New Rival to Scanlation?: A new site called Manganovel has been launched by Toshiba Corporation. The new service provides Japanese manga to its readers, who can then translate the manga into another language, either for free or for a small amount of fee as "reader-translators". Will this new service affect the world of scanlation?

Detective Conan to End? Goushou Aoyama hinted during an interview with Sankei Shimbun that Detective Conan (also known as Case Closed) may be ending soon.

Light Novels to be Adapted into Anime: Three of MediaWorks' light novel series will be animated. They are: "Alison" and its follow-up "Lilia and Trais" by Keiichi Sigsawa (author) and Kohaku Kuroboshi (illustrator), and "Wagaya no Oinari-sama" by Jin Shibamura (author) and Eizou Houden (illustrator).

Jump SQ Releases New Promotional Video: Jump SQ has updated its official website another promotional movie called "Burning!!!", downloadable versions can be found here.

11th Japan Media Arts Festival Nominees: The nominees for the 11th Japan Media Arts Festival has been announced, nominees for the manga category:

- "Soredemo Machi wa Mawatteiru" by Masakazu Ishiguro
- "Kayo-chan no Nimotsu" by Sumako Kari
- "Aria" by Kozue Amano
- "Yasashii C++ Part 2" by Takahiro Yonemura
- "Chimuchimu Parade" by Shiho Suzuki

Serialization Updates:

Ikki December issue (10/25)
Starting:
- "Even a Monkey Can Draw Manga 2.0" by Kentaro Takekuma and Aihara Kooji

Morning No.45 (10/11)
Starting:
- "Angel Bank -Dragon Sakura Gaiden-" by Norifusa Mita

Nakayoshi December issue (11/2)
Starting:
- "Moonlight Himejion" by Moyoco Anno

Ribon December issue (11/2)
Starting:
- "Hikari no Su he" by Fumi Eban

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Inside Scanlation - TYPE-MOON

I don't see how it would affect scanlators unless some moron goes, steals and uses translations that were posted there. Or uses raws from there (which from the sound of it isn't even possible).

My suggestion: don't use it. It doesn't seem too worthwhile anyway.

It really depends I can see where this might be helpful to series that are not as popular and don't get scaned by groups. So yea this has it's uses but the price has to be low to be usefull.

Only had a quick glance but it looks like a proprietary software is needed to view the manga and edit it.... Pain in the arse format, and software, or jpeg/gif/png, and 1000 alternative image viewers to choose from?...


tough choice.

I can't help but make a parallel between this and the attempts by the record companies to sell music online back in the heyday of Napster and Share via overpriced and crippled services. It's like this company realized that "Hey, there are a lot of English-speaking manga fans" and "Wow, skeeves like Narutofan can make money distributing scanlated manga". This scheme might have been successful prior to the advent of easy and distribution (namely bittorrent), or if it offered already-established manga that was popular with a less tech-savvy crowd (Naruto, Bleach), but since it meets neither criteria, it's already dead in the water in my eyes.

Err, Scour, not Share.

Manganovel won't work.
-You need to download a software that only works on windows.
-there's scanlation too.
-They don't have any extremely popular titles
-you have to pay for it
-when translating, you can only gather a max of 5000 points. Seems like a pain to me, because that would mean you'd have to keep on translating if you want more more manga. No translator can keep up with that.

Also, the typesetting is done by a computer and it totally sucks. (check the sample viewer)

The only news that resonates with me is the beginning of Even a Monkey Can Draw Manga 2.0. Yay. Manganovel: in my experience, if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.

i don't see why anyone would like to use this "service" (5 dollars per manga, proprietary viewer, drm, you can't download, typesetting, etc, etc) when there're scanlations but doesn't this mean that EVERY manga that a user uploads a translation to on their site should be considered LICENSED?

people who exclusively download unlicensed manga do so with the excuse that there's no english publication they can buy - they better keep a watchful eye on that site since now they can.

im not really in a position to say anything, but i looked at it and the, i don't know, typesetting? was terrible. Just not on par with most scans i would read. Good idea though, my question is how much/ what kinds of manga will they stock up on. because that could be a good way to read rare/hard to find manga.

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Can't read >_<

C++? Hackers invading manga world?

Toshiba? now thats an odd company to be doing this. I was thinking ADV or something would try something like this.
I think they had good intentions. Also for a couple of bucks a book, thats not bad, cheaper than a manga. I would pay for it. But they need to have a good selection. The quality looks better than scanlation picture wise (Well they probable have the original copy, not a printed then scanned copy like scanlators). However I do agree the typeset seems odd, and not that great. Also i like normal picture files because then i can edit it in photoshop and do some random stuff with it. Well they are new and starting. I'll give them a year and check back to see if they have a better selection and fixed the other problems.
It seems to me that this might be for Toshiba to show off it's DRM software. Kinda of a "Hey this site uses our DRM, it works." kinda advertisement. But I'll give them the benefit of the doubt and hope it's not true.

Looks like a gimmick to me, even though i don't understand exactly what it does.

Hmmm... aside from the other points mentioned above, there have to be measures for checking the quality of the translations.

For now, I can't say much about Manganovel. I've read the previous comments, and decided to see how the translations are. but what in the world?! you have to register just to see the SAMPLES? o__O and FIVE DOLLARS A BOOK?! that's such a rip off for ONLINE READING! x___X

I just have this feeling that I'll basically never do anything for them D: I'd rather go to a good bookstore and just buy the actual book :/ I'd really doubt there's much future for this site, but as one says, let's wait and see how it develops :3

(am I mistaken, or is Toshiba a "electronics" company? o_O)