37 Japanese publishers will distribute digital manga in North America

The Managing Director of Shueisha publisher, Kazuhiko Torishima, announced yesterday in the Denshi Shoseki Comic Summit that there's a project in development called tentatively 'J Manga', which will be a site that will give access to its users to mangas from 37 Japanese Publishers.

It is estimated that the fully operational site will be launched on March 2011. The beta version of the site is already available.

The list of publishers that will participate in the project are:

Akaneshinsha
Akita Shoten
ASCII Media Works
Bunkasha Publishing
Enterbrain
East Press
France Shoin
Fujimi Shobo
Fusosha
Futabasha
Gakken
Gentosha
Hakusensha
Houbunsha
Ichijinsha
Jitsugyo no Nihon Sha
June-Net
Kadokawa Shoten
Kasakura Shuppansha
Kodansha
LEED Publishing
Libre Publishing
Magazine House
Media Factory
Nihonbungeisha
Oakla Publishing
Ohzora Publishing
Shinchosha
Shinshokan Publishing
Shodensha
Shogakukan-Shueisha
Shonen Gahosha
Tatsumi Publishing
Takeshobo
Tokuma Shoten

The famous website, along with others, has removed 350 titles in their stock. Their manager is currently negotiating with representatives of Japanese and U.S. publishers, who formed a coalition on June 8th, for the removal of many manga scanlations that represent financial losses for them.

Mangafox is owned by a Chinese company called Hangzhou Noez Technology Co., Ltd, and it was in the Alexa ranking as one of the 2,000 most visited sites with a million daily visitors from around the world (!!!).

The company has other sites dedicated to streaming anime episodes, a download site and a social networking site exclusively for fans of anime and manga like us.

Wow, this is quite a blow to those who are looking for a specific title, although some people might think that reading manga online legally is much better.

(yeah, right)