The earliest recorded translation was probably a fan translation of Tezuka's Phoenix by the four-man team "Dadakai" in 1977. One of the four members of Dadakai was Frederick Schodt, who would later go on to become a well-respect manga scholar in the U.S. The group's translation was later incorporated into Viz's official release of Phoenix.
Viz was founded in 1986 under the name Viz Communications by Seiji Horibuchi.
In 2005, Viz merged with ShoPro Entertainment to form Viz Media, LLC, which was jointly owned by Shogakukan, Shueisha, and Shogakukan Productions.
By 1992, many individual translation projects could be found on Usenet on newsgroups like rec.arts.manga and alt.manga as well as on various FTP servers. Popular series included Kimagure Orange Road and Ranma ½.
A new series by Nobuhiro Watsuki titled Rurouni Kenshin began serialization in Weekly Shounen Jump No.19.
Akira Toriyama's Dragon Ball ended its ten-year serialization in issue 25 of Shueisha's Weekly Shounen Jump.
When Viz first began releasing Rumiko Takahashi's Ranma ½ in the U.S. in 1993, each chapter was released very slowly. In response, many translation and fanscan projects were started to bring later chapters of the manga to U.S. fans.
A new series by Rumiko Takahashi titled Inuyasha began serialization in Shogakukan's Shounen Sunday on November 13th, 1996.
Robb first launched Studio Robb in 1996 as a place to host his Ranma ½ scanlations.
Jason Satoru Doyama started a translation project called The Ranma ½ Project on June 3, 1996 and hosted on it translated scripts of Ranma ½ chapters which would have otherwise taken many years to reach U.S. shores. Doyama, together with Smurfbon (who operated the websites), ran two other projects between 1996 and 1997: The Dragon Ball Project and The KOR Project.
The KOR Project was shut down after Viz licensed the series and contacted Doyama.
A new series by Eiichiro Oda titled One Piece began serialization in Weekly Shounen Jump No.34.
Mixx Entertainment was founded by Stuart Levy in 1997. The company published a manga anthology called Mixxzine. In 1998, the company moved its Sailor Moon manga to the new shoujo magazine Smile and soon found itself in a public relations disaster.
In 1999, Mixx moved its e-commerce business to Tokyopop.com. According to an interview with Tokyopop's Mike Kiley:
In '98, I joined the company as the founder of Tokyopop.com. That was the point where we brought all the e-commerce business into the Tokyopop fold, we also had the printing business, the magazine business, and it's just kind of evolved from there.
Viz began releasing Akira Toriyama's Dragon Ball series in the U.S.
The Daily Dragon Ball Chapters project (DDBC) was a very popular Dragon Ball translation site founded in 1997 by Eric Phan. The site later became a large repository of scanned and translated Dragon Ball manga.
Wot-Club was started by Chris Rijk in 1997 and provided translations of Inuyasha chapters as they were released in Japan. Sometimes a translation would even come with a few magazine scans. Before scanlations became popular, these scans were a real treat to the site's visitors.
Ian Smith, a.k.a. Izumi, created an e-zine called Ryokurin. A manga section, called Manga Screener, was later added.
Jason Doyama closed down the Dragon Ball Project after Viz licensed the manga.
Anime News Network was launched in July 1998 by Justin Sevakis.
Typus created a website in 1998 called Typus' Anime Depot to list the anime-related sites he visited that contained downloads. Users were able to rate those sites.
JanimeS was first created by Klisis as a general anime site on GeoCities and was moved to the domain anime-anime.com in 1999. From its history page:
JanimeS has been around since 1998 and has been maintained by I, Klisis.
JanimeS was first created in early 1998 as an untitled website at Geocities. At later 1998, I finally purchased klisis.com for my site from Geocities, so Klisis.com was the first name and domain for my small anime site.
During 1999, my site had begun to get a small amount of traffic, less than 200 hits per day. The site didn't have much content back then. At later 1999, I finally purchased anime-anime.com which has been using until now, it took long a long time, but my site was getting around 10,000 hits per day at the moment. Additionally at the moment, 3 members joined me to build up the site.
Nobuhiro Watsuki's Rurouni Kenshin ended serialization in Weekly Shounen Jump No.43.
A new series by Masashi Kishimoto titled Naruto began serialization in Weekly Shounen Jump No.43.
At the 1999 A-Kon, Mixx Entertainment announced its decision to change the name of its flagship magazine Mixxzine to Tokyo-Pop:
The new name, according to CEO Stu Levy, better reflects the direction of the magazine, which is no longer considered a manga magazine by any party (including Mixx). The magazine will work together with the web site to provide information. The magazine also might get a new addition soon, as Levy hinted that Card Captor Sakura could very well be on its way.
By 2001, Mixx Entertainment had for all intents and purposes changed its name to Tokyopop. According to Tokyopop's John Parker in an interview:
JP: In 99, when I started with the company, we had just started a website called TOKYOPOP.com with the idea that we would sell imported products from Japan. It was doing reasonably well, but at the time we were experimenting with other types of entertainment products from places other than just Japan. We had a lot of heated conversations on weather we should be TOKYOPOP or if it should be something else. After about a year of deep analysis and thought, it just kind of evolved into becoming the real meaning behind the company and the values that name had kind of set were really indicative of what we were trying to do. So we essentially decided to retire the original name, which was Mixx entertainment, and focus only on TOKYOPOP as a brand name. In the original genesis of the company as Mixx Entertainment, our focus was a mix of entertainment, a mix of product, and a mix of culture. We still believe in that, but the TOKYOPOP brand name, we think, has a lot better connotation (for) the casual consumer of entertainment products.
Dark Horse, Studio Proteus, and Radio Comix teamed up to launch a new monthly manga anthology called Super Manga Blast. Five series were set to serialize in the magazine: Oh My Goddess!, 3x3 Eyes, What's Michael?, Seraphic Feather, and Shadow Star.
The New Ranma ½ Project was started in February 1999 by EvlNabiki and SHADE:
The New Ranma Project is a group of anime/manga fans that banded together to create home grown graphical translations of the Ranma 1/2 manga. Our goal all along was to translate the SECOND half of the manga series. This being all the chapters that Viz comics have not yet done.
The project began in February of 1999 with EvlNabiki and myself (SHADE). Taking our cue from The Ranma Project (or the original Ranma Project as we personally call it now, not to mention stealing the name since we were too lazy to think of one ourselves) we began to scan and graphically translate a handful of chapters of Ranma. [...]
The Ranma ½ Project ended on September 20th, 1999:
[...] I just want to thank everyone out there that came out to this web page, read some mangas, or just sent me some email. When I started this thing, I thought no one would even care that I was doing it. But over the past few years, I've received alot of emails from people all over the world everyone with one common thread, they all loved anime. I remember in 2nd year of my undergrad, I first saw Mosaic and what the www was when it was first conceived. I never in my wildest dreams ever thought 5 short years later we'd be where we are today. I really do think that the internet can be used to bring people from different parts of the world together. I'm feel very fortunate to be able to watch how the world has changed so rapidly so far, and to be able to see where the world will go into the 21st century. Im not saying anime is the solution to world peace, but hey I think it's a pretty good start.
SnoopyCool was originally created as a general anime website. The site later hosted anime like Dragon Ball Z, Flame of Recca, and Kenshin for download.
darkshard formed the first truly organized scanlation group called Mangascans in April of 2000.
The New Ranma ½ Project ended after completing its goal of finishing the second half of the manga series.
Typus's Anime Depot was renamed to Noated in July 2000, and the website was relocated to noated.com/typus.
Space Coyote creates The Nameless Manga Translation Site to share her scanlations with her friends.
A fansite called Fantasy Chronicles is formed by a person called Tsubasa and her sister VIvi. The site was later turned into a scanlation group and renamed to Aku Tenshi.
