Bato.to was not a scanlation group. It was something more consequential: distribution infrastructure for scanlations made by other people.

That distinction helps explain how a practice once organized through scanners, translators, editors, IRC channels, and fan sites grew into a network that rights holders said attracted hundreds of millions of visits in a single month. Scanlation itself means scanning manga, removing its original text, inserting an unofficial translation, and distributing the result; the Content Overseas Distribution Association describes the term as a combination of “scan” and “translation”.

Fan-led manga translation has roots going back to the 1970s. The recognizable internet scanlation workflow arrived much later, around the turn of the millennium. By January 2026, the distribution layer had become large enough that a cross-border criminal investigation helped close Bato.to and dozens of related domains.

What Scanlation Looked Like Before Large Aggregators

Scanlation did not begin with Bato.to, and its prehistory was not necessarily unauthorized. One useful example is Dadakai, the group formed by Frederik Schodt, Jared Cook, Shinji Sakamoto, and Midori Ueda. In 1977, Schodt approached Tezuka Productions for permission to translate Osamu Tezuka’s Phoenix. The group completed English manuscripts for the first five volumes, but they remained unpublished for nearly a quarter century. Schodt later recalled that Viz Media began publishing the translation in 2002, with the complete 12-volume set finished in 2007.

That project matters partly because it was authorized. It belongs to the history of fan enthusiasm and manga translation, but not to the unauthorized digital distribution that later defined scanlation.

The internet model took shape in a very different environment. Inside Scanlation’s history traces an IRC channel called #mangascans to around 1998, when manga scripts, primitive edited scans, GeoCities pages, and other fan projects were already circulating online. Mangascans formed in April 2000 and coordinated translators, scanners, and editors into what the archive describes as the first organized effort closely resembling a modern scanlation group.

The work was more structured than the phrase “fan translation” can imply. A later academic study of a Spanish-language scanlation community documented distinct jobs for cleaning, translation, typesetting, and correction, along with shared tools and internal standards. Scanlation was volunteer culture, but it was also a workflow.

When the Workflow Became Distribution Infrastructure

The sharper conflict arrived when the people translating manga and the sites distributing it were no longer necessarily the same people.

By 2010, Publishers Weekly described a market increasingly dominated by scanlation aggregators: sites hosting thousands of unauthorized editions, drawing millions of readers, and generating advertising revenue. The same report noted that some publishers had previously believed fan translations helped seed the US manga market and attract readers. Large aggregators changed the calculation.

OneManga showed how far that distribution model could scale. In July 2010, ICv2 reported that it ranked 935th on Google’s list of the world’s most-visited websites, with an estimated 4.2 million unique visitors and 1.1 billion page views per month. A coalition of Japanese and American manga publishers had formed the previous month to fight unauthorized online distribution.

OneManga soon announced that it would remove its hosted manga. The important shift was already visible: scanlation had produced its own distribution economy, and the biggest nodes could matter more to publishers than any individual translation team.

Why the Bato.to Case Was Different

Bato.to represents the same separation between production and distribution at a much larger scale.

In its 2026 account of the case, CODA described BATO.TO as a user-submitted piracy site dating to 2014 and said the suspect had played a central role in its operation since at least 2018. CODA identified approximately 60 related sites, including xbato.com, bato.to, and mangapark.io.

According to CODA, those sites recorded a combined 350 million visits in May 2025 and approximately 7.2 billion visits between October 2022 and October 2025. CODA also attributed peak monthly advertising income above 400,000 RMB, or approximately 8 million yen, to statements from the suspected operator. Those traffic and revenue figures come from the enforcement organization pursuing the case and should be read as such rather than as independently audited financial records.

The legal action was similarly cross-border. On September 25, 2025, CODA’s Beijing office filed a criminal complaint on behalf of KADOKAWA, Kodansha, Shueisha, Shogakukan, and Square Enix. China Literature, a Tencent subsidiary whose comics CODA said were also being distributed without authorization, filed a coordinated complaint.

Chinese authorities searched a suspect’s residence on November 19. CODA said the man was detained and questioned, computers were seized, and he was later released on bail. Crucially, CODA said he admitted operating the related sites; that is not the same as reporting that he admitted every alleged copyright violation. CODA said he was expected to be formally indicted.

The network continued limited operation temporarily, which CODA attributed to evidence preservation, before shutting down. By January 19, 2026, CODA said it had confirmed the closure of all 60 identified sites.

