Fakku Going Legitimate: A Ray Of Hope For Hentai Manga?

[Nosebleed]

So Fakku founder Jacob announced a week ago that Fakku is officially dropping all unlicensed material on their website and will begin pursuing a legitimate place in the hentai manga market.

This is was of huge impact for most of Fakku's users of course.

Fakku was built mostly by scanlators who upload their translations on their site in order to share what used to be Japan exclusive with the whole world. This has always been one of Fakku's core goals, to make hentai manga popular and easily available in the West.

Being a scanlator myself I can definitely sympathize with the thought of sharing all the amazing manga Japan has to offer and sites like Fakku really do help with exposure which is good for everyone.

A while back, Fakku did something no other site has ever really done, they partnered with some major hentai artists like Bosshi and Hisasi to release fully uncensored digital and hard copies of some of their books. This was a huge hit and they've sold thousands of copies already (really recommend buying some because the quality is amazing) and most people thought it was great to have the opportunity to get such exclusive content. However, this was a double edged blade.

Not too long ago, Fakku started taking some drastic measures to avoid legal trouble, and that included the removal of controversial manga tags such as forced (rape), incest, loli, etc.

Jacob assured everyone that the tags just had to be manually turned back on in user settings and that this measure was only to comply with other countries' laws where this content is not allowed and now that Fakku is becoming more legit, they really do need to step up the security.

But sadly this was only the first blow, most recently, these aforementioned tags have been completely removed from the Fakku database, erasing thousands of users' lists and favorites from their profiles.

Not only that but unlicensed content started slowly being removed and Jacob finally made it official on the forums that Fakku will become a completely legal site.

As a scanlator it pains me that a site which was grown and cultivated by fans with a passion for hentai manga is now turning its back on them.

On the other hand, I also do believe in content becoming legally available being a good thing and something most scanlators wish for is the manga they worked on to finally be made legally available worldwide.

Fakku's policy blocked Japan IPs so only westerners could see the releases, this was to ensure the whole "this site is only for people who can't support the official artist". Jacob himself is a big defender of free speech and scanlators so i don't believe he has any ill intent behind this change, but rather, he wants to achieve what most scanlators also believe in, and that is making manga actually available in the West through legal channels. And for that end goal to be reached, getting rid of piracy only helps.

Either way, one thing is sure, Fakku is doing something unprecedented in this business. We don't know exactly what model they're going to be adopting in the future. Maybe something similar to doujin-moe and their premium memberships? All we know is that by the end of August, all manga and doujinshi will have disappeared from Fakku.

What do you think of Fakku pulling a Fuwanovel? (Yes, I made this whole thread to write that)

Do you believe this was the right move or that it won't result in anything too big?

[Kaguya]

People can still use sadpanda for all the good stuff, so fakku was just /meh.

Good for them they're doing something different, I guess. I mildly wish they succeed with what they're doing. Don't really care, though. 

[Abyssal Monkey]

Rip Fakku, I'm glad I made the switch when they screwed up the mobile site.

 

I honestly think this will kill over half the fakku userbase.  The official releases didn't have much of an effect because it was basically added value, but this completely kills the purpose most people went to fakku for in the first place.

 

All hope to them, but they are really just shooting themselves in the foot.

 

Someone more witty than I can write the eulogy for Fakku.  They will survive, but it will be a long trek back up hill,  especially with competing websites like e-hentai and Doujin-Moe still giving out free things to keep the userbase there.

[Nosebleed]

We don't know the plans they have though. There might be alternatives, I know Jacob respects the community as much as you and I and he wouldn't just pull this off without any plans.

They might form agreements with authors to let some manga stay, essentially licensing them.

I agree with alienating the fanbase to an extent, Jacob really did handle this poorly by removing everything and then making a quick announcement out of nowhere, and not even on the front page but on the forum.

Still though, I think there could be something at the end of the road.

Maybe I'm just being overly optimistic.

[Kosakyun]

I think it's a good thing, since there are other sites for browsing doujins anyway.

The death of free doujin Fakku does not necessarily mean the death of the hentai fanbase!

 

I doubt I can do anything related to Fakku's licensed doujins though. My mother would kill me if I bought one of their products.

I'm looking forward to the day when I can.

 

I was pretty sure the thread would be filled with 'burn in hell, Fakku' or something like that.

[sanahtlig]

Not too long ago, Fakku started taking some drastic measures to avoid legal trouble, and that included the removal of controversial manga tags such as forced (rape), incest, loli, etc.

Jacob assured everyone that the tags just had to be manually turned back on in user settings and that this measure was only to comply with other countries' laws where this content is not allowed and now that Fakku is becoming more legit, they really do need to step up the security.

 

But sadly this was only the first blow, most recently, these aforementioned tags have been completely removed from the Fakku database, erasing thousands of users' lists and favorites from their profiles.

