Manga

Comicarr treats manga as a first-class content type with full parity to comics. Manga series show up in Library, Releases, and Wanted alongside comics, and they can be searched, downloaded, and tracked the same way.

Under the hood, Comicarr uses two complementary sources:

• MyAnimeList is the primary metadata provider when enabled. It supplies titles, authors, cover art, synopses, and cross-references.
• MangaDex supplies per-chapter data that MAL doesn't expose, plus a metadata fallback when MAL is disabled.

When MAL is enabled, Comicarr uses it for primary manga metadata and resolves each result to MangaDex for chapter data. MangaDex remains the fallback when MAL is disabled or does not return a result.

Enabling Manga

You have two paths depending on how much setup you want to do:

• MAL + MangaDex combines MAL metadata with MangaDex chapter data. MAL requires a client ID.
• MangaDex only works without a provider key and supplies both search metadata and chapters.

MAL + MangaDex

[MAL]
mal_enabled = True
mal_client_id = your_mal_client_id_here

[MangaDex]
mangadex_enabled = True
mangadex_languages = en
mangadex_content_rating = safe,suggestive

To get a MAL Client ID, register an application at myanimelist.net/apiconfig. The free tier is sufficient. In the UI, configure it under Settings → API & providers.

When MAL is enabled, search results are routed through MAL first. Each result is badged with the source it came from. If MAL doesn't find a match, Comicarr falls back to MangaDex automatically.

MangaDex only

Leave MAL_ENABLED at False and set MANGADEX_ENABLED = True. All search, metadata, and chapter tracking will go through MangaDex.

Configuration

MyAnimeList

MangaDex

Language Filter

MANGADEX_LANGUAGES accepts standard language codes. Set it to the languages you read:

• en for English
• ja for Japanese
• ko for Korean
• zh for Chinese

Multiple languages: en,es,fr

Content Rating

MangaDex classifies all titles by content rating:

Default includes safe and suggestive only.

Classifying a series as comic or manga

Comicarr infers whether a series is a comic or manga from the metadata provider it came from, and that inference is sometimes wrong. A manhwa added through ComicVine gets read as a comic; a Western title that arrived via MangaDex gets read as manga. Since v0.30.0 you can override it directly: open the series detail page and set its content kind to comic or manga.

The stored classification is provider-independent, and it reaches past the labels into search, refresh, and post-processing. A series switched to manga is tracked and displayed in chapter terms and matched by manga rules from then on, wherever its metadata came from.

Finding manga packs

With Allow packs on, a manga series gets an extra bare-title query pass on Torznab indexers (since v0.36.0), because a numbered query like "Solo Leveling 001" never returns a pack-shaped title. Two shapes common on manga trackers are recognised: brace-delimited metadata such as Solo Leveling v01-14 {2021-2025} {Digital}, and numberless complete-series releases such as Solo Leveling (2021-2026) (Digital).

The numberless shape is trusted for manga only. It carries no issue range at all, so a match claims every issue of the series you have not already downloaded, minus anything published after the span's final year. On a print comic a bracketed year span usually just states when the series ran, so the detector stays off there. Details and the full behavior: The bare-title pack pass.

Chapter-Level Tracking

Manga series are tracked at the chapter level, not the issue level. Each chapter maps to a Comicarr issue, so chapters appear in your wanted list and can be searched and downloaded individually. Regardless of whether MAL or MangaDex is the primary metadata source, chapter listings come from MangaDex.

Adding a manga returns immediately, like adding a comic: the series appears at once and its chapters populate on a background worker. If population fails, the failure shows up in Activity instead of hanging the add.

The chapter and volume ledger

Since v0.33.0 each manga series keeps a defined ledger of its volumes and chapters, and ownership follows one rule: owning a volume covers the chapters that volume is known to contain, without counting those chapters as individually owned. If you own volumes 1-10, the ledger does not call chapters 1-90 missing. What is missing is whatever the ledger says no volume covers.

Automatic search targets the blended frontier by default: released volumes you do not own, plus chapters beyond the last released volume. That matches how manga is actually published and released, with the back catalogue arriving as volumes and the current frontier as chapters.

Per-series search mode

The blended frontier is the default, but each series can be switched under Search options on its detail page:

Bare filename numbers

A manga filename with a bare number, like Naruto 12.cbr, could mean volume 12 or chapter 12. Since v0.33.0 each series has a bare-number interpretation setting, next to the search mode:

Prefixed names are never ambiguous: One Piece v10.cbz is always volume 10, and explicit chapter markers stay chapters. The setting is honoured on library scan, import, and post-processing. Since v0.34.0 refreshing the series rematches its folder with the same setting, so a volume file like Naruto 12.cbr marks the chapters in volume 12 instead of being read as issue 12.

Scheduled refresh and healing

Since v0.33.0 manga series refresh on the same schedule as comic database updates, via the Manga ledger sync job:

• Series with an empty chapter ledger are healed in place. Chapters are fetched and populated without you having to delete and re-add the series.
• New MangaDex chapters are polled, so the frontier advances on its own.
• Newly wanted chapters are searched automatically.
• Manga series are recognised by their identifier prefix as well as their stored content type, so a series whose ContentType was backfilled as comic by an older migration still refreshes.

The series-detail header shows the real last-refresh time (or "unsynced" if the series has never synced).

Cross-Provider Detection

When a series is added via MAL, Comicarr stores both the MalID and the corresponding MangaDexID (resolved via MangaDex's links.mal field). This lets the app keep chapter data in sync even when the primary metadata comes from MAL.

Rate Limiting

Both APIs are rate-limited automatically:

• MAL is throttled per the MAL API v2 limits, with no configuration required.
• MangaDex is capped at 5 requests per second with a 200 ms minimum between calls.

Caching

Comicarr maintains an in-memory cache for MangaDex data to reduce API calls:

Covers are never hotlinked from MangaDex. Library and series-detail covers are served from Comicarr's local cover cache, with a same-origin fallback, which is why manga series stopped showing the "You can read this at MANGADEX" placeholder image in v0.33.0. MAL covers are served through Comicarr's image proxy (allowlisted CDN hosts only) to avoid browser CORS issues and reduce SSRF risk on the server.