Hello! I'm not sure who is reading this I'm going to ask you to read all of this before you start flaming me on how I'm unfaithful to the mangakas XD

I want to create a scanlation group for licensed mangas.

But as a condition to mangakas in the world, only licensed manga that is un-available, worldwide I mean, under 20 USD or is out-of-print.

I've seen some seriously great manga that I love a lot being taken down because it is licensed, but as soon as I try to buy it (cause it's a pretty old manga) it's definitely over at least 22 USD. Being that I'm still a student, it's plenty expensive for just a manga book. It's not like I don't think it's worth it, it's just that it's seriously just too expensive, not everyone can afford it.

But not only that, just because it's licensed, it's been taken down, but not only that, no ones bothering to pick it up once it was out of print, Princess Princess Plus, I believe, is an example for a out-of-print and overly priced manga. I love the series a lot, but once I realized it was licensed, I headed for the internet to track down a reasonable price, borrow my friend's credit card, buy it, then repay her.

But no matter how hard I tried, I couldn't track down a good price that was under 20 USD because it was so rare to even find a copy. I was really devastated. So because of this and many other people in the world, I'm going to start a scanlation group just for this purpose, picking up overly priced and out of print mangas that have been dropped.

I really only wanted BL mangas, but I thought it was only fair that I did any genre, so I will.

I am a typesetting, cleaner (have absolutely no clue what a quality check does, but I'll still ask for one) and pretty much anything else besides a translator, so that's one of the main people I'm going to ask for (in case anyone got confused, I do need a tranlator )

But any typesetters or dedicated people who can scan raws in good quality, I'm asking for you to join as well.

I'm being a bit stupid asking for this, because I have neither the connections, nor the friends. Altogether, this is just pure will asking. If anyone will ever read this, I'm just asking for a miracle to help others in reading what they love, nothing else. So please, help me with your best if you can, because I'm just going to do the same.

(one last thing, on the conditions that if the company picks up the manga again (starts reprinting it) then all releases from me will cease and I'll redirect everyone to the new licensing manga site or the places where they are selling it, sounds good?)

Thanks everyone
Anyone who wants to join, please comment down here and PM me as well

Last edited by dgjttddw at 1:06 am, Nov 7 2012

I am sorry to say this but this would not really be a good idea in my view. Not because it is "disrespecting" the mangaka but because the manga was available in your country.

My suggestions would be to either go to the library and see if they have it or just try to get someone to scan the mangas for you.

________________
Leader of Bento Scans

Beyond this being a good or a bad idea, I have some things I would like to say.
I live in Chile, that's in South America. Here you can't find ANY manga at less than 20 USD, unless you get veeery lucky and get it in some sort of special sale. Also, you can't find manga at normal libraries. You have to buy them at special shops which are not very common. Sure, you can find some random (and usually very bad) manga at the most famous libraries, and that's if you're lucky. And still it will be very expensive.
You could ask me why I don't buy manga from Amazon. Yeah, I could do that. Manga is much more cheaper that way. But the shipping rates rise the price quite a bit when you request international shipping (it's sometimes even more expensive that the product itself), and it's muuuch more expensive if you want your order to arrive fast. If you want cheaper shipping rates, you must be willing to wait for around a month (even more, I ordered a book and had to wait for around two months and a half) for your order to arrive.

So yeah, for me licensed manga is really hard to get. When a manga I like gets licensed, a part of me feels glad for the author, but it's also really bad news for me since it means I won't be able to read it anymore. So I have to resort to read the scans, but the quality is never quite the same, since scanlating and translating groups put much more effort than someone who is scanlating an already translated manga just to share it.

Personally, I would be very happy if there was a group that publishes licensed manga. But, at the same time, I understand that it's not something so simple, since the manga has been released officially. Oh well, I just wanted to add my own circumstances (I'm sure there are more people like me out there) to the arguments that dgjttddw exposed. And I've been wanting to get this out of my chest, since I was planning to buy at least one volume of Fullmetal Alchemist today (the volumes JUST arrived here at my country) and I couldn't afford not even one of them.

You'll probably run into copyright issues is all I can say.

I personally don't care or rather would be very happy if someone does scan licensed mangas, but the most I can do is wish you good luck. Have to say, I'm pretty lucky to be born into a country in which manga costs an average of 3 bucks... if rented 2 cents for a week.

