Chef Sanji Posts

You do realize before FAKKU actually started playing by the rules and legally acquiring the right to the intellectual property from official sources in Japan, they were just one of many pirate sites offering content they legally did not have the right to distribute, correct?

Once FAKKU went legit, they no longer could continue to host content illegally anymore. FAKKU's business partners in Japan, like Wani, would not allow FAKKU to continue to have pirated content and continue doing legal business with FAKKU at the same time. Either FAKKU is nothing more than one of many pirate sites hosting illegally obtained content or it is a legal, for profit, business aimed at providing a revenue link between the western fanbase and the content creators and license holders in Japan. It can't be both and continue to run legally. This means FAKKU had to remove all illegally hosted content and also had to clean up the site to show business partners in Japan they were serious about dong things the right way from then out.

I, for one, am glad FAKKU made the change. Now the artists actually get something financially for our views besides kudos, and we get super high resolution, direct from the creators, images, which are fully uncensored to boot. No pirate site can offer you that, unless they are taking it directly from FAKKU and reposting it on their site.



How else is one supposed to interpret the line "whoring yourself out for cash" in the context of FAKKU switching to a legal subscription model? If FAKKU legally selling stuff versus illegally hosting stuff was not your point previously with the Alexa ranking, then what, exactly, was your point?



Maybe, just maybe, FAKKU wants to actually, you know, give something back to the artists by going legit and stop profiting from illegal means by themselves. Maybe FAKKU's goal isn't just getting as many hits as possible but actually growing legal ero manga distribution in the west. FAKKU going legit is a win-win for both artists and FAKKU alike. Being a pirate site only benefits FAKKU directly, and at the expense of the content creator getting paid anything for viewership of their content.

As far as I know, HentaiKey is an illegal operation hosting content they don't legally have permission to have from the content creators. Any money they make goes to line their own coffers and doesn't give back to the ones who made the content. Supporting that is supporting someone profiting off of another person's hard work and efforts. The original content creators listed above are all ones FAKKU is working with to legally bring their content to the west. I imagine FAKKU pays them a licensing fee to do so as well. They are all thrilled to have a legal way to gain viewership and revenue abroad through FAKKU's efforts. That's something the pirate sites can't do.

FAKKU being a service and not a content creator itself has absolutely nothing to do with anything. Not sure why you even wasted time typing that tbh. The bottom line is FAKKU's service both works with and supports the artists, while other "services" out there don't. FAKKU also does indeed make original translations for works hosted on the site now, as well as employs several people to work on making English typeset graphics for the works. FAKKU is indeed official, in that they actually, you know, legally work with the content creators and pay to license their content for distribution in English. Also, they do make things, like the English translated tankobon books and some doujinshi. While they do not create the original content, they do create the officially licensed English equivalent in both print and digital format with legal permission from the creator.

Yeah, I get it. FAKKU was previously a pirate site and profited from illegally hosting the content then, making them look hypocritical now that they are legit. That said, I applaud FAKKU for realizing the error of their ways and going the legal route now. They can use their ill-gotten brand to actually affect positive change and grow legal, artist supporting, ero manga distribution outside of Japan. That's a lot nobler aim in my view than continuing down the pirate path, never giving back to the artists, and being a petulant child who feels entitled to things they don't own for free because internet.

Nah, your rant is probably justified, I feel you on the digital front at least. A digital FAKKU release at the same dollar value as a Project-H one at this point in time is just plain better in terms of value for the money. I'm still waiting to see how their print manga stacks up in person, but going by pics and comments from others, it seems there is still room for improvement; which, to their credit, they seem to be making in the print realm of late if those reports are true. My bigger pet peeve is the censorship on print releases still. While I'm happy they get released at all, censorship is a huge turn off to me. I'm way more likely to buy a book on impulse knowing it is fully intact and uncensored than knowing it has content missing and/or genitals censored.

Project-H is part of a larger corporate structure under Digital Manga Inc. and probably has more red tape and disconnect between people in the organization as a result. Hopefully, the Project-H division is taking notice of what FAKKU is doing and is reporting back to higher ups about what needs to be done to compete long term and not just resting on "it's porn, they will buy it". I think the print ero manga, and anime for that matter, market shrinking over the past decade has shown you can't just assume that any longer. What's more, FAKKU seems to be doing quite well by comparison, so the market is definitely still there, it has just changed how it consumes the media and has higher quality standards than the market of yesteryear. If a company can meet those quality standards while still turning profit, then it is a no brainer it can work with the right team at the helm and a passion for what you do. I'd love to see someone try and do what FAKKU, or even Crunchyroll, does but with ero anime, and start a legal streaming site with uncensored simulcast and catalog streaming content. There are a few PPV sites that are legal, but they are so expensive and the market has changed so much from the PPV days. They need to rethink their business model if they want to compete with "free" alternatives.

