Everyone knows it’s not hard to find any manga you might want to read online, even if the websites in question might not be on the best legal footing. Now hentai mangaka Manno has released a YouTube video with a message that’s important to him: he’s asking fans to stop reading his works on illegal manga pirate sites. Let’s take a look at his message, and the wider issue of online manga piracy in 2026!
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Artist Manno Asks Fans to Stop Reading His Works on Pirate Websites! What Are His Reasons?
The other day I came across a tweet from Anime Trends detailing the video posted by hentai manga artist Manno. In the video, Manno makes a passionate plea to his fans to stop reading his works on pirate manga sites. He explained in detail what creating hentai manga means to him and why his fans should not consume it for free.
- How Manno became a professional hentai artist. He basically had to dedicate everything he had to his art, giving up on ever dating girls and enjoying a normal sexual life.
- Work and life have completely merged. Being a solo artist with no assistants, Manno works extremely hard on his art, never relaxing or enjoying free time. And he can’t tell his family what kind of manga he draws, which causes stress for him.
- He works so hard that he can no longer enjoy adult content. If he watches porn, his brain switches into artist mode, analyzing the poses and camera angles. So he can’t even enjoy a wank after a long day drawing.
- The workload that being a professional manga artist involves is terrible. He spends 2-3 hours drawing a single panel that readers will see for only a few seconds. Drawing that much takes a toll on his back and his overall health.
Manno’s video generated a lot of positive discussion with his fans on Twitter. At the suggestion of his followers, he opened a Patreon, and many fans pledged to support his work that way.
You can also support this artist by buying Manno’s hentai doujins and anime DVDs from J-List. We love his Drop-in Gyaru hentai series, and his brand new offering from the most recent Comiket, A 2D Otaku Falls For The Curvy Idol Transfer Student.
What Pirated Manga Costs the Industry
A few years ago, Love Hina creator (and sitting member of Japan’s Parliament) Ken Akamatsu testified in front of Japanese lawmakers about the damage that manga piracy was doing to the industry. His frustration included these points:
- Anger at seeing his hard work given away for free. Manga that took Akamatsu three months to create are uploaded in a day. And since individual chapters are available immediately, this harms the demand for tankoubon volumes that will be published months later. He especially called out “cyberlocker sites” that charged money for faster download speeds.
- Reproduction quality. In the old days, pirated manga from “scanlation” groups was of lower quality, which allowed publishers to receive money by providing higher-quality versions. But these days, even pirated works are full quality.
- Especially bad for new artists. While established artists like Akamatsu can still make a living, manga piracy is extremely harmful to up-and-coming artists, who can’t live off the royalties from their work. This endangers the whole industry, which might find itself with a lack of new talent in the future.
What is the real cost of the damage caused by illegal manga piracy websites? Japan’s manga industry groups estimate the cost of manga piracy at around $17-18 billion a year, which is a staggering number. But it’s difficult to quantify this amount. When a young man in Indonesia reads a localized scanlation of his favorite JUMP manga for free, how much of that “loss” is real? Unless there is a legal avenue for him to buy the manga, it’s not really a loss. The real damage comes when active fans in advanced countries choose free websites over properly licensed options.
More Manga Pirate Sites than Proper Shops?
J-List, of course, sells popular hentai manga and doujinshi comics from Japan’s best artists, and has sold hundreds of thousands of books over the years. Whenever I pick up a manga and prepare to post it to the J-List store, I Google the name so I can grab the chapter titles without translating them manually. In addition to various Japanese shops selling the manga, I generally find one or two sites providing the entire manga online for free. Occasionally I find more pirate manga sites than proper shops selling the book, which makes me sad.
Want to read J18 Publishing manga and doujin online for free? Keep reading to find out how!
It’s a testament to anime fans (and J-List customers!) that J-List is able to bring these books to fans and collectors despite free options that are just a search away. It warms my heart to have received such support from our customers over the years.
Why Do Manga Fans Pirate the Manga They Love?
It’s a difficult question. We all love manga, so we all want to support the artists and publishers who bring it to us, right? And yet, there are valid reasons why fans might find themselves reading their favorite manga for free online.
- Time lag. Once upon a time, fans expected to wait a few years for anime and manga to get localized. With the internet, that time lag is gone.
- Cancelled releases. If you were buying physical releases of a series that got cancelled after volume 5, you might be wary of supporting that publisher in the future.
- Different local realities. Countries like Spain or Switzerland have multiple languages. Would a publisher have to make versions in Castilian, Catalan, and Basque?
- Problems obtaining adult manga. With increasing restrictions on what kinds of products can be purchased with credit cards, it’s not always possible to purchase physical copies of manga or doujinshi and have them shipped to your home. And for the same reason there’s no “Netflix of hentai anime,” there’s no reputable website you can subscribe to that has licensed versions of your favorite H manga.
And piracy can really affect the industry. In the case of hentai anime, fans consumed so much of it for free in the first decade of the 2000s that licensed hentai anime basically disappeared. That’s why you’ve seen almost no uncensored hentai anime since the Bible Black era. J-List has plenty of hentai anime from Japan in stock, but licensed, localized hentai anime is basically non-existent.
Happily, fans of hentai visual novels seem to pirate the titles JAST USA pioneered much less. And if fans did download a pirated copy first, they’d often come and buy a legitimate one from us at a convention, or during a Steam sale.
Is Manga Piracy Always a Bad Thing?
Once I was in a meeting with a certain well-known manga and video game artist. He was in a bad mood because the manga and artwork he had spent so many years working on was available for free online. I told him that yes, having his work consumed for free was certainly a frustrating experience. But looked at another way, it was actually a good thing. If there are 100,000 fans who knew his name and art style because they’d encountered it online, that means there were 100,000 potential customers waiting to buy the books or games that we were preparing to release in proper versions. He was so happy to hear this that he gave me a bottle of scotch.
So yes, having zero friction when it comes to distributing something like hentai manga is not good for artists trying to make a living from their work. But there can be a silver lining in the form of name recognition. For some lucky creators, online manga piracy can unlock new opportunities if they become famous enough with passionate fans.
FAKKU and J18 Publishing Have Changed the Hentai Manga Industry for the Better
Of course, the best possible alternative to online manga piracy is to buy the proper physical books from publishers FAKKU and J18 Publishing. Both companies are extremely passionate about translating Japan’s best manga and doujinshi into English, with zero censorship. We fans get amazing hentai stories, properly translated into English and with all the sexy details we want to see. Japan’s publishers and artists receive royalties, which have been inflated thanks to the weak yen over the past few years. Everybody wins!
Want to Read Manga for Free? Use the J18 Publishing Free Manga Reader!
Since everyone wants to read manga on digital devices, J-List’s sister company J18 Publishing created a great way to do that: the J18 Manga Reader at Doujin.io. It’s totally free to use (though you need to create an account), and lets you browse the newest tankoubon manga and doujinshi published by J18 Publishing, if the original artists signed on. We believe you’ll be so happy with the quality of our translations that you’ll want to own the physical books before they sell out.
Thanks for reading this blog post exploring the video artist Manno made asking his fans to stop reading his works on manga pirate sites. What do you think can be done to stop or reduce manga piracy? Tell us your thoughts in the comments!
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J-List has another sale for you: 18% off all adult toys. This means amazing offerings from Magic Eyes, Toy’s Heart, Maccos Japan, and Tamatoys. You can also get 18% off all personal ero lotion to get you through the rest of the year! Start browsing here!
