Thread: The history of scanlation

Some guy I know on irchighway made this site. Basically goes over the history of scanlation from its inception to the present day, and includes interviews from some of the leading figures.

Anyway, I thought it was an interesting read; you guys should check it out.

You must be a very boring person.

Originally Posted by be0wulf

Some guy I know on irchighway made this site. Basically goes over the history of scanlation from its inception to the present day, and includes interviews from some of the leading figures.

Anyway, I thought it was an interesting read; you guys should check it out.

Its indeed very interesting, thanks for the link.

Great, thanks.
Scanlation has changed the mangaworld outside of japan like nothing else before, so its intersting to read some background.

Crazy how things changed in only 10 years. I couldnt think of a world without google, wikipedia, onemanga, and so on today.

Its also interesting that is mainly a resume of the last decade... makes me thinking about that this decade is ending slowly...

<cooldude> Why is HnG being released so slow?
<anothercooldude> It's a TW-project.

read everything I wanted to read(the history and spotlight articles on my favorite oldskool scanslation groups).

cool beans. good times. great site.

Wanted to say something in line of "Rather unusual project", decided to browse around and... still reading. So -- my thanks and great respect to the author!

wow, lotsa work poured into this. great site, would be useful if i was still in grade school and had to do a random research project, lol

man, i remember waiting for HnG chapters at TW, and suddenly they stopped releasing 'cause it was licensed

"Distribution methods for scanlation were also changing. In the old days, most releases were distributed on IRC, sometimes supplemented by direct download and BitTorrent. By 2005, many manga-specific direct download sites like NarutoFan and Bleach7 rose to prominence. While these sites proved to be popular among fans that were turned off by the difficult learning curve of IRC, they also became the center of many conflicts because many charged their users to download otherwise free scanlations. Such actions outraged many groups. One of the most well-known cases of this involved NarutoFan's Tazmo, who was so infamous that some people set up a website at StopTazmo.com that offered free downloads to oppose Tazmo's charging users to download manga. People profited from scanlations through other means as well; some even sold self-burned CDs full of scanlations on Ebay."
http://insidescanlation.com/history/history-2-4.html

"Direct download sites have always existed; sites like Tidwah and Squiggle-Manga have been around since 2004, and NarutoFan, one of the biggest Naruto download sites, was launched in 2003. StopTazmo, NarutoFan's "arch-nemesis," has also been operating since 2004. However, usage of direct download sites was low during the first and second generations of scanlation. Most groups protected their "work product" and wanted manga fans to come to their IRC channels or websites in order to get their scanlations.
Between 2006 and 2007, a new wave of direct download sites came into existence. These sites were popular among those new to scanlation because of how easy they made it to download scanlations. By 2007, some of the more popular download sites included Mangadownload, StopTazmo, and Manga Traders. While most download sites existed in harmony and maintained friendly relations, there have always been "battles" between download sites like NarutoFan and Bleach Exile, both of which charged a fee for manga downloads, and the rest of the community."
http://insidescanlation.com/history/history-3-4.html

I started downloading manga around 2001 and the earliest site that I could remember was Snoopy cool. Titles like Midori no hibi and Yakitate Japan were one of the first few titles that I could easily remember that I followed. It's quite surprising to find that scanlations started way earlier than I can imagine. I only skimmed through it but it sounds like there's a lot of drama that happened throughout its history.

Though I find it funny how I found that it was easier to download doujinshi compared to scanlated manga back then.

I saw the site a few days ago, and it made me proud (without any legitimate reason). I think it's going to become a site of both practical and historical value to the scanlation/manga-leeching community.