As to where they are printed, that's interesting. I don't know how big of a difference it makes for their revenues, however. Quality for FAKKU releases does not seem to be affected by it at least. I can't imagine a printer in China or Canada is so cheap that paying to import books back into the US would be that much cheaper than printing them here. Maybe I'm wrong, though, as I have no idea what printer costs are like between the countries. It is pretty sad importing it back into the US seems to be cheaper than using a US printer.

This is a pretty nice idea. Just thought I'd add I think a redeem code to add a gift sub to an account would be the best way to implement a possible gift sub addition. If the person receiving the gift is already subscribed, then entering the code should tack it on to the end of their current sub term.

For example, let's say someone subs monthly currently and gets a gift sub. Let's also say they just were billed for the current month of January on the 1st in this hypothetical. That user redeeming a one month gift sub code would make their next month free, so when it came time to autobill in February, the system instead does not bill that user until March, unless the user cancels their sub renewal before the March rebill date. Doing it this way would not interrupt their sub, in that the month after the free one they would be charged as normal unless they cancel.

The same could work if the gift sub was, say 6 months. That same user would get February through July free on their end but their payment method would be rebilled at their chosen monthly option come August if they did not choose to cancel renewal in the meantime.

Not a bad idea, but I'd suggest also to have an option to show only the books one purchased. The button to toggle this option on and off should be at the top of the Library page and say something to the effect of "Show Only Purchases". They could maybe also add a filter to show only books/doujin that have not been purchased. Again, a filter option at the top of the Library page could read something to the effect of "Hide Purchases" to filter out already purchased books. That would come in handy to see what you may still want to buy, while the other would be useful for quicker navigation of a user's current book Library. A manual "Hide by Book" option with check marks next to the books to select what to hide would fit the OP's request well, I think. That option could be useful to hide what you are not interested in buying while still showing the gaps in what you intend to buy in your Library.

Another useful feature could be a wishlist feature for purchaseable books/doujin. It would also be handy for showing other users what they should potentially send you as a gift if they were ever so inclined.

I would also like it if FAKKU could separate the book Library from the doujin Library, or at least add a filter to show only books versus show only doujin.

No worries. Since I did not know when the coupon code would expire and this is likely the best discount they will offer outside of maybe a Black Friday or clearance sale, I decided to put in a decent size order to get free shipping and make the most of it. I got both the print and digital copies of the following:

How Good Was I? (2nd Edition) - For a more vanilla Yamatogawa experience.
Power Play! (2nd Edition) - Love fantasy settings and this one has some nice art too.
Boing Boing (2nd Edition) - Looks like this is one of the more praised Yamatogawa books. I liked what I saw so far.
Cute Devil Girlfriend (2nd Edition) - I love me some monster girls and bonus points if they are demon/oni or succubus
Deep Stalker - Yeah, I went there... I can only read so much vanilla before I need a little more stimulation lol.
Strange Sex In Parallel Worlds - The concept looks fun and I liked the art and crazy story. Pity a short chapter is cut, though.
Welcome to MizuryuLand! The 1st Day - A great looking doujin series. Again, really like the art and also the fun story.
Welcome to MizuryuLand! The 1.5 Day - See above.

All together with the 20% off coupon applied it came to around $152 with free shipping. That's $19 per book/doujin if you split it up evenly. I pretty much just got the digital versions for free with the print ones with that discount. However, the digital coming with the print by buying direct should be standard practice, IMHO. FAKKU sets the bar there and spoils us with its generosity, but that's goodwill you can't buy in my book.

I would have got Welcome to MizuryuLand! The 2nd Day as well if the print version was stocked. Will have to wait for a restock for now. I decided to hold off on Yamatogawa's Aqua Bless, Witchcraft, and Vanilla Essence for now, given the first two had print runs with other companies and are likely to stick around longer and the latter may be stocked in LE format if there is any excess left over later; at least that's my wishful thinking for now.