Toriyama's World was founded in March 2001 by AK of Troy and Gotenks243 (Mike) on GeoCities. Soon after, it moved to its own domain.
The Band of the Hawks is founded by Griffisu as an anime fansub group.
MangaProject, founded by ZlleH and Ichigo, was officially formed when Mangascans disbanded and most of the Mangascans staff joined the new group.
GenmaC, a former member of Mangascans, forms Dual Translations.
FuguTabetai begins the Great Manga Application Onidzuka (GMAO) project and uses the application to create GTO scanlations, which were made available at greatteacheronidzuka.com.
darkshard disbanded Mangascans after the group finished scanlating all eight available volumes of Love Hina. Most members, including darkshard, went on to join ZlleH's MangaProject. GenmaC's Dual Translations picked up Love Hina where Mangascans left off.
As Ryokurin's manga sub-division became the site's main attraction, Izumi decided to shut down Ryokurin and relaunch the e-zone's manga division as the scanlation group MangaScreener.
Project Omanga was founded by Shiru but was later taken over by Zyph after an internal "power struggle."
A new series by Tite Kubo titled Bleach began serialization in Weekly Shounen Jump No.37+37.
After relocating Ryokurin's manga section to a new domain, ryokurin.com was used by Izumi as a personal blog for a few months before completely going offline.
Right Stuf reported that Tokyopop had licensed three new manga: Love Hina, Cowboy Bebop, and Initial D. The licenses were later confirmed by Tokyopop in December.
Aosh founded the group MangaDownloads to scanlate shounen manga:
Mangadownloads began in end of 2001, by the mysterious and elusive entity known only as Aosh. Aosh had a plan, a plan to steal some manga at random from the local comic store, scan them, translate them, and let lazy leechers read them. Luckily, Aosh chose to steal two great manga series, One Piece and Rurouni Kenshin, and the leechers were amazed at his thievery skills. Soon, Aosh was joined by a band of monkeys and pirates to aid in taking care of his stolen goods, and Mangadownloads has since become what it is today.
Anime News Network reported that Tokyopop had licensed Great Teacher Onizuka and Chobits. The licenses were confirmed by Tokyopop in December.
FuguTabetai launched MangaTranslation at mangatranslation.com and moved all projects (GTO, Get Backers) to the new site.
Luch formed the shoujo scanlation group Mangasync in October 2001. The group scanlated from Indonesian manga releases and was most known for its scanlation of Glass Mask.
Tsubasa renamed Fantasy Chronicles to Aku Tenshi in late 2001. According to the group's FAQ page: "Aku means evil, and Tenshi means angel. So it literally means evil angel! I'm not entirely sure why we came up with that name, it just sounded cool to have the contrast there(at the time). This site use to be called 'Fantasy Chronicles', we changed it to Aku Tenshi because it sounded too much to be Final Fantasy related stuff. Not that I dislike FF, in fact I love it! But still...."
Sakura-Crisis was founded in January of 2002 by Sakurayuki and Crisis Dreams to scanlate "the lesser known manga of Japan." The group's goal states:
Our aim is to get the attention of English translating companies so that they may officially licence these much neglected works, so that they may recieve the recognition they deserve.
Manga-Daisuki was founded in January of 2002 by Ichitaka.
Akatsuki-Manga was founded in late 2002 by arumi. According to the group's old History page:
Akatsuki-Manga is a "manga scanlation" group started in November of 2002. We were originally the "Naruto-Guide" group, but now have changed our name so that we could expand and do different manga titles.
Although we're no longer connected to NarutoGuide.com or the channel #narutoguide, you can still find us hanging around there, and our own channel #akatsuki-manga to publicize our releases, or just to chat about ... stuff. Everyone there loves manga, so you can't go wrong. Do not ask us to send you Naruto episode-whatever of the anime. That's not our job! ^o^
A manga newsletter for the AOL anime/manga–loving community was created by MiMi. The community soon formed its own shoujo scanlation division called Rebellious Angels.
Korean Manhwa Translations, or KMTS, was a group founded by xX_bLuE in March of 2002 to scanlate Korean manhwa. KMTS's goal was to introduce shounen and shoujo manhwa to English speaking manga fans. Among their first projects were Jjang, Audition, Change Guy, and Ragnarok (Korean). To this day, Change Guy remains the longest manhwa project to be completely scanlated.
JanimeS began to translate manga, and by 2003 became a full-fledged scanlation group.
The Great Teacher Onidzuka translation Project ended after FuguTabetai received an email from Tokyopop asking her to remove all GTO-related images and text from the website.
Seeing a lack of shoujo scanlation in the online community, MiMi decided to re-launch Rebellious Angels as MangaArt. The new group's first two projects were Daa! Daa! Daa! and Angelique.
A number of sources began reporting that Viz would be releasing Shueisha's Shonen Jump in the U.S. The news was confirmed by Viz in a press release a day later.
By late 2002, Dual Translations had for all intents and purposes ceased operation.
Seven series were reported to appear in Viz's Shonen Jump: Naruto, One Piece, Yu-Gi-Oh!, Shaman King, Sand Land, Yu Yu Hakusho, and Dragon Ball Z. A press release sent out by Viz on August 1st confirmed this lineup.
BadAndy formed the group AnimeWaves as an anime fansub group. Over time, the group slowly evolved into a scanlation group.
Tsuzuku Jinsei o... (TJO) was formed on July 24th 2002.
Toriyama's World dropped Naruto after the manga was acquired by Viz. This directly led to the formation of Null and, later, Inane, which in turned played an important role in the rise of speed scanlations that came to dominate the scanlation community in late-2000.
Ctogen launched the Yanime website as a general anime website.
In September 2002, after some disagreements with staff members from his group, Shiru was let go from Omanga and Zyph, who had long been the person running the group, became Omanga's official leader. According to Omanga's own FAQ:
Who is Shiru? I see him mentioned in the forum sometimes.
Shiru was the previous head of Omanga (before it was a popular group). He was overthrown in a coup d'tat and now Zyph reins supreme.
When Shiru left, he tried to bring the site with him. but although Shiru was in charge of Omanga's hosting (omanga.cjb.net), Zyph owned the actual domain, so the group's website was briefly moved to a temporary domain until it was later moved to Omanga.net in 2003.
Marcy launched DailyManga, the first-ever release tracking website. The site became an instant hit with the scanlation community, but its French origin turned off many English visitors.
kal- formed a small group called Null. According to Null's History page:
Null was originally created as a sub-group of Manga_Daisuki with the help of staff members from Manga-Sketchbook and MangaProject to edit Naruto after it was dropped by Toriyama World for being licensed. It was founded on September 10th, 2002 by kal-.
"Null started doing Naruto from chapter 106 when Toriyama-World stopped scanlating it. Fans shouldn't have to wait years just to read the next chapter. We were staff members of existing manga groups and we decided to release just for productive leechers: editors, translators, fservers, scanners, etc... Do something for the manga community and you'd get our manga!" -- kal-
As isolated members from several groups, no group would use its own name (by no group in particular, and for every group) so the group didn't have a name, a channel or a website - it was literally a group that doesn't exist, a "Null" group.
Toriyama's World participated in Viz's affiliate program to promote Viz's upcoming U.S. release of Shonen Jump:
Also, you like the new banners for Viz's Shonen Jump? Those were all created by Viz themselves, and I think they look pretty sweet. Hopefully this is indicative of future excellence.
When the affiliate program ended in November of 2002, Toriyama's World signed up more subscribers for the initial launch of Shonen Jump than any other affiliate.
Infornography and Zion from MangaArt formed a shounen group called Solaris.
Siana and chry18 formed the shoujo scanlation group ShoujoMagic.
Storm in Heaven was founded by Belial as a manga fansite, but began scanlating manga in 2003. An Italian division was later created.
