In manga circles, raw means the untouched original — Japanese pages straight from the magazine or volume, before a fan group has translated and typeset them. If you're caught up on a series, raws are often the only way forward. The next official English release might be months out; a scanlation might never come.
You don't have to wait. Here's how to read raws in English yourself.
What "raw" actually means
- Raw — original Japanese scans, no translation.
- Scanlation — a fan translation typeset back onto the pages. Free, but slow and inconsistent.
- Official — a licensed English release. Best quality, but often far behind Japan.
Reading raws in English bridges the gap: you get the story now, in your language, without depending on a fan group's schedule.
The reader's method
The old way was painful: crop a bubble, paste it into a translator, read a caption, repeat. The modern way keeps you on the page.
- Bring the page in. Screenshot your reader, photograph a physical page, or import an image or PDF.
- Solve bubbles in place. Tap a speech bubble and the Japanese becomes English right there, fitted to the shape — no captions, no context-switching.
- Scroll and repeat. For vertical webtoons, solve bubbles as they come into view.
Why "in place" matters for raws
Raw pages are dense. Action scenes throw ten bubbles and a fistful of sound effects at you per page. If every translation lands in a separate box, you lose track of who said what. Replacing the Japanese inside its own bubble keeps the choreography intact — you read it like a finished chapter.
This is the whole difference between a general translator and a manga translator: one tells you what a bubble says, the other lets you read the page.
Reading raws to learn Japanese
Raws are a great study tool because you're motivated — you want to know what happens next. Turn on a view that keeps the romaji next to the English and you'll start recognising common words (the "wait!", "let's go", "impossible") without trying. Short lines and heavy repetition make manga one of the gentler ways in.
Do it offline, keep it private
You'll often read on the move, and your raws are files you'd rather not upload. A translator that works on-device solves both: bubbles resolve with no signal, and nothing gets sent to a server. Yomi's Manga mode reads raws in English entirely on your iPhone — import, tap, read.
And when an official English version exists, buy it. Self-translating raws is for the chapters the industry hasn't reached yet.