 Hello and welcome to the Grand Line Review, your source for everything One Piece. And today we are going to have a very important discussion centering on the question of whether or not One Piece Manga Readers should support the official release by Viz. And in this video I'm going to go over why I chose to support the official translation on this channel, a brief history of why scans exist, as well as the arguments for and against reading them. I also want to make it very clear that my purpose here today is not to preach at you all or present myself for some sort of arbiter of honor, because I really am the very last person who gets to call people who read scans wrong, as one of the foundations for building this channel was reviewing scans. In fact the argument can be made that I personally was doing far more damage by reviewing scan lations than combined thousands of people who simply read them week to week. But let's get straight into it by further laying down my bias in this discussion. This channel for some time now has instigated a policy on only reviewing the official Viz release for a wide variety of reasons, and I'm very happy to explain those for transparency. Firstly we have the lesser noble reason that if I uploaded a chapter of you based on a scan, then there was a significantly higher chance that my video would be flagged by Shueisha even though it didn't actually use any images from the manga chapter in question. This is because Shueisha, Toei and a whole ton of other global companies have a policy of flagging and removing any video they come across that even looks like it might infringe on their copyright, pretty much from the thumbnail alone. In many cases they won't even watch the video and if they do, the chances that they understand what I'm saying as an English speaker are extraordinarily low. They just recognize that the title and thumbnail says one piece chapter or whatever, and because they see this video before the chapter is officially released, they just assume that it's me uploading the entire chapter rather than discussing it in a review context. And it's not like this happened every week, but over the course of my YouTube career I have had five copyright complaints, with one of them being a false flag on my Luffy vs Kata Curry video, one of them being Toei claiming my Luffy vs Kaito video, and the other three were all Shueisha taking down a chapter review video. So three out of five issues have spawned from early chapter reviews. That is a ridiculously high hit rate and a very obvious pattern, which led me to make the practical decision to switch to the official release. And honestly, I was pretty terrified about making that decision. At one point I was considering whether or not it would still be worth me doing manga reviews at all, because I thought that my views would be drastically reduced as a result of me being late. But I bit the bullet and when I uploaded my first chapter review on a Monday morning, after all of my contemporaries had done theirs on Friday evening, I noticed, well, very little substantive change. There were definitely less views, yes, but the difference was so negligible that I could not believe how I was pushing myself to release a video mere hours after a scan had dropped just for the reward of maybe a couple of extra thousand views at most. And that's when it hit me that even from a strictly business and even profit-driven perspective, it was not worth reviewing a scan. I mean, why push yourself to churn out some initial thoughts based on a product of questionable quality and accuracy when you could take your time to put together a really well thought out and digested review based on the most accurate possible translation. And yes, we'll get into some of the issues that people have with the Viz translation in a bit, but this is where I am coming into this discussion. I, as a YouTuber, even before I realized that reviewing scans was potentially channel threatening, would be constantly frustrated by the fact that on many occasions, my reviews were based on false information. I won't deny that there were a collective of scan groups out there that produced some high-quality stuff, but they still contained very consistent errors, and it's frankly embarrassing when I do something like base an entire two-minute section of a review on information that is false. And not only that, but if I didn't read the official translation at all, I could be basing any future discussion in any of my videos on said false information, and I have done so in the past. And with a channel that's motto is your source for everything one piece, that simply is not good enough. So I saw my unfortunate copyright situation as an opportunity to fine-tune the quality of information that gets disseminated on this channel, which I truly believe can only result in a better product for all of you, even if there is a couple of days waiting attached to it. But with this all in mind, I would not blame anybody for asking the question of why I used scans in the first place, especially if I knew that there was a chance of blatant misinformation. And one reason, as alluded to before, was because I thought that in terms of chapter reviews, being the quickest was the most important factor, and I was very wrong about that. But the other has to do with my long-standing mentality regarding scans, because I've been a One Piece fan for close to 14 years now, and