I used to be very active in the online manga community ~8 years ago, but I rarely come around nowadays. I love baka updates and would rather see light redesigning rather than an overhaul. For me, the best features are seeing scanlation updates and being able to do complex searched by genre then ranked by rating. It's a huge help when I'm searching for something new to read (like today). I rarely use the forum or lists. It's been a long time so I don't have specifics, but I always found the lists a bit clunky to use.

Thank you for all that you do keeping this site up and running!

I really like manga update's simplistic designs and the weekly polls, so if I were to add something I wouldn't rely on customisation or too much stuff like that, since for new users it would be hard to distinguish the site itself from others.

I'm more a seinen fan, but if you check out the "Series Statistics" it's mostly been yaoi for the past years you could probably expand their forum, add something for them and a way to filter yaoi/hentai/....(whatever there's more of at the time) from the statistics without deleting it permanently from what you view.

One detail you could add is something like "verifying profiles" and adding a small symbol (like the folding project one) or whatever and only show the threads created by them in the forum main page (alternatively manually change the ones that are shown on the forum main page), this might help in not giving a bad impression when the page gets attacked with spam and could help you compare the behaviour of temporary users (for data processing it would also be very interesting).

Maybe creating a profile of this site on other manga communities posting the same polls saying something like "If you want your poll to be used post it at our site" and asking the users already present in them to cooperate is the most effective way to get an influx to new users.

If you do big changes/there starts to be a significant influx of new people you might want the make a distinction between old and new users, since manga/nl/anime fandom is usually very toxic and you'd have to make stricter rules for opinions etc. (even now once in a while you can read some crazy opinions in the forum).

Lastly even though the design is old, it can be used in your favour adding features old sites use to have. There's always more than 40+ people online, old sites use to have chats (with 2-5 channels) and they worked out quite well (with a minimal use of moderators), if there aren't too many people trying to speak at the same time (though that feature is quite susceptible of spam). You could add one on weekends to concentrate the users that want to chat, with a small gimmick like anyone can kick someone out for 5min from the chat so there's even less moderators needed / lessen toxic behaviour/ get muted users to use their inbox. I bet this would attract lots of chat nostalgic people.

I hope we can have better spam filter in the forum or even better, a bot detection. I can't patrol 24/7 while those threads only litter the front.

Edit: Ok, this will probably add extra work because the spam doesn't show up every time. But maybe there is another way?

Last edited by Xunu at 6:54 am, Jun 1 2022

+1 dark/night theme option

+1 for improved search functions

+1 personal notes

+1 for covers, especially on lists (or maybe having different view options like list, list w/covers, grid, etc); would also be nice on like author/artist pages

+1 (improved?) recommendations -- I think that adding covers and the option for people to add/vote on recommendations would be helpful. tbh, I didn't even notice the recommendations section on this site until very recently. I think adding covers would make it easier to notice plus it would look nice. Covers are essentially clickbait and are more eye-catching than just the title text.
I don't know how recommendations are generated right now, but allowing users to contribute and being able to see (for example) that 35 people agreed that this title is a good recommendation would be helpful. Not everyone wants to take the time to write a review/comment, but a quick vote agree/disagree might get more people to interact. I don't know if I'm making sense, I think I'm rambling. Anyways, I think the recommendations section could use some improvements.


In addition to following authors/artists, maybe following users? If there's a user who I've noticed from reviews/comments and I really like/agree with them, it would be nice to have a feed seeing that they've posted another review or maybe even see their reading activity (if they've allowed that to be public I suppose). If you're trying to make the site more social, then this would also allow people to follow friends/internet acquaintances and be able to see what they've been reading lately. This could even be implemented on individual title pages -- have a section showing the reading status and ratings given by users that you're following, maybe even a link to their review/comment.


As a numbers person, I also think it would be fun if there was some way to implement reading statistics. So like be able to see how many chapters/volumes/titles you've read ever/by year/by country/by release year. Stats for genres and tags/categories would be interesting as well. However, I'm not sure how plausible this is with the way things are currently set up on this site. It might be a lot of work. It's just a thought (:


Thanks for all your work running this site! ^^

I don't know much about website design or any technical terms.

I joined as a MU member 6 years ago, but I've used MU far way back, I think since 2008/2009 when I started to read scanlation manga.

I love this site even more after I utilize the lists feature here. Even though it's an old design, its simplicity and features are what made me stay here. Not to mention some of the fun polls from time to time.

The only thing I'm concerned with, but I'm not sure about the solution, is that sometimes there are manga/manhwa with inconsistent releases informations, especially when it's from official publishers. For example, sometimes, you put updates from official publishers, such as Line Webtoon or Shueisha's Manga Plus, but then it stopped updated in chapter 11 or 12, when the official platform actually already has it translated until chapter 50 or more.

Oh, and since sometimes there are chapters that goes 50.5 or 51.1 and 51.2, I think it would be nice to have a feature for a not-even-chapter numbering

I have missed several chapters previously since there's no notification whenever the scanlator/publisher update a 51.2 or 51.5 chapters, until they updated chapter 52.

Sorry if it sounds confusing. I hope you understand what I mean.