The latest public status still requires care. As of August 11, 2026, CODA’s English copyright-news archive contains newer enforcement cases but no later Bato.to update. The publicly reported status should therefore be described as a criminal investigation following complaints and enforcement action, not a completed prosecution or conviction.

The MangaPlaza Sales Spike Is Evidence, Not a Motive

The most provocative detail in CODA’s announcement came after the shutdown.

MangaPlaza was not created as an emergency replacement for Bato.to. NTT Solmare launched the licensed US digital manga store on March 1, 2022, almost four years before the Bato.to network closed.

CODA later said NTT Solmare reported that MangaPlaza’s daily sales approximately doubled immediately after Bato.to’s closure.

That is a striking before-and-after result. It is also narrower than some interpretations invite. A sales jump after a major unauthorized source disappears is consistent with at least some readers moving to a licensed alternative. It does not establish how many Bato.to users converted, how long the increase lasted, how much other factors contributed, or how much revenue piracy had previously displaced.

Most importantly, it does not show that publishers waited to enforce against Bato.to until a replacement platform was ready. The documented sequence runs the other way: major publisher action against aggregators was already visible in 2010; MangaPlaza launched in 2022; CODA says concerns about Bato.to were formally raised at a five-publisher anti-piracy meeting in July 2024; and the criminal complaint followed in September 2025.

The sales spike is evidence of what happened after the shutdown. It is not evidence of why the shutdown happened when it did.

Taking Down the Hub Did Not Erase the Workflow

Bato.to’s closure removed a major distribution network. It did not remove the skills, communities, tools, or incentives that produced unauthorized translations in the first place.

That distinction also makes contemporary anti-piracy numbers difficult to read as a census of scanlation itself. Kakao Entertainment’s enforcement operation covers a broader illegal-distribution ecosystem. In its 2025 anti-piracy report, the company said its team helped close 11 sites and remove 160 million instances of illegal content during the first half of 2025.

Those are company-reported enforcement results, not a count of surviving scanlation groups or websites. They show continuing enforcement activity. They do not show that scanlation has disappeared or provide a reliable measurement of what remains.

The deeper difficulty for rights holders is structural. A centralized aggregator creates a target: domains, servers, advertising revenue, traffic patterns, and identifiable operators. The underlying translation workflow is much harder to eliminate because it can move between groups, platforms, chat services, uploaders, and replacement sites.

Scanlation FAQ

What does scanlation mean?
Scanlation combines “scan” and “translation.” It generally describes comics that have been scanned, edited to remove or replace their original text, translated unofficially, and distributed online.

Is scanlation illegal?
There is no single answer covering every jurisdiction and every possible use. In the United States, however, copyright owners hold exclusive rights including reproduction and the preparation of derivative works, and the US Copyright Office identifies translations as an example of derivative works. Exceptions can apply. Fair use, for example, is evaluated case by case under a fact-specific four-factor test. Reproducing and distributing complete translated manga without authorization should therefore not be described as automatically lawful merely because it is fan-made or noncommercial.

Why did Bato.to shut down in 2026?
CODA filed a criminal complaint in China on September 25, 2025, following requests from five Japanese publishers. Chinese authorities later searched and questioned a suspected operator, and CODA said all 60 identified related sites had been confirmed closed by January 19, 2026.

Has scanlation disappeared completely?
No. Rights holders continue to report unauthorized translation and distribution networks and ongoing takedown activity. Kakao Entertainment, for example, reported 11 site closures and 160 million removals during the first half of 2025, although those broader anti-piracy figures should not be treated as a measurement of scanlation alone.

The Argument Bato.to Leaves Behind

Bato.to matters because it clarifies what scanlation became once the people doing the translation were no longer the only people controlling its circulation.

The old image is a scanner, an untranslated volume, a volunteer translator, and someone patiently rebuilding speech balloons. That labor never fully explains Bato.to. The 2026 case was about what could be built on top of it: a network of domains, enormous traffic, advertising revenue, international uploaders, and a distribution system large enough to attract coordinated enforcement across borders.

The MangaPlaza sales spike suggests that closing one of those hubs can redirect at least some demand toward licensed channels. It does not settle the older argument over whether fan translation creates readers, displaces sales, fills licensing gaps, or does several of those things at once.

What Bato.to changed was the scale of the problem. Scanlation began as people doing work that publishers had not done for them. Aggregation turned that work into infrastructure. And infrastructure, unlike a fan translation passed between friends, leaves something large enough for governments to come looking for.