Mihon or any of its forks:
Note you will need to add the extensions manually but that's pretty easy to do. This is to avoid DMCA issues like what happened a few months ago with Tachiyomi and now Kotatsu (same company that took down both FYI)
this post was submitted on 14 Nov 2025
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Piracy: ꜱᴀɪʟ ᴛʜᴇ ʜɪɢʜ ꜱᴇᴀꜱ
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That was a reason i liked kotatsu. It was also on fdroid. Because i didnt like the fact of installing random apks for adding source. Sad its gone
Unfortunately that's also the primary reason Kotatsu was targeted and shutdown
Bundling the sources with the app has become very risky because one specific multi-billion dollar Korean company (Kakao) has openly made it their mission to hunt down these apps' creators and nobody can stop them. They literally brag on Twitter about it and everything.
So the best way to avoid litigation and ensure longevity at the moment is to completely separate the app/reader from the actual sources of content.
But it's not that inconvenient. Once you add the repository url you can see all the available extensions in-app and download the ones you want. They are also updated automatically so it's not that involved after the initial setup.
All Mihon forks also have an update checker so you'll pretty easily keep the main app updated as well.
Persobally I could never pay for a vertical strip, not one is that good, they all lose the plot and spiral becaude they never expect to make it to the end of season 1 or past it, just throwing concepts at the wall. It was fun junk reading in the past, but if Im near my tablet, im reading fullsize normal comics by good writers and artists, the slop just doesn't hit anymore. At some point I just felt no urge to check my weekly updates and never touched them again.
They also have some really weird systems for charging for it, instead of just letting you pay a sub fee, hate tokens
The issue is really that Kakao is not just a comic app.
They are basically the Meta/Facebook of South Korea, one of the most valuable companies in the whole country, and they are in quite literally every facet of South Korean life.
They do instant messaging (KakaoTalk), payments (KakaoPay), banking (KakaoBank), public transportation (Kakao T), games (Kakao Games) and probably way more I'm forgetting. If you're in south Korea you cannot live without Kakao almost.
Webtoons are not a significant portion of their income, but they have so much disposable income and such a drive to go after pirates that they don't care.
Their actual audience in South Korea is very anti piracy too and support these moves. It's a very similar case in Japan, but not even the richest Japanese manga publishers are as filthy rich like Kakao, they mostly spend their resources fighting piracy within their borders and leave it at that.
Also the monetization model you're describing is unfortunately the most profitable currently. They employ it because it works. Webtoons are also by far, and I mean by faaaar, the most consumed comic format. Majority of the public is now reading comics on their phones and Webtoons thrive there. So there's a very big financial incentive to go after mobile apps because of it.
They apparently made a lady have a miscarriage and dont pay well
Apparently age verification is an issue and needs korean phone numbers too
What is the story with all the forks?
TLDR; The developer of tachiyomi got threads from the manga publisher's lawyers. So he archived his repo. Other devs forked it to keep the project alive.
Haven't seen Doki mentioned yet. It's the official successor to Kotatsu.
Kotatsu-Redo is a fork by a new guy. At this stage, they're basically the same, so I'm waiting it out.
Try the redo fork.
How are they even hoping to keep it alive by hosting it on GitHub again?
I'm just speechless at these devs now, there's a million lessons to learn from and they keep repeating the same mistakes over and over again like they feel somehow untouchable? They are on the right side legally, but that never stopped Microsoft from not giving a crap what constitutes an actual DMCA violation, they will always err on the side of caution
Nooooooooo 😭😭😭😭😭
Sad truth. I hope someone will fork it
was a Kotatsu user as well. Right now, I am using Aniyomi for both anime and manga, so you should try it or its forks out, just like the others are suggesting.
It doesn't come preloaded with the extension extensions though, so you'll have to manually add them.
Dagnabit, and I just switched from Comick when they shut down.
Can't find it. Could you give me a link to it
Lol
AnymeX (its anilist but with extensions you can read manga and watch anime while keeping track of your progress)