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CLUSTER MANGA-TEXT-BUBBLES · 10 ENTRIES · EARLIEST ENTRY 2024-03-16

Manga translation and scanlation tools

This cluster covers tools for automated manga translation and scanlation cleanup, using machine learning to detect speech bubbles or panel text, remove it, and re-letter or export edited pages. The dated pre-index history is too thin to read a shape from—only two dated entries exist, so the cluster predates the index or its members are mostly undated. On traction, kuro-bot and FumetoReaderPlus lead with 3 stars each, ahead of manga-translator with 2 stars.

Entry timeline

ENTRY TIMELINE

JUL 2021: 1MAR 2024: 1AUG 2026: 2SEP 2026: 3OCT 2026: 3
JUL 2021OCT 2026

Each bar is the month a member carries, which is a creation date where the source published one and a crawl date otherwise. Nothing in the index was found before 11 August 2026, and coverage broadened sharply on 14–15 August, so a bar from then on reports how much we found that month, not how much was built; an earlier bar reports how far back a member's own source dated it — not how long we have been watching.

Members by activity

Activity signals, not revenue.

Build origin · 1 ai-built · 1 hand-coded · 8 unlabelled

Operator · 5 hobby · 1 indie · 2 open source · 2 unlabelled

Two labels per entry, never collapsed into one: how it was built, and who stands behind it. Counted over the 10 listed below. Unlabelled means nothing has decided yet — not that the answer is small.

  1. 01kuro-bot3★23 days—Discord bot and web dashboard that automates manga scanlation team workflows from raw acquisition to final publication.
  2. 02manga-translator2★7 days—hobbyBrowser-based manga translation tool that detects speech bubbles, removes original text, translates dialogue, and exports edited page images.
  3. 03xianscan2★1 mo—Self-hosted web app that automatically translates comic and manga pages using AI, with text detection, glossaries, and translation job management.
  4. 04FumetoReaderPlus3★1 mo—indieAndroid manga reader that translates comic pages on-device, detecting speech bubbles and re-lettering translated text inside the original balloons.
  5. 05manga-translator0★4 days—hobbyWeb app that translates entire manga chapters in batch, redraws translated text into speech bubbles, and provides a right-to-left reader.
  6. 06manga-studio0★5 dayslivehobbyWeb app that generates manga pages from a story premise, with editable speech bubbles and one-click export.
  7. 07mtl-studio1★1 mo—hobbyLocally run web app that translates text inside images in bulk, removing original text and lettering translations back into manga and comics.
  8. 08Translatent0★1 mo—ai-builthobbyWeb app that extracts text from uploaded manga archives and overlays machine translated dialogue onto the scanned pages.
  9. 09Panel Cleaner0★3 molivehand-codedopen sourceDesktop tool that uses machine learning to detect text in manga panels and generate masks to remove it for scanlation cleanup.
  10. 10Seeneva: smart comic reader0★2 yrabandonedliveopen sourceComic book reader that uses machine learning to zoom into speech balloons, with OCR text extraction and text-to-speech reading.

Ranked by traction, highest first, and paged 20 at a time — this is a window on the cluster, never the whole of it. Ties are broken by a stable id so a product cannot appear on two pages or fall between them. Browse every cluster.