This post was written by Dark_Sage. He is Dark_Sage.
Edit: It looks like Crunchyroll’s only doing Amerimanga for now, which pretty much renders this article invalid. I’ll set it to private in a few hours. :(
Why I’m excite
Scanlations are shit
Unlike fansubs, scanlations have never progressed in quality. It’s always been the same stupid low-quality scans combined with poor English.
Bottom-feeders like Mangafox have definitely done their part to popularize and trumpet stupidity, but the blame must be shared with the audience and the scanlators. If you look at Batoto, they’re basically hosting the same low-quality shit, despite their attempt to work out the issues that shitty hosts like Mangafox and their ilk have perpetuated.
Hopefully Crunchyroll can raise the bar of quality among scanlations this catches on, with the “if this catches on” being the key part to note.
Precursor to something better
I like Crunchyroll, but I don’t like them enough to put all my eggs in their basket. If this experiment ends up being a success I’m sure we’ll see some competing services, and competition is good for consumers.
Ultimately, I want to see something like Crunchyroll for series currently being serialized (as well as those that have yet to attain serialization). I’m a voracious manga reader when I want to be, and something like that would be exciting enough to push me pretty heavily into that side of the fandom. Take my time and eventually take my money, because I really want to see this happen.
Why I’m not excite
Fuck this fucking shitty fucking navigation fuck
This is goddamn fucking counterintuitive. Usually to navigate these things you move right to turn the pages. But the right button is actually for the “previous” page. Except when it’s not. Yes, the navigation changes depending on whether you’re reading manga or something else (whichever way the author intended the book to turn, Crunchyroll follows).
Okay, I can relearn… I guess. But what’s NOT fucking acceptable is that I can’t use the arrow keys on my keyboard to navigate on some of the manga (like Okamirai) but you can on others. I mean, are you fucking kidding me? I like to sit back when I read my manga, not be hunched over in “earnest gamer” mode with my hand in a death grip on my fucking mouse. Let me lean back and work that keyboard; it’s what I fucking bought it for. (Yes, I only bought my keyboard to easily surf manga on Crunchyroll’s site. That’s the kind of man I am.)
It won’t fucking load
Yes, I’m sure they’ll manage to iron their shit out, but it better fucking work for go-live or you need to change your fucking go-live date.
This is a showstopper. It doesn’t work on Waterfox, it doesn’t work on Internet Explorer, and it doesn’t work on Chrome. What the fuck?
The weird thing is that some series do load, and some others partly load. Again, fucking work on your shit before you put it out to the public.
The selection
This is all that’s available currently (Dreamlands not pictured). I fully expect there to be more right-quick, but what they have… sucks.
Actually, as I started writing this out, there’s a lot to talk about so I’ll just make a new post solely for these. For now, uhh, assume my opinion is accurate.
tl;dr:
I really hope this does well because it could possibly lead to some big changes as to how we consume manga (and I’d be willing to bet it would also affect which titles get localized in the States!). Most of the issues I have with the site can be fixed, though some (like the selection piece) may be more difficult and time-consuming to fix than others.
Link, for those of you curious: http://www.crunchyroll.com/comics/manga
I say kudos to CR for going after manga. God knows it’d be nice to have somewhere you can actually stand to read respectably translated manga on the internets.
Thought I would point out that the image you posted of “Denpa Kyoushi” from S2Scans was down-scaled from 989x to 649x and is not a proper representation of their quality.
In addition, I would also like to point out that you used the word “fuck”, and derivations thereof, 16 fucking times. High repetition of words or phrases can easily render texts to be dull, senseless, or simply retarded.
On the actual topic of your post, I do agree that their setup is rather strange; however, that is quite a minor problem to me, considering that it doesn’t actually slow the rate at which I am able to read the manga. Furthermore, I am not experiencing the problems that you are with keyboard navigation. Taking into account that it uses flash(People still use flash these days?), it would be natural to conclude that you simply forgot to bring the window into focus.
I don’t care what resolution it originally was, the English is shit no matter how you scale it. And I like to fucking swear, yes. Thanks for noticing.
The keyboard navigation is an issue that pops up when the site tries to load a page that isn’t working correctly. Try to navigate from Okamirai’s starting page to the next one and you’ll see what I mean: http://www.crunchyroll.com/comics_read/manga?volume_id=35
>stupid low-quality scans combined with poor English
>I don’t care what resolution it originally was
That seems a bit contradictory to me. You’re complaining about mediocre scans and then saying you don’t care about their resolution? While I don’t disagree that most scans are low-quality, I do think that it’s slightly misleading to use a down-scaled image for the purpose of represent the whole of manga scans.
