In a dramatic twist for manga fans and anti-piracy watchdogs alike, Mangajikan—Japan’s notorious manga piracy site—has mysteriously gone offline after taking the internet by storm with a mind-blowing 185 million visits in May 2025 (via TorrentFreak). In Japan, Mangajikan was even bigger than Facebook, Instagram, and ChatGPT.
Now, all that remains on its homepage is a stark, two-word message on the front page: “Website Closed”, leaving fans stunned and anti-piracy teams scrambling.
Mangajikan Vanishes After Going Viral
Mangajikan — which translates roughly to “Cartoon Time” — was virtually unknown when it launched in May 2024. But by early 2025, it had skyrocketed to the top of the manga piracy world. The site’s traffic surged from 104 million visits in March to 90 million in April, before doubling to 185 million in May, making it the most popular site in SimilarWeb’s ‘Animation and Comics’ category in Japan.
This meteoric rise made it the 17th most-visited website in the entire country, surpassing even major global platforms. For a brief moment, Mangajikan was more popular in Japan than Pornhub and more visited than ChatGPT.
Legal Pressure Mounts On Mangajikan
But as it grew, it also drew criticism and closer inspection. Shueisha, a Japanese publishing powerhouse known for hits like ONE PIECE, filed a DMCA subpoena in a U.S. court earlier this week — the latest in a growing series of legal moves in the United States by top Japanese publishers, including Shogakukan, Kadokawa, and Kodansha.
The subpoena targets Cloudflare, a U.S.-based service often used to mask website operator identities. Shueisha is requesting information on around 25 domains linked to manga piracy — including Mangajikan and several others known for sharing raw, untranslated chapters..
The Constant Chaos Of Piracy Sites
The manga piracy world is notorious for playing digital whack-a-mole. When one site goes down, clones and lookalikes take its place. While Mangajikan may have disappeared, traffic data shows that its users quickly migrated to other platforms, often to near-identical domains or rebranded alternatives.
In Vietnam, the trend was striking. For instance, two manga sites with no traffic in March suddenly skyrocketed in popularity by May: one soared to 27.5 million visits, while another rocketed to 77.2 million, making it the 9th most-visited website in the entire country.
Users Beware: Not All Redirects Are Safe
While some users ended up on seemingly legitimate sites, others were unknowingly redirected to malicious domains, including one flagged by cybersecurity service Quad9 for links to adult content and potential malware, prompting it to be sinkholed for user safety.
The Bigger Picture
The shutdown of Mangajikan may feel like a win for publishers fighting the ever-growing tide of manga piracy. However, experts say it’s just a brief pause in a much longer battle. These sites vanish one day, reappearing the next under a new name or domain, making enforcement efforts a game of cat-and-mouse.
