That’s part of the appeal to me, baka doesn’t bother with the SEO game

I wish mangaupdates/bakaupdates did anime too. It’s the best aggregator. No bullshit, no ads (probably, if there are any they disappear with Adblock), straightforward design straight out of like 2005. Given their relationship with scanlation groups they could also have a pretty awesome database of fansub releases potentially.

Would be so much better than those random spreadsheet websites where some discord channel decides the best release with no criteria they are willing to share publicly and erases the existence of all others like seadex and sneedex.

But even if they didn’t I still would prefer to just use that for everything. It’s just a comfier website. I hate MAL, anidex, etc

The one thing that sales do benefit is the potential for future localization and to be fair that does matter if you can’t read the raws

This is why niche titles are shifting. People complain about companies like viz doing less with niche shonen and yuri and stuff, instead translating tons of BL. But you know who buys tons of physicals? BL peeps. And when the expected sales are 3-5k units, if that, might as well go for the ones that drop cash

That said it’s still crap that viz doesn’t localize smaller titles. They can do digital only releases. They have a one time fixed cost of the licensing and localization then just bandwidth, which is not much for digital books, and still make a bit of profit. But their mission isn’t to bring media to people, it’s to make fat stacks

Full disclosure: I don’t have a dog in this fight really bc i can read Japanese and just get raws in Japanese. I typically pirate everything and I do for big titles like oshi no ko (which had a weak ass ending) and shit but for small titles I do buy them to support the creators. Buying from Japanese sites gives the artist (typically) an 8-10% cut and with the weak yen digital titles are real affordable

The best way to support the actual artists is to buy Japanese raws. The compensation for English releases varies but since so many of them sell in such small numbers many of the authors don’t get any payment at all for the book sold and only get the initial licensing fee for the series.

Depends on the series, obviously. A huge series that moves tons of books, like one piece? Different story. But the latest niche release that will sell maybe 4k copies at most? Nahhh

Piracy is justified, viz/kodansha/etc are pieces of shit. unless you specifically want to support the localization teams I guess, but they also aren’t getting royalties. It’s a company of suits who “buy” creative works and earn money off them in perpetuity.

As for recommendations: you and I are polar opposites, the summer hikaru died, after the rain

Fuck that and you’re stupid. You’re just falling for their bullshit “save the children” nonsense so they can extend their overreach to ban more media they don’t like

Granted someone who jerks off to toddler lolicon is super gross and should probably talk to a therapist. And someone who is making cp deepfakes is way worse and there is probably an argument for government intervention at this point. And both should maybe not pass a background check for jobs like babysitter.

But giving the government carte blanche to “ban cp in anime”, especially by the wording of this proposal? Fuck that

(1) “Obscene” means material or a performance that: (A) the average person, applying contemporary community standards, would find that taken as a whole appeals to the prurient interest in sex; (B) depicts or describes: (i) patently offensive representations or descriptions of ultimate sexual acts, normal or perverted, actual or simulated, including sexual intercourse, sodomy, and sexual bestiality; or (ii) patently offensive representations or descriptions of masturbation, excretory functions, sadism, masochism, lewd exhibition of the genitals, the male or female genitals in a state of sexual stimulation or arousal, covered male genitals in a discernibly turgid state or a device designed and marketed as useful primarily for stimulation of the human genital organs; and © taken as a whole, lacks serious literary, artistic, political, and scientific value.

If you read that and think “oh yeah, Texas is qualified to judge whether something is justifiably obscene” then I go back to my first statement: fuck that and you’re fucking stupid

Someone already brought up evangelion as an incredible work that wouldn’t pass this morality test and isn’t pornographic but others in the same boat just off the the top of my head: oyasumi punpun, chainsaw man (remember Denji is 16 at the beginning), blue period, o maidens in your savage season, etc. all fantastic works (even if the second season of chainsaw man is mid)

Plus even age appropriate characters in ero doujin that don’t explicitly state their age but perform “perverse” sex acts (eg any) will potentially be grounds for deletion.

