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.