MangaDex, the popular online repository for fan-translated manga, has been subjected to a sweeping wave of DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act) takedown notices throughout May, leading to the removal of thousands of chapters across an estimated 700 manga titles.
The actions, initiated by a consortium of Japanese and Korean publishers, have been described by a site moderator to MangaAlerts as the first time a takedown happened on this scale.
While an official comprehensive list is not yet available, titles compiled by fans and reported to be affected include well-known works such as 20th Century Boys, Akira, Azumanga Daioh, Claymore, Dragon Ball (and related content), Frieren, Golden Kamuy, Hajime No Ippo, JoJolion, Jujutsu Kaisen, Kaiji, Kuroko no Basket, Mushishi, Nana, One Piece, Oyasumi Punpun, Solo Leveling, Spy x Family, The Apothecary Diaries (both series), and Vinland Saga, among hundreds of others.
The chapters have now been replaced with links to the official sources and their free to read chapters.
This has sparked widespread discussion and discontent among fans about the availability of manga and the practices of official rights holders.
The takedowns are not the result of a single DMCA notice but rather a sustained series of requests over time. Data from Lumen, an open-source DMCA tracker, reportedly shows MangaDex receiving DMCA notices almost daily in May 2025, and several on May 14 itself.
Publishers involved are said to include prominent names such as Kodansha, Square Enix, Shogakukan, One Peace Books, Houbunsha, Lezin, Webtoons, Shinchosa, AlphaPolis, Mag Garden, and Bunkasha, with reports indicating over 100 notices filed in just a two-day period recently.
MangaDex operates as a non-profit platform hosting “scanlations” – manga chapters translated and edited by fan groups. For many international readers, it has served as a primary way to access titles not officially licensed or available in their regions or languages.
According to data from Similarweb, the website (mangadex.org) got 68.8 million views in the last month alone.
Fans have often relied on Mangadex to access and read lesser-known series and niche titles which are not very popular. As one fan of the platform noted, MangaDex is an “embodiment of passion for the entire medium of manga and a preservation of its history for non-Japanese people. It’s a site that really promoted fan translators to share thousands and thousands of niche works to the world.“
The takedowns have ignited strong reactions from the manga community, with many fans expressing frustration and demanding better legal access from Japanese publishers. A common sentiment is that takedowns occur without adequate official alternatives.
“The saddest part of the MangaDex nuke is that license holders don’t realize or ignore WHY scanlations exist to begin with… Not every English manga reader lives in the US… Make [manga] ACTUALLY available Worldwide & not only in select countries,” one fan stated.
According to users of the platform, the massive DMCA takedown request on MangaDex perfectly embodied their issues with the Japanese publishers.
“They would much rather take down ways people can actually consume their manga even if they have abandoned it rather than put in effort to make it more accessible,” another fan noted.
With this move by the Japanese publishers, a call for official digital services that offer a wider variety of content beyond mainstream shonen titles, especially for those in second and third-world countries, have intensified.
These actions against MangaDex follows a slew of stricter copyright enforcement by publishers.
Recent reports indicate that similar takedown efforts have targeted other platforms, including Reddit, where communities discussing manga have faced DMCA notices for sharing unofficial chapters, leaks, or raw scans.
For instance, the subreddit for Blue Lock reported being contacted by Kodansha with requests to remove such content to avoid potential site-wide penalties. Other manga-focused subreddits, including that of Kagurabachi, have also reportedly experienced waves of copyright removals over the past few years.
Earlier this year Japanese lawmakers were shocked to realize that illegal consumption of manga cost the industry around 1 trillion yen.
The large-scale removal of content from MangaDex is only bound to intensify the tensions simmering between the manga readers and the official publishers, who are now bringing the down the hammer on illegal sources.
Source: X
