I don’t get what the manga publishers aim to achieve from this. I’ve bought official translation paper versions of like 20 manga series that I’ve read through scanlations. If I didn’t read the scanlations, there is no way I would ever buy them let alone read them.
There is absolutely no fucking way I would pay per episode like publishers want digitally. They put the dumbest restrictions like I can’t screenshot, I’ll need to pay if I want to access it and all that crap. That’s absolutely not happening. People don’t start reading new manga that way.
It’s probably old farts making decisions based what they learned from “the good old days”. For many Japanese, that was the 80s. This means over-attachment to analog methods and physical objects. It’s cultural inertia that won’t phase out quickly.
That said, I love having the physical paper tankobon or physical figurines! I’ve even bought blu-ray boxes of anime series I love, so that u can actually have/own my own copy of the episodes and support the creators as well!
It may sound strange coming from a programmer and gamer, but streaming or even buying digitally just isn’t the same thing.
Online friends of mine from Japan often feel the same way, too. I really get the feeling that, at least among Japanese otakus, physical copies and merch is still something they value a great deal more than Western otakus/fans.
