shelly

I was already having problems at work where every once in a while I would open a browser and, if my mind was blank enough, my hand would just naturally reach for the 'b' key.

Wonder how long that'll go on now.

I opened/checked/closed the front page so much in my life that to some extent it almost doesn't really sink in as anything other than "Oh, not many releases today," yet. After the front page goes down I wonder what it will be like for me.

So, who - like me- keeps showing up here outta habit to check for releases?

Its closer to under 6 tb. And that is just the images in the image server. We are still waiting for a cleaned db from grumpy, probably after the site is down since chapters are still being uploaded.

We aren't fully done downloading our backup yet.

It won't be a full backup of the site, but hopefully we will have all the important stuff minus the user data.

That is all I can say for now. 

We will be in the Batoto discord.

https://discord.gg/PxAqQGy

Let's turn back time to Jan of 2011

A site that started out small and mainly for uploading ToG turned into something as big as batoto 7 years down the road.

Who would have thought it would have grown this much. But sadly now it has come to its end.

As the laughs and memories start falling apart.

New one will begin falling into place.

Even with the death of one site, the internet as a whole will carry on as if nothing has ever happened. And then new sites will begin to sprout. The cycle then repeats.

Over and over and over again.

Time flows until the clock stops ticking..

Talking about the older days has me remembering back when Onemanga.com provided scanlations to read before it decided to call it quits.

​That was a good time for younger me.

During my 3 years of high school I had 3 very good friends. We hit it off pretty early, I mean we were practically best friends by the end of the first week of school, it was so easy; we had the same sense of cheesy humor, shared the stupidest ideas and were just the same amount of awkward around girls. We made so many great memories in those 3 short years that I naturally thought we'd remain best friends throughout.

Nope. In the end the 4 of us had one more trait in common: none had the commitment to remain in contact, not a single one of us cared enough to put the fucking effort in. Fucking lazy to the core. And we just drifted apart, so easily, like those 3 years of friendship was nothing.
 
I'll refer to the 3 as M, N, and S.

M was the worst offender. I haven't heard from him since the last day of school. That night we went out for dinner together. And that was it. He didn't have any social media accounts, and his only phone number we were aware of would never connect through to him. He remains a ghost to this day.
 
I sent N messages on Facebook, like twice, asking him what's up. He replied an year later, keeping it super short. He said he was planning on joining a school as a teacher, made sense, he was one of the truest nerds I knew. This was around the time I myself got into Architecture school, so we wished each other the best and went back to being strangers. Almost. Last year we wished each other on our respective birthdays. Through Facebook of course.
 
S and I kept in contact the bare minimum, like, enough that you could call it keeping in contact. He would occasionally send me a message or I would to him. Like 2-3 a year. Or even less probably. I never realised it to be honest but looking back it feels nice having barely kept a friendship we used to cherish alive (afloat? whatever)
 
So, S contacted me last night at around 1 a.m. A brief message, the same familiar format.
His message [censored of course] :
 

 

@[Name of city]News: [Name of town], N (24) Teacher, [Name of school] passed away. Son of [Father’s name]. Details: [Contact info]

 
S:
Our N passed away
~1:16AM
 
Me:
No? Really?
When?
When and where is the funeral are you going?
I can come
 
S:
Dont know any details

 

 
I don't know his address.
I have the means to obtain it, yes.  But I didn't try the contact number.
 
I didn't go to the funeral, assuming it's over.
 
I checked his Facebook profile. Still am. I've been refreshing it from when I got the news. There have been a total of 2 posts on his wall since. Probably his now close friends, co-teachers at his school from what I could tell [there were photos]
I didn't post on his wall.
 
To this moment I don't even know HOW he passed away.
 
I'm scared. And I feel like I'm irrelevant to be honest, after 5 years of being practically strangers, I wonder if I am even allowed to be in the ending of his story.
I feel like shit, not sure how much of this is actual sorrow from the loss of someone I used to know, and how much from not being able to save our friendship, being a lousy ass "friend".

I wonder if M knows about this. Is he even alive? He could've died in an accident that night in 2012 and I wouldn't know.

 
  
And that's it.
I had to write this down. At least as my last tribute to my friend. I don't have the balls to post this -or anything for that matter- on his wall. 
 
I'm sorry for the 4 of us. For having grown so far apart that even showing up at another's funeral is a scary concept.
 
Hope M and S wherever ever they are live out the rest of their lives happily. And I sincerely hope they can save the relationships they cherish moving forward.
 
As for me, there's no running from who I am. I'll be the dreamer I've always been. Playing out the most beautiful scenarios in my head while never putting in the effort to realise them.
 
So, yes. If the 4 of us can ever get together again, somehow, somewhere, just to talk over a dinner and relive our memories from high school. That would be the nicest ending to our story. Or maybe even a new beginning.

I, also, would like to say a big thanks for running Batoto all these years. It's been a good site, and I've spent a lot of time here and read a lot of cute, funny, and heartwarming series. It'd be much better if there were a rip of all the manga here, because so much of it is going to be lost as the scanlators don't have their own websites (or those sites went inactive). But we wouldn't have those chapters in the first place if it weren't for Batoto.

