Nobunaga no Chef

We are not stopping Nobunaga's translation. The chapters just won't be uploaded here.

Well, as far as this site and its users is concerned, you have stopped.  Actually worse than stopped, that last chapter was horrendous with the watermarks.  It made it incredibly clear what group decided to do a useless thing.  It certainly didn't instill a need to support the group, given that Batoto doesn't rip from scanlators.

I hope someone else picks it up, or I'll just find it the cleaned up version elsewhere.

Why are you here then?

After all bato.to is still a aggregator site, just that they decide to follow the scanlators wishes.

Other sites, the aggregators like mangaf*x and co, take series from scanlators and then host them no matter what.

Batoto on the other hand, is given series by scanlators and then hosts them for as long as the scanlator wants them to.

There's a slight difference between the two and it annoys me when people call Batoto an "aggregator", when the site is basically a public noticeboard for scanlators to use in any which way they choose. Simply calling Batoto one is to lump it in with the rest and ignore every single important thing about the site.

Anyway, bella got very pissy with me for daring to mention any part of our conversation here when I tried to explain their last incoherent statement (the one starting "This is for all the questions below:") for the benefit of everyone else. Apparently I was supposed to know from them not replying any more, that they'd decided to end the conversation unilaterally and also how very dare I tell anyone here anything they hadn't given me permission to say. Nothing I can do on that end, I can't deal with unreasonable people.

It doesn't matter whether or not they post here. If you like the series you read at their place

Why are you here then?

After much, MUCH questioning of bella in PMs about LOLScans new policy and why they've implemented it, this is as close as I've been able to get to answers. Some small parts I've had to fill in the blanks with my best guesses and their actions etc as getting answers out of them is nigh impossible, so take this with a small pinch of salt and draw your own conclusions from it as you like. I know I have.

Me: Why is LOLScans taking such drastic steps to try and fight agregators? There is almost nothing that can be done about them and almost all things you could try will just hurt the readers with no effects on the agregators.

Bella: Should we do the same? Should we not fight it? You do agree they aren't doing something good. Do we continue to allow it? Pretending to be blind? I wonder what would happen if people with their own consciousness wouldn't visit those websites or if every group decided to do something about it. (direct copy paste)

Me: But all you're doing is hurting the honest readers with this madness.

Bella: Yes the watermark wasn't our best bright idea and I did confirm it wasn't. (After saying this, they go on a long tangent and doesn't give any indication of if they care about the readers being hurt by their attempts, or not.)

Me: So why is LOLScans disallowing uploads on Batoto?

Bella: Because there's no point in allowing it.

Me: What? That makes no sense.

Bella: They can just come to our reader to read it.

Me: Is your goal not to share great manga series with other people?

Bella: Yes it is.

Me: Then why?

Bella: There's no point to do it in two places. Everyone knows where they are being released as I left a notice, so it's not a problem of us not wanting to share it and never was any matter if batoto gave us more readers or not. Bookmark our reader or not, join our server or not, keep reading or not: your decision. (direct copy paste)

Me: If people had to keep checking individual bookmarks of every scanlator's site periodically to check for updates for 100 different series or whatever, that would be insanely more time consuming than just checking Batoto's follow list as a way of knowing when updates happen.

Bella: It's not a problem for me.

Me: *sigh*

Me: Okay, so is the goal specifically to force people to read on your site's reader and nowhere else? (direct copy paste)

Bella: *footsteps quickly running up the hall, door slams, tires squeal in the distance* (Stops replying at this point. I think they would claim that they're not trying to force people to read only on their reader, but the evidence indicates otherwise.)

Me: ...

This is for all the questions below:

 

We have a discord too, where you will be notified immediatelly about the update if that's one of your concerns.

 

Nothing is forcing you to bookmark our reader and keep a look out for updates but there's no reason to not do it too.

 

I was already thinking the world was going mad without the "you're monsters hungry for money" regular type of accusation. Our goal is not money and never was. There's nothing forcing you to donate. Our reader is just a reader, no ads, nothing. Just a free reader to anyone that desires to use it.

 

We are more than aware that the artwork doesn't belongs us, still we make no personal money from our scans unlike those agregators. It's in your conscious to pick where you'll read it or if you'll stop reading your favorite story just because of where the story is released.

 

Regarding the stop of batoto releases, this is nothing new. We had stopped some time ago too, remember?

We came back because the person updating our releases on Manga Updates stopped, but there's no need now.

 

Finally, about other teams starting to do their own releases of our projects.... You know how sad it is to someone that worked on the project to see something like that..? I really hope for people to be respectful on that aspect.

 

I think this is my last message here.

Any more concern I'm happy to respond if you contact me.

It is actually kind of amazing how much of a non-answer that post was, and how hard you worked to dodge answering a simple question.

A fantastic question, I've kind of been operating under the assumption that LOLscans is like most scanlation groups, namely that they enjoy certain great manga series and want to bring translated versions of them to a much wider audience. If that's the case then they've been continually going in the wrong direction.

 

However if we assume that their goal lies in something like "getting famous / lots of site traffic" and / or "making lots of money from donations" or whatever else, then suddenly their bizarre actions start to make some sense.

 

How about it Bella; what is both the ongoing goal and end goals of your group?

This is for all the questions below:

We have a discord too, where you will be notified immediatelly about the update if that's one of your concerns.

Nothing is forcing you to bookmark our reader and keep a look out for updates but there's no reason to not do it too.

