Onemanga to close down permanently

We Filipinos, we love our manga. You have to admit you flipped pages in a manga scanlation site more than once. So it saddens me to inform you my dear friends that Onemanga, the number one site of Japanese manga scanlations, is closing down due to the change in Japanese manga publisher stances.

Zabi, the administrator of the site says:

Just posting the news here as well in case people somehow missed it.

"It pains me to announce that this is the last week of manga reading on One Manga (!!). Manga publishers have recently changed their stance on manga scanlations and made it clear that they no longer approve of it. We have decided to abide by their wishes, and remove all manga content (regardless of licensing status) from the site. The removal of content will happen gradually (so you can at least finish some of the outstanding reading you have), but we expect all content to be gone by early next week (RIP OM July '10).

So what next? We're not really sure at this point, but we have some ideas we would like to try out. Until then, the One Manga forums will remain active and we encourage all of you to continue using them. OMF has developed into a great community and it would be a shame to see that disappear.

Regardless of whether you stay with us or not, on behalf of the One Manga team, I would like to thank you all for your unwavering support over the years. Through the ups and downs you have stuck with us, and that is what kept us going.

As a certain Porky was fond of saying... That's all folks!

Time for me to go lay down and let this all sink in.

- Zabi"

It's just so sad. Personally, I have developed a bond with this site. Not only are they up-to-date, but there's this feeling of fun and satisfaction everytime I finish reading one of their mangas, especially Naruto, Bleach and Katekyo Hitman Reborn.

Alas, even if it's too early for the site to shut down, anti-piracy junkies have won again. But like most people say, "they might have won the battle, but they haven't won the war." There's still Mangafox and Unixmanga among the plethora of scanlation sites.

So to Onemanga.com, rest in peace.

'Till my next installment.