Posted: 5/16/2025
So last night MangaDex got hit with a metric fuckton of DMCA takedown requests from various Japanese manga publishers and at the time of writing, 900 or so series have been scrubbed from the platform. What does this mean? For readers, firstly, get ready to turn on a VPN if you want to read anything. A good majority of popular series (typically shounen) that are already officially localized aren't allowed on MD in the first placeーif you visited the page, you'd get links to the licensed English translation rather than any fanworks. This is a good way for MD to brush aside any legal troubles by simply promoting the publisher directly, and it's a huge warning sign to scan groups to not touch that series. While a good practice in theory, the biggest and most glaring issue is that these official sites often block non-American IP addresses, so you'll either have to turn on a VPN, be American, or find a reupload site to read on. It's a frustrating process that feels punishing, especially considering that the series on said sites tend to be free to read. This takedown is different, though, as a huge chunk of the scrubbed series aren't actually licensed. This means that the big corporate publishers decided to take down hundreds of manga that are inaccessible to foreigners, with some being out of print!
The scan teams are going through it as well. MD did not properly alert anyone before these takedowns occurred, so imagine how awful it was for the hardworking volunteers whose hundreds of thousands of hours of work were deleted without prior notice or contact. In my case, a series I was going to upload a chapter of also got deleted, so there goes 30+ hours of work. Of course, the fault lies with the Japanese publishers for their outdated mindset regarding manga translation and the belief that people are and should be willing to pay full price for a product they may or may not enjoy. The handling of the situation also leaves a bad taste in my mouth, however, as the MD team has been generally incompetent over these past few years.
In March of 2021, MangaDex was hacked and all user information was stolen. This data breach was so massive that the site went down until June of that same year, when early access for V5 began. MD is the primary location for scan teams to upload their work, and from MD all aggressor/reposter sites steal (the shitty ad-ridden ones, with names like mangago, mangarock, etc.). It would not be an exaggeration to refer to MD as the hub for teams due to its sleek design, ease of use and large userbaseーyet, I find that after 4 years, the lack of features is, frankly, unacceptable. You need to ask MD staff to lock a group so random people can't join, the banners/headers are all...not theirs? (it's Thavnair's loading screen from FFXIV for some reason), the comments are still not embeded, etc. One of my personal pet peeves is that whenever I upload a chapter, it never shows me if it's completed in the readerーI have to click back out to the series page. These are, in the grand scheme of things, minor issues...but at the same time, you really shouldn't make promises without delivering on them for years and years.
I'm sure it sounds like I'm bashing MD staff rather than the people who are really at fault, but it's more like I want to vent my frustrations! I'm a solo scanlator so this isn't something my friends really understand. As I said, it's the balding Japanese publishers who are in the wrong, not caring at all about media preservation and looking down on people who put their blood, sweat and tears into each upload. Scanlation is and has always been a labor of love that drives the industry: would you buy a manga without reading it first? I don't, and never will. In fact, series like Love Bullet have been saved by piracy! Were the publishers taking any care in advertising for it? No, because they don't care about the authors nor the readers, they just care about money. Don't forget that anime in America was popularized thanks to dedicated fansubbers who hard-subbed VHS tapes and shipped them out.
But yeah, if MD goes under we'll all just move to another site like with the death of Bato.to. I definitely do not plan on scanlating ever, no matter what happens. Corporations don't give a shit about their customers. Keep pirating manga, keep supporting scan teams. The only ones looking out for readers and scanlators are each other.
(JP publishers & MD staff during this incident)
