Nothing is wrong with Manga Fox. Is this one of those serieses with watermarks and other pages trying to get you to go to Batoto? (Quick check shows the latest chapter of Darkness has a page saying they don't want it rehosted anywhere except Batoto, so yes.)
Basically there's this new Manga Fox clone that pays people to host their manga on there. It's not a sustainable model AT ALL, but a few scanlation groups only want their stuff on that site and will have absolute fits if you don't go there.
The problem is a few fold. One, there's no way they can afford to pay people to host manga there — there's no money in Google ads, outside of paying off server bills. Two, by adding money to the equation, they're now officially letting Scanlators PROFIT off of Manga translation. That means that they just painted a huge bullseye on every scanlation group — every US and Japanese manga publisher will be aiming to kill them once they notice people not them are making money pirating manga. And as much as everyone likes to say otherwise, manga scanlation is piracy — copyright violations and theft.
Now, I believe Mangafox ignores requests to take down manga by scanlators. The thing is, groups that are scanlating manga... are pirating manga. They don't actually have copyright on anything they're doing, but they are demanding Mangafox take stuff down because it's violating their (nonexistant) copyright.
Think about that for a second. These are people who are breaking the law, stealing product, and are going so far as to attempt to dictate terms of distribution. Yes, I read scanlated manga, but I don't have any illusions about what it is — it's theft, pure and simple.
I believe what happened is that enough of these Batoto trolls were going into the Mangafox forums and making asses of themselves that Mangafox had to take action against them, banning them from the forums. Edit: For example, please see the guy from Japanzai here
who had a rather epic freakout on the forums before being banned.
Which is where we're at now. We have a few very prolific manga scanlation teams — Japanzai and CXC Scans are the ones I can think of off the top of my head — that are trying to go through Batoto, presumably because Batoto is paying them. We have Mangafox, which is hosting manga that people submit to them, and refusing takedown requests from non-copyright holders. And we have the readers, who have to put up with idiotic stuff like Japanzai putting harassing watermarks all over his scanlations to try and punish Manga Fox's readers.
Hilarious thing is, I'd actually go to Batoto — I use an ad block, so I wouldn't see their ads anyway... But they don't have a "Search via genre" feature, so I can't just get a listing of all the latest releases in the genres I read — Comedy, Ecchi, Gender Bender, etc, which I can currently do on Manga Traders and Mangafox.
Which means that all other things considered Batoto is inherently inferior to Mangafox and cannot compete on it's own merits. Which is why they're trying to pay people to use it.
Edited by KiTA
Ah, looking at it someone went through and re-did all the links to Batoto. I've cleaned them up.
The thing about that is, last I checked, Batoto had uncensored, higher resolution, tankobon scans of the original series up and Mangafox didn't. Considering the type of franchise this is, that'd make it a superior host for the purposes of linking images. I'm not going to get in an edit war over this yet, but if someone wants to change it back to Batoto, let them.
Edited by OJtheLION "If at first you don't succeed, well, so much for skydiving."
"Higher resolution" maybe, but "uncensored"? How? If the team remakes the scanlation using uncensored scans, it would as well be uploaded to Mangafox.
The theory is that the team only uploads these superior scans to Batoto.
In the case of Japanzai what happens is that team releases a low quality, intentionally sabotaged release filled with vaguely insulting watermarks on every page on their site (which is the only one they release for download) and then Batoto gets the "real" release... which in the case of Japanzai still has his "Japanzai" logo on almost every page.
Because more important than reading it in English, you had darn well better know that his team brought it to you.
It's some sorta weird Glory Hound situation. I can't imagine Batoto pays them that well, and if they're really trying to turn a profit on scanlation, well, then they're not scanlators anymore, they're illegally not-licensing a work they're trying to profit off of.
I think part of it is people getting ideas above their station. Ultimately, we're stealing manga whenever we read scanlations. You have some Japanese comic and cartoon fans saying fansubs and scanlations are a grey area in order to soothe their own qualms about doing so — it's not. It's theft. And now you have some of the alpha thieves trying to dictate terms of distribution, which is something only copyright holders can do.
