I have never even heard of this site.

>>44272
Your power level's too low.

>>44281
It's not like it matters now that they've closed up shop.

>>44291
Where does everyone else go to get their scans then?

And shitty read-online websites don't count.

>>44299
...Why?

I've never had any manner of luck with mangahelpers, personally. It never has what I'm looking for.

>>44299

#lurk generally works.

>>44299
Sure they do! The text is still legible on the pages I'm reading and the art is more or less intact. It's not at 4600x6200 resolution or whatever but I'm okay with that because neither is my monitor.

>>44299
sometimes you just have to learn to settle... or buy the stuff for yourself.

>>44305
I'm sure that's great for people with a steady internet connection. And some people want to re-read older chapters on their own hard drive instead of relying on a remote server.

>>44303
Wasn't #lurk getting taken down as well? I generally avoid irc anyway, in favour of RSS which is something mangahelpers did supply.

I suppose I could go back to mangaupdates, but they take ages to update, and often incorrectly. I suppose mangahelper's RSS feeds linking straight to the download link spoiled me. I managed somehow before.

>>44320

Not according to their front page: http://gotlurk.net/

If you mean the cries of 'we need donations or we're going to go down', that's been their litany for months to years.

>>44312
> or buy the stuff for yourself.
This is what I find ridiculous about the whole thing. We don't get Shounen Jump (or at least Ausfailia doesn't). If we want to legitimately buy it we have to wait for the translated tankoubans (which may not even exist; and even then, I'd likely have to import from America).

The companies are essentially going, "You don't deserve to read our comics at the same time as Japan because you're not Japanese." Well, more like, "because we can only make a profit off you if we make you wait for months."
Fuck that. If I lived in Japan I'd buy pulp manga religiously. But I don't, so I have to settle for this.

/rant

>>44321
I suppose I have to reacquaint myself with irc then. Damnit. Mangatraders has gone down as well. I used their RSS too.

Changing topic, out of curiosity now, which websites does everyone else use? Every time I've seen someone at Uni looking at comics it's been through Onemanga.

>>44322

Well, let's take a second to discuss the realities of the market.

I would love for pulp manga to be available in western markets the way it is in Japan. There are few things that I would love more. But it's never going to happen, because it's only cost-effective in Japan for two reasons that either don't apply or are otherwise impossible in North American markets (and thus, western markets in general).

First: Manga is way, way, WAY bigger in Japan than it is in the US. Bigger market means bigger printing runs. Bigger printing runs means lower per-unit cost. You want to know why manga volumes in the states cost 2-3 times more than they do in Japan? It's because the printing runs in Japan are HUGE in comparison, because the market is that much bigger. The more copies the publisher can expect to sell, the greater the print run, the lower the cost. One of the only reason Shuisha and the like can put out these weekly magazines with a fuckofalot of content at low rates is that they know it'll sell a ton of copies. The western market just isn't big enough to sustain something like that.

And second: Manga magazines are printed on the worst paper in the world.

You probably think you already know this, but unless you've actually held a copy of one of these in your hands, you don't. I have literally made recycled paper in my kitchen that was better paper than it. And it's not white paper either - oh no. They literally make these magazines out of whatever crap paper they can buy in bulk, so it's all shades of the rainbow: green and orange and blue paper, in no particular order or pattern. And it's rough as shit. The print quality is also completely terrible; rarely is a black every truly black, but rather dotted randomly with swatches of white and gray where the printer didn't get it quite right. An uncleaned raw scan is an ugly thing to behold.

Which works perfectly for Japan. People expect their manga magazines to look and feel like crap; they're paying for cheap content now, and if they want it to look good, they'll buy the tankoubon later. But in the USA, the pulp market is dead. There is a baseline assumption about how every paper product should look and feel that only newspapers get a pass from; and pulp manga magazines are a shade of terrible well beyond even newsprint.

You can see this every time comic prices go up; the publishers always issue a letter of apology explaining the decision, and always contained in there is a statement that dropping expenses by sacrificing paper quality is out because that would degrade the reader's experience. This is code for 'If we went to pulp paper, nobody would buy our product anymore'. Putting something in the NA book market that looks and feels as shitty as one of these manga serials does is completely impossible.

Of course, I'd love to see Viz or Yen Press or one of those experiment with it.Who knows, maybe they could make it work. But I doubt we'll see much experimentation right now; the western manga industry has always been a bit shaky, and the recession hit them hard. This is a shitty time, from their perspective, to go experimenting with their business model.

>>44325
The point I was making is that it's ridiculous for Japan (and the North American distributors) to expect us westerners to be able to buy manga like they do. So we make do, with scanlations. But now companies have decided not to tolerate that, and deliberately shaft us for whatever minimal profit they can make (yes, that is admittedly ignoring the fact that 'japanese raws' are just pirated scans to other japanese). What you say is kinda supporting my point.

And yeah, I own an issue of Shounen Jump (a Christmas special I think) from my last trip there. The paper we wrap fish and chips in is better quality.
That's another point though, supported by your arguement. If we want to legally read the stories published in japan, we have to outlay far more money for it. I could easily afford shitty pulp manga once a week, hypothetically. I can not afford buying tankoubans regularly.

tl;dr , I'm just pissed we're getting shafted and made out to be evil internet thieves when we're just trying to make do.

I mostly read from online manga sites because my internet sucks too much to download every little thing just for a slight art improvement that I would most likely not notice anyway.

>>44328
I prefer to download because I'm a packrat. But also, if there's a storm or the internet's playing up for whatever reason- I can use that time to re-read Chopper's backstory or catch up with a series I downloaded but have yet to read.

One thing I don't want is to be half way through a chapter of One Piece and then have the internet fuck up for a few hours. If I'm reading online, then I'm screwed.

>>44326
>self-entitled whining

When are companies going to learn that this sort of heavy-handedness doesn't actually work?

As these groups cropped up to pick up the slack of others, so too will more groups come forth.

All this will do is cause a potential slowdown in our scanlation reading.

As someone who buys those big volumes of his favorite manga whenever he gets the chance I feel not guilt or shame or impatience. "Those who wait" and all that.

I'll be amazed if the companies actually do anything except posture. Even if they do start shutting stuff down, though, it won't solve anything. Within days, there'll be new distribution networks set up, and within a month, it'll be like nothing ever happened. We've seen this happen over and over again.

ITT leechfags whining