Anyways~ for licensed mangas, I don't know if they have them in USA and other countries, you could try to find stores that rent mangas. Or, borrow it from library and friends. I mean, there's a huge problem to what you're saying. Those expensive mangas which you yourself cannot afford, someone else will need to buy them. Buy them, rip them apart and scan them for your reading (and others). Well, sorry but I can't.

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Seeing as how you're not looking for translators, am I correct in assuming that you plan to purchase these manga and scan and release them as is? If that's indeed the case, MU won't list your releases.
Just sayin'.

Perhaps if the the companies see this working then they may either reprint them or re-obtaiin the license.

I wasnt collecting many manga back when adv manga and cmx and cpm were printing them and they've all gone defunct and there books are all impossible to find now. I was also late to tokyopop and missed some early series they had and seeing deadman wonderland and code:breaker and other manga just sitting on my shelf incomplete is horrible. I mainly stuck with shonen jump cause I had limited money and loved the shonen jump big 3 and dbz.

So this would be a good idea to show the companies we still care about these manga and that not everyone could by everything that was available 10 years ago due to being a school kid on a weekly allowance. so there is still a potential audiance.

plus i'm annoyed at the serious lack of titles the current companies have been picking up, all the at kodansh'a disposal right now and they only license 4 manga (at NYCC) and none of them are in weekly shonen magazine which would probbaly be their best chocie of magazine in regards to viz and shonen jump. viz's shonen sunday line-up is terribly short and should rival the shonen jump line but it has a serious lack of titals in comparison and in recent years even the shonen jump line has drastically fallen. if not for shonen jump alpha and the popularity of death note (ral grad was porbably licensed for takeshi obata's name value alone, the same way gun blaze west and zombie powder were.) then viz would only have licensed toriko, bakuman, psyren and nura from the last 7 years worth of jump manga. thats just very poor imo.

we need to let companies know there's a ton of manga out there we still want!!

I believe you are right, I do respect what you think and what the mangakas think as well, but occasionally I'm really tight on money, I do wish to support the mangakas (I have some of the Sekaiichi Hatsukoi and other miscellaneous manga volumes, they are fairly cheap on amazon) but sometimes, I really just can't do anything about it.

How about if I said, manga that were licensed, but was never finished (like they lost their license for it?) and also the out of print ones?
Also, like I said at the bottom, I don't have connections, nor much friend's who share the same view as me with manga, so I wouldn't be able to get a scan.
But thank you for your reply, I'll definitely take it to notice if I really to attempt to create a scanlation group for licensed manga.
Thank you again

@Furan
You have a brilliant point, I agree too, that's why, I'm only going to focus on licensed manga that has been out of print or is really just charged overly expensive everywhere, like, I'm not going to do stuff like Bleach (even though everyone did do that XD) because you can get it for 12 USD or less for each.
But yes, I agree that I feel much happiness when they are licensed, it gives the mangakas a new chance! So that's why I'm only really doing the ones where they are seriously just rare or non existent in printing values.
Thank you for your point of view, it was very important to know what people thought

@renseih
That's a good point, but I really already thought about that, that's why I'm not focusing on the still printing manga and only really the ones that don't print anymore.
The society where I live and study in don't believe in such small things are mangas and animes, but it's very important to me, that's why I want to bring back some dead manga (out of print) back to life
I can't rent things, manga renting spots don't exist here XD
Oh, BTW, thanks for your comment, I'm glad to hear different comments from different point of views

@Maris
Oh no, sorry, you must have mistaken my words.
I'm mainly focusing on finding translator, because if I get the chance I will buy raws or ask for a scanner online for permission.
I hope MU will release my releases if I do that
Thanks for your comment, I'm happy to hear other's point of view.

@ZidaneFF
Yup That's true, if the manga licensing companies do pick them up again after I give it a go, I'll stop the releases immediately and redirect people to the new licensed plate
I'm glad to know that someone also shares my thinking as well, that's partially why I'm giving a go for this group

Last edited by lambchopsil at 11:49 pm, Nov 7 2012

I guess that means they aren't licensed anymore (and didn't finish or re-obtain the license). In turn that means you can scanlate the unlicensed chapters and/or you can scanlate anything if it isn't in your language.