Go search for any anime or manga title, and it won’t take you long to come across a way to watch or read it in its entirety for free. However, the majority of these platforms are piracy sites or apps. Some series are rips of Japanese media with fan translations (fansubs and scanlations). For other works, they are the official translated versions.
Proponents of these platforms argue that these are necessary, even a good thing. The most common reasons are either because they are not available in all countries and, even if they are, it costs money to read. But it’s also hard to argue against their convenience; instead of having a bunch of releases divided between several licensors, these unofficial sites can host just about anything. Official licensors can try to use legal pressure to take stuff down, but many have the loophole where they don’t host anything; they just provide links.
While I hope all of you out there are trying to support the creators, you may have heard of a manga aggregator called Manga Rock. Manga Rock is run by a Vietnamese company that’s under the umbrella of a company from Hong Kong. It launched in 2010 for iOS devices, eventually also launching an Android version and website. Users could download titles and even pay for a subscription that included removing ads. It provided both links to other sites and also hosted illegal content.
For years, Manga Rock has chugged along, becoming very popular. Anime News Network contacted companies like Apple and VIZ Media back when it first launched, and with its popularity, manga companies surely had their eyes on Manga Rock.
But it got pushed in the spotlight thanks to a series of Tweets from the CEO of Irodori Comics, an English digital publisher of Japanese doujinshi. His original comments were in Japanese, but you can read highlights and other responses in English on Twitter or in the linked Google Docs file.
A few days later, Manga Rock announced they are planning to shut down. Not only that, the development team revealed MR Comics, an official platform. According to their website, this is their way to redeem themselves for creating Manga Rock.
This wouldn’t be first time an illegal animanga site went legit. Crunchyroll and FAKKU both started off as unofficial sites before becoming an official distributor. Several translators also got their start in fanworks before being hired by official licensors. So it is possible to go on the straight and narrow and be successful in doing so.
So far, according to their site, MR Comics has inked deals with Zhiyin Animation and Tan Comics. They are also still negotiating with other platforms like Comi Cola. If you haven’t heard of these, that’s because all the places MR Comics list are Chinese, Korean, or Vietnamese. Nothing wrong with releases from these countries, of course, but there’s a key East Asian country missing: Japan. They are going to be open to indie artists like Webtoon, but considering they started off with Japanese comics, MR Comics is likely going to losing a large part of their audience.
Most of the big name publishers already have connections to get into the US/English language marketplaces, including some free options like MANGA Plus. Indie artists also have options like directly releasing eBooks or publishers like Cross Infinite World that release web novels and manga. Rival platform Webtoon is spending millions of dollars in ads this year to find new readers and writers. Even with the creators’ experience, like any startup, it’s going to have a hard time catching up.
Don’t get me wrong, I wish more of these platforms would go legit. No, I don’t think they’ve suddenly awakened to the affect scanlations, and yes, more will always pop up. But the fact they’ll be lesser known (or unknown) means that new fans are more likely to stumble on the official sites and apps than the unofficial ones. They won’t have nearly the numbers or rankings in the search results as Manga Rock did. But I don’t think MR Comics, with no manga in sight, is going to do much to stop the next Manga Rock or start the next Crunchyroll.