Scanlation Thoughts

Earlier, I was worried that the Scanlation crackdown would be potentially hazardous to the online community, but so far, the results haven’t been as bad as previously thought.

MangaHelpers, which used to gather translated Manga scans has closed down, and simultaneously launched a new site, OpenManga which will "allow manga creators to distribute their work digitally. The program will feature the ability for artists to sell merchandise and accept donations. The new program will also provide ways for users to legally translate and localize these manga."

The commentary on the AnimeNewsNetwork forum is... surprisingly positive, given how negatively they react to anything. When I first read the announcement, my first thoughts were that it must’ve been a reconcilatory declaration of defeat. Now, having read it again, I’m still not entirely sure what’s happened.

I’m not entirely satisfied with my last post. It’s full of various ramblings without standing for a definitive position. The majority of my arguement is a post I commented on a month ago, and was still without an opinion about. Part of the problem was I tried too hard to match my thoughts to one of the Randomized Garfields, and as a result, lost my train of thought. I was worried that other readers might not be able to understand its reference, and went into a bit of overkill.

One possible model I thought that would be helpful would be if companies allowed scanlators to submit their models via cell-phones. A typical Manga page that can sampled quickly even at a reduced size, and can be flipped quickly would be more popular than Mangas where you have to see both words & pictures in a wider canvas. Thus, Shojo stories where there are often vertical panels going towards the bottom would be less popular than Mangas with traditional comic layouts going from top to bottom.

There have been other bloggers who have made their points more eloquently than I have, which suggests to me that I shouldn’t bother trying to venture into realms I’m embarrassingly naive about, and stick to what I know. I know more about comics in general than about the business of comics, which is the kind of subject where my eyes glaze over. All I want is enjoyable re-readable stuff at a reasonable rate. Is that too much to ask?

One of the Sunday comics reprints I was most interested in was Polly & her Pals, which is coming out this fall. I’d been interested in the surreal Dadaist strip ever since I saw some samples in an encyclopedia of comics. But when I heard about the insane price of $75, I hoped that the price would go down. If it were $20, I would snatch it up in an instant! $40? Same as the Popeye reprints. But $75? That’s the old joke of lemonade that costs a thousand bucks, but the kid only really needs to sell ONE glass. I’ll probably wait until the price goes down, or I find it second-hand at a better price.

See? This kind of arguement I'm much more comfortable talking about.