Most all of the best series in Good Afternoon are already being scanlated, but that's not the case for the other magazines I'm buying. There are at least 3 series in every one of them I'd like to scanlate if I had enough staff for that. And that's just looking at the images, some of the others may be good series if I could read Japanese and judge them. Unscanlated series are not in that state because they are bad, it may just be that they were not discovered by an scanlator.

Of course is relevant to bring readers, and that was indeed the case when we picked up The Vanishing of Yuki-chan, Isuca and Deus Ex Machina, but it's also true that I'd never pick up a series that I hate - and I dare say other scanlators are the same. You need a great deal of work and time to release a chapter, you can only do that if you care enough about the series. On the other hand, maybe we can do that because we buy our own raws and can pick carefully, some other groups may be limited to what they can find in places like jcafe.

I think this is exactly the case. Actually, I voted for "No difference at all" because I really don't see any difference with previous years.

Fair enough. But you bring up another important point. Lack of staff. If only 30% of the stuff gets scanlated and some (possibly) great mangas are skipped over, doesn't that simply mean that the majority of the 70% are truly poor quality and therefore dissuading groups from finding the "hidden gems"?

Actually I find it hard to believe that truly bad manga can keep getting serialized. They could just be manga that isn't to our taste. And as you said, raws are a problem.
Scanlators can't just keep buying a magazine every issue just to scanlate one or two chapters. Since there're groups that are doing different series but in the same magazine, shouldn't we pool the money and find one single person for the raws? (Though it is kinda thick.) Or is that how it's already being done. I'm kinda new.

90+% of voters are not qualified to answer this question. How many here are veteran readers from the old days to now?

Online readers look at the scanlation date, not the actual release date, & like mentioned before, most manga do not get translated to begin with; not now, not before.

Same thing with licensed material.

[img]http://i43.tinypic.com/351e59t.jpg[/img]

what do you count as old days?

when i voted i thought about when they where made rather then scanlated.

Reads far to much Manga

sigh
My bad... Didn't even realize it until now

A just ruler amongst tyrants

Well, that is good if you actually did, but how many manga have you completed? 113? That is not even 1% of produced manga works to date, whether we take into account your reading list or not.

What I meant is that there are people who have been reading the latest titles for over a decade, & as such can make a valid judgment. However, those people are mostly Japanese, not some Western Naruto/shoujo fanboys/girls . . .

[img]http://i43.tinypic.com/351e59t.jpg[/img]

Aw now that you corrected it, it made me look like I had multiple typos.

True enough. How many people out there remember Ghost sweeper Mikame, for one.
Also who was around for the start of To Love Ru Trouble, and such.

There are way too many titles out there that go further back that should be taken into account as well. And those examples are just ones that actually were popular and known fast.

While the medium has become more polished and streamlined, it seems variety has faded. It may very well be because material available in the 80's and 90's was culled from the best over the course of years while nowadays, we judge according to every year or even quarter. Still, it seems like every anime and manga nowadays is about high school kids and/or fanservice. Even Mecha and fantasy genres are focusing on such. I used to laugh off arguments that companies are pandering too much to fanboys but nowadays... 🙁

It's not a matter of quality so much as taste. My tastes are fairly slanted toward older stuff.

There can never be a decline in the quality of manga, since it's all graded by personal preference.