As to the digital, I chose .cbz for my one option I'm allowed. Again, FAKKU sets the bar there with ALL options allowed and included with print. While I figured the resolution was going to be x2400, it is actually half that! It's only x1200 resolution .jpg images. I was pretty disappointed to find they cheap out not only with resolution but also go the .jpg route instead of .png for the individual image files. FAKKU not only has better resolution at x3200 and x2600, but it also uses .png for the images, which is a lot less lossy in terms of quality. The Project-H digital images exhibit some minor artifacting around edges being .jpg and the lower resolution, which makes its only real advantage over scanlations being it is uncensored, presumably from the original files from the creator. Anyway, though I'm certainly disappointed in the digital quality relative to FAKKU, I still am glad to have them digitally uncensored for quick and convenient reading on my PC and phone/tablet. I hope Project-H is looking at FAKKU's quality digital releases and is gearing up to improve their digital catalog. Honestly, that is probably the single most important thing they should do to stay competitive long term.

I hope their print quality impresses me a lot more than the digital. They have some good titles but really need to let FAKKU handle their releases or something to ensure they are worth the money in quality. At least I'm happy there is an option for, mostly, uncensored and actually supporting the artists and legal distro. FAKKU can't grow larger soon enough. We need that quality to be the standard industry wide.

Thanks a lot for the heads up, appreciate it. Haven't put in an order yet, been waiting to hear back from support regarding my questions. That said, this is a pretty good discount and I may chance an order for some of their web store limited stuff.

Do you know how long this coupon code is good for and does it have any restrictions?

Awww, yes. Will be buying this again... in English print copies, haha. Congrats on the success of this sale, too.

Please tell me you also have plans to localize and distribute...

the "mother/daughter mix" chapter that is in the works by Shindou now.

Looks like the 80 unsigned print copies of the mother chapter are now completely sold out, too. Considering it has not even been 24 hours since it was offered, I'd say this was a great success, initial web store issues aside.

Dang, that box set looks gorgeous. I'd really love a reprint to get my hands on one, but it looks like, according to the post a few posts up, there are no plans to make any more as of now. Maybe a standard edition could be considered, though?

Hope you can both work out what happened all right, especially considering that is $15x20=$300 difference in total revenue for the daughter chapter copies. I thought it was weird it was only $14.95 for the daughter chapter, and it did not say signed on the store page either, if it was supposed to be signed as well. Not sure entirely what happened there, but if I had to guess I'd say the system in place that calculates the shipping cost based on region went wacky with the site traffic at the time, besides the error in price being posted. I'm fine with FAKKU coming back and charging the $15 that was missing as long as the shipping issue is worked out, too.

To compare shipping discrepancies, I tried putting the unsigned $14.95 mother chapter in my cart just now to test things and it offered me the option of USPS Media Mail at $2.72 as the lowest option. Which is a far cry off from the $11.44 for the USPS Priority at the next lowest, which was the lowest option available for the daughter chapter when I checked it out. It is also weird that the signed mother chapter did not have a USPS Media Mail option at $2.72 for me, either, and instead had USPS First Class at $3.60 as the lowest option. Seems the store was definitely bugged out then.

Perhaps the fairest solution will be to refund any charges, then send revised invoices with both accurate and combined shipping costs and an updated price on the signed daughter chapter copies, then ask buyers to confirm the updated cost before resubmitting the correct overall payment? For those that may have snagged two or more copies of the daughter chapter at the lower price, FAKKU could just ask them if they want to keep that many copies in their order at the correct price or if they only want one copy, then offer any leftover in the store again? Not sure how easy it would be to do, but figured I'd throw this idea out there @jacob.

Awesome, thanks a lot for doing that and the quick response. I sent in a ticket to support to let them know the details.

This was pretty cool getting doujin, signed at that, offered on FAKKU in print. I hope you can work with Shikimaya and others in the future to get more doujin for us like this. I'm also pretty excited to hear Shikimaya has potential plans to do English print copies in the future if this does well. Wish you all the best!

Hey Jacob,

First off, thanks a lot for doing this and working with Shikimaya to offer this sale. It was pretty awesome of you guys to do that. That said, given the glitches with the shipping options in the store for the daughter chapter, and the delay in posting the daughter chapter until after the mother chapter had sold out physically signed, is there any way you could combine shipping costs for those of us who made two orders to get one of each and were hoping for combined shipping? I know those located outside the US would especially appreciate it at least.

