Dongman Zhijia is an unavoidable name when mentioning Chinese manga websites. It served as the manga introduction for countless people, was the primary destination for finding free manga, and accompanied the youth of numerous manga enthusiasts.
From 2005 to the present, after 20 years of ups and downs—it finally fell at the age of 20.
If you open Dongman Zhijia now, not only can you not load manga, but even those annoying ads are hard to find. Only the message "This server's certificate is invalid" remains, announcing the final outcome of Dongman Zhijia, which inevitably evokes sighs from old-school anime fans.
Even though Dongman Zhijia's Weibo account has been inactive since June this year, and the content on its official website has long ceased to update, as long as the servers are still accessible and the content can be browsed, there remains a glimmer of hope. Although this hope gradually fades with increasingly frequent crashes, at least it provides something to hold on to.
But this time is different. If you open Dongman Zhijia now, you will find that the homepage fails to load, all resources have disappeared, and even subscription history is inaccessible. The manga you once bookmarked has completely vanished due to the expiration of the server certificate.
The event came quite suddenly, without giving anyone a chance to back up their data. It vanished into thin air. Countless uploaded obscure works may now become Lost Media, and the comments and replies accumulated over more than a decade remain solely in users' memories.
But the demise of Dongman Zhijia was foreshadowed; it was an inevitable event—only no one knew exactly when it would happen.
In 2021, the Beijing Cultural Market Comprehensive Law Enforcement Team investigated a case involving "providing online anime products containing violence, pornography, and vulgarity through hidden channels." The protagonist of this case was Dongman Zhijia. In this incident, the enforcement team imposed the maximum penalty on Dongman Zhijia and ordered it to shut down its Japanese manga channel and delete all violating online anime content.
Due to copyright and related regulatory issues, many Japanese manga titles, including "Attack on Titan," were removed from the Dongman Zhijia platform. The Japanese manga channel, which accounted for a significant portion of its popularity, subsequently disappeared from our view.
This event had a significant impact on Dongman Zhijia. It marked the starting point of its formal march toward death. From then on, facing the unavoidable copyright era, Dongman Zhijia was pushed into the ICU, kept alive by a single breath.
That breath might just be the community.
As a website powered by passion, Dongman Zhijia offered manga for free reading, with many titles uploaded by users and fan translation groups. In the comment sections, you could find a friendly and inheritable discussion atmosphere. However, all of this operated in the shadows—strictly speaking, it bordered on illegality. For Dongman Zhijia, which built this platform, maintaining servers and paying editors required funding. Given the site's precarious nature, the only source of this funding was advertising.
However, with the advent of the copyright era, Dongman Zhijia removed numerous popular works and suffered several fines, making its original advertising revenue unsustainable. Consequently, Dongman Zhijia developed the most criticized aspect in recent years—an increasing number of ads. This seemed inevitable: with more penalties, fewer manga available, and declining traffic, the only option left was to aggressively push ads. Thus, Dongman Zhijia transformed into "Ad-Zhijia." At its peak, it even introduced the controversial practice of requiring a membership to remove ads, causing its reputation to plummet rapidly, with many hoping for its demise.
And this end was indeed not far off. Exactly one year ago—in September 2024—a user claiming to be a former editor of Dongman Zhijia revealed insider information about the site on the S1 forum.
According to this former editor, the actual controller of Dongman Zhijia not only arranged extensive commercial content and flooded the site with ads but also embezzled company funds and delayed editors' salaries for long periods, leading to the departure of all original editors and leaving Dongman Zhijia as an empty shell.
It should be noted that the vibrant community culture of Dongman Zhijia was largely due to its editors. Whether it was the recommendation lists or curated collections on the site, they were genuinely watched and organized by the editors themselves. This gave Dongman Zhijia's content a human touch and fostered a harmonious community atmosphere.
But under the pressure of internal strife and external threats, advertisements increased, reputation plummeted, editors were forced out, and Dongman Zhijia stopped updating. At that moment, Dongman Zhijia was already half dead—its spirit had died, leaving only an empty shell.
Although its spirit was gone, a starving camel is still bigger than a horse. Shortly after the news of "Dongman Zhijia is dead" spread widely last year, Dongman Zhijia briefly resumed updates—but how long can an empty shell survive? In June this year, Dongman Zhijia posted its last Weibo update and then completely ceased all activities.
At that time, Dongman Zhijia might have already been dead, but no one was willing to accept it. After all, the community version of Dongman Zhijia could still search, watch, and download content. Except for the lack of updates, Everythinggj remained as usual. As a symbol of an era, Dongman Zhijia naturally made countless people reluctant to let go, whether for emotional or practical reasons. Youth had not yet ended; the website that allowed us to read manga for free was still hanging on. Countless obscure manga titles were still on the servers, and we could still try our luck to access them.
But now, the server shutdown thoroughly proves one thing—the physical body of Dongman Zhijia has completely rotted. It died long ago; it was just buried today.
After all, the demise of Dongman Zhijia was inevitable and had long been foreshadowed. No matter how long it dragged on, we would eventually witness the end where both its spirit and body perished. Whether broadly influenced by the copyright era or narrowly due to the owner's self-destructive actions, the story of Dongman Zhijia has come to a complete close.
However, we don't need to make a final judgment just yet. When one story ends, it may be replaced by another—as long as the so-called "spirit of internet sharing" persists.
Why do so many people support Dongman Zhijia and similar manga websites, constantly seeking alternatives? It's not just about "youth." In the copyright era, supporting official manga is certainly justified, but official releases occasionally have issues. In some cases, fan translation groups working out of passion are even more meticulous in their translation and proofreading than the official publishers. Moreover, official manga is often censored for various reasons, creating a paradox where "paying results in a worse experience than not paying."
At this point, only the "spirit of internet sharing" can provide a relatively good experience. Of course, this is not to justify piracy, but to illustrate one thing: as long as issues affecting the official reading experience persist during the manga importation process, the internet will inevitably produce stories like Dongman Zhijia, hidden in its corners.
However, the next chapter may not be named "Dongman Zhijia," and its future remains uncertain.
But then again, what is most regrettable in the death of Dongman Zhijia are the obscure fan translations that once existed on the site, the interesting comments spanning over a decade, and the reading records stored on the servers... All of these were buried along with Dongman Zhijia, turning to ashes together.
Perhaps, they can only become beautiful memories, remaining in the past alongside our previous experiences of reading manga.