for about 13 of those 14 years, I would read the scans as soon as they dropped. But for some context, I do want to take this all back to what the Manga landscape actually looked like 14 years ago. In 2005, there was no online Manga options. It was print or nothing. And in Australia, the Viz Manga translation of One Piece was sitting somewhere around, you know, Volume 9, so sort of late Arlong arc stages. And meanwhile, the Manga being published in Japan was just entering the any-slobby arc. And with the extraordinarily slow pace in which the English volumes were being released, it would have taken the better part of a decade to catch up to the point where the Manga was currently. Of course, as a dumbass teenager, what I did not predict was the eventual One Piece speed up that Viz did, and thank God for that. But at the time, a high school me was not willing to accept waiting that long, nor would I have had the money to spend buying 40-plus volumes at almost 30 Australian dollars a piece. And yes, the anime existed as well and was ahead of the Manga. But at the time, the only choice of anime was the Four Kids adaptation. So being a One Piece fan was prohibitive in every way imaginable. The only way that a satisfying experience was possible was to read the scans. Errors and all. And my God, oh, there were errors back then. Plus, the actual image quality was comparable to literal garbage, but these were very desperate times. And I think that overall, scan relations had a positive effect on the Manga industry because it forced them to provide readers with an online alternative delivered in a prompt manner worldwide. So illegal or not, I think that both readers and publishers were great thanks to ScanLations for providing us with a vision of the future for a globalized society. I mean, it still took an awfully long time to get to that point, but here we are in this day and age, and I personally think that scans have now been made redundant. However, I was still in a habit of reading them as all of this innovation was going on around me. Yes, Shueisha and Viz began their online services, but I had been reading scans for like a decade at this point. In fact, it was the most consistent part of my life looking back on it. You know how things change, like being in university, working different jobs, or even being in different relationships, but the one constant was the fact that every week, a scan of One Piece was going to drop, and I was going to click it immediately. And that's been a really difficult habit to break, especially because running a channel and a community on Discord and Facebook, specifically about One Piece, it's just impossible for me to avoid spoilers. I would have to actively not look at my comments, my page, or even some of my primary server channels for almost three days straight, and I just can't do that because I do value communicating with all of you. But that's very much my personal problem, and the large majority of people aren't going to be too affected in that regard. So that leaves us with two potential arguments in favor of reading scan lations, one being the speed at which they are released, and the other being the very subjective notion of quality. Starting with speed, there's no way around this, but scans will always be available before the official chapter provided that Shueisha is determined to continue focusing on their print business model. And the Library of Ohara put together a really good timeline in regards to this as part of an article on why he supports scan lations, which I will link in the description because he does raise a lot of interesting arguments, most of which I don't personally agree with, but you guys are free to engage in some critical thinking and make up your own minds. But what this particular point boils down to is that until Shueisha further adapts to the digital market and releases chapters online prior to the magazine release, we're going to be stuck with a system of early scans, meaning that for those of you who want One Piece as fast as possible quality be damned, that is always going to be your natural option. And I get why you'd want to do that, I really do, because this is such a wonderful community built around an amazing story that has had us all gripped for over two decades now, and we want to be in the know and in the discussion as soon as possible. And I will be honest, it's hard to come up with a counter-argument to this that doesn't sound like just suck it up and wait. As the community currently stands, you would have to effectively ostracize yourself for it for just under half a week, which is not a pleasant thought. Although as a community, I think we can do much better in this regard simply by not being dicks and being very considerate about spoilers, keeping them under lock and key for those who don't want to see them. But then again, this is the internet so I don't expect that sort of social responsibility to take place. Although that isn't to say that it can't be done, I mean when Avengers Endgame came out, I witnessed an unparalleled wall of support for not spoiling the experience for others. So surely we as a community can stop doing that as well? That would be one step towards fostering a better environment for supporting the official release. But now, why should we support the official release beyond legal or moral obligation? Neither of which I'm going to go into, because quite frankly, they