Manga Aggregators and Mangadex

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AliceShiki

『Ms. Tree』『Magical Girl of Love and Justice』, Female
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Yanno, something that bothers me about the manga translation community, is how there is nothing like NU in there. Because like... NU is really really practical, and it's the main reason why I never considered using any novel aggregator site instead.

And like, sure, Mangadex is practical, and mangaupdates does put most of the information out there for the public to see, but... None of them are as practical as NU. I do use them both, but it still feels lacking to me, which is... Quite annoying.

Back in Batoto days it was even worse, because the site was very laggy and there were plenty of mangas missing from the catalogue. Mangadex at least has the lag problem solved and generally speaking, you can find anything that isn't licensed there.

But uhn... I still feel like it's not nearly enough! I need a better site than just one that functions! >.<

Like... It's homepage shows roughly the 40 newest updated mangas and 8ish featured titles and 8ish new titles, as well as the top 10 titles... Which is usable I suppose? (ah, it also has a top chapters function, that IMO is useless, but maybe somebody cares about it)

Meanwhile an aggregator that I use primarily to find new mangas has 25ish newly updated mangas, 10 featured mangas, 25 popular mangas, and a top 5 of eight different genres in the front page. (the top 5 is based on very recent popularity, so it's also very helpful in showing you whenever a manga you like has updated, because it pretty much always shows there whenever it gets an update) And it's all very clean and intuitive to use.

And like... I wanted to transition to mangadex to support the translators and stuff, and I do read some series there, but... It's really hard to just stop using the aggregator when it's just a lot more practical and gives me much more stuff that I want to look at in order to find interesting new mangas to read, while also making it easier for me to know when stuff I like was updated. (Yes, I know you can just "follow" a manga in mangadex and you'll be notified when it updates, but I don't use the site while logged in, so I look at it from the functionality of a guest user)

It feels a bit sad overall, I just prefer to use an aggregator because the site is plain and simply better than mangadex to me. Like... Not 100% better, mangadex has some really nice things, like links to the translator sites, links to raws, links to mangaupdates, an actual synopsis that often times isn't visible in aggregators... But it's front page feels really lacking to me! And that's what I use the most! >.<

Not to mention they for some reason like showing the latest cover instead of the first one, which can be spoilerish. Ah, and their forums are shit and don't have a search function, like... The hell is that piece of garbage? I know better forums on outdated software that were made in 2006! >.< (And I complain a lot about those dated forums btw)
Seriously, who makes a forum without a search function? It can't be that hard to implement that... And like, when a manga group disappears and I want to know more about it, what do I do? I google about it to see reddit results, because I can't find anything on it in mangadex because I have no search function to look for a thread! >.<

... Not like aggregator forums (if they have one) are much better though, but I don't expect them to be better... I just expected more from mangadex's forums I guess.

So uhn... There are a bunch of small qualms that end up frustrating me when I use mangadex, which makes me often times go back to the aggregators... Primarily to find new stuff nowadays, but this often means I end up reading it there as well... Or try going directly to the translator site as opposed to reading it in mangadex because... I dunno, I really can't like mangadex I guess, it feels lacking to me.

Oh well, that's just my rant, I still love the fact mangadex exists and does a great job for the community, I just wish the site was better than it currently is.

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Comments

    1. AliceShiki Feb 11, 2020
      @BB_Tensei That batoto is just a random aggregator that bought the domain from the original owner.

      @Raneday Aye, I remember~
      BB_Tensei likes this.
    2. Raneday Feb 11, 2020
      @AliceShiki remember Tony planned to make an NU equivalent for Manga's before by axed it due to copyrights or something something
    3. pass1478 Feb 11, 2020
      Thought you were gonna shit on aggregator plagiarism. *phew*

      Honestly, I just click what comes first in the search results. As for checking on updates, I don't lol. If I tag a manga, I'd probably forget about it for the rest of my life.
    4. BB_Tensei Feb 10, 2020
      There are places like bato.to and others, though?

      Oh, missed the line. xD It still exists.
    5. AliceShiki Feb 10, 2020
      @mir Oh yeah, Mangaupdates' search function is terrible, I was never able to use it properly... Luckily, it's very easy to find the pages you want by googling the story and adding "mangaupdates" at the end of the google search~

      I also remember their sign up feature was a bit bugged and I could never create an account. And their contact e-mail for some reason was censored, so I couldn't report the problem either...

      If anything, when I want to know if a manga is dropped, I usually go to mangadex and from mangadex to the translator's site to see if there is any notice about it... I only feel troubled when the translator's site also disappeared, so I can't really know anything by myself... At that point the best bet is to check if an aggregator is still updating the story even when Mangadex isn't updating anymore... T.T
      mir likes this.
    6. mir Feb 10, 2020
      I agree. It's crazy that mangadex doesn't have a forum search function. It bothers me that I often have to use an aggregator site to find info about whether a manga is actually dropped or just not in mangadex. And mangaupdates is wonderful, but their search function is really not that good (which is another part of the reason I end up relying on an aggregator). Really really difficult to find things. Many times I've wanted to find a certain manga, known almost everything about it, and yet couldn't find it for awhile because the title I typed in needed an extra apostrophe or had one word in the wrong place.
      AliceShiki likes this.
    7. AliceShiki Feb 10, 2020
      @seven I do use Mangaupdates! I mentioned it in the beginning of the blog post! xD

      It's just not nearly as practical as NU is~
      seven, DCLXVI, mir and 1 other person like this.
    8. seven Feb 10, 2020
      There's one, actually. It's called Baka Updates. Baka Updates, or also known as MU tracks LN translation releases as well as manga and its equivalents. But at some point in the past, the management of MU was bringing up a discussion about removing non-manga equivalent contents from their site. That's how @Tony started to build NU. And truth to be told, the first generation of NU was heavily influenced by MU in style and how it operates.
      Havisu and AliceShiki like this.
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