When I first began making content for YouTube, there was (and may still be) a strong trend for manga youtubers to review manga chapters as they came out. I ultimately resisted this temptation and, as time went on, I began to feel repulsed by chapter reviews, viewing them as meaningless content as well as actively damaging to the manga industry. I will try to make my viewpoints clear in this article.
Let us start with a question. What does it mean to review? I want you to take a moment and think about what that means. Done? To me, reviewing means to explain the good and bad aspects of a product and to then either recommend it or not. This is meant to inform a consumer of the product they are considering and a good review should be able to help in their decision. Even if you don’t recommend it, they may still pick up the product based on the good things you have said about it.
Before I continue any further, I should explain that manga is typically released in Japan in manga magazines. These magazines can be released weekly, biweekly, monthly etc and will contain chapters from a variety of series, usually with a common demographic or theme. Once enough chapters have been released, a collection of chapters is released in what’s called a Tankōbon.
When it comes to reviewing chapters, the question I must ask is “What is their purpose?” If you are reviewing chapter 100 of a series, is it likely that someone, who has no experience with the series, will watch it? Instead, I believe that the main audience for these so-called “Reviews” are people who are already reading the manga. In that case, how is the review useful? Are they likely to skip the chapter because you say that it’s bad? No. They are likely to read the bad chapter anyway because they want to keep up with the story.
When I review a series, I typically try to stay light on spoilers, perhaps mentioning what happens in the first chapter or what is written on the blurb. After all, the people watching the review probably want to experience the story for themselves. In the case of chapter reviews, how do you review chapter 100 without talking about what has happened in the past chapters? In fact, how do you review a chapter without spoiling it? It is such a, typically, small amount of content that, in order to review it, you will have to go into the details of what happened.
That shouldn’t be a problem for most people interested in watching the review though. The fact that these videos are more discussions than reviews is surely not lost on them and they consume the chapter before they watch the review. This might not be too bad were it not for the single worst problem that chapter reviews actively encourage.
That problem is scanlation. Scanlations are defined by definitions.net as “The process of scanning and translating foreign language comics (especially Japanese manga or Korean manhwa) into the translator’s language, for free distribution over the Internet. ” As you might expect, most authors and publishers consider this to be stealing and try to discourage it.
I remember noticing that many chapter reviews were coming out a few days before the chapter was released in Japan. I soon discovered that, as the manga magazines are being brought to stores, some of them are taken and scanned onto the internet. It is translated (usually crudely) and released onto scanlation sites before the magazines have been officially released in Japan. Having explained why people must read a chapter before watching the “chapter review”, I believe that these videos encourage viewers to read scanlations of manga.
To conclude, I find chapter reviews reprehensible, both from a content perspective and from a legal and moral perspective. It is my hope that, as people become more educated on the economics of manga, they will realize the damage that these videos cause and that they will give up watching them, particularly if they are true fans of the medium.
Hopefully you have found this article interesting and informative and, if you wish to seek any of the works I mentioned, don’t hesitate to use bookdepository.com for all of your needs!