DALnet announced that it was prohibiting "Using a channel for the primary purpose of facilitating the transfer of files." As a result, scanlation groups were forced to migrate to different IRC networks. Most moved to mIRC-X.
Deathscythe, with the help of Something Awful's manga forum ADTRW and the ArsAnime community, launched Manga Jouhou. The site soon became a competitor to DailyManga.
Manga Coalition was formed as a sister group to the fansub group Anime Coalition:
We are the sister group to Anime Coalition, hence we're called Manga Coalition. We are basically fans who come together to translate and edit japanese manga into english so that other fans can enjoy what they otherwise can't.
Unforunately, the group's website went down a month later in March, and the group soon became inactive in the same year, and has not released anything new after 2003.
Dark Horse announced the acquisition of Kentarou Miura's Berserk. At the time of the announcement, the manga was said to be a joint project between Dark Horse and Digital Manga.
HCross's scanlation group Jinmen Juushin was officially launched in March of 2003, although the group's website has been up since February 28th, 2003.
Endless Dimension was founded in March 2003 by Janice's cousin pingu. The group's ownership was transferred to Janice during the summer of that year.
MegKF formed a shoujo scanlation group and named it after herself. According to its FAQ:
Q: Who founded MegKF and why such a lousy name?
A: MegKF founded MegKF back one Spring Break when she was really bored. She had scans and translations for Hana-Kimi and edited them, very poorly at that. And felt they should be shared no matter how bad the editing was. Siana from Shoujomagic inserted the MegKF nick onto the zips so people would know who did it... And MegKF was just too lazy later on to change it so it stuck.
On March 25, Manga Jouhou's Deathscythe pitched the idea of a central IRC channel where people could go and download manga:
Leech Channel?
After talking to guys from Mangaco, Omanga, and Hawks I decided it would be a neat idea if we set up a chan on Mircx where we can have fservs come and distribute their newest manga. Like just released stuff. This will allow people to go to one place to get their manga rather than 4 different servers? All we ask is that you dont have ads and you only share only your newest manga. Good idea?
The channel, #mangacentral, was launched a day later and became a big success:
Just some quick news. For those who were wondering about the MangaJouhou fserv chan, it is up. It is on irc.mircx.com(along with our chan) at #mangacentral(Ketsugi's idea, not mine so dont kill me MSH :) ). Please keep fservs to #mangacentral and chat to #jouhou. If you want to fserv there go ahead. We're trying to get all the newest manga up there. I set this chan up for all those smaller scanlation groups so if you're interested please come. Note: If you want to gain recognition through this, tell your fserv servers to advertise your site along with the triggers and all that information. +v's are the fservs
Hikaru no Go by Yumi Hotta (story) and Takeshi Obata (art) ended serialization in Weekly Shounen Jump No.33 (7/14).
In its Shonen Jump USA newsletter, dated April 25th but sent out on the 28th, Viz announced the following in their subscription campaign:
So... SUBSCRIBE!!! You'll get Rurouni Kenshin, One Piece, Naruto, Sand Land, YU-GI-OH!, SHAMAN KING, and of course your DRAGON BALL Z without thought, without worry every month.
The Rurouni Kenshin acquisition was confirmed later on the same day:
The response for Rurouni Kenshin has been overwhelming, but we should clarify a thing or two about the previous newsletter. Rurouni Kenshin will be published by Viz, but we have not yet announced how it will be published. It may be in SHONEN JUMP, it may be published as Graphic Novels--or it may appear in both. Rurouni Kenshin will make an appearance in Issue 7, however--in a feature article. Stay tuned for more details about the historical hit manga/anime.
Shoujo scanlation group Terrad was founded by Lilyes and at first focused on scanlating Hanazakari no Kimitachi e (Hana-Kimi).
Having been on hiatus since 2002, The Nameless Manga Translation Site finally went down after Space Coyote forgot to pay for its hosting.
The group Be With You Scans was formed by Earth Dragon in May of 2003. The group became most known for its scanlation of various CLAMP manga.
Toriyama's World announced on June 24, 2003 that that they had been contacted by a company holding the North American rights to the Hikaru no Go manga:
Hikaru no Go manga has been licensed.
That's right. Following up on the shocker news of the end of Hikaru no Go in Japan a few weeks ago, the beginning of its English publication in North America will soon be upon us. It's confirmed, people. The company in question wrote us an email today. We have been proud to work on sharing the manga with you for the past two years. But now, the pinnacle of our goals has now been reached, and it will soon be available to the mainstream manga market.We ask that all North American fans of the series support the commercial release to help ensure the success of what many claimed was too obscure a topic for a manga to ever be released domestically.
Since the publishing company which now owns the license has not yet made any public statement and may not yet be ready to do so, we're witholding the company's name at the present moment until we are given the go-ahead. Suffice it to say that we're confident this company is capable of doing it justice, though we definitely hope they don't assign any newbies to do the translation.
Coinciding with this licensing announcement, all chapters will be removed from the website and we ask that any other related form of distribution be halted.
Viz was later confirmed as the company that had acquired the manga.
Del Rey Books announced a new manga line and partnered with Kodansha to bring four manga series to the U.S. The four licenses were later revealed to be Mobile Suit Gundam Seed, Negima! Magister Negi Magi, Tsubasa: Reservoir Chronicl, and xxxHolic.
A site called tyZon was launched by tysol "as a site to share or promote manga and anime, through sharing of wallpapers."
Yanime was re-launched by Ctogen to focus more on manga scanlation.
On July 18, 2003, Yanime began collaborating with Akatsuki Manga to scanlation Ichigo 100%.
Tokyopop announced at Otakon that it had licensed Yukiru Sugisaki's D.N.Angel.
A yaoi scanlation group called Hochuuami was formed by kitten_toy.
Manga-Underground was formed by Gene. The group scanlated series such as GTO, Read or Die, and Gekkoh.
Viz editor Carl Horn confirmed that Viz had licensed both Kaori Yuki's Angel Sanctuary and Hisaya Nakajo's Hana-Kimi.
MangaArt formed a shounen division called ShounenArt:
Some time in 2003, ShounenArt--a shounen division--was formed and ran by bgarion and MidnightStar to deviate from the shoujo goodness MangaArt was well known for. However, ShounenArt eventually broke off from MangaArt and became the current Manga-Mania.
Robb announced that he was joining Studio Ironcat and took down the scanlation section of Studio Robb.
bgarion and MidnightStar's ShounenArt left MangaArt to become an independent group called Manga-Mania.
Through an update on RightStuf, it was revealed that Viz had licensed Mayu Shinjo's Kaikan Phrase manga and released it under the name Sensual Phrase.
Fifay.net was launched in October of 2003. According to the site's History section:
Fifay.net came online around 13th of October, 2003. We initially intended it for it to be a manga hosting site, but over time we started to scanlate our own manga. Our site is growing everyday-so check us out often! You are currently looking at layout 5.0, designed and coded by Rem.
Viz officially announced the licensing of both the Saikano manga and the TV series.
The AnimeOnDVD forum pointed out an update on Barnes and Noble's website that revealed Viz had licensed Bleach, Detective Conan, Imadoki, Cheeky Angel, and Mermaid Saga: Forest. Additional rumors from AoD reported that Viz may have also acquired Takeaki Momose's RahXephon.
Manga Jouhou reported a record 125 scanlation releases.
According to Toriyama's World:
I also bring some interesting UNCONFIRMED news! Both a little sad, but very very WONDERFUL. It's seems that Bleach might be added to viz's licensed line up soon! (MAYBE! UNCONFIRMED! WHO KNOWNS FOR SURE? I DON'T!!) That means you can go out, and support kubotite by buying the actual english manga when it comes out (if it is indeed licenced...which I don't really know for sure... But I thought you'd all like to know...)
