See You Space Cowboy...

A sad day indeed

That is going to complicate a lot of things...

Thanks for the heads-up

A shame, not entirely unexpected, but still a shame.

Oh well, it was good while it lasted, we'll all just have to "endeavor to persevere!"

man that's kinda depressing. one of, if not, the best manga site on the net imo. I'm gonna do some binging there for old time's sake.

Hopefully someone will take up the reigns. I don't see why the owner doesn't pass it on instead of just closing it down because they don't "feel like running it anymore".

You can't leave lambchopsil, it'd be a sad day if you did.

Sad day. But at the same time, I'm confused on the reasoning about having to always be on call 24/7 (even while sleeping) and never being able to take a vacation. Wasn't Batoto run by a group of people? If so, the problems Grumpy listed seems like they could've been dealt with by delegating some responsibilities and setting primary and backup people for various roles. That's generally how organizations are run.

Wow, thanks for the heads up. I completely missed the announcement.

I've been on Batoto practically since day one, and to see it go like this is definitely a sad day. I expect this'll be some kind of milestone for the manga scanlation community, but I'm sure it won't be all bad. I wish Grumpy luck with all his future endeavors.

(Also, thanks to all the mods at MU for sticking with it all these years. We might not always say it, but know that we really appreciate all your hard work!)

wow, I've been reccing Batoto to people for years specifically because they played well with scanlators and had such a nice layout. I hope none of my favorite re-reads are lost with this change

I am really scared about individual runned series.They only uploaded to there, so what will happen to lots of series such as them a big question mark.

I don´t really care and only started using that site for "exclusive" content once they went members only. I don´t event think that anyone should be surprised by this and no one will care in a few months, as that´s how these things go.

The Bato only groups should get a public grace period before they become delisted on MU, or whatever, so they can set up another official "presence".

I still remember the day when Batoto was advertised here mmm...
The only place where you can actually read scanlation in true form and not heavily monetized mmm...
Such a sad day, goodbye Grumpy and Batoto, we'll miss you mmm...

I'm glad you're still here lamb mmm...

And this is one of the reasons I don't use online readers and only read series I can download. Don't have to worry about losing a series if I want to go back and re-read it.

That said, hopefully these groups that only release on Batoto will find another acceptable way to release their series. It could be as simple as setting up a Facebook page with an account with MEGA to allow downloads, or whatever.

Honestly, I feel like he put himself through too much, unnecessary stress, I don't see why he had to be available 24/7, of course he would get burned out at some point; for example, the site gets a DDoS attack? Put it offline, people can wait a few hours/days; when it happened on MF during a weekend or holidays, the owners didn't really care and nobody died while waiting for them to fix things *shrugs*
Also, why make a site that is going to die as soon as the owner decides it's time to move on? I don't get it and keep in mind that I don't really care what happens to batoto or any other aggregator site since I prefer to follow the groups and download their releases when available.
Guess the next best option for the groups is to use google drive ._.

Too bad because I really liked being able to "read" dropped series in other languages. Easier in Spanish or Italian than in Japanese.

I just don't want the manga community to dieeee!!

I read up on this matter after hearing about it yesterday. The main problem it seems that it is likely to create for manga readers is that alternate sites that have UPLOAD reception capability, as opposed to just bots that downloaded material from Botato, are rare. That means that scanlators who WANT to share to aggregators will have trouble doing so.

That was my general impression from reading on Reddit, etc. Does anyone know if this is true?

Personally, I use Kiss manga.

~ A Staff Mod from Batoto here~

Grumpy isnt goin to hand his torch over to anyone cause he knows the headache behind
the scenes. The IP Board doesnt have the capability to handle what it requires...
But that not the reason why.... Batoto is tainted. Grumpy rather whoever to start over anew
instead of burdenin someone else with those ^ issues. There is legal matters & Plus it does
require lots of money to maintain cause it is a hosting images without limits among other
issues.. High standard quality with no compressions and high traffic with 35% bots ...
someone with deep pockets can maybe maintain it.

He doesnt want to go into detail of his reasoning and just state a more general approach of
hoping you guys would understand. Even if it isnt this year, its only a matter of time before
grumpy announce such. It's sad but our grumpy cat needs his rest.