Not only that but unlicensed content started slowly being removed and Jacob finally made it official on the forums that Fakku will become a completely legal site.

This is why I can't support Fakku's current direction.  At least JAST makes an effort to give fans what they want, even if it means doing it under the table.  And even JAST doesn't go so far as to censor rape (even just for appearance's sake), and I doubt they'd censor incest either.  Based on these actions, it would appear that Fakku has no regard at all for free speech, and I have little but contempt for operations like that.

[nohman]

I'm not a part of the fakku userbase, so this change doesn't really affect me in the immediate sense. I'll be interested in seeing how this turns out though.

I'd wager they'd go the doujin-moe route of things, alongside selling physical prints of stuff.  I wonder how fast they'll be able to release new content with whatever model they adopt. I'm a pretty voracious reader when it comes to translated stuff, grabbing up most of the new stuff that gets added to sadpanda daily. 

 

I kinda don't expect this to have any impact at all, besides fragmenting the community.

[Abyssal Monkey]

I'm not a part of the fakku userbase, so this change doesn't really affect me in the immediate sense. I'll be interested in seeing how this turns out though.

I'd wager they'd go the doujin-moe route of things, alongside selling physical prints of stuff.  I wonder how fast they'll be able to release new content with whatever model they adopt. I'm a pretty voracious reader when it comes to translated stuff, grabbing up most of the new stuff that gets added to sadpanda daily. 

 

I kinda don't expect this to have any impact at all, besides fragmenting the community.

From what I know of how Doujin Moe operates, Fakku was essentially that before this move, except more legitimate.  Correct me if I'm wrong, but doujin moe sells translated works that they don't own under a subscription, while also giving out free content too.

 

I also completely ignored that section about incest and rape. Wow... nice going Fakku, at least we know where your allegiances lay.

[Nosebleed]

The Fakku staff has never been against this type of content, even going as far stating the loli tag is staying (though it's now RIP).

One of Fakku's most popular memes, the Mega Milk girl, is from an incest doujinshi.

This just makes me think that they're going through a transition period and things might be more well implemented later.

The option to hide controversial tags is still in the user preferences which makes me believe they'll revive the tags at some point later down the line.

This type of content has never been censored before and I know the staff doesn't believe in censorship either, so this is likely forced upon them by financial or security reasons for the time being.

I know the loli tag didn't use to be allowed because of advertising issues but they solved that after a while.

I do think Fakku is planning some under the table stuff, but unlike Jast, they're not really hinting at it. And since there's no precedent of this anywhere, we can only speculate.

[sanahtlig]

So I looked into it and apparently fictional rape pornography is illegal in the United Kingdom.  But wait, it gets better.

 

In February 2015, Section 16 of the Criminal Justice and Courts Act 2015 amended the Criminal Justice and Immigration Act 2008 to criminalise the possession of pornographic imagery depicting acts of rape. The law only applies to consensual, simulated, fantasy material. The possession of an image capturing an actual rape, for example CCTV footage, is not illegal; but a "make believe" image created by and for consenting adults is open to prosecution.

[Chuee]

So I looked into it and apparently fictional rape pornography is illegal in the United Kingdom.  But wait, it gets better.

 

So apparently fictional images of rape are illegal, but real images are ok.

 

Keep in mind, this is the same nation that has a vast network of spy cameras set up to monitor its citizens and has initiated a vast default porn filtering scheme.  Welcome to 1984.

 

Anyway, these UK laws are probably why Fakku started censoring rape material.

 

Err, I'm pretty sure Fakku is based in Oregon, so why would they be worrying over UK laws?

[sanahtlig]

My guess is they're trying to comply with laws in English-speaking First World countries (i.e., not Saudi Arabia or ISIS).  JAST has voiced similar sentiments recently with their decision to censor Starless and Shiny Days.  I'm giving Fakku the benefit of the doubt by assuming they did this for legal reasons and not simply to piss off their fans.

[Abyssal Monkey]

My guess is they're trying to comply with laws in English-speaking First World countries (i.e., not Saudi Arabia or ISIS). JAST has voiced similar sentiments recently with their decision to censor Starless and Shiny Days. I'm giving Fakku the benefit of the doubt by assuming they did this for legal reasons and not simply to piss off their fans.

We all know that they didn't do it to piss off their fans, and that it was probably a legal reason too. We are instead speculating what they are planning to use to replace this while also laughing as we watch fakku temporarily burn itself to the ground.

Honestly, they have to give out some kind of preview of their new books if they don't already. Either that or they get the artist to allow them to release one shots of their works so that the people know what they are getting. If we were to compare them to the porn industry websites, they all give excerpts and previews to get people to buy their stuff. As it stands, fakku doesn't have that and as such will not be getting a new user base to replace the one they will be currently bleeding.

