I never have understood the banning of unscanlated oneshots from the manga list. The list here is what many scanlators use for deciding what they're going to try and find to pick up. Without the unscanlated oneshots on the list, no one will know about them and no one will translate them.

There are many talented creators who work mostly in oneshots and have few actual series. Those authors are the ones that are listed with two or three works despite the fact that they've actually done hundreds.

There are untranslated oneshots that have revolutionized manga. There's The Mysterious Clover, which many scholars consider the first true manga. There's Hagio Moto's November Gymnasium, which was the first open shounen-ai (Takemiya's In the Sunroom had the first male-male kiss, but it focused more on the relationship between a boy and a female prostitute). People that only use this site for their manga information won't know anything about these gems.

This site isn't just for finding things to read in English, or we wouldn't list any untranslated works. As it is, untranslated works take up more space than their anglicized brothers do. I can't see why oneshots get left out.


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This is all very well in theory, but in practice there are many problems. First, the database is already vast, and it already "bites" more than it can "chew". As you say, there are many, many untranslated manga in it, but for most of them, there is very little information available. Arguably, adding series where most of the fields say N/A does more harm than good.

Now, you'd probably add those one-shots judiciously, and include enough data about them. Most people, tough, are not so restrained. We might end up with a deluge of new entries with virtually no useful information.

One more thing; even if you add those one-shots, who says the scanlators are going to find them? They'd be the probervial needles in the haystack. Also, when it comes to manga with historical value, most scanlators (and readers) aren't interested, raws are hard to come by, and this kind of works are generally better left to actual publishers.

I don't want to sound overly negative. But I do think there are many issues to consider carefully before changing the policy.

Actually, in my experience it's far easier to find oneshot raws than it is to find full series. The oneshots that are available online are the ones that would be represented the most in the database. Of course, oneshots by unpopular creators would not be easily found, just as series by unpopular creators would not be easily found, but scanlators often look at the lists of works for their favorite creators to find things to pick up. There are a lot of groups that actually prefer doing oneshots because they're quick and easy, and these oneshots could finally be well-represented in the scanlation world.

Meanwhile, professional translators really don't bother with oneshots or historical works at all. The most important thing to these companies is what they can sell. That's why you'll notice they tend to pick up things that already have a fanbase due to scanlations. What's more, since manga is published almost exclusively in tankoubon form in North America, it's pretty much impossible for a professional group to release a oneshot.

I'm personally of the school of thought that any information is better than no information at all. This website would top all others currently dedicated to manga information if we could list a creator's full bibliography with the potential for all the information one would want about each one. We can only list series now, and most creators make more oneshots than they do series. This way we're missing lots of important information about pretty much everybody.

I understand that the reason we have that rule is to save space, though. I hope once we can handle more it will be lifted.

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I completely agree! ..It would be so nice if the database had unscanlated oneshots (and maybe even doujinshi) as it used to.. T-T It was much more useful than it is now...

Please, consider this, dear Admins~

Being able to hadle the information is not just a matter of space. It's about keeping it accurate, pruning redundant entries (you already noticed them), perhaps making sure all of them include at least certain fields. Sometimes you have to stop and consider how fast you should grow, and what your priorities are.

Even just sticking to the original remit (manga in English) would already be pretty damn ambitious. Both scanlations and licensed manga have grown enormously. The addition of Manhwa, Manhua, OEL and doujinshi (plus artbooks, novels and drama CDs) makes things harder. Just keeping up with new releases demands considerable effort. Letting the userbase add information helps, but it also creates more work in cleanup.

We all want the MU to do everything, and do it well. But we have to consider the problems that entails. It's already trying to do a lot of things at once. Caution and patience are well in order.

In the meantime, I think scanlators shouldn't rely so much in MU in the first place. After all, they have translators so they are not limited to English sources in the first place.