Overview

Toraka is a discovery and tracking platform for manga, manhwa, and webtoons. It aggregates thousands of series from many scanlation sources into a single, fast interface where readers can browse and search a catalogue of 3,000+ titles, open rich series pages, and jump straight to the chapters they want.

Every reader gets a personal library: bookmark series, track current versus latest chapters across sources, rate and review titles, and get notified the moment a new chapter drops — with reading history and an activity profile tying it all together.

Project Goