, performances, and all kinds of other content.
metadat 5y ago
> I ended up buying a $75 android TV box which is way faster than a TV and has Kodi w/ torrent search + streaming What product is this? It sounds freaking amazing!
- dmix 5y ago
  Amazon is full of these boxes, you can use any of them that support new android versions + 4k/8k. The software I use for torrent streaming is a Kodi add-on called "Elementum". For a similar app that crawls all of the steaming websites see "The Crew". https://howtomediacenter.com/en/install-elementum-kodi/ https://howtomediacenter.com/en/install-elementum-kodi/ https://kodi.expert/best-kodi-addons/the-crew/ https://kodi.expert/best-kodi-addons/the-crew/ It really changed the way I download movies. No need to keep a NAS or collections when you can just stream anything on demand (unless you use private trackers w/ bandwidth caps where streaming doesn't make sense).

kiawe_fire 5y ago

As a manga reader, one of my biggest frustrations is with censorship. 10 years ago, Viz and Tokyopop dominated English published manga, yet they each had very spotty records with regards to translation quality, editorial decisions and censorship. I didn’t want to read Full Metal Alchemist or Dragon Ball or Initial D knowing that random instances of blood would be erased or religious symbols replaced or weird editorial changes would change the tone. And unlike the edited anime airing on TV, there was no “uncut” version I could buy and even finding lists of changes was difficult. So, I kind of learned to avoid buying North American manga. Only recently have I started buying some releases from publishers like Kodansha and Dark Horse that, from what I can tell, have a better track record. But ultimately that’s the problem - you shouldn’t make a customer guess what they’re getting. I want to collect way more manga than I do, but my confidence in the industry was shaken very early on, and that’s hard to gain back.

HalcyonicStorm 5y ago
I pay Viz and Shonen Jump as a subscriber in their apps. Whats frustrating is that I only get a tiny subset of their catalogue. I can't ready some of their older series. I'm even willing to buy them if given the option but I'm only offered new stuff that I'm not really interested in.
- kiawe_fire 5y ago
  It is frustrating when you want to do the right thing and pay for a product that you have great demand for, but which nobody is offering to you.
cogman10 5y ago
Translation really is a major problem with Anime/manga. The unfortunate thing is the pirated versions often have better translations and translation notes vs the official release. Why? Because it's mostly just a bunch of nerds trying to share what they love. It seems like the studio translators are very often just trying to churn out a translation as fast as possible. It gets a little better when dubbing is involved (because someone ACTUALLY has to speak the line, which makes bad translations/awkward phrases a lot more apparent)... But, like you said, there's often a lot of editorial choices to make sure things are palatable to the widest portion of the English speaking population.

temp8964 5y ago

Another reason for me to download stuff and put in a home streaming server is that I get to control what my small kids watch. There are so many stupid stuff on YouTube and other streaming services, so I just download good cartoons for my kids to watch.

jbm 5y ago

On a related note, I am ever grateful that I still have my Amazon.co.jp account and a Japanese kindle / Japanese credit card, and a VPN for Amazon Prime Japan. The situation for legal product in foreign languages has barely improved in Canada. When I was studying Japanese in the early 2000s, you were basically locked into ridiculous 60s-80s era material by Tuttle Publishing. The only way to be culturally fluent was Aozora Bunko and piracy - which is probably why it is less common to find 40+ year olds in the west who are fluent non-Japanese Japanese speakers. Considering the near zero cost of publishing ebooks, you'd think some enterprising Japanese company would sell their books abroad for the same price as in Japan, but I guess that's not happening.

itsthecourier 5y ago

dayvid 5y ago

Manga's tough because it's so easy to pirate and there are so many older titles out there. Viz has done an amazing job by having access to a decent Shonen Jump library for only $2/month that hopefully will grow, but it's dead simple to go to a manga fan translation aggregator site and read a larger range of comics (and from non Shonen-Jump titles). I'm a subscriber and read titles they have there. The image quality is better than fan sites unless you download torrents or something. The obvious solution for this era is to have a Netflix or crunchyroll-like approach with Manga. Also for some newer titles, they're creating the translations to be released when the title is released in Japan.

johnchristopher 5y ago
> The obvious solution for this era is to have a Netflix or crunchyroll-like approach with Manga. But there's a very vocal group here that says Netflix is not the solution because not everything is available through Netflix because evil rights holders don't want to and so it's okay to pirate content. Some go as far as to say they are forced to pirate content not available on Netflix because it's the right holder's choice. Viz is already the Netflix of manga. And that includes the justified pirating stance.

cercatrova 5y ago

Somewhat related, Tachiyomi really is a great Android app for manga, it makes it very easy to read on the go.

yesco 5y ago
I'll add the only reason I pay for a viz subscription is because their site works with tachiyomi. Honestly most subscription services require you install their own specific shitty app that's such a downgrade it just ends up not being worth it, it's frustrating really.

techwiz137 5y ago

I cannot believe manganato/manganelo has 100m monthly visits. I mean I just finished catching up to manga(s) and it's my only source but damn, considering the simplicity of the platform, I could have never imagined. Their search function is also buggy, does not include/exclude categories i am interested in.

PebblesHD 5y ago

The ongoing and rather poorly executed merger of Funimation and Crunchyroll certainly isn’t helping in my circles. After years of subscribing to Animelab, which merged into Funimation in rather poor fashion, I was abruptly told no new content would be added and that I should sign up for Crunchyroll, never mind that my annual subscription had renewed a month prior. Crunchyroll then announced that annual subscribers would be given credit for their remaining time, but no timeframe was given and after waiting months, I ended up getting a refund last week and am now looking for another company to give my money to. Unfortunately they all seem to be owned by the same group now, with ongoing concerns around quality and conditions for the voice actors working on their content, so for now I have started buying physical media again from the Japanese distributors to at least register my interest in these shows in some way. Content in Australia has aways been a bit of a mess and I can’t see the market improving, meaning to me the conditions that I believe drive piracy are only set to continue and expand. We really need less exclusivity in the market and more of a competitive landscape for sourcing existing content. I’m happy to deal with a few extra players for original content, but needing 5 different subscriptions to watch all of Stargate, Star Trek, and Star Wars is never going to work for me.