So, the mother chapter was $29.95 plus $3.60 for USPS First Class shipping, but the daughter chapter was $14.95 plus $11.44 for USPS 2 Day Priority Mail, with no option for USPS Media Mail or First Class Mail; which would be under $4. Gonna have to contact support and see if they can combine shipping costs or not. I had also previously bought the daughter chapter digitally, and maybe they can refund me that or the half off special instead.

Anyhow, the mother chapter was just added to my account about 10 mins ago and it is about what I expected to pay grand total wise based on the info we had going in. Just glad I got one of each before it was too late.

I ordered the daughter print copy at $15 but the cheapest shipping was 2 day priority mail at nearly $12 lmao. After I did, it was sold out a second later when I checked. Hope support can sort this all out lol.

I got in an order for the signed mother chapter as well, but still waiting on the daughter chapter to go up. Was hoping to combine shipping on them, though.

LOL the system gave me Fallen Prince digital instead of the oni mother chapter with the purchase... guess I will need to contact support. Did this happen to anyone else?

Wooo! Thanks a lot for the information and all your efforts!

I'm hyped for potential English print doujin if this sale goes well. I will be looking to get both signed copies, assuming they don't sell out immediately before I can get in my order.

Not sure if you take requests for doujinshi or not but I'd love to see FAKKU! pick up any of these for release uncensored and maybe with some print copies if possible:

(C85) [おぶまんじゅう (obmas)] 鬼暮らし]/(C85) [Obumanjuu (obmas)] Onikurashi/Living with an Oni]
(C86) [おぶまんじゅう (obmas)] 鬼の秘蜜]/(C86) [Obumanjuu (obmas)] Oni No Himitsu/Oni's Secret]
(C87) [おぶまんじゅう (obmas)] 鬼の湯]/(C87) [Obumanjuu (obmas)] Oni No Yu/Onis' Hot Spring]
(C89) [おぶまんじゅう (obmas)] 発情鬼]/(C89) [Obumanjuu (obmas)] Hatsujou Oni/Estrus Oni]

Are there any eroge you have played already that you enjoyed? It would be easier to recommend from there.

I enjoyed Starless ~ Nymphomaniacs Paradise, great art and sex scenes, but it is pretty hardcore at times. Fruit of Grisia is probably a good entry level one that is recent.

If you want something a bit more vanilla and romance oriented, try SHUFFLE!

If you want mainly sex and don't really care about story or characters, just google "Nukige" and take your pick based on art/artist and tags.

Thanks for the heads up. I see above they mention FAKKU! has them on hand, but I'm unsure if they are just fulfilling distribution for them and the sale will be elsewhere or if FAKKU! will also be posting them for sale on the website. If FAKKU! is listing them for sale, they may wait until they are back from the holiday break to post them or they could do it remotely soon after the Comiket sale ends. I guess we will find out soon enough, unless Shikimaya or FAKKU! clues us in to an exact time beforehand.

I really love the artwork in this doujin series and would love to get my hands on a physical copy, censored as it may be, but I'm equally pumped for FAKKU! listing the uncensored digital version of the mother chapter soon.

Ah, this bodes well for the 2nd editions being the same as the add-on LEs from the KS then. I emailed Project-H just now to clarify about this. Hopefully they get back to me before the sale ends with a straight forward answer.



It looks like Cute Devil Girlfriend's 1st edition was missing such content but the listing for the Project-H web store exclusive 2nd edition remedies this. Besides that, what Project-H releases should I look out for with similar "controversial content" censorship? Since you mention FAKKU! has issues with it, too, what FAKKU! titles are affected?



Thanks for the heads up on the quality and the DRM. If the DRM is just an ID and does not require an internet check or something, then that's acceptable, though still undesirable, for me. With Cute Devil Girlfriend, I'm assuming if the 1st edition is on par with the Japanese tank, then the 2nd edition should be a bit better quality.

Ah, that's what I figure with .cbz, good to know it is simple enough to extract them to image files. Are the zipped images in .png or something else?

They currently have 15% off with a code until January 1st. Would you say the price for the print edition is discounted well at 15% off compared to other sales they have had in the past? For example, $20 for print at 15% off is $17. Would that $17 price be a better deal than some other sales or do they ever do better than that?

Thanks a lot for your help. It's much appreciated. Also, hope you are having a nice holiday season and will have a great new year, too.