So I'll read a chapter or two of Yokohama Kaidashi Kikou on Batoto one last time, and wish all of our precious community well whatever site you end up on.

Farewell, at least for now...

This is a technical support issue, and I think you'll find better answers on what to do in that forum or the quality assurance forum.

...But hell, who cares about the rules*. It's the eve of the Apocalypse! So I'm just gonna say, try hitting the little gear icon next to the page-select dropdown and see if changing servers does you any good (if none of those work either probably you're/we're just screwed by all the people desperately ripping their favorite scans at the last minute).

*I actually do care about the rules still but teaching people to use the correct forum at a time like this is probably taking "keep calm and carry on" a bit too far.

I'm also looking for a site like this(though I think everyone is); but if it helps, here are some sites you SHOULDN'T go to. The ones I heard about, I heard about through yahoo answers or reddit threads.

Mangad*ep- Has malware ads, but aren't very obtrusive. Probably best bet so far; thanks kingpipot89!

Mangap*nda- has instant redirects and pop-ups. For me it was completely unusable.

Mangastre*m- heard it has exactly the same problems as Mangap*nda.

Mangare*der- has same problems as aforementioned sites.

Mangah*re- heard it has malware ads and redirects.

Mang*go- has malware ads and redirects.

Kis*manga- has alware ads and horrible navigation that causes you to click them unintentionally. Also redirects.

Mangaf*x- Has malware ads and pop-ups.

Onem*nga- heard it has malware ads and redirects.

Mangap*rk- obtrusive malware ads.

Thespe*trum- has malware ads and redirects.

I'm updating this as I find or remember more sites. Also, most of these sites are still usable with the proper ad-blocks, I personally would just rather stay away from sites that try to give you viruses( or affiliate with ad companies who do the same).

This list is nice and all but I think these are actually the only alternatives to bato.to at this moment? If you are looking for a site with a collection of manga. So the only other option would be to check the daily releases at mangaupdates and then find the scanlation site itself. Personally I pref they way bato.to did it with the small thumbnails because I could always get an idea of the artwork and whats the story about when looking for new manga to read. Having to go back to scanning all the titles on the mangaupdates release page and checking random titles for new manga is gonna be so tiring everyday

EDIT: Does Onem*nga still exist in some way? As far as I know that site doesn't exist anymore???

I heard the news and it's hard for me to part ways.  

After a year had passed, since it was created, did I officially join as a member. It was the ideal site for hq scans from growing scanlation groups to the logistics and simple format that made it easy for a non-tech wiz like me to understand nearly everything. The people are amazing, really, they'll entertain you. 

I hope this won't be the last that we see any of you who silently lurked in the forums, those semi-active members that only look at postings or someone like me who appeared ever so often to only say one word--you will be missed. 

Thank you for making this a place that I often found myself welcomed. 

if you want quality chapters, then you're best option is too go to the scanlators sites themselves and read/download from there. Aside from bato.to there really isn't any other site that host the manga series in the quality that said group released them in. Sites like kissmanga are decent, but they usually reduce the quality of the scans and in most cases remove the credit pages form the chapters.

Batoto quickly became my favorite reader because it identified and even let us communicate with scanlation groups.  I cant think of any other aggregate sites that even identify where they got their pages from. 

Ill second Kissmanga as a next best thing. They have similar comment sections on each manga's title page and while they don't link scanlation groups there, they don't remove pages that identify them either. 

only way so far is to search on mangaupdate in order to find the scan's group. what best about bato is also there are many verson of 1 chapter and they continue to update the cleaning

I believe I haven't introduced myself yet. I've been here for about six years, but nowhere in the rules does it say only newbies can post.

I came here after seeing The Company's notices on Tower of God about a mystical land where my beloved Manhua webtoons could be read in uncompressed strip format.

After a while I decided to create an account, just because I desperately wanted to say something in a comments section.

I've never interacted very much with fellow Batotonians one-on-one, but I hope a few of things I've said in the comments over the past several years were memorable enough that a few of you have some vague idea who I am. If not, I hope enough of you genuinely thought I'd said something insightful, funny, or just generally agreeable, at some point over the years.

(As an aside, my username and avatar should not be taken to indicate that I actually enjoy the taste of the referenced sports drink, but rather that I find it terrifically amusing when things are beautifully lost in translation. It is kinda tasty, though, I suppose, in that weird off-putting gatorade way.)

So yeah.

Hi.

This is a very, very very painful farewell. Checking Batoto is the first thing I do as soon as I come back from work, it became a reflex -a very important one that gives me so much joy.

You've created an excellent website and gathered an amazing community. You made a very good job. Thank you for all your efforts, thank you for allowing us to enjoy ourselves for so many years. I'm extremely sorry you had to pay such a high price and sacrifice so much of your own life because of it though.
I wish you all the best.