Heck, I've even seen some people openly saying that scanlators have copyright on the scanlation itself, and therefore Manga Fox is violating Japanzai and CXC's copyright. Which is a fascinating theory, and one that I'd love to see discussed with the Japanese Author and Publisher.
Look, I think the Japanzai etc thing is annoying and ridiculous too. I just don't care about any of it, as none of it has any impact on how good it is for an image link. My concern is to provide a link with the best quality. I just checked now and it seems at least some of the original series had been re-uploaded from the tankobon version on mangafox, but the resolution is still lower than Batoto. I haven't personally gone through all the original's scans again on mangafox, but I do recall them being the censored version when I first read this manga. I know because, at the time, I had access to a bunch of tankobon scans in Spanish and was tempted to merge the two and upload them to MF myself.
I'm not a shill for Batoto or any of their scanlators, I'm talking about the original, pre-Darkness series, and even if the manga was transferred over to mangafox, the actual mangafox image viewer displays them at a lower resolution than the Batoto one. That, and censorship, is all we should care about when it comes to posting image links, not whether some idiot thinks he's legally entitled to put his name on his piracy. You'll note I'm not the one that made the original edit you changed, I'm just the one who noticed that all of the links were switched to lower res versions.
Edited by OJtheLION "If at first you don't succeed, well, so much for skydiving."
Last time I looked, Batoto's site is clunky, poorly organized, the search engine could not find common words like "highschool" IN THE MANGA TITLE OF POPULAR SERIES, and was only marginally reliable if you scrolled through the alphabetized manga listing, which runs for DOZENS of PRINTED pages. I strongly recommend you do NOT go there if you're looking for something like Zero no Tsukiama because even thought he list is several PRINTED pages long, it's still all placed on a single WEB page, and you have to scroll through the whole list to find it.
This example needs serious trimming for Thread Mode. And please apply No Lewdness No Prudishness while you're at it.
- Accidental Pervert:Poor, poor Rito...or not.
- Lampshaded: in one arc of the manga, when the lights go out, resident tsundere Yui Kotegawa immediately thinks he's going to fall on top of her. SHE falls on top of HIM.
- Hell, let's just say that somehow, Rito's face becomes a magnet for the female body, especially breasts or crotch.
- There was a Double Subversion of this: in the fifth OVA, Rito and Lala greet Haruna and Oshizu and he trips on a can, heading straight for Haruna. The usual? No; she actually dodges. From his angle on the ground, he sees up all three girls' skirts. Seriously, he can't help it anymore.
- Surprisingly, he manages to subvert this for the first few times in the manga.
- Lampshaded again in the pilot chapter of Darkness:
Nana: Why does he always grab the panties?Momo: As usual, he has a god-like skill at falling...- It bears stating that they say this in response to Rito falling down the stairs, faceplanting into Yui's crotch, and getting her panties stuck in his teeth.
- Lampshaded yet again in chapter 9 of Darkness:
Nana: Why does Rito get tripped at places where there's nothing there?Momo: It must be what people call fate.- Hell, in Darkness, Rito has attempted to save a girl from naughty tentacles only to get tangled up in them himself, resulting in an impromptu make-out session. Twice.
To Love Ru should probably get taken down if most other similar stuff has been taken down. I think the sudden rise in Puritanism here is a little ridiculous, but if you're going to do it, do it all the way. I mean, Mikan is shown in titillating poses all the time. I think it qualifies.
Hide / Show Replies
Take it to this thread (listing it there isn't an auto-cut, just a notice that you think the page should be looked at). And just because other things which are similar are getting cut/cleaned/whatever, does not mean this should be; list it there if you think it could be called porn or may contain sexualisation of pre-teens or something. There aren't hard-and-fast guidelines.
Explain me, please — what's wrong with Mangafox?
Hide / Show Replies