I was already thinking the world was going mad without the "you're monsters hungry for money" regular type of accusation. Our goal is not money and never was. There's nothing forcing you to donate. Our reader is just a reader, no ads, nothing. Just a free reader to anyone that desires to use it.

We are more than aware that the artwork doesn't belongs us, still we make no personal money from our scans unlike those agregators. It's in your conscious to pick where you'll read it or if you'll stop reading your favorite story just because of where the story is released.

Regarding the stop of batoto releases, this is nothing new. We had stopped some time ago too, remember?

We came back because the person updating our releases on Manga Updates stopped, but there's no need now.

Finally, about other teams starting to do their own releases of our projects.... You know how sad it is to someone that worked on the project to see something like that..? I really hope for people to be respectful on that aspect.

I think this is my last message here.

Any more concern I'm happy to respond if you contact me.

Scanlators are supposed to bring the work to fellow readers as true to its source as possible, but that doesn't look like it's in this case. Also @LOLScans. What's is the purpose of your group doing scanlation? As I see it it's not to share a work with your fellow readers, but it feels like to get recognised somehow.

A fantastic question, I've kind of been operating under the assumption that LOLscans is like most scanlation groups, namely that they enjoy certain great manga series and want to bring translated versions of them to a much wider audience. If that's the case then they've been continually going in the wrong direction.

However if we assume that their goal lies in something like "getting famous / lots of site traffic" and / or "making lots of money from donations" or whatever else, then suddenly their bizarre actions start to make some sense.

How about it Bella; what is both the ongoing goal and end goals of your group?

We are not stopping Nobunaga's translation. The chapters just won't be uploaded here.

And the 'making the worst possible decisions given the situation' continues.

Now instead of some people from here going to your site to read, because they are alerted to the new chapter thanks to the upload on Batoto, nobody will at all. Aggregators will still automatically rip your releases from your site with bots, but anybody who reads manga on Batoto will never even be aware that there was a new chapter in the first place, as they don't follow those aggregators and are unlikely to have your site bookmarked in the hopes of catching of a single manga updating.

This is not the bottom of the barrel, LOLScans passed that some time ago and you seem to be digging deeper into the dirt beneath the barrel in a frenzied effort to reach China. You don't seem to understand what the problem is or have any inclination of fixing it, this is the start of a slow death for your group.

Explaining the problem:

Best places to read your manga:
1: Your own site
1: Batoto
3: Aggregators like mangaf*x

Best places to read your manga:
1: Aggregators like mangaf*x
2: Your own site
3: Batoto

Best places to read your manga:
1: Aggregators like mangaf*x
2: Your own site
N/A: Batoto

Can someone please explain what's wrong with uploading the non-watermark version here? I mean, as soon as the scanlator updates their page, the proper version will be all over the internet. Isn't it better to just upload the clean version to Batoto? Cause let's be honest, no one's going to the scanlator's page. They'd get waaaay more visibility at Batoto.

well... looks like no more Nobunaga no Chef for a while... hope someone will update this soon...

We are not stopping Nobunaga's translation. The chapters just won't be uploaded here.

well... looks like no more Nobunaga no Chef for a while... hope someone will update this soon...

Just the worst attitude a scanlator can take. No translation is really "your" work. It's all built on the backs of the mangaka. As scanlators, we don't own anything, and trying to "fight" and make sure others cannot read the manga in a way you don't approve is selfish.

A brief honest message.

You're right. it was a bad idea and yet you can't blame us from trying to fight for our work, something that we wasted hours working on.

We did try to contact them first and even after that, all we got was silence.

We tried and we understood that even after our obvious stance they still decided to add their own watermarks.

Pretty great, right?

I hope everyone understands that we never meant any harm.

We're very sorry for the disappointment but we're taking another direction with this.

You're right, there's no reason to upload them here like this.

We have a fully functional reader, with no ads, no watermarks and a place for comments too.

For anyone worried, I assure you, we make no money from that reader as the other agregators do.

No more uploads here. I hope you all still decide to follow the story and understand that we like this project as much as you all do.

Hmmmmm, I'm not sure if I can link our reader here?

I will if someone tells it's fine.

I'm trying so hard to cover every aspect ;_;

Bella,

LOLScans

Confirmed with the group that ezflip is one of their staff members and that the watermarks are intended for any comic aggregator site (i.e. sites adding the chapter without them are likely ripping it directly from the group's site).

What idiots. People with no brain like that really deserve the worst.

Confirmed with the group that ezflip is one of their staff members and that the watermarks are intended for any comic aggregator site (i.e. sites adding the chapter without them are likely ripping it directly from the group's site).

If that's really the case then it's absolutely retarded. "Because we hate aggregator sites let's add a shitty version made for aggregator sites to the site where we manually upload ourselves, that'll show them(?)!"

At the very least if you want to troll those sites you add less obvious shit like replacing random speech text with bullshit that can get past low quality (if any, but then only batoto got the glorious version) QC of those sites...

Confirmed with the group that ezflip is one of their staff members and that the watermarks are intended for any comic aggregator site (i.e. sites adding the chapter without them are likely ripping it directly from the group's site).

I see they take a page out of the "bad game dev's guide to preventing piracy" then, namely punishing the legitimate customers and letting the pirates get the best deal of all.

Confirmed with the group that ezflip is one of their staff members and that the watermarks are intended for any comic aggregator site (i.e. sites adding the chapter without them are likely ripping it directly from the group's site).

Great watermark. Perfectly unreadable. Thanks.

I can't read shit