A few days later, the AnimeOnDVD forum found more evidence of the license supporting the fact that Viz had contacted Toriyama's World beforehand, hence Toriyama's World's "independent confirmation" of the license. After AoD's confirmation, Toriyama's World dropped Bleach.
Coordinated by DGT, eight groups (DGT, MegKF, ShoujoMagic, Shounen Chefs, Ichigo Cooks [formally SVU], Hush, Eden, and Endless Dimensoin) came together to work on a special "Christmas Bonanza" project in which each group scanlated a chapter from the manga Zig X Zag.
AnimeOnDVD's forum reported that Viz had licensed Takeshi Konomi's The Prince of Tennis.
Shoujo scanlator Ivyscan was formed by vvhime in January 2004.
mIRC-X was shut down after a series of DDoS (Distrubuted Denial of Service) attacks, forcing many groups (including many fansub groups) to move to other IRC networks:
Sunday, February 22, 2004
Over the past few days, we have been receiving a very large sustained ongoing DDoS attack against all of the servers on our IRC network. While we have made efforts to filter the attack, the person behind it has been very persistent and we have been forced to block all traffic to the servers at times to filter it. Unfortunately, the end result has been an unusable network and the loss of our secondary server.
Together with our main server provider, we have decided to close down what's left of the IRC network. We don't know for how long the attack will continue, and it has, at times, affected other servers (and paying customers) on the networks where the IRC servers are hosted. Ultimately, we decided that it's no longer worth the expense, resources, and trouble to deal with any more attacks and outages over a free service. While we understand how many of you have come to depend on the IRC network, we hope you can understand our position and do apologize for the short notice and inconvenience this causes. We would have liked to continue the IRC network for a long time to come, but with the current state of DDoS attacks on the Internet and the problem only increasing, this no longer seems feasible.
We would like to thank the providers who hosted our servers over the past few years for their support, and all of you who made the IRC network your home. At this time, we know who is responsible for the attacks and law enforcement is investigating. Should you have any information which might assist law enforcement, please send it to us and we will pass it along.
A sub-division was created at Solaris called SVU, or Solaris Vanguard Unit, that scanlated more obscure shounen manga.
DC Comics officially announced its new manga imprint CMX. Included in the announcement were new titles licensed under CMX, including Kamikaze Kaitou Jeanne and Tenjo Tenge.
A new group called Eternal Blue was founded by Burner, Karsh, and Orihime.
A new scanlation group called Tama-Chan Scans was formed by Kuwa-Jiji to scanlate various shounen and shoujo projects:
Yup, this is a manga scanslation group, and we're proud to have Tama-chan as our mascot! Our projects include both shounen and shoujo, cause we love them both. :> You can view all that legal junk here. Hope you like our stuff, and don't forget to frequent our IRC channel!
A new manga release tracker was launched by Baka-Updates to compete with Manga Jouhou and DailyManga.
Manga Underground was created by silverado as a place to look for downloads of various manga scanlations.
Condensation was formed by Vanderguard in September of 2004 to scanlate Kapo-n (>_<)!, and soon grew into a full-time shoujo/josei scanlation group.
StopTazmo was created in October 2004 by Kevin Shiel and Brian Shiel to counter NarutoFan and its owner Tazmo, whom was (and still is) accused by many scanlation groups of charging money for scanlation.
An article from Time Comix reported that Viz had licensed Hunter X Hunter, Fullmetal Alchemist, and Dr. Slump.
Noated was relocated to noated.net after some troublesome server migrations. The site was now lead by DiSpy.
Tokyopop announced its license of Harold Sakuishi's Beck. The manga was subsequently dropped by MangaScreener. MangaScreener's translator for Beck, Stephen Paul, later went on to translate the manga for Tokyopop.
It was also revealed a few days earlier on January 20th that another manga that MangaScreener had been working on, Naoki Urasawa's 20th Century Boys, was licensed by Viz (along with Kekkaishi and the previously announced Dr. Slump).
Fansub group Shinsen-Subs announced the launch of a scanlation division called Shinsen-Manga:
Well... I haven't posted on the website in ages and I better make this quick or else Vincent will have my balls... Anyway, #Shinsen-Manga on Rizon is a subdivision of #Shinsen-Subs, for those of you who don't know already. Today, I am proud to announce the release of Samurai Champloo manga chapters 1 (a second version) and 2. I hope you guys enjoy the manga and come visit the new channel for any comments or questions and possibly applications for work -_^. I guess that brings a close to my first rant since... hell knows when.
Takahashi-Keisuke (Fearless founder)
HCross dissolved Jinmen Juushin on March 29th:
After two years together, we've decided to call it quits. I, the leader of JJ, was fed up with scanslation and decided to leave the group. No one else was interested in wearing my shoes. So we're done.
Two of Jinmen Juushin's staff members, Buey and Snewcee, went on to form We, the Fans to continue some of Jinmen Juushin's projects.
In November 8th, 2005, HCross brought the group's old staff back together and announced the revival of Jinmen Juushin.
By late March of 2006, Janice had announced that Endless Dimension was closing:
READ EVERYTHING CAREFULLY OR YOU WILL MISS THE GOODIES!
Hiya everyone! How are ya all? One tiny news for you today: Endless Dimension is now officially closing down. A million of small things have been piling up as of late and I just felt that it's not worth my time anymore. ED has truly been my love and pride for the longest time, and I enjoyed building up the network. But the harder I try, the more bashing and criticism I seem to receive. Some of them have been helpful, but some are rather...heart-breaking. Why put more effort into something that will eventually become underappreciated? Nevertheless, I think I'm at least responsible to let you know where all our old projects are heading to, so let's begin the list! [...]
The group's website stayed up until August of 2006, when the group disappeared completely.
Mangasync received a C&D letter from Kodansha in late May asking the group to remove some of its scanlation from the website.
Manga-Underground split up, and some of the group's members tried to form a new "Manga-Underground." The group's site was later replaced Manga Realm, a community forum site by Manga-Underground founder Gene.
Ten days after receiving the C&D letter from Kodansha, Mangasync received a C&D letter from Hakusensha asking the group to remove its scanlation from the website.
VicariousLurker created a website called thelurker.net for his IRC manga archive Lurk.
Mangatraders was launched by Aftershock and kAi:
Mangatraders is a site dedicated to making English translated manga available to the world. It was founded by Aftershock, who wanted to give something back to the manga community by providing a simple, effective way for people to obtain translated manga for free. In the past it was difficult for a person to find different manga series, as they were spread out all over the net. The goal of Mangatraders is to bring all translated manga together so people can find what ever they are looking for in one location.
Initially Mangatraders was a glorified dumping ground. The few staff members added whatever manga they saw fit to share, and users would come and download them. But, as time wore on and more and more manga became popular, it was decided that the staff alone was not sufficient to obtain and upload all the titles available or desired. Thus the site was reformed into a true trading center. In order to live up to the title of traders, as well as take slack off of the staff, it was decided that any user would be allowed to upload any manga they wished, as long as it was translated into English. In this way Mangatraders has grown as more and more rare or obscure manga are brought to us by users from all over the world.
BWYS experienced a mass resignation of staff in August of 2005 over disagreements with decisions made by the group's leader. Former BWYS staff went on to create their own scanlation group called The Waffle House:
Now, since this is our opening day, maybe I should introduce our group a little:
Most of our staff used to be part of another scanlation group, but because we have some problems over there, and there are projects we would like to do, we decided to start our own group.
So Why TheWaffleHouse, you ask. The channel was originally created as a joke, way before the group had decided to start. It was for the love of waffles, that a member of the current staff constnatly brings up. Several months later, it came the day when we had to name our group, and we decided that "thewafflehouse" is not a bad name, so there it is. The birth of a new scanlation group.
Scanlation group RiSQ was merged into the group Hanashi. RiSQ's one and only project, Kokoro Library has also been dropped due to a loss of interest in the project.
