User blog comment:Lemursrule/Mangastream no longer hosting Shonen Jump Manga/@comment-1351982-20120212012439/@comment-1248963-20120212111254

I just want to ask where have you seen people comparing Viz with Hitler. I haven't been all over the place, but even if I've seen a lot of negative reactions, I haven't seen anything like this.

But regardless, I understand that you try to calm people down and not have them react aggressively, because after all, it is the old copyright/ilegality debate all over again, but I hope you try to understand where people are coming from too. You live in the States and have access to Alpha and Viz's printed tankobon and many official media. Many of us don't. Many of us live in countries where there is not a single licensing company that will publish legal manga. In my particular case, I can find manga imported from Europe and USA on the occasional Manga-Con, but if I want to buy it I have to pay thrice its original price. With a third-world-country salary like mine, it's the kind of money I can't cash out.

Of course Alpha is a great proposal. But it's region blocked. For whatever reason. It doesn't change the fact that it's region blocked. Viz has stopped printing the Jump magazine, another official good that I could eventually purchase and made it digitally-region-blocked. And it also doesn't change that it's a rental. I'm sorry, but paying for digital media (pixels, fricking pixels) that I can't keep and reread say... in six months when I want to revisit a color spread, or a scene that I loved, or something I don't remember and need to check for a reference, is absolutely not worth it compared to scanlators that keep their files stored in the net for eternity.

Finally, another problem is that MS had to take down say... 7 series. Out of those, only 3 are part of the Alpha project. Manga like Reborn, D.Gray Man, Claymore, and HunterxHunter are now abandoned and if I remember correctly, at least one or two of them have been dropped by Viz itself. No scanlation and no official release. Of course everyone is mad.

So yeah, MS didn't have the best translations, but they had the fastest release and the cleanest scans. And most importantly, they made manga available to everyone through a system that also encouraged you to buy the official work. I hope you understand why so many people (including myself) are so upset about this