The end of an era

Today is a bitter sweet day. My favorite website was taken down last night, thanks to publishing licenses they had to stop. It was a website that was by fans for fans. It was a testament to the better parts of human nature. Most people don't even take time to smile when walking past others one the street, but then people on onemanga go out of their way to scan, clean, translate, and typeset manga so that fans in other countries could read the most recent chapters. It is a great community that, hopefully, will continue to be a welcoming place to all manga fans.

As an avid manga reader today is a very sad day. I can understand the legalities, but the communication major in me wants to know why a different solution couldn't be worked out. I want to know why the publishers weren't even willing to discuss different alternatives. The best way for a disagreement to be settled is for everyone to sit down and hash it out. There has to be a better alternative than just shutting down the site. They obviously don't understand the first thing about the fan community.

Onemanga wasn't doing it for money, they weren't doing it for personal benefits, they were doing all that work because they wanted to share something they love. Because being a manga fan means being a part of something bigger, it means being a part of a diverse world were the only thing that matters is a mutual love of a great story.

Thank you publishers for not taking the fans of your work seriously. We really appreciate it.

Evil publishing things

I was having a good day until I went to my favorite website and found out it is being closed. So ANGRY! I can understand why most of the website is being taken down, sort of. The site is a place were fans of manga have gathered for years, and now I find out that due to licensing issues they have to take down the site. This was a huge fan collaboration that took manga that had recently been published in Japan, scanned it, cleaned it, translated it, and then posted it were people in other countries could read it before it was available.

It was a great thing, a wonderful collaboration that showed how people could come together and over come any hurdle. It was a place were it didn't matter who you were, or what you had done in the past so long as you loved manga. And now because some jerk wad it is all going to go away. *tear*

This is me being very angry because I will need to wait over two years for the publishing companies in America to catch up with where Japan is now! AAAAAAHHH! So annoying. Grr.