Last edited by mallika23 at 9:03 am, Jun 2 2022

Maybe it would be nice to include OEL manga/manhwa that are popular. Such as The Beginning after the End.

Of course this might bring issues where people might add English comics (Marvel, DC, etc). So maybe a strict guidelines to what OEL is allowed.

I thought that it is a manhwa (and submitted an entry), but after being rejected, I realized that it is actually OEL.

I wonder why OEL is not accepted - this site allows other types languages, including Asian languages Filipino, Indonesian, Manhwa, Manhua, Thai, Vietnamese and Malaysian, and also Western languages Nordic, French and Spanish, but OEL is strictly not allowed.

Is it because the burden of admins will be increased? If so, why doesn't this site limit the allowed types to e.g. Manga, Manhwa and Manhua only (or even stricter, Japanese Manga only)?

+1 dark mode

+1 personal notes

+1 follow author/series/scanlation group

+1 improved search functions, which I will elaborate on:

-The ability to search multiple of my own lists would be much appreciated. Currently I would use that feature to find out which series are completed, though there may be other uses for it.
-The ability to search by date/range. Either by the year published or date of last release. This would allow me to pick out manga of a certain "era", to avoid series that don't have active translations, and to look to see which series have been completely translated recently.
-The ability to search for series that I have already given a rating but aren't on any of my lists. This is more of a personal request then a feature I think other users would use, I will admit, but someone else may be in a similar situation.
I deleted a bunch of series off of my lists years ago and regretted it later. I also wound up with some bug when I was transferring a bunch of series from one list to another (my OCD need to organize my lists as they grew too big got to me) where they didn't transfer to my new list and instead were just deleted from the old one. They still had the ratings when I manually searched them up and found them later, but I'm not sure I got all of them. I just got all of the ones I could remember off of the top of my head or find and recognize the cover art in a search, after all.

I would also like to recommend a couple of other minor features:

-An indicator of some kind on the list as to whether the series is completely translated. Something obvious but somewhat subtle like a green check mark to the left of the name or something.
-The ability to choose which name is displayed on my list. Preferably, I'd like a selector next to the "Associated Names" in the series info, so I could pick which one I want displayed on my lists.
-The ability to put a series on the Unfinished list from the series info page. I don't know if it's a feature or a bug that comes from me making too many lists, but I can't seem to do that. Currently, I have to go to the list it's on and check the series then manually send it to my Unfinished list.

For the most part, though, this site is the "stable database". Reader sites have a tendency to get taken down or just die for some reason or another, this site has survived the test of time, so far at least. You could maybe make a flashy "mobile version" if you need the hyper zoomer views, but otherwise this sites main attractions are currently:

1.Keeping track of current reading progress
2.Remembering series to check out later
3.Searching for new series <- no other site does this nearly as well, definitely your bread and butter
4.Seeing if a series has been completely translated yet
5.Seeing if there are any new chapters for a lot of series simultaneously
6.Ratings, tags, genres, and reviews
7.Stability

I do think it's important to note that stability is your other bread and butter and I'm worried too much of a change may give off an impression of instability. All in all, this site is a pretty solid site with only minor inconveniences to gripe about. You may be best off just trying to spread the word more.

Just a minor suggestion, it would be great to have a delete option for forum posts. I just noticed I commented about a bug in an unrelated thread by accident, and it would be nice to be able to deal with that sort of situation ourselves instead of waiting for a mod to remove it.

For what its worth I like the site the way it is now. I enjoy how simple it is to use and how there aren't any distracting ads that block the content.

I wouldn't mind seeing a superficial face lift, but I hope the majority of the site stays the same.

The ways I currently use this site:
- I use this site to enhance my own personal manga list by hyperlinking each title and author. It's such a great way to find a summary quickly.
- I love the categories! I use this all the time to find the next great manga.
- I love keeping track of the different formats of my manga with lists.

I love this site and I hope to keep using it for years to come. Thank you!

Last edited by ceruleantear at 10:15 pm, Jun 5 2022

I've discovered this website only some time ago and I agree with other commenters that it's brilliant as is. Many websites tend to go with a minimum viable product, cutting features and in the end losing users, so in general I'm somewhat skeptical about redesigns.

There are some suggestions I would like to offer from the point of view of a newbie if a redesign is definitely being considered:

1. Let use chose the title we use on our lists from a dropdown. Having to manually type alternative titles in the add section is tiring on mobile. That being said, the fact that this is at all possible is brilliant and makes this website very unique.

2. Add a separate search icon in the mobile top toolbar, next to the hamburger menu. Many websites do that and it's a godsend on mobile. Bonus points if instead of sending us to a new page dedicated to search it would simply roll into a searchbar after tapping.

3. Let us type the number of read chapters on the mahwa page. This works great on the list view, but being able to do it directly would be nice.

4. Take list statuses into consideration. Category recommendations are brilliant, but they often show me something I'm already reading.

5. Let us use genre filters also in the search results, while providing a toggle to show unfiltered results (just like Steam does it). Letting users set the default in their profiles would be a great bonus.

