Popular online Manga reading site, One Manga.com, has been brought offline by the recently formed Manga Publisher Coalition/Group. Made by Viz, Tokyopop and Yen Press and some 36 Japanese Manga Publishers. The Message on the site is as follows:

It pains me to announce that this is the last week of manga reading on One Manga (!!). Manga publishers have recently changed their stance on manga scanlations and made it clear that they no longer approve of it. We have decided to abide by their wishes, and remove all manga content (regardless of licensing status) from the site. The removal of content will happen gradually (so you can at least finish some of the outstanding reading you have), but we expect all content to be gone by early next week (RIP OM July ’10).

So what next? We’re not really sure at this point, but we have some ideas we would like to try out. Until then, the One Manga forums will remain active and we encourage all of you to continue using them. OMF has developed into a great community and it would be a shame to see that disappear.

Regardless of whether you stay with us or not, on behalf of the One Manga team, I would like to thank you all for your unwavering support over the years. Through the ups and downs you have stuck with us, and that is what kept us going.

As a certain Porky was fond of saying… That’s all folks!

Time for me to go lay down and let this all sink in.

- Zabi

People who visit the site now, are shown this message. One Manga, as a website, still intends to remain open, and a thread on their forums is saying the website’s discussions forums will remain open!

With One Manga now not offering online manga reading, fans of manga will probably head to other sites. It seems like a similar drive to what is happened in the P2P Bittorent scene, is happening here. Will the Coalition of manga publishers totally stamp out scanlation? Its doubtful.

Funimation has tried to do so for Anime fansubs and had little success in addressing, as their problem. Even with decent legal alternatives like Crunchyroll, there are still rips from their site and other Fansubs. It remains to be seems whether this action actually increases manga sales in the US and Japan, or if it will only serve to alienate and prevent a large number of manga readers from “trying before they buy”.

For better or worse, the removal of manga from onemanga.com is the first conquest of the new Manga Publisher Coalition.

• Sweety8587

  fuck you viz, tokyopop etc etc! I sincerely hope this move comes and bites you so hard in the ass that you won’t have hips anymore! >XP

  them and their stupid translations which are too bloody slow and for series that make you go “WTF? Why cant you pick up more and BETTER series?!” FUCK YOU *flips em off* This is only making my resolution to learn Japanese and read the raws more firmer! SCREW the US translations *is pised and depressed and sad all at once*

  • http://anime-evo.net/ Setsuken

    Another big problem is that manga is very expensive, and only comes out in volumes in the US. Its a bit better with anime since they have stuff like Crunchyroll, Manga doesn’t even have an actual online reading service.

    I agree, waiting 2-3 months for the next volume really REALLY breaks the immersion. Also, if you decide to buy a full series, given each volume is about 10-15 bucks, if you’re buying a 30 volume manga, that costs you a good 300 USD, which is something very few people can afford.

    I dunno, I’m sure a few other sites will open instead, as I’m sure there are manga sites that the publishers haven’t heard of yet, and if nothing else, people will just start releasing on Bittorent.

    • Sweety8587

      And take into account shipping and it all but breaks your wallet’s back buying manga! The longer series like MARS or HanaKimi will make you weep in despair at the final price tag! D: and Tsubasa as well come to think of….there is need for a good, legit online manga reader and downloading It WOULD help speed things up a LOT

      More than 2-3 months in many cases mate! Theres a LOT of series that they say “We’ll pick up!” or “We’ve picked this up!” but then due to all sorts of wack delays the title may end up being delayed by YEARS. Take for example, “Tyrant who fell in love” D: Its been delayed like…three times or more in the past two years and now they say that it’ll come out in Sep 2010 but even then im like “Yeah right we’ll see!”

      well there’s also MIRC, thank the good Lord above for that

• Dee

  Yikes. I was just there yesterday, but it’s not so much of a surprise to hear. It was just a matter of time before they started to shut the big names down.

  • http://anime-evo.net/ Setsuken

    I think for a good deal of a while, there will be sites to replace the big names. After that, I think the scene may just shift to IRC and Bittorent. Sad that the Manga Industry is starting to bite the very fans that brought it popularity

    • Dee

      True. They won’t be able to shut every possible download route down. I just hope they come up with a good alternative and offer a way to read online whether it be free or for a fee. I know I would pay and I’m sure a lot of other manga fans would as well if their favorite titles were offered.

• http://www.mangatherapy.com Manga Therapy

  Publishers should’ve caught on to the scanalation trend years ago and capitalized on it. Instead, we got this crazy mess. I wrote about this and the lack of a “reactionary business” method by publishers. You can read it at: http://www.mangatherapy.com/post/846045104/end-of-onemanga

  • http://anime-evo.net/ Setsuken

    Agreed, you make a very valid point. Before stamping out Scanlations, it would’ve been better to provide a legal alternative to it. Most scanlators or sites like onemanga.com rarely are in the buisness for the profit. Its generally out of love for the series.

• Manabi

  Those unhappy about this should go take the survey MangaToshokan has put together. They plan to share the results with the coalition.

  There’s a free-form comment section at the end to express your thoughts beyond the survey questions, but do keep it polite, they’ll just ignore the survey if people are rude jerks. Survey is here: http://www.mangatoshokan.com/survey/index.php?sid=33624

  • http://anime-evo.net/ Setsuken

    Thank you for the link, I’ll definitely also edit the news post here to add that link soon! I’ve already done the survey myself =D

• http://www.deliciousmanga.com Delicious Manga

  There’s always http://www.deliciousmanga.com to read manga