Grumpy didnt intend his site to be so popular and for such use at first.It was suppose
to be a place where his scanlation fans can go and be part involve in. It just suddenly grown
from that point where he decides to expand it so everyone can contribute and make more
manga known.

Even I who works as a mod having headache dealing with some members and just how many
does uploads , doing moderating on site is hard enough... dealing with the backlashes behind
the scene I cant imagine what grumpy is going through than what he generally announced.>.<'
handle uploads.

What the hell..
Bot?

This worm is infecting the forum.
Anyway, i think the online manga community is dying slowly...
Is that bcause of less ppl reading manga or bcause of more manga being translated in each country than before so fewer ppl sought the online trans?

This is sad news, what a terrible way to start the year. I've been using faithfully Batoto since it came around as it was respecting the wishes of the scanlators and taking care to remove licensed manga chapters. The scanlations in other languages are going to be sorely missed as well, they are not usually so accessible as the manga community seems to be fragmented by country+forums. No way to stumble by chance on a manga in French/Russian/etc. while searching for info or translations in English.

Maybe some user activity should have been restricted to allow for a more manageable space? Although I loved the vibrant community, if it became too much to handle I am sure most users would accept some policing here and there instead of simply seeing everything gone. Knowing that we won't be able to see it anymore is just... too much somehow.

Still, thank you mods and thank you Grumpy for bringing us together on your platform until now. I hope your legacy won't be lost.

Please don't leave lambchopsil. I depend on this database for keeping track of my manga and discovering new ones. The database on this site is so extensive that it's irreplaceable. Thank you for the hard work you do to maintain this!

Also, Batoto will be dearly missed. I've continued to use them since the beginning due to how they respected the wishes of scanlation groups. Thanks for posting about this.

And nothing of value was lost. Needing an account just to read stuff is disgusting as it gives them the ability to track you.

Ditto on the "Please don't leave!" I'm an old guy who loves manga. I discovered all these great stories in 2010, shortly after I retired, while I was looking for free stories online. And I was absolutely LOST in the huge mass of manga! Eventually I figured out that most manga were not aimed at my age group (to say the least), but I also finally understood that the category Seinen often fit my tastes.

Baka has been my friend ever since. I'd still be lost in the world of manga without it.

You guys do a wonderful job.

I don't want to see the day when I open MU and see the dreaded announcement that MU will close its door. I understand the hardwork the admins and mods to maintain this site, you must be sacrificing a lot of time to enjoy your life. I won't persuade and beg you to stay on this site, Lamb. You have been doing so much for us, so when the time you'll say you are gonna quit, I will respect that decision. Just ensure a new leaf is ready to continue to take care of this beloved site.
On regard of Batoto, though I don't go there anymore, it's still a very sad news and I want to cry for the lost of one of great community. But Grumpy has decided. Wish him the best for all his future endeavors and the rest of us need to move on.

I'm really sad about batoto and know some people who really depend on that site for their manga...although i directly follow the groups now since batoto often didn't update fast enough for my liking lol

omg PLEASE never close this site down! my manga habits literally depend on it ;_; if you guys ever need money to cover costs I will gladly fork some over.

Could manga updates send out an email to all the groups that listed batoto as their web site. Ask them to update it?

It would be a shame to lose all the groups.

Some may not realise there is a script that helps users, that makes listing a web site convenient.

Maybe give them an option to use something very simple for the web link if they already have a facebook/twitter link, like ghostbin
At least then smaller single person groups can link to their folders without having to set up a site.

So I was reading, and apparently a discord chat is being made (via Comics) kinda as a backdrop of batoto. Here

I don't know if people who aren't considered groups would join or not?

With batoto closing I feel that many groups may go back to the old school irc servers. Sigh... Reminds me of the old days with Onemanga shutting down.

This is just sad.. so many websites closed and opened during the years and now one of the good ones who actually has good quality manga is closing down.

On another note, I've beem into manga since the early 2000s and the forming (and discovery) of baka updates has been a huge part in my manga+anime info. I always use baka for info on manga, mangaka, licensed volumes and what to buy, you seriously have no idea how helpful your website is (it has also helped me win a couple of manga related arguments xD).

