OneManga.com, the largest source of Manga Scanlations (translated manga scans) on the Internet, will remove all manga content from its site.

The announcement was made out of the blue on Thursday (July 22) on the site’s homepage, by One Manga webmaster Zabi. He mentions the changing stance of publishers on scanlations and his decision to comply with their wishes.

Just weeks earlier, 36 major Japanese manga publishers and several American publishers had formed “a coalition to combat the “growing and rampant problem” of scanlations.” Among them are publishing giants Square Enix, Viz media and Tokyopop.

The coalition is concerned that scanlation sites “now host thousands of pirated titles, earning ad revenue and/or membership at the expense of creators, while undermining overseas licensing opportunities and illegally cannibalizing legitimate sales.” .

The coalition has also reportedly threatened legal action against 30 scanning sites.

Square Enix has announced that it will launch its own online manga site in the fall, which will be available to visitors in North America and France. However, it will not be free, as they intend to establish a “paid digital distribution channel” to “better serve the diverse needs of their global customers.” Square Enix is ​​best known for the popular Final Fantasy series of games.

One Manga has been listed at 935th place in Google’s 1000 most visited sites, which obtained its data in May of this year. It claims that One Manga received 4.2 million unique visitors and 1.1 billion page views that month.

So is this the end of One Manga? Unlikely. Although the site will no longer offer visitors the translated scans that made them so popular, they already have a thriving community forum with more than 100,000 members. They also rank very highly in many Google search results, which offers tremendous potential for developing a site aimed at the same target audience.

Among the titles that One Manga readers enjoyed were Naruto, One Piece, and Bleach.