As anime and manga become more popular, so does the act of piracy. A combination of the time it takes to localize manga well and the growing appetite of fans has made this a big business, but one of the biggest manga piracy sites on the web has recently been shut down. After its owner was arrested back in November 2025, BATO.TO, the piracy site visited by nearly 200 million people per month and making more than $50k each month in advertising revenue, has been taken down.

BATO.TO was one of the most popular sites for reading Japanese, Chinese, and Korean comics online. On November 19, 2025, police in China arrested the man believed to have operated the site, which includes around 60 similar sites that would pop up when one was shut down – like a copyright-infringing hydra. Finally, in January 2026, each of those sites was taken offline as the man at the center of its operation awaits trial.

The details of the report show just how staggering the scale of manga piracy really is. BATO.TO and its more than 60 sister sites around the globe reportedly accounted for 7.2 billion visits from October 2022 to October 2025, which averages out at around 195 million visitors per month. At peak times, this could climb as high as 350 million visits. Advertising revenue from peak times was around 8 million yen, or $51k.

What is even more surprising is the alleged impact on the manga industry. The report applies a cost of around 107 yen per manga view, which takes into account lost revenue from manga piracy and results in nearly $5 billion in revenue lost to the global comic industry.

While BATO.TO is one of the largest manga piracy sites out there, it is in no way the only one. The growth of the Japanese manga industry and the increasing demand for more translations done faster is part of what is fuelling the Japanese government to help the industry along – and is causing publishers to increasingly turn to GenAI translations to quickly and cheaply fulfil demand.

Each week, Popverse's resident anime expert Trent Cannon runs down the latest and, dare we say "greatest," in anime and manga in Popverse Jump. Some recent columns have included... 

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