The End of an Era

Earlier this month Mangastrean and Jaimini box, two of the most prominent scanlation team, decided to stop working on Weekly Shonen Jump(WJS) entirely.

For those of you who doesn’t know what is that supposed to mean, let me walk you to the world of manga scanlation.

Weekly Shonen Jump megazine is the household of the biggest manga on the planet. One Piece, Naruto, My Hero Academia just to name a few. Obviously to enjoy the series you love, you need to purchase the megazine. To purchase the megazine you need money. You need even more money if you live here in INDONESIA.

Scanlation Team is the answer to the problem. The team which usually consist of a die hard fans “works” on your favorite series and deliver it free for you. What is the word “works” mean. It means the process of changing a really bad picture scan called raw into something you and i can read.

From this

In to

There is a huge difference in terms of quality between the raw picture and the uploaded version. Not only in drawing, they also translate Japanese version into English or other language.

There used to be a lot of group like this in the past but not so many of them left today.

Earlier this month the biggest Scanlation team Mangastream and Jaimini box decided to stop their works on WSJ entirely. While Mangastream completely shutdown their website and their twitter account, Jaimini Box decide to stop working only on WSJ. They are still working on other megazines and some of webtoon series.

This decision hits really hard on fans since it easier and cheaper to read manga on the internet. While it is true that many websites provide similar service besides these two, but most of them only mirror or use the scan from these two team.

If i were to asked will it be harder to read manga online from these days? The answer is no. Somebody will pick up the work and local scanlation is still alive and well.

However, i believe the decision comes along with the maturity of the fans and the Scanlation Team itself. I’ve been reading manga online since i knew how to use internet and in one of those years i’ve been reading them in Mangastream. Just to give you a picture Mangastream has operated for almost 10 years before closing down and thats a decade. So i’ve been snitching manga online starting when i was still a young brat snitching porn on internet cafe to an adult enjoying porn on my smartphone. Time flies, now i have a job and can make money. To give you yet another picture. One of the longest running series in WSJ that im following has been running for OVER 20 YEARS and i didnt even have a single Tankobon of that manga.

So this is a farewell and a welcome at the same time. Thanks for the hard work for all these years folks.