Mangasync leader Luch decided to disband the group after receiving the C&D letter from Hakusensha:
Mangasync: disbanding soon
after we release vol 18 of glass mask (currently still working on vol 17 and 18 ).
i am asking all our fans to respect my decision and stop asking mangasync not to disband. the recent letters from kodansha and hakusensha are not the only reasons why we're disbanding. there are other personal reasons which i am not free to discuss (hint: real life kicks in, etc).
we've been doing this manga scanlation service for 4 years, and like the old saying, all good things must come to an end. thank you once again for all your supports, minna-san!
ja ne!
After releasing volume 18 of Glass Mask in September, the group officially disbanded.
Terrad's Lilyes announced that the group has been shut down:
GOOD BYE TERRAD
I wanted to procrastinate on homework, so I'm revamping this a bit. Terrad thanks all those who've supported it since it's birth two-three years ago (hell, you expect me to remember that type of stuff?!). We went from just two people on two projects to over 20 staff and 10+ projects. Due to time constraint, I can no longer keep up with it's growth. It's a crime to manga fans and other scanlation groups to hog up the projects that we aren't even working on (or barely working on). So, as sad as it may be, Terrad is now dissolved.
A new group called Entropy was formed by riseabove77 and Saga. In an unusual move, the group sent out a press release for its grand opening:
Entropy is a new scanlation group that specializes in shounen, shoujo, seinen and josei. The only rule to which we will adhere when choosing projects is that it has to strike our fancy. From Kenji Morita's biopic on Hijikata Toushizou, Getsu Mei Sei Ki, to Chun Kye Young's fan-favorite manhwa, Unplugged Boy, Entropy strives to bridge the gap between genres and nations. Today's releases are:
Getsu Mei Sei Ki chapter 1 by Kenji Morita
The end of the Edo period, the Bakumatsu (between 1853 and 1867), was an era of uncertainty and chaos; a time when the line between right and wrong was indistinguishable. During this era, Hijikata Toushizou, determined to live by his own rules, led his reformed Shinsengumi--formerly a band of ragtag mercenaries which became the elite samurai fight force of the shogunate--to glory. This is his story.Unplugged Boy chapter 1 by Chun Kye Young
Not only does Jiyool have high school to worry about, she has her love life to worry about, too! The guy she likes, Hyungyum, doesn't see her (or any other woman) as more than a friend, and some guy she's not interested in is obsessed with her! Her life gets more complicated, and those complications don't even include trouble from the class delinquent...They, Too, Love chapters 3 and 4 by Seo Moon Da Mi
This is a joint with DragonVoice.
Jung Euimoon and Eun Myroyung are both members of the second Biology Club, which has been downgraded to the oldest facilities in the school to make room for the new Biology Club. Jung Euimoon uses Bunsen burners to cook his breakfast and routinely camps out at the Biology Club room to get away from his numerous siblings. Eun is a loner and reads tarot cards--which always foretell unhappy auguries--to amuse herself. They each think the other is strange. These two seem to be opposites, but they have more in common than they think. Who knows what the future holds in store for them.Soon, expect releases of Love Catalog, I'm Doushirou, SA "Special A", Five, and Ookiku Furikabutte, a baseball manga that was voted the #1 baseball manga on an internet poll.
We hope that everyone enjoys our releases.
For more information, please visit our website at www.entropy-manga.com, or stop by our irc channel at #entropy@irc.irchighway.com. We can also be reached via e-mail to info@entropy-manga.com.
Illuminati-Manga was formed by users of the StopTazmo forum (the Gantz forum, in particular). According to GGpX:
Illuminati-Manga was a ST-based (StopTazmo) group co-founded on November 11th 2005 by coolerimmortal and SealBroken in the hopes of getting Gantz Manual scanlated.
In 2005, NarutoFan was one of the largest English Naruto communities on the Internet. Every week, on the "raw day" (the day when Naruto raw from the latest issue of Shounen Jump is released), the forums would often slow to a crawl or even go down due to the large volume of traffic it receives.
njt, wanting to create a similar site to help people get their fix of the latest raw, had been working on a site named MangaHelpers and, in November 2005, decided to unveil the new site. From there on MangaHelpers became known to the masses as the place to go to for the latest manga and later for international translations as well.
According to Eternal Blue, Eternal Blue and Furinkazan have merged and would be working on their projects together:
31-10-2005
We got some flash news , Our group Eternal-Blue and Furinkazan has been merged we'll be doing furinkazan's projects as well which would be X-Gene and Chunrang . Give us your support~ yay~ .
In late 2005, a new website was created at GotLurk.net to help user with downloading from #lurk.
In December of 2005, MangaUpdates moved from Baka-Updates's manga subdomain to mangaupdates.com:
New Domain Name
To those of you who are wondering, we got a new domain name!
The site has grown to the size that we think it warrents it. This is just to let everyone know. If you link to our site, please update your links!. We would like to keep our search engine rankings :-)
Thank you!
A forum called Binktopia was founded by Binky as a place composed of multiple individuals that Binky had encountered around the Internet. Later that year, Binky teamed up with thatbabo and the translator Mankai and founded the scanlation group known as Binktopia, which used the forum as its base of operation.
MangaArt formed a sub-division called RebelliousArt:
So for a period of time, MangaArt continued as a shoujo-only group. However, some staff members became restless and felt that just doing shoujo wasn't enough. Wanting to dabble with other genres of manga, not just shounen like the previous ShounenArt, they decided to create a whole new division. Taking the idea of the initial Rebellious Angels, the name RebelliousArt was decided on and formed on January 29, 2006. Hence, RebelliousArt ventures where MangaArt refuses to tread, doing projects of a variety of genre ranging from smut to shounen.
Three Japanese were arrested for illegally uploading manga scans on their website 464.jp in spite of being warned by publishers and authors:
Three Japanese have been arrested for illegally uploading manga scans on the Web in spite of being warned by publishers and authors. They were the first such arrests in Japan.
The website, 464.jp (pronounced "Read!" in Japanese), was intended as promotion for the manga and internet cafe "Ichigo" in Oota-ku, Tokyo. Touted as "Free Manga Browsing," the scans amounted to over 17,000 volumes, including 1,300 titles by nearly 700 authors. Nine titles named in the investigation were Akamatsu Ken's "Love Hina," Akimoto Osamu's "Kochi Kame," Adachi Mitsuru's "Touch," Ichijou Yukari's "Tadashii Ren'ai no Susume," Inoue Takehiko's "Slam Dunk," Urasawa Naoki's "MONSTER," Shigeno Shuuichi's "Initial D," Takahashi Rumiko's "Maison Ikkoku," and Fujisawa Tooru's "GTO."
In September 2005, several major manga publishers and an association of authors warned suspect Muramoto Toraji, 52, to cease distribution, but by December the website was still open. On January 5th, publishers and authors complained to the police, who investigated the website.
On January 25, police searched the suspects' homes and business premises and confiscated servers, PC's, and scanners, as well as 17,552 volumes of manga with bindings removed. Muramoto was arrested on February 14, along with Takei Naoto, 43, who built the servers, and Yamauchi Hiroko, 34, who scanned.
Muramoto stated in regards to the investigation, "To promote the manga cafe, we showed 1 or 2 pages of each title, but I thought if we were going to get caught infringing copyrights anyway, let's show all of them. I thought we could pay the copyright fees later."
The suspects had planned to switch the site to a paid membership system at 380 yen per month. From January 23-25, they had already collected about 2 million yen from 1,000 people towards several months of membership.
In an attempt to attract more visitors, a web store sent Manga Jouhou a press release announcing its plan to provide free manga to scanlators:
Bemmu.com provides free manga for scanlators
Tampere, Finland, February 18, 2006
In an effort to give something back to the manga community, Bemmu.com, a web store specializing in the import of Japanese language manga and Japanese music to Scandinavia and worldwide, will be considering applications to provide free copies of new manga to established scanlators.
