J-Comic Terrace Corporation has announced that Manga Library Z will officially re-launch on April 25, 2025, thanks to a successful crowdfunding campaign to revive the platform.
Manga Library Z (previously J-Comi) is an online manga archive originally launched in 2010 by Love Hina manga artists and politician Ken Akamatsu. The platform was created to help preserve old and out-of-print manga titles in digital format. All manga on the archive was hosted for free with permission from the original artists and publishers, with an ad revenue- and premium subscription-based system in place to compensate artists financially.
However, in November last year, Manga Library Z announced that it would be shutting down after 14 years of service. Due to the platform hosting adult manga (among other genres), their payment processors abruptly terminated payment contracts, and credit card payments were suspended on the site. This apparently happened despite Manga Library Z complying with “an international credit card brand’s request that we suspend the distribution of works containing specific words.”
As a result, the archive was left without a stable source of revenue to return to its contributing manga artists and thus decided to shut down, with a promise of returning once an alternative was found.
Fortunately, thanks to a successful crowdfunding campaign hosted on Motion Gallery, Manga Library Z will be reopening. The campaign started in early February and has since amassed over 8.8 million yen (around $60k USD), surpassing its original target of 3 million yen by a large margin. The site is expected to be up and running in late April.
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