Generally, the first thing I do after I read a manga I like here is see if it's available for purchase anywhere. If we love this stuff, we also want to support the artists who create it, right?

The first issue is that so many manga here used translated titles, and since these are mostly niche manga or even doujins, the titles are just made up by the scanslation group. I don't mean made up as in "inaccurate" necessarily, but as in chosen by purely the translators and not based on any more widely-agreed and known English title (because usually, none exists!). That's understandable to a point, but the lack of romanized or at least Japanese titles makes it a pain sometimes to seek out the manga/doujin for purchase. Particularly when scanslators completely replace the original title on the page (which I really dislike), so that I can't even try to search on the Japanese text.

I know Dynasty just aggregates the manga, not does the translations, but would it be possible to add a field or two where users or at least uploaders could provide romanized and Japanese titles? This would cut out a number of extra steps in trying to locate these works for purchase.

Along those lines, I'd also love if users had the ability to provide purchase links directly. For commercial manga the ability to add a Bookwalker JP link (if available) would be great, or Amazon JP or HMV or whatever else. For doujins, the artist might have a DL Site or Pixiv Booth or other foreigner-friendly site from which a copy could be purchased.

If there's already something like this I've somehow never seen, let me know. But right now it seems like, while Dynasty is a well put-together site by and large, it's not really doing as much as I would have hoped to assist readers in supporting legal purchases of the titles and artists we enjoy so much.

last edited at Jul 26, 2017 11:36PM

Hm well about the titles, if looking up the TL'd title doesn't get you anywhere, one thing i would do is look up the author on mangaupdates and go through their listed works. For example, Itou Hachi. The page for the series lists the 'associated names' too, so chances are you'll find the TL'd title (official or not), the romanisation and the original title.

last edited at Jul 27, 2017 2:17AM

I think there's something of an assumption that if you're willing to buy a doujinshi, in Japanese, off a Japanese website that likely only ships to Japan, you're probably familiar enough with pixiv to look through the artist's works for the preview for whichever douj and find the link to Toranoana or Melon Books or whatever. And the artist's page here almost always links their pixiv (if they have one) or, failing that, it's usually on the publishing info page which is almost always left in the scans. For non-doujin manga, googling or checking baka updates manga, as Faust suggests, is trivial.

Really, if you're willing to jump through the hoops to buy JP manga, the amount of effort it would take you to find the info you're wanting is trivial in comparison.

Really, if you're willing to jump through the hoops to buy JP manga, the amount of effort it would take you to find the info you're wanting is trivial in comparison.

Making something easier to obtain actually makes a very big difference. Sure people like me will seek out whatever methods we can, but plenty of people who would be willing to buy simply haven't tried because they don't know.

So while ease is one part of it, but visibility and education is also important. Plenty of people assume that there's just no way to buy this stuff and so never bother looking. I didn't know Bookwalker existed before this year, and only started using Pixiv Booth a couple months ago. Yet I've been importing hundreds of manga and BDs and CDs since 2009. I feel like knowing something is readily available is 90% of the battle. The actual buying is the easy part (especially for commercially published manga).

(I also think there's a little bit of a moral imperative for sites like this to surface legal acquisition methods when possible, but wouldn't base my suggestion purely on morality because that's always a dull argument.)

last edited at Jul 27, 2017 7:41PM

I use ebook japan a lot, though I imagine the site is hard to use for people who don't read Japanese. :/

I usually get the stuff I want recommended to me now on Amazon.co.jp because of all my purchases there. I think an easy way I used to try to find titles was look at the covers that showed the title in Japanese or just search Baka-Updates to get the Japanese title and then paste it on Amazon.