Bemmu.com does not and will not assist in scanlation efforts in any way. The received books may be used in any way the receivers see fit. The applicant may name one or multiple series for which they wish to receive newly released books.
How to apply
Please send a free-form application by e-mail to manga@bemmu.com. The application should mention
- Name or alias of applicant
- Name of the scanlation group
- Position of the applicant in the scanlation group
- URL to group home page or to a list of previous releases
- ISBN of the first book in the series for which the applicant
wishes to receive new releases for
- Full address where the new releases are to be sentEnglish-language site for bemmu.com can be reached at bemmu.com/e
The store pulled the offer after the news received much attention on other mainstream anime and manga websites, and the store's suppliers threatened to stop supplying the store with goods.
By 2006, AK of Troy was for all intents and purposes retired from Toriyama's World, which was already struggling to stay active as a scanlation group.
After much inactivity, Sakura-Crisis officially ceased operation:
All good things must come to an end.
It's been a long time coming, but Sakura-Crisis is now officially dead. I don't have the energy to take care of it anymore, and both Sakura & Crisis have been basically gone for a long time. It's sad to see it go.
The bittorrent tracker was disabled the other day due to my host cracking down and me not wanting to get my account disabled, so your best bet for finding anything now would be to try IRC somewhere. Our IRC channels have also officially been unregistered.
So here's where we say goodbye, and a huge thanks to everyone who's helped out with this project in the past what, four, five years? Translators, scanners, editors, and you guys, the fans who kept us going.
[...]
Manga Jouhou launched ComiPress, a spin-off site to expand its news coverage:
Manganews.net Launches ComiPress:MJ is proud to announce the launch of ComiPress Beta, a new project that aims to provide the most comprehensive information on both U.S. and Japanese publishers, magazines, and serialization informations. ComiPress is composed of the following projects:
Magazine Guide
Release Calendar
Serialization Bulletin
Sales ChartsCurrently in its Beta stage, please do understand that some features of ComiPress may not be working. Feel free to contact Eclipse if you wish to help contribute, suggestions are welcome.
A big thanks to everyone who helped making ComiPress a reality, especially NeoSam for all his contributions to the magazine guide, Floating_Sakura and ocean for the serialization informations, and Blue-Ghost for taking the Magazine Guide out of Bloggers ;)
Manga Jouhou collaborated with 26 other scanlation groups on April Fools' day to announce the relaunch of Manga Jouhou as a legitimate manga publisher. The collaboration effort was a huge success, and Manga Jouhou even received request from Publishers Weekly for an interview on its "entry into the mainstream."
Akimine Kamijiyo's Samurai Deeper Kyo ended in Weekly Shounen Magazine issue 23 (5/10).
As most of its staff member became busy with real life, MangaProject gradually became inactive, until May 2006, when it released its last chapter of scanlation.
Kindan no Aku was started up in July of 2006 to scan Eden.
Tenshi-Tachi is formed by Ayumi, Hinata, and Suzu. According to the group: "Tenshi, in Japanese, means 'angel' and Tachi is a plural suffix. Hence, Tenshi-tachi = group of angels."
Since September 2006, Jinmen Juushin has been inactive, in March of 2007, the group's website disappeared.
OneManga was launched on December 19, of 2006 by Zabi:
One Manga is born!
Well, after lots of hard work, OM is finally ready to see the world.
So what is OM? OM = good scans + instant online viewing = best thing since sliced bread?! Our goal is to provide a place for you, the fans, to read the latest updates of your favorite mangas online, instantly, and without hassle.
Speed + Quality = Yummy!
Feel free to let us know what you would like to see here! And if you like what you see, remember to help spread the OM love... ^^
Manga Underground launches jCafe, a forum that focuses on providing manga raws.
NarutoBuzz was found to be stealing scans from another group and was subsequently banned on MangaUpdates:
It has come to our attention that this group is actually stealing scans from other scanlators. The original scanlators came and complained to us. After attaining proof of this, we first attempted to email the admin of this group, but since we have not gotten a response, we have decided to not allow releases from this group any further.
The group apologized three days later and was unbanned:
We received this from a staff member of NarutoBuzz:
"For a previous release NarutoBuzz featured the work of another scantlation team (slighty touched up by us), we sincerly apologize for any confusion that we may have caused, we did credit the team however we apologize for not obtaining proper permission, NarutoBuzz will avoid such behavior in the future and sincerly apologize to the Scantlation Group whose work was featured. We also thank MangaUpdates for reconsidering our Ban and promise to be as Ethical as possible in the future. We have been greatly humbled by this experience and thank everyone for allowing us to further serve the Naruto Community."
As a result of this formal apology to the original scanlators, Mangaupdates will again report NarutoBuzz releases.
After releasing Act 8 of CUTExGUY, Fifay.net announced that it would cease operation:
This chapter will be our last chapter. We are closing our site. All scanlated projects will remain online until a further notice. We also have an archive site at this URL. Please check out. There will be no more new releases except a couple of outstanding chapters, which are in the hands of our graphic editors.
After most of its projects became licensed, mochi*mochi decided to drop its last remaining project and close shop in March of 2007:
Well, congrats to Honami-sensei for more licenses. Kiss Scandal from Sono Toki Heart wa Nusumareta and Tenohira no Seiza were picked up by DMP books (June Manga)! Deserving ones too~ That leaves us with just Bukiyou na Silent left, and I'm going to have to say it'd just be best for us to drop it and close mochi*mochi. But our files will still be available for download as long as they remain unlicensed. Just thank you to all our friends, helpers, volunteers, joint partners, hosts, fservers and readers for sticking with us through the years. It was fun while it lasted. Ciao!
Three Japanese males in Tokyo, Morioka, and Osaka were arrested for unauthorized file-sharing of manga. The three males, aged 17, 26, and 29 respectively, scanned and uploaded manga from Shueisha's Weekly Shonen Jump and Shogakukan's Weekly Shonen Sunday on the Winny peer-to-peer file-sharing network.
One of the three Winny file-sharers (the 29-year-old one from Osaka) was found guilty on June 20th and will be facing one year of prison and three years of probation.
The arrest played a big part in slowing down distribution of manga raws on sites like MangaHelpers in the months that followed.
A user by the name of ivory_shoes posts on MangaUpdates's Recruitment forum asking for help with a "Nodame Cantabile Scanlation Project," and many people came together to form the group known as NCIS, or Nodame Cantabile Illegal Scanlations.
MangaProject officially closed shop.
Yanime officially closed:
"Well, if you even bother to read this page, then this is truly the end of Yanime as a scanslation group. When I first joined Yanime, I was a lowly editor that wanted to do something with Ichigo. Oddly I was referenced from Akatsuki, another group that worked with Ichigo for a while. Anyway, by the time I joined Yanime was still budding with youth. Like most people, I was in love with Ichigo and wanted to see how the love pentagon would go. After a while, after my Japanese got better, I would help with proofing and translations and QCing with Ichigo and other projects. I'd like to think my first colored pages help get Plum, Strikeflo and DDR into Yanime.
It felt good to be in a scanslating group doing something that was reaching out to more people than people buying the licensed manga. Having a friendly rivalry with Animewaves gave us some entertaining drama, and a handful of great projects kept us going for a while, like School Rumble, Gintama, D-Gray Man, and Mai-Hime.
Then the licensing plague finally hit us, and we lost all the series mentioned above. That and Ichigo went from love pentagon to a Nishino fan-service. With extra characters thrown in near the end, a haphazard climax and a bland conclusion, it left a bittersweet taste for most of us. However, it was the reason I came to Yanime, and we were able to finish it well before it was finally licensed. After that, Yanime had nothing. It is odd to see Yanime go through this long with only ONE completed series, and that Toriyama one-shot doens't count.
