Bakaupdate May 2026

For over two decades, the manga community has relied on a handful of pillars: MyAnimeList for tracking, Reddit for discussion, and—for the dedicated scanlation reader— Baka-Updates Manga (BUM).

While not as polished as modern database giants, BakaUpdates remains the gold standard for one specific mission: tracking the messy, beautiful, chaotic world of fan-translated manga. Launched in the early 2000s, Baka-Updates Manga is a user-driven database and release tracking website. Unlike official databases that only catalog licensed volumes, BUM focuses on scanlation groups —teams of fans who translate, redraw, and typeset raw Japanese manga into English and other languages before an official release exists. bakaupdate

If you grew up reading Naruto before Viz Media caught up, or One Piece from "Kaizoku-Fansubs," you owe BUM a quiet nod of respect. It kept the chaos organized. For over two decades, the manga community has