are boring and they won't convince anybody who regularly reads scans to stop anyway. But one of my primary arguments for supporting the official release is simply quality. And a lot of people are going to disagree with me on this, which is fine because quality is very subjective, but a lot of the examples are going to cite specific translation grabs. So for example, the obvious one is the fact that Viz still translates Zoro as Zolo. Now we know that they do this for continuity reasons, I still find it personally a bit ridiculous and I would say just change it, no one's going to care. But even if it has to be Zolo for the end of time, it's not the biggest issue in the world. There are also other translation issues I do have, such as calling Kido's crew the animal kingdom pirates. That in particular just doesn't suit my taste at all. Or effectively give me an impression of what Kido's crew actually is. It sounds more like a crew made up entirely of creatures in Movie 3, where they visited the island that may chopper a king. And there are others, and as much as they get cited by the fans, they are really not a big issue in the grand scheme of the story, because they are surface level changes. Almost all of these gripes are going to be completely based in nouns. And nouns by and large do not affect the greatest story. They don't impact the narrative or the perception of what's happening in the manga. Nouns are just a quality of life preference. However, scans do the exact opposite. They will honor nouns incessantly, and acquiesce to the general fan consensus regarding names. But when it comes to the story, they make mistakes left, right, and center, which I would argue is so much more damaging to the series than a cringy name here and there. And even then, scanlations are not immune from cringy names. Every time a new character is introduced, every scan group will translate their name differently, and it just leads to mass confusion amongst the fanbase, which is a much longer lasting effect than you'd think. I mean for example, do we all remember when Katakuri was translated as Dogtooth? And to this day, I still get comments on my YouTube videos featuring Katakuri calling him Dogtooth. Like it really does such a significant amount of damage to the perception of One Piece within the community. And we all need a universal point of reference, and the only organization that is going to give us that is Viz. So you know what, we as fans can keep calling Zoro Zoro and keep referring to the Beast Pirates as the Beast Pirates. But in regards to the story, Viz is the only trustworthy source. And for a series where story is more important than anything else, I believe that this is as good a reason as any to support the official release exclusively. But in the end, it's not up to me to make that decision for you, especially with my particularly hypocritical background. I would implore you to support the official release, but I also think that Shueisha needs to wake up, realize it's 2020 now, and deliver their product to a new world digital medium. The free market has spoken, and it has determined that 3 days to wait is simply too long. People are willing to accept products of lower quality for the sake of speed, and Shueisha needs to learn from this and offer a high quality product with a similar speed. From a business standpoint, I think that is the only way to truly solve piracy once and for all. With that said, that doesn't mean that you have to take part in it. Reading ScanLations is always a choice that we make. Nobody forces us to sit down clockwork orange style and projects 18 pages of scanned manga into our eyeballs every week against our will, and especially when the official release is completely 100% free and to the best of my knowledge available worldwide through either the Viz website or Manga Plus. Links to which will be in a pinned comment below. And some of you may also have problems with the usability of these sites, I've personally never had an issue, but if you have, then great, send them some feedback so they can improve that product for you, because if enough people take a minute out of their day to report something, it will be listened to. In the end though, while I don't think that this battle between scans and the official release is going to be over anytime soon, I just wanted to make it clear why I've made the decision that I have. I will be supporting the official release from here on out because it makes almost no difference to my channel, and because I believe that it will result in better content for all of you. And that pretty much does it for this discussion regarding the official release of the One Piece Manga. If you enjoyed this video and the content this channel produced in general, then please do consider donating to the Grand Line Review Patreon because the support of all of your amazing people is what continues to make this channel possible. And if you'd like to see more videos like this but applied to other anime and manga series, then please do feel free to check out my second channel New World Review for all of your wider needs. And if you'd like to join the fun at any time then please do head over to my Discord server where a wide array of shenanigans takes place on a daily basis. And finally please do comment with your thoughts on scans versus the official release. This has been the Grand Line Review, and I'll see you next time.