The thought that you might be closing is very heart breaking, and we are sorry if we don't show you how much we appreciate your efforts and hard work on this website (and the iOS app). Really, its an excellent website and thank you very much for your hard work. Everything you provide on the website: tags, categories, mangaka info, manga names, mangas associated, reviews, ratings, how many volumes, licensing status and even your weekly polls are some of the things I always look for when I enter the website.

What I'm trying to say is... please don't close TT~~~TT and what can we do to help?

The suggestion that the scanlation scene is slowly eroding is utter nonsense and i can easily disprove it with http://alexa.com/siteinfo.
Viewers sites live of clicks and kissmanga has a global rank of 2.023. Mangafox is at 2.978. Mangapark is at 3.143. While bato is at 4.351. Still a top 10.000 site, so they survived the member only policy just fine, but they weren´t the leader last year. Also look just how much manga and anime reddit and sub-reddits get traffic and those directly link to scans. Who knows what the peak year for the manga piracy scene is but it can´t be far in the past. MU is at place 12.856 btw. and was around 10.000 this summer.

It´s the legal side of the market, aka. the actual market, that we need to worry about. Bato lastly had less manga that the typical viewer due to their (random) curation decisions. Onemanga or mangatraders shut down and nothing came of that. Traders was even past it´s prime. Mangahelpers going though their "reform" couldn´t even shake the pirates so nothing will come of this too.

If you want to judge whether the scene is eroding or not, I think a more relevant measurement is the number of actual releases. The number of anonymous readers is of absolutely no relevance to scanlation.

(reply to residentgrigo, clicked the wrong reply button)

I feel affected, like seriously.
I usually went to Batoto to get direct sources, not reading via this reader but getting links to go to the scanlators' pages. Before this, I felt disheartened when MU can't upload their pages anymore & with this decision, it will be tremendous lost. I don't know any other solution if I want to get to the hard-to-get scanlators' pages :c
(yup, simple Google-ing won't do much)

Can no longer access the site already... o7

Depending on the timezone they're 1-2 days too soon.

Cloudflare still cached this bit of text, but not that it's useful or anything (maybe give it some time?):

I was planning to manually trawl through my follows and pull the websites for each group so I freaked out when batoto went down today.

this spreadsheet just made my life so much easier...ty!

https://github.com/loadletter/mangaupdates-urlfix
It helps a lot too, if you didn't already know.

Unfortunately many single person translators still have their site listed as batoto.

@cmertb The amount of releases that get submitted to MU daily hardly decreases and anon scan groups are as legit a part of the scene as ones that have a dedicated site. The delivered product is the same after all. A shit ton of the porn scans too fall though MUs cracks too yet, yet e-hentai is still a top 5000 site according to Alexa. The web toon scene is also badly covered by this site all in all. Etc.

For anyone interested, https://discord.gg/y8YmWPz

mangadex is the first up and running to try and replace batoto.

No idea if any of the the people who mirrored batoto will upload there or if they have their own site in development.

Is only me who had a mini panic attack when lambchopsil casually said he wanted to quit Baka-updates several times?? Other then Batoto and here I have no other sites I use to keep me informed on manga and the manga scanlation community. It's like I've had one leg cut off and now the other is wobbling. *shrugs* I guess I'll just pretend it's just a flesh wound a la Monty Python

Man there isn't a single thing I used back from high school left besides mangaupdates and myanimelist and now the college stuff I know is closing.

Weird. It's the 19th already and Batoto is still up and running. And groups keep updating series.

He's actually updated his initial post (well, a couple/few times now for that matter, but the update he made on the 18th is the one I'm referring to), the new date is for sure shut down by the 25th with the forums being migrated to the new address by the same date.

Huh. Well, I would be lying if I said them closing bothered me in regards to the site itself. I stopped using them years ago now, and never really looked back. Really didn't like how they decided to run things.

Still, losing a big site isn't amazing for the community itself. Feels bad.

It appears the main batoto site is now gone/disabled/whatever......... for those who are interested, the forums have been migrated to the new site...

https://vatoto.com/forums/

and yes, everything appears to be there just as it was before........you know, as long as you can remember your password

(hey, I got mine after only three tries, that's good for me )

A new site has been born from the ashes of Batoto, we'll se if it will last. Not gonna name it here, since I'm not sure it's allowed by the rules and I can't bother checking.