[12kami]

well,i dont really care about the new policy of theirs. 

 

and im also vanilla hunter so no problem with the tag :x

[FinalChaos]

People can still use sadpanda for all the good stuff, so fakku was just /meh.

Good for them they're doing something different, I guess. I mildly wish they succeed with what they're doing. Don't really care, though. 

 

But then again, I rarely visit fakku lately. 

 

So yeah, I hope you burn in hell.

 

So long Fakku, I hope you burn in hell.

I wonder if this is what the other communities were thinking when Fuwa made 'The Jump'. 

[OriginalRen]

I think a lot of 2D animation from Japan is getting attention (i.e. = visual novels, anime, manga) from the rest of the world because of the Olympics coming up. Some of my students and I have been talking a lot about the changes that Japan is implementing in preparation for the event, and a few of my students (3 of them actually) have brought up the controversy with pornography and censorship in the rest of the world. The debates we have had are very interesting, and most of my students have varying standpoints. One of them is a huge fan of PC games actually, and even she thinks it is wise that the country is willing to open itself up more to the world. In order to do that however, changes need to be made.

[Nosebleed]

The hentai manga market in the West is even smaller than the VN market.

With doujin-moe and now Fakku being the only places where you can pay to read hentai manga and Fakku being the sole website selling exclusive uncensored manga only for western fans (not redrawn but actually uncensored as it was originally meant to be).

 

The manga market in general is very small due to licensing issues and only a select few countries actually having good manga opportunities (mostly English speaking countries and France).

In Portugal for example you can get like up to volume 4 or 5 of Shingeki no Kyojin when the original is already in volume 15 which is pretty meh.

 

The scanlation market exists because of this scarcity. All doujin scanlators will tell you the same thing. It's basically the same concept as translation patches.

A lot of manga scanlators will take down the manga they translated once the manga becomes officially available for purchase worldwide and I know if I ever saw any of the manga I translate become licensed, I'd also remove it and publish a link to support the artist.

 

Sadly, this very rarely happens over here because doujins just aren't a thing in the west in terms of market, especially because Western companies have this insane fixation on 3rd party derivate works that's essentially: "you parody my work and sell it? HERE'S A LAWSUIT SCRUB" 

Popular Japanese doujin stores like Toranoana and Melonbooks don't ship worldwide which only makes it more difficult for us to support the original artists.

 

Fakku is essentially trying to go where no other place has gone for and offering official West only hentai manga releases (fully uncensored) and I believe this is a great thing and we can only imagine what they're actually planning by turning themselves into a full fledged business.

But it only will be truly good if they manage to make up for what they've now just lost, and that is pretty much most of their fanbase and all of the translated doujins which aren't available for purchase in the West anywhere that most people went to Fakku for as well as all the unlicensed niche hentai manga that'll never get licensed over here.

They also need to implement the controversial tags back at some point in the future and they need to manage some form of deal that allows users to read some chapters without having to pay because at the moment previews really aren't their strong point.

I'm cool with a subscription model if it means I can read uncensored and exclusive content (because Fakku books are very much copyright protected and they're not uploaded on Sad Panda or most other online readers).

I also think that Fakku could strike deals with doujin artists to allow for their manga to be published on Fakku for us to read.

 

Indeed as of now Fakku has mostly only lost due to the way they approached this change (too sudden with little transparency to the fans), but from what I know of Fakku, I know they do not hate their fanbase and they love hentai as much as most of us do, so I am staying cautiously positive that they do still want to offer the fans who supported them all these years something without asking them for money to read everything.

[Abyssal Monkey]

The hentai manga market in the West is even smaller than the VN market.

With doujin-moe and now Fakku being the only places where you can pay to read hentai manga and Fakku being the sole website selling exclusive uncensored manga only for western fans (not redrawn but actually uncensored as it was originally meant to be).

I seriously doubt the hentai market is smaller than the VN market.  No real evidence, just a feeling.

 

Also, I'm still curious about how doujin-moe can get away with a subscription service on doujins that they haven't licensed or owned the rights to.

[Nosebleed]

I seriously doubt the hentai market is smaller than the VN market.  No real evidence, just a feeling.

How about the non existence of any international hentai manga retailer for evidence? At least visual novels/eroge have Manga Gamer and Jast.

Yeah there's some doujins sold here and there in isolated conventions, most of it probably unlicensed, and even that is very scarce and non centralized, there's no official "this is a place you can go to buy hentai manga" website anywhere. It's pretty much all hogged by Japan.

 

It's not "just a feeling", you'll struggle to buy any hentai manga in the West primarly due to ridiculous international obscenity laws (and what Fakku is currently up against).

 

And yeah I'm not sure how doujin-moe handles their business as well so I can't say much about them, but this is why I'm rather positive about Fakku because they're becoming a legit business that supports the original authors.