6. If a series is an OEL, tell us about this in the search results, even without having an entry for that thing. Some titles I were trying to add turned out to be OELs and I have wasted quite a bit of time before I learned that. Having a dismissable alert that there's an OEL with this name could save people some time.

7. Consider letting us rate not only the series, but also the chapters. This would probably hug the database a bit too much, so alternatively you could add a personal notes box to note favorite chapters and whatever else the user wants.

Lacking any of these is by no means dealbreaking, but after interacting with the website for a bit this is what came to mind as far as potential improvements go.

Honestly the design is super easy and very convenient as is, rather than a redesign, some additions here and there would be perfect.

Adding the topics from "Latest discussed series" to the front page on a box on its own might be a good idea, instead of having it mixed with other topics.

Having updates when you first open the site would make me want to visit more than just to edit a list, so making the latest translation updates visible for everyone would be very nice, as well as a section for latest updates of most popular series.

I like these since I get to know something new through them 😁

And as a recent thread stated, it'd be very nice to have the covers stick to the 1st volume cover, since newer covers often have spoilers and I've been spoiled few times 🙁

And I strongly agree with having a dark mode.

i would like to see multiple features implemented.
The most important thing is the search function. it should be possible to search for the name and filter for genres, categories, series, etc. It would be really nice if there would be a way to group tags together in the search. To mean by that something like that(example in sql):

SELECT * FROM `db_name`WHERE title = "" AND (category = "" OR genre = "" ) AND category = "full color"

That means that the tags within a group get connected with an "or" and the groups and the search get connected with an "and".

Furthermore it would be nice to see some meaningful statistics. Like how many people read it and how they voted and compared to other series in the same genre, but in a graph over time and not like it is now.

You could also implement an expected release schedule. It isn't that hard to code to analyse the release schedule and make a prediction.

It would be great if there would be a PWA version for mobile and desktop. It wouldnt consume as much data because it only needs to fetch the infos and not load all the static content of the page.

A usefull feature would be if there would be easy way to update the reading progress of every single scanlator site. Could be implemented through third party cookie or api.

I really like that you want to redesign the website and move away from php. I dont get why people want to stick to ssr. Im pretty sure most of the people that said they want to keep this version, dont know what the advantages of a webapp are. A responsive webapp is way better than what you could achieve with php. I would personally use svelte instead of react, just because it compiles and is therefor more efficient and the code is less messy, but when you already have a team of react devs there is no other way.

The post suggests that you want to use the api you just written. I highly recomment that you add a way to get genres, categories, names, releases, comments, etc in one api call to improve loading performance and reduce lag due to many db calls.

In Summery:
- better advanced search
- statistics
- expected next release
- PWA with mostly text fetches
- mobile version
- third party cookie to track reading progress
- change username ;D

Last edited by tglgpbohdeopgnwzld at 3:12 am, Jun 19 2022

1. I'm a longtime MU mostly-lurker who rarely uses the forums or leaves reviews, so I'm indifferent either way to most forum/social suggestions for improvement. But I wouldn't want forums to become the primary focus either: it's annoying on other manga sites when every page has a giant Facebook comment thread, or when site admins require all mod contact go through Discord, etc.
2. By far the most useful feature of MU for me is the Advanced Search page combined with filtration from the extensive series tags It's been amazing to be able to find new series (or old series I forgot the name of) by searching for tags while filtering out genres, licensed/unlicensed series, series already in my Completed, etc. I wouldn't remove any of the current search options available on the Advanced Search page because I use them all. If I could add anything to the search options it would be to add keyword search like the Quick Search has, or add filtration options to narrow down Quick Search results. If I'm trying to find a shoujo series with "Ookami" in the title, it's annoying to Quick Search "Ookami" then scroll through a million shonen series. 😁
3. It would be nice to expand the User CP Genre Filtering options from filtering just the New Releases to filtering search results as well. There are some genres I'd be happy to never see while I'm logged in. I still think all genres can & should be listed on the site, but the ability for hide genres to my individual tastes would be great.
4. Please keep the site mobile-friendly and text-based with few, small images. I'm usually browsing manga sites on my crappy phone with limited data, and I want to spend that data on loading manga pages, not giant video ads and ad popups and reactions GIFs that people have posted in the page comments. Scrolling through MU's no-frills text pages is a breath of fresh air compared to that. I would literally pay MU money to keep this part.

More ideas:

1. Multi-language options. I don't know if it'd work with scanlation releases, but it would be cool to be able to add links/information about official series licenses in languages beyond English, and/or add the ability to search/filter for series licensed in Whatever language.

2. Add Boys Love/BL and Girls Love/GL genre names for M/M and F/F romance. In the early 2000s, the genre names were mostly used in English manga fandom to indicate levels of erotic content: Yaoi/Yuri were NSFW/sexually explicit, and Shounen Ai/Shoujo Ai were the teen-friendly tamer stuff. These days the genre terms are used more loosely or have fallen out of fashion, and newer fans & creators mostly prefer the umbrella terms BL and GL. I think it's still useful to indicate if a BL/GL work is sexually explicit or not, but the old genre terms aren't being widely used on new works for that purpose.