Bummer.

I’ve been reading manga for a long time. I started with print and moved online to deeper cuts. A lot of those series are still not officially translated. I’ve been consuming fan translations, official digital translations, and print manga since.

No one should be surprised this happened to MangaDex. It was too convenient and too well known. A lot of the stuff that was removed is niche, but a lot it isn’t. I get why license holders don’t want Spy x Family and Blue Lock available for free on a massive website that tons of people know about.

However, I will not suddenly be pouring money into translators’ pockets. I’m going to read a lot less manga. To me MangaDex was even more useful as a hub than it was for being free. Excellent usability, good library function, okay searchability, great responsiveness, and no shitty app. No, Viz, I’m not going to download your shitty app.

It’s not 2002 with amazing fan forums. Reddit is a bot cesspool (with a shitty app). I don’t have peers who consume manga anymore. Without something like MangaDex I won’t know what to try or buy and I’ll be out of the habit of starting new manga. The money I was spending on manga related stuff, largely at cons, sometimes a lot of money, is going to drop a lot. I hope fifty more free downloads of the shitty app were worth it.

I feel very sad.

We’ll see if something else decent pops up. MangaDex had a good run. And this forum is actually not negligible; I’ve started several manga because I saw them here.