This law moves to target deepfake style child pornography. This is probably a good idea but the language needs to be explicitly defined and super clear, especially with the government the way it is right now. And Texas, of all states, is not the one to trust

called one punch man

punches multiple times

copyright law is Japan is weird and very uncool

The key differences are that they allow criminal punishment (such as this) though that’s not super common unless it’s egregious (like lots of money), this is pretty insane (though any criminal punishment for copyright violation is)

Registration is also automatic. In the us copyright is automatic as well but you have to register your copyright to sue for damages. In Japan this is not necessary, work is copy written upon creation and protections are granted without registration

The big one though vs us law is that they don’t have an exception for fair use. This is why manga and anime typically go to great (or minor) lengths to avoid saying names of products and chains. Unless they have a working relationship with the item/vendor/chain and explicit permission to do so they can be sued for having a character go to don quixote or whatever if donki decides their brand is damaged by being associated with some trashy manga.

Further complicated by the existence of doujin, which are all blatantly in violation of this system, but tolerated and even encouraged mainly because of cultural precedent. That said the doujin market is itself a complex and hypocritical beast filled with exploitation because of this. When works are small no one cares. When they are medium, free advertising. When they are too big to rival the brand it can cause issues and there has been precedent for shitty behavior here (shutdowns, poaching artists from circles, etc). Similarly disagreeable content can get you shut down (eg Pokémon and Nintendo banning sexualized doujin, kadokawa banning kantai collection doujin featuring rape, kodansha banning attack on titan doujin featuring “disagreeable political themes”)

I’m not saying it’s bad, clearly many many people like it. It’s exactly what you say. For some people it clicks and for them it seems to be a borderline masterpiece, but for me I was just bored

I get it because there’s so many people right now that endlessly shit on nokotan, and when asobi asobase aired there was a similar contingency of people who loudly moaned about how stupid it was and how stupid people were for liking it and I just thought those people were dumb. I still think those people are dumb because I can understand why someone would like nichijou, I just didn’t

asobi asobase is, imo, one of the funniest weird anime ever made

aho girl (be forewarned the anime ends on the creepiest fucking part of the manga)

azumanga daioh (be forewarned there is anime bullshit here as well, different time)

hinamatsuri (definitely well worth it to read the manga, which is one of the funniest I’ve ever read. It’s so good. The anime is great but it only got 1 cour which is an abridged version of the first 9 volumes. There’s 10 more and the story just keeps getting better), I felt like it was a bit of a spiritual successor to ranma which is also a good suggestion

Imo nichijou isn’t very good, though the animation is excellent. City was a much better manga and I’m excited to watch the anime for that. People love it though so it’s worth checking out

I genuinely enjoyed nokotan but the above picks all destroy it imo

be forewarned that if you watch lain (made in 1998) you’ll be like “how the fuck did they know this would happen”

akane cover? Fuck yeah

imo the best source is a locally hosted komga server. Download/purchase manga for hi res copies from places like AB/nyaa/baka/etc, rip scanlations with something like hakuneko or fmd2. Place in a folder, install komga+komf, point it at said folder. Komga scans in manga, komf scrapes metadata from manga updates or MAL. Use the Komga plugin in mihon and your progress is tracked both ways.

Much higher res most of the time, better translations, faster, more reliable, no ads, no tracking, no downtime unless your shit breaks, consistent across devices, no worrying about sites going down, manga getting taken down because it got licensed or group drama or whatever, and if you get tired of your library you can still just jump to the mangadex plugin or whatever I guess

I am somewhat conflicted on manga piracy. On one hand you should buy manga because the sales numbers for titles that aren’t stuff like one piece are often reallllly slim. On the other hand companies like viz are really shitty and my understanding is that the actual mangaka gets very little money from English releases. My suggestion is to learn Japanese. そうすれば、漫画をすべて読めます

You can scrape mangadex content completely anonymously though. Who cares if they have a breach. Only suckers make an account there

the full time wife escapist if you want something that’s more about realistic characters while also challenging the patriarchal dominance that so many Japanese romcoms fall into though (mild spoiler, I don’t know how to use the spoiler tag) the ending is a bit unsatisfying on that front. It cheapens it a bit but not enough to ruin what is ultimately a great and often overlooked series

Also the translation of the title is garbage. The translation of the manga is good but I have no idea why they settled on such a shit title. They also made it a tv drama and translated the title of that to “we married as job”, which fits better, but still isn’t great. The literal translation of the title is “running away is shameful, but useful” which I think ultimately reflects the work best.

It’s great to read if you’ve felt aimless and disillusioned in your early adulthood (like late twentys/early thirties) as well