[Abyssal Monkey]

How about the non existence of any international hentai manga retailer for evidence? At least visual novels/eroge have Manga Gamer and Jast.

Yeah there's some doujins sold here and there in isolated conventions, most of it probably unlicensed, and even that is very scarce and non centralized, there's no official "this is a place you can go to buy hentai manga" website anywhere. It's pretty much all hogged by Japan.

 

It's not "just a feeling", you'll struggle to buy any hentai manga in the West primarly due to ridiculous international obscenity laws (and what Fakku is currently up against).

 

And yeah I'm not sure how doujin-moe handles their business as well so I can't say much about them, but this is why I'm rather positive about Fakku because they're becoming a legit business that supports the original authors.

I should rephrase this.

 

I seriously doubt the potential hentai market is smaller than the VN one.  What I mean by that is that the number of people who read hentai is far larger than the number of people who read VN.

 

As for Fakku being a continued success on book sales alone, I really don't know.  They would HAVE to move to a subscription based model.  I don't know how much disposable income people have, but if they are anything like me, I read silly amounts of hentai every day, and one tank on FAKKU currently costing $10 for just a digital copy is absolutely ridiculous. You can call me entitled or whatever, I really don't care, but I can read one tank in about an hour, and that's $10 for an hour's worth of entertainment.  Not ignoring the fact that I usually don't revisit the same story lest once maybe two months, the content they are offering for the price they set is just not worth it.

 

I feel Jacob needs to take a look at crunchy and see how they do manga before moving forward any further, because the current business model he has will collapse if he doesn't change it fast.  I see nothing wrong, and in fact highly encourage the physical distribution of the tanks, but the digital cost is simply too high.

[Nosebleed]

I should rephrase this.

 

I seriously doubt the potential hentai market is smaller than the VN one.  What I mean by that is that the number of people who read hentai is far larger than the number of people who read VN.

That's not a market, though, just a large fanbase, which I also agree is infinitely larger, but the capital market remains untapped, at least until now.

The potential is there indeed.

 

As for Fakku being a continued success on book sales alone, I really don't know.  They would HAVE to move to a subscription based model.  I don't know how much disposable income people have, but if they are anything like me, I read silly amounts of hentai every day, and one tank on FAKKU currently costing $10 for just a digital copy is absolutely ridiculous. You can call me entitled or whatever, I really don't care, but I can read one tank in about an hour, and that's $10 for an hour's worth of entertainment.  Not ignoring the fact that I usually don't revisit the same story lest once maybe two months, the content they are offering for the price they set is just not worth it.

 

I feel Jacob needs to take a look at crunchy and see how they do manga before moving forward any further, because the current business model he has will collapse if he doesn't change it fast.  I see nothing wrong, and in fact highly encourage the physical distribution of the tanks, but the digital cost is simply too high.

I only bought Fakku books when they're on sale for half the price.

I do feel like Fakku should allow for individual chapter viewing for a smaller price instead of an "all or nothing" approach. But still, 10 dollars is actually a fair price.

Typical tankoubons are around that price range in Japan, and on top of that you're getting it fully uncensored. It might seem like a lot to you for a 200 page book but that's a pretty similar price point in Japan and Fakku is actually being very lenient with their prices.

 

I agree that a subscription model can help them, but they need to have something more than Fakku books to keep me entertained, I want to be able to read my loli manga whenever I want, uncensored or not, and I'm willing to pay if that supports the original artist, unlike what doujin-moe is doing (I don't believe they license their series).

[hsmsful]

Well that means that Fakku is doing something good for once since it has always been bad anyways. Removing tags, bad quality , no decent mobile version... etc.. , bad fakku is bad.

As for the whole going legit stuff, I don't think it will matter that much due to the international laws so hentai mangas will take some time to become popular and probably only a small part of them will become popular in the world and ofc they won't be sold in many many countries. It has always been like that for vns and mangas too anyways . Anyways I don't really care much about this due to two reasons:

1-When I do have money, I will spend it on stuff like figurines and dakimakuras but that's probably not happening before 6 years ;-;

2-I always either visited exhentai (when I am on pc) and visites doujin-moe (when I am on mobile, their interface is good and I like how they group all the chapters of a series together).

Nonetheless I wish Fakku luck and hope that this gies somewhere since with everything unprecedented happening , they might lose many things in return ... for example the whole majority of their fanbase.

[Kendjin]

They should go down a sub model like subdesu did.

[KuroganeHomura]

 

 

This is why I can't support Fakku's current direction.  At least JAST makes an effort to give fans what they want, even if it means doing it under the table.  And even JAST doesn't go so far as to censor rape (even just for appearance's sake), and I doubt they'd censor incest either.  Based on these actions, it would appear that Fakku has no regard at all for free speech, and I have little but contempt for operations like that.