Everyone from the old gang was growing up or got tired of the scanslating scene. Others went to other groups and others stayed until the end. It is regretable that I didn't get to say good-bye to some of them. In the end, Yanime did its best at telling a story told in another language, for free no less. So to the people who read this whole spiel, thanks for sticking it out and I hope you enjoyed whatever we worked on.
PS. We never made it to the lesbian rape scene >.>"
~ AlphaUltima
And some word from LoserBait too >_>
"Goodbye, everyone~"
Katze announced that Sakura-Crisis has been revived under new leadership. However, the group became inactive by early 2008, and ceased operation in September 2009.
Aerandria was founded by Lacaille and Tii-chan after a merger between Winglica and Scrumptious Scanlations.
MangaShare was created in July, 2007 after a merger between the #blood-scanlations IRC channel and bludshock (a one-man group ran by bludshock, who later became known as blud).
In an attempt to improve the quality of Viz's Inuyasha, Freelance-Manga sent Viz a letter pointing out errors found in the Inuyasha graphic novel.
CGE-HQ, which was already collaborating with Heidi-Scans to scanlate Cannon God Exaxxion, merged with Heidi-Scans to form the new group HAO: Heidi's Amry of Outlaws.
By 2007 Band of the Hawks was for all intents and purposes defunct.
A monthly Japanese PC magazine called Windows 100% ran an article on the various methods available to acquire manga raws from forums, websites, and blogs. Many English sites were featured, including jCafe, The Lurker, MangaHelpers, Ritual Scan Forge and more.
Gizmodo reported that Fuji Xerox has developed a new photocopier that can scan an English document and then print a copy of it in Japanese or Korean, or the other way around, translating from Japanese to English.
Viz responded to Freelance-Manga's letter regarding improvements on the quality of Viz's Inuyasha graphic novel. According to the response, one of Viz's supervising editor would be examining the errors pointed out by Freelance-Manga and would correct the errors. This was one of the first instances where a major manga publisher in the U.S. directly responded to a scanlation group's letter.
According to Tiamat's Manga Reviews, tensions sparked between NCIS and Lurk over Lurk not abiding by NCIS's week "grace" period.
The raw manga download site Point:Blank was suspended by WordPress due to "a violation of [their] Terms of Service."
Also suspended due to the same reason was Manga Underground. However, Manga Underground was back up on another domain a day later on September 30th.
Dakku Manga was closed down after users abused the group's forum and its leader, Mahvish, can no longer manage the group.
Toshiba Corporation announced a new site called Manganovel that was claimed to be the "world's first interactive Japanese manga web service." The new service provides Japanese manga to its readers, who then help translate the manga into another language, either for free or for a small amount of fee as a "reader-translators."
The service didn't last long and ceased operation in 2009.
amtt's Sushi Bar Manga merged with HuhWhat's BLAH, also known as Blahsoft. According to Sushi Bar Manga: "Sushi Bar Manga has now merged with BLAH since well we think it'll speed up releases for both groups and be a little less stress, Also because Rei ( Owner of BLAH ) will be leaving for Boot Camp soon so the SBM team can take over whats going on."
NinjaBuzz announced that the site will cease Naruto anime and manga distribution:
Due to a numerous spam attack and cyber stalking over the last year by a user whom simply identifies themselves as Stephan Fry, Ninjabuzz will stop distributing the Naruto Anime and Manga series by January 1st 2008, this will give the users in our community time to adjust with the cease and removal of all Naruto releases from NinjaBuzz, it will also allow our affiliates time to find new consistent sources for distribution purposes. [...]
By 2007, both Binktopia and MangaShare were already well-established as groups that released weekly chapters on a timely basis. Both groups covered a similar range of series, and operated with similar expectations with regard to speed and quality. As a result, in late 2007, Binktopia and MangaShare merged into one entity; MangaShare became the site that listed releases while Binktopia was the scanlation side of the group. According to blud's announcement:
In possibly the quickest conceived and executed merger of all time, we're excited to announce that Binktopia and MangaShare will be joining forces to provide you with weekly manga scanlations. The new group's name will remain Binktopia, and all new releases will continue to be done from MangaShare.com.
SCX-Scanlations is formed around 2007–2008 by Aquafina, Skyking, and members of the IRC channel #detcetorp. The group blog is launched on February 3 of 2008.
Tenshi-Tachi announced that the group is shutting down due to its members not being able to continue scanlating manga because of "real life issues."
The Prince of Tennis by Takeshi Konomi ended serialization in Weekly Shounen Jump issue 14 after eight years of serialization.
AnimeNewsNetwork conducted an interview with former fansubber and scanlator Tofusensei from the group Live-Evil on the subject of the fansub community. The interview raised many debates among scanlators as many of the points discussed applied to the scanlation community as well.
Tokyopop Germany sent a list of 230 manga that needed to be removed from scanlators and download sites. In October, the list of manga was revealed by Kuriousity.
By late 2008, The Waffle House's website was no longer updated.
MangaShare/Binktopia and BleachExile had a huge back and forth dispute over BleachExile hosting Binktopia's Bleach scanlation without giving proper credits:
In earlier April, manga download site MangaShare, on behalf of the scanlation group Binktopia, posted an announcement criticizing BleachExile for removing the credit page from their work on BleachExile's online reader.
BleachExile is currently one of the largest Bleach fan sites that offer downloads of Bleach anime, manga and numerous other series and medias.
In mid-April, Binktopia, enforcing their re-distribution policy found in their credits page, sent a request to BleachExile to remove Binktopia scanlations from their website, stating MangaShare is the official distribution site for all Binktopia releases.
However, Binktopia received an "unsatisfying" response, leading them to putting up a public service announcement regarding BleachExile.
In response, BleachExile began removing the credits page for all releases from MangaShare, Binktopia, bludshock, and #blood, and stated that without an apology, they would continue to remove the credits page.
Although threads on the topic has been removed from BleachExile's forum, (due to claims of a PHP virus in the thread that runs on vBulletin) their view regarding this incident can still be viewed here: Page 1, Page 2, Page 3.
[...]
With no agreement reached by either side, in May MangaShare/Binktopia came to an unanimous decision to watermark random pages of their scanlation.
Manga Underground's silverado announced the launch of ROME:
I've been working on a new website project called ROME, a site where scanlators and fansubbers can manage their own projects, add new members and cooperate with each other. Right now I want to test the software in a live environment. To do that I need a webhost or server that has Ruby on Rails installed on it. Right now searching for motivated team members for ROME. If you are an experienced coder that can handle Ruby on Rails, a webdesigner or just happen to have a webhost supporting Ruby on Rails then please contact me!
To try out ROME, simply log on with the demo account (login: guest | pw: guest | project: rome).
Also, a month later on June 28th, Manga Underground launched version 3.1 of its website.
Rumiko Takahashi's long-running manga Inuyasha ended its 12-year run in Shogakuan's Shonen Sunday No.29 (6/18).
By 2008 Omanga was for all intents and purposes defunct.
Binktopia and SleepyFans had a dispute over Binktopia's raw provider Manyou (a Chinese scanlation group). According to Binktopia:
Added: July 18th, 2008 @ 01:35:59 AM CDT - Released by: Binktopia
This took long because I'm pissed off. Do you know why I'm pissed off? Let me tell you.
You guys enjoy Binktopia releases right? How would you feel if someone was intently trying to sabotage our ability to release in order for them to make profit? No I'm not talking about Bleach Exile, and no I'm not talking about NarutoFan. The one I'm talking about is SleepyFans.
It's bad enough that there's "someone" out there apparently paying a group of people to release anonymously under the mask of being a legitimate group, but when you start affecting the fans by forcing your stale translations and sub-par cleans on them... it's another thing.