Regarding the English in most translations, I do think that they could use more work, but I wouldn’t exactly call them shit. Unlike anime, you’re exclusively reading it. Because there is no audio to go with it, I don’t see as much of a need for it to properly flow. Grammar could be a concern, but I’ve seen a lot of anime that has it just as bad. This is all just my opinion, of course.
I’m still unable to reproduce your keyboard navigation issue. After bringing the window into focus I’m able move from the very start of the volume to the end and back with only the arrow-keys.
Christ you scanlators are annoying twats. Fine, I’ll upload a full-rez image of that picture in 24 hours. Promise.
The English is shit, though, and go ahead and defend it all you want because you can’t change reality just by wishing it. There’s a pointless translation note, bad grammar, and jokes that don’t work. It’s a fair example of the issues that literate people have with scanlators and if you don’t see any issues with it, well I know which camp you fall into.
The navigation issue is still there for me. You have to click into the image on Okamirai before the keys start working and even then, the first two pages are stuck in infinite-reload hell. If it’s working perfectly for you, well then congratulations, that doesn’t solve the issue for me.
What I don’t get is, surely if all you’re doing is reading when it comes to manga, scanlators should be MORE wary of typos and bad grammar, because at least with anime, there’s some kind of visual to give you a clue what’s going on.
I didn’t even see the tl note until you mentioned it. I assume they meant a “lookalike” or an “impersonator”? Because that’s really difficult to translate…
I have no problems being known as an annoying twat(I probably am one), but I would like you to know that I am NOT a scanlator.
It is a fair example, and I’m not saying that the issues don’t exist. As I stated in my previous post, that was simply MY opinion. I’m a very lenient person when it comes to grammar(usually) and would probably read anything as long as it isn’t Google Translate quality(If the content is actually good).
I don’t think that Manga scanlation quality is going to pick up for a long time. It’s different for Anime, which is neatly organised so all the hardcore watchers know what shows will be coming out every season. And there really are only about 20 fansub groups that people use, who split the shows between themselves with much overlap for choice.
In the world of Mangos there are more coming out then most hardcore fans can organize, and there are so many scanlators I can’t even make a good estimate or guess. The two worlds are vastly different in size, and I doubt CR will manage to make a dent when you look at just how many shit groups there are, most of whom have unchallenged monopolies on different Mangos.
So what you’re saying is that scanlators are giant elephants that eat all of the mangos for themselves and don’t share any of their sweet sweet stories with us?
Like really, is the problem too many scanlators or too few?
My point was that its very common for groups to only work with 1-3 series at a time and be the only ones working on them. No one will complain about the QUALITY since, except for the most popular series, the readers have no alternative. My solution is for there to be fewer small groups and more large ones that take on many more projects.
I pointed out mistakes on a series I love to the group translating it and one of them threw a fit and did the whole “I worked hard on this and asked for nothing in return…” thing and nothing came of it. There are just some people working on these projects that are no good. If it was anime, everyone could say so and tell them to give it up since there are people who can replace them. In manga there are no replacements.
Maybe the anime subgroups should just become scanlators – because let’s face it, do we really need four or five groups doing simulcast edits on each series every season?
You know what, screw it. I’m gonna start doing manga. Who’s with me?!
Anyone? No one? Oh well.
I’d scanlate if it would really piss off some scanlators. Like, coming in on a popular series that only one group’s doing really slowly. This Sage runs on salt.
http://kissmanga.com/
This is my favorite manga site. Pick a manga on that site, try it and you will see why. Happy to hear that CR is picking up manga. I am hoping it will raise the bar for some of the scanlators to overcome.
Turns out I just misinterpreted what CR was doing. Having read every offering on the site, it’s all Amerimanga… and most of it’s pretty low-tier. I think they’re just doing something like the “Tokypop Rising Stars of Manga” series.
I’m pretty disappointed now.
Silly D_S jumping the gun.
And as for scanlation quality… holy fuck. I started reading manga a few months ago and some releases make me want to gouge my eyes out. A crippled ostrich could spell better than most scanlators while still forming coherent sentences. Couldn’t you just say “celebrity impersonator” instead of putting a stupid tlnote?
Well I wanted to get the post out ASAP since even Crunchyroll hadn’t announced it yet when I stumbled across it and wrote the post. Slow and steady’s better I guess. :/
Brace yourselves, comming up on Nyaa:
HorribleManga: Manga ripping group
CommieManga: Manga reeditors
…and a lot more