If you mean where to buy manhwa that hasn't been legally translated into English, I'm not sure of that myself. I've purchased Japanese manga from a variety of places but not manhwa. I'll certainly look into it, I have several friends who adore manhwa and buy it a lot from around the world.

And in regards to ad sites, it's true that small websites won't make much from ads. I've had this site for years and I've yet to make enough to pay for the site itself. But when you get to sites that get millions of hits a month, suddenly things get much different. If a small site makes say… a penny a day, multiply that by the thousands more hits these large scanlation sites were getting on a regular basis (some of the most visited sites in the world) and you can imagine how much they were bringing it. This is part of why the same sites would host the same content on multiple 'shadow' sites – more different ads means more ad revenue for those who visit the sites.

My other statement is about the ads on the people's sites. I thought ads on sites pay just enough to keep a working site. I work with people who are building up websites, and they've said those ads do not pay out great deals of money as you say.

And no, I've never read manga on websites like OneManga and don't plan to. Really no need to though, way more than enough manga out there to read legally, buying or otherwise. I'm more than happy with the dozens of free series online, and thousands upon thousands of books out there.

And you're analogy about "stealing a suker from a baby" is certainly an accurate one in some respects if only because you've hit the nail on the head perfectly with the use of the word 'baby' to describe certain individuals. Kicking up a huge fuss about having something you're indulging in illegally taken away from you is just silly.

Everyone's due their own opinions but you'd do well not to make assumptions about others based on your own personal emotions. I know having something you enjoy taken away gets people really riled up, it's a huge emotional rollar coaster for most, it's just a shame it makes people tear others up so negatively.

That concludes my complaint. I belive I feel better.

I tried to think of a nice way to put this, but I can't, the argument in section one is mornonic.

Let us operate under the assumption that Title X is written in Japanese and is not coming out. By not coming out, I mean no English publisher has announced that they will publish it. The older the series or more unknown the author, the less likely it will be licensed. The proposed solution is to essentially buy the Japanese version – which our assumption admits is largely useless to the consumer – and hold it on a shelf until it gets published in English? That is a waste of money. I understand the idea of buying the author’s works that were translated, if any exist, but it makes zero sense to ask someone to buy something they can’t use on the off chance that it will convince the IP holder to later put that work out in their territory so the reader can buy it again. I do not dispute that it is easy-ish to get in-the-original-Japanese manga in America, but I do dispute that buying said product is any kind of solution.

Whenever I hear of a video game, manga, movie or anime that is not being brought out in any official capacity in America, I always think one of two things: 1. That title has too many licensing issues to make it worth publishing (i.e. most Super Robot Wars games); more commonly 2. That publisher does not care about American sales. A publisher has made the decision that it is not worth the effort of translation and republishing to try and put something out in America.

For my money, the response to the second issue is always the same: fine, then you, the publishing/artist, don’t deserve to see any money from that territory for that product. If people put out a free, readable copy of something when there is no translated version available legitimately, then the IP holder shouldn’t be crying about lost sales because there are no real sales in that territory anyway. At that point, I do not even see that free translation on top of a scan of an original as piracy, although it is my understanding that it does violate the law.

While a bit divorced form the issue – the principle is the same – Front Mission for the SNES was a game that was not brought out in America until recently. If you wanted to play it and read the text you could: A) buy a Super Famicom and the cart then learn to read Japanese or B) download a translated rom and play it on your rom player of choice. Clearly Squaresoft thought it would not make business sense to translate a mech strategy game for America when the game first came out. So they didn’t get any money in the US for that game until they put out a legit version for the DS a few years ago. Did they lose revenue because some people said “I already played that, why would I buy it again?” probably. But maybe part of the reason the put it out was they saw how many people were downloading the rom or discussing the game after playing the rom (more likely), “Huh, I guess there is more interest than we thought.” (That and its on the DS, and it’s a SquareEnix joint, and Front Mission brand now has some penetration in America after a PS1 and PS2 game).

I am just saying, it is hard for me to see a scanslation as stealing if it is not out in your area because it is not a sale that was lost. The publisher never had that sale to begin with.

Obviously the totally legal solution to this problem is to learn Japanese. But that is not really a realistic solution for the vast majority of native-English manga readers. Since the issue of language in a global audience is the same across media, this is never really a solution.

The foregoing being said, I thought the rest of your points made sense and would agree with them. The first section, not so much.

A ton of movies made in the good ol’ USofA are put out in other territories with either subtitles or movies because film companies want the box office cash (well, the licensing cash). A lot of anime from Japan has English subtitles on the disc, so its effectively available in America. But when you read a free scanslation of something that probably will never see the light of day in your area, you are not taking money from a publisher. You are robbing them of a potential sale that has been prevented from being due to a business decision made by the publisher. It’s like kidnapping the idea of potential children from of a couple that uses condoms. It doesn’t harm anyone.

Unless its out in your country or will be coming soon, in which case you should buy it.

I especially like your argument against their "I can't afford it" arguement. So true. Life lessons can be hard. It seems people have just decided to opt out of learning them in favour of "me, me, me, nown, now, now." My three year old didn't get away with that, you know.

I'm bilingual, so I see that some scanlations I've seen are terrible. Mind you there are brilliant ones, and some official translations are too official with no play. But having it official allows the intent of the artist come through better as mentioned above, and more true to the story. I've seen scanlations ignoring delightful details just because it's too much of a hassle to translate for free. So both are good and bad at the same time.

I do hope to see though, that translations are made officially in Japan and not fall victim to watered down localization as we have seen in some Anime (like putting underpants on little Goku in Dragonball and totally not showing the perviness of Kamesennin). That's a crime like painting leaves on the naked murals by Michael Angelo in the Vatican.

I just hope everyone could work together and make everything amazing.

Kinokuniya.com's US site (they also have real stores you can go to if you are lucky enough to live in NY or on the west coast (I'm not, but I can dream)).

CDJapan.co.jp, which recently created a book request form where you can ask them to get any Japanese book you want, as long as you can provide the ISBN and some basic title/author info. Their shipping rates are quite reasonable and they're really quick to respond to requests/emails. I just made an order with them and it's shipping even now!

I've taken two years of college Japanese, which means I can read the furigana and figure out about 30% or so of what's going on in my J-manga—mainly I'm just looking at pretty pictures. Still, I consider it perfectly reasonable to purchase books in this language I can't really read (the pictures are all there, after all—it's not like buying a foreign-language novel for the privilege of staring at a wall of indecipherable text). I buy the books in Japanese because I adore the artists who create the works and I want to be able to experience the stories in whatever legal form is available. I think it'd be great if we could go back to the days when text-only translations of unlicensed series were swapped around, and curious fans could buy the original editions to follow along…