Our raw provider (Manyou) was threatened today. The SleepyFans raw was given to a rival Chinese Group and they received the ultimatum to end their relationship with Binktopia if they wanted that to stop. I speak for the entire MangaShare, Binktopia and Manyou staff when I say - FUCK OFF.
We're not going anywhere in the foreseeable future, whether we have to release Jump manga today, tomorrow, or several days from now. No amount of tampering will change that, if anything, it will only motivate us more to embarass your group like we have the last 2 weeks.
This conflict became one of the many reasons that ultimately lead to MangaShare/Binktopia dropping Naruto (the series was picked up again in early 2009).
The scanlation group FoOlRulez was formed in August of 2008.
The IRC channel for Viscans was originally formed on August 12th, 2008, and officially formed as a group on 26th of August. However, the group set its anniversary on August 19th. According to the group's About page:
We started off as a prank scanlation channel called Visually-Impaired scans founded by Satoshi. A sacred ground full of darkness….a place where many applicants, intent upon joining scanlation groups got 'pwned hard'...so to speak. However a few of us got together and decided to turn it real whilst changing the name in the process to Village Idiot.
By 2008 Toriyama's World's website was no longer updated.
Red Hawk Scanlations was formed by takadanama and CupofDice after Noizy Scanlations disbanded. According to the group's 2009 Anniversary announcement:
This group was formed August 30th 2008 after the collapse of Noizy Scans. Most of the same staff from Noizy came over and formed Red Hawk Scanlations under the guidance and care of takadanama and CupofDice (who is sadly no longer active in the group). Today marks the one year mark for our group and as such, we will have lots of goodies to share with you, our loyal fans and readers, so we hope you thoroughly enjoy it. Our staff have tried very hard to bring you quality releases over the year, and I hope that you as readers, will feel inclined to voice your opinions and thanks to our wonderful staff by posting here.
Kouta Hirano's Hellsing ended its 11 years of serialization in the November issue (9/30) of Shonen Gahosha's Young King Ours.
After being on hiatus for over six months, Boku-Tachi 's Hoowee announced that the group was officially shutting down:
Well, this shouldn't be a surprise to anyone as we haven't updated in over six months now. Boku-tachi is officially shutting down. In the coming weeks, even this page will disappear.
All of our old releases that HAVE NOT been licensed will be available from this website.
11 September 2008
I'm going to join the wonderful group Storm In Heaven, who will also be taking over the project Dawn Chilly Hands.
And as a parting gift, I give you Boku-tachi's last ever release, Chapter 10 of Eikou no Te [completing the series].
Thank you to everyone who supported this group for the past 4-5 years. It's been an enjoyable ride.
~Hoowee
Yaoi scanlation group Forever More disbanded, with many of its projects taken over by Dangerous Pleasure. Insufficient time was cited as the reason behind the disbanding:
As you can tell from the layout, I've decided to disband Forever More. Sadly, I don't have enough time to keep it up anymore. It was a very difficult decision I had to make, because I really enjoy working on all those smutty pages filled with boys' love. Luckily I don't have to entirely give up on that because I'm working for a publisher, so you might see my name occasionally in boys' love mangas again.
I've asked the ladies at Dangerous Pleasure if they were willing to take over our projects and they we're so kind enough to say yes. They are one of my favorite groups and I'm sure they will do a fantastic job, so please support them~!
For those who are curious about what will happen with the website...I've decided to keep the scanlation site the way it is right now, the staff tutorial will be moved to DP's webhost, and I'll continue to scan lots of images for the gallery, so that's the only site that continues to be active.
I want to thank my staff for all their efforts and hard work throughout these years; our fans and visitors who gave us their support; and the wonderful ladies at DP for taking over our projects. *bows-deeply* Thank you. "
BL scanlation group DokiDoki closed its doors after making its last releases: "I've no interest in pretending to run this anymore and all the old people have left."
Yaoi scanlator Hochuuami announced that they were officially closing their doors months after the group's old domain expired. Some of the group's old projects were picked up by Urusai!.
AnimeNewsNetwork reported that an Iowa man named Christopher Handley was being charged for possessing allegedly obscene manga. Christopher Handley pleaded guilty to the charges in May of 2009.
TEA-Scans was merged into Dynasty Scans. According to TEA-Scans's GolSho:
Hello folks, GolSho (the founder and leading horse of TEA-Scans) talking.
Lately I became too busy with work and studies, which put almost all our projects in a state of silent death, cause I didn't have time to supervise anything... And I thought that the best option would be to enter the family of Dynasty Scans. We were like sister groups from the very beginning after all. So most of our projects will now be worked on by Dynasty Scans. Even new ones like Gift - Under the Rainbow that was released today~
So, as of now, officially, TEA-Scans has died.
By 2008 the MangaScreener website was no longer updated.
The Japanese media company Broccoli announced its decision to shut down Broccoli International USA, which was completely liquidated by February of 2009.
After the end of 2008, Tsubasa disappeared from the scanlation scene, and Aku Tenshi has been on hiatus ever since.
DFCG was formed by Skyking, but Skyking soon left the group as dink and be0wulf took over.
By early 2009, most of Condensation's staff became too busy with life, and the group's website was no longer updated. Since then, the group was put on hiatus indefinitely by Vanderguard.
Meep-Scans closed its doors after receiving a Cease and Desist letter from Daiwon, the Korean publisher of most of the group's projects.
With most of its staff gone or missing, ShoujoMagic faced an uncertain future and, with only two active staff members, came close to shutting down. The group survived the crisis when it announced a month later that it has received many new staff applications and would cut down on the number of its projects.
Griffisu announced on Hawks's forum on April 1, 2009 that he planned to bring back Band of the Hawks.
KMTS was moved from K-manga.net to Amaru007.net after the original site was infected by a Trojan:
okay as you know, our site has been up and down over the last month or two, and its been trying to infect ppl with a trojan.
we've decided we're gonna blame this on fly and his site encoding. its been narrowed down to a site error and not the server. so for the time being , this site will be the kmts homepage, untill we get things sorted.
Due to internal conflicts, members from NCIS split off to form their own scanlation group Which Scanlations. NCIS became inactive for a short while before being put back into operation. According to Which Scanlations's blog post on July 24th, 2009:
Well, before I get to the releases today, there's obviously some things that need to be covered. First off... welcome to the new site! We're still not 100% up and running (note the lack of a projects page), but hopefully everything will be completely ready to go before our next release.
Perhaps more importantly, though, is that we've picked up several new projects that were being handled previously by NCIS before. The (simplified) reason for this is that NCIS did indeed split shortly after I became admin of that group, and the decision was made that those who split off from the group would join the staff at Which. As such, the scope and type of Which's projects has definitely grown, so... We're in need of staffers of all shapes, sizes, and positions. Check the link the sidebar for more info.
After years of inactivity, Omanga's website was shut down.
By summer of 2009, many of KMTS's staff members, including its founder and administrators, were inactive. As a result, Amaru decided to shut down KMTS on July 19th.
After disbanding KMTS, Amaru and many former KMTS staff members went on to form a new scanlation group called A-Team.
In July of 2009, Mangadownload, a manga download site created in 2004, was shut down by -T- after the site ran out of funding:
Mangadownload was a great project, I met a lot of people and made many friends, but as all good things, it has to end. MD is out of funding and is being shut down. I'm sure there are plenty of people out there willing to donate more money to keep this site online, but I don't have the time to keep working on it to the extent that is needed. I would feel bad about spending your money on server costs when I don't put enough effort into the site.
MangaHelpers removed all Kodansha manga scanlation from its archive after receiving a Cease & Desist letter from Kodansha.
Scanlation group FoOlRulez leaked the unfinished draft of MangaHelpers's plan to reach out and form a partnership with Viz. The news caused quite an uproar in the scanlation community as many fans felt betrayed by MangaHelpers's move.
