It all started back in middle school (not sure of exact date), when my good friend showed me something, Ai Kora (Inoue Kazurou). I absolutely loved it. This was back in the days where onemanga was the primary internet manga site and contained almost every title imaginable. Scanlators were lesser known to the leeching public (AKA me at the time) and there was little action in the aggregator vs. scanlator debate.
After I finished Ai Kora, I read it again. Then I tried out Kazurou's other work, Midori no Hibi (Midori Days). I loved it too. But I never fully got onto the manga train at that time, I was simply rode it for a couple stops.
Years later, during the summer of my Freshman year of High School, I was bored. So what did I do? I browsed the internet, looking for anything to do to entertain myself. After seeing The Prince of Tennis on TV, I searched it up online, and lo and behold, I found myself on Mangafox, discovering that The Prince of Tennis had a manga. I didn't read the manga, because I wasn't particularly interested in rereading what I had already seen and because I had no special interest in it. Instead, I clicked on a link simply called One Piece.
I started from the Oneshot, chapter 0, and then I moved on to read chapter 1. I recall the scanlation being a bit blurry and not all the best quality, but more than enough for me to appreciate it. Before long, I had spent the rest of my day reading chapter after chapter. I spent several consecutive days during that summer reading One Piece, which was on hiatus when I finally caught up to. Suddenly finding myself with nothing to read, I scoured the internet for more information on One Piece, its author, its extras, its anime, and practically everything about it. But after two days of One Piece drought, I turned my attention away from it to find another source of entertainment.
Having read that One Piece was serialized weekly on Shounen Jump, I discovered that it was part of the "Big Three" in the Jump magazine, which included, as any manga fan worth his salt should know, Bleach and Naruto. Now I had been exposed to Naruto before, during the erratic Toonami era of Cartoon Network when Dragonball Z and Code Lyoko played. I was not much a fan of either of those shows, but I did see a commercial of Naruto now and then while I was on the channel.
Finding myself with nothing to lose, I reasoned that if One Piece was that good, the then other two of the Big Three shouldn't be bad either. I picked up Naruto and Bleach. It took approximately two weeks to catch up to both series. I had been delayed by real-life circumstances, such as going out with the family. Nonetheless, I was pleased to have at least read the other two series. I was especially pleased with the quality of these scans, which I later found out was scanlated by Mangastream.
Then began my deeper foray into the world of manga, both into the breadth of the content I would later consume, and the depth of information I would use to catalogue each manga in my head. I lurked on the Mangafox homepage (at this point there was really no comparable competitor), testing manga I found interesting and eventually mentally noting each one.
Before I had a relatively narrow interest, Shounen "battle" mangas, because of my initial attraction to One Piece. I began to complain to my good friend (the same that had long ago told me about Ai Kora) that I didn't have enough to read. Annoyed with my constant lamentations, I told to me go read Suzuka, by Kouji Seo. After I read it, I promptly told my good friend it was amazing and dived straight into the whirlpool of Shounen romcoms.
I found it much wider that I could of imagined. Adding romance to my list of interests indirectly led me to read many, many manga with tags that sometimes inevitably came with romance. Ecchi, harem, and most of all, Shoujo. Shoujo was my bane at the time. The art to me was unbearable. The plots were inane. Thinking back, I probably didn't pick the best representatives of shoujo, but it certainly drove me away from the genre for several years. My good friends reaction when I asked him how good Kaichou wa Maid-Sama! was ("I haven't heard of it, what's it's genre?" "Shoujo." "Shou- wait what?!") didn't help the cause either. (Note: I have since abandoned my discrimination against Shoujo, though I still approach them warily).
With a hefty load of various types of Shounen manga in tow, I began to see a problem. I could not possibly remember them all. What made it even more difficult was that some mangas were long abandoned or dropped by groups, and even if they were to get picked up again, I would most likely forget it. The fear of losing even one manga to forgetfulness led me to sign up on Mangaupdates (link down below). I meticulously recorded every manga I ever read and finished, to the best of my ability, and continue to this day to record every new manga into my account, lest I ever need to remember it.
Of differing concern was the other side of manga I never really saw, the scanlation side. I really was clueless to was scanlation was when I first read manga, and never got into the scene until around the time I was expanding my Shounen romcom interests. I picked up The World God Only Knows, and because I feverishly loved it, I scoured for more information, which inevitably led me to the site of the group that scanlates it, Red Hawk Scanlations.
Their site was professional, much more impressive than what I expected and what I had seen before (blogspots and wordpresses anyone?). I canvassed the forums, realizing that some manga was coming out in real time. That is, some of the manga I read (including TWGOK) were not simply "out there" waiting to be scanlated. I always did wonder about where scanlations came from anyway, but I also always felt that reading manga was a more important investment of my time.
Learning that some groups scanlated serialized mangas (this gave me a D'oh! moment when I realized Mangastream had been doing this for weeks on end without me realizing) also opened me up to how manga was scanlated. I learned about RAWs, about scanning, about translating, about cleaning, about typesetting, quality checking, proofreader, the whole nine yards. (It seems ignorant of me to "just" discover these roles, but as an avid reader, I rarely looked at the recruitment and credit pages.) It was then that I realized that the manga I read every day was not meant to be free.
Upon learning about how Red Hawk Scanlations functioned, I noticed that ALL groups had to function in a similar manner, some way or another. Years of continuous manga reading coupled with a more in-depth knowledge of manga scanlation led me to be more informative in my pastime. Each group had a reputation, a standard of quality, a preferred niche of subject matter, and of course real people to go along with it. It wasn't long before I began to begin mangas based on the sole fact that a certain group scanlated it, so it had to be good.
I reached a point where I had read hundreds upon hundreds of manga and began to reach a standstill. I wanted to read more, but there wasn't anything I was willing to read, or willing to look for. I became more involved in the community, not opting to sign up on Mangafox, but discussing manga and leaving reviews on Mangaupdates instead. I watched several anime series to help appease my appetite.
It was at this point where the debates between scanlators and aggregators began, with readers (informed or not) began to complain about watermarks, slow releases, and other issues. I personally heavily sided with the scanlators, with only one cardinal rule to guide the way: Scanlators made it and therefore they can do whatever they wish with it. After several weeks and possibly months of arguing, I discovered that a little site called Batoto had been born.
Needless to say, I jumped immediately onto the train, abandoning the mega-aggregate sites of before to give little Batoto a chance. Because Batoto was conceived mainly by members of The Company, who's main series is Tower of God, I was exposed to the world of manwha (webtoons). Finding yet another style of storytelling I could read, I expanded my then only-manga catalogue to include manwhas, and eventually manhuas and doujins as well. I also became more actively involved in the forums and in commenting on the individual sites of scanlators.
And today, I rest on my chair, contemplating how far I've come from my early days of cluelessness and relative ignorance on the range of manga. It's been a long time since I started reading manga, but I can't imagine living without it now. Just as others watch TV shows religiously or sports regularly, manga has been my pastime. It fueled me through hours of boredom, days of inactivity, and weeks of procrastination. And yet four years into the world, and I am still finding new and interesting material everyday. I may someday lose the vigor I have now for reading manga, but I believe that I will be reading it in some form for the rest of my life.
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