Manga aggregators are needed by very busy people, of which there are lots these days. And there will be more. The way the economic world is going, I expect work to take up more and more of our lives, leaving less for visiting one scanlation site after the other to catch up on our long list of manga we're following.

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Someone said:
"the whole reason scanlators started was to share love for something and spread it's popularity so that there were more fans (and encourage these new fans to buy the manga too)."

Surely aggregators help do that! On an aggregator site I can quickly scan many, many manga and check out a few pages of each 'til I find something I like. In practice I read only manga I find that way--avoiding "big hits" like Naruto. I bet a lot of readers do that kind of scanning on aggregator sites, and so get to read hundreds of good but obscure manga. It would take much more time to do that by visiting individual scanlation sites one by one, and at most of those there's no way you can read a few pages right away to see if you like something you find there.

However, I now do make a point of visiting the scanlator site for a good manga I've discovered in that way, so I can thank them for their work.



Last edited by cecropiamoth at 5:53 am, May 25 2013

wanderlustee, thanks for this:

Posting here the link on the history of the scanlation scene for those who haven't read it yet
http://www.insidescanlation.com/history/index.html


I read the entire history, and what I discovered from it was there seems to have been a sense of "belonging" that came from subscribing to and reading manga through a scanlation site, getting to know the people there, commenting in their forum, etc.

Unfortunately, having gotten interested in the history of early radio (1900-1930) a while ago, I learned that in any new medium there seems to be an inevitable movement from fun, friendly usage of that medium toward, first, increasing commercial usage of it and, finally, absolute control of it by huge corporations. Most likely the Internet will go that way over the long run. This comes about because everyone needs money more than almost anything else. Add the incredible greed that capitalism rewards and in fact honors, and you have a fearsome force that takes over everything. MangaFox, et al., are the forerunners of the Internet's likely future.

Goodbye Sura. Thank you so much for bringing to us Superior, which will (forever) stay on the very top of my favourite list

Yo Hinokai, I would just like to add that this closure has been a long time in coming. I've been part of the community on that site for years and Sura's always been conflicted about scanlation since she openly admits that it is stealing. I believe the mangafox thing is just the straw that broke the camel's back since she realized that by scanlating she was starting to do more harm than she was doing good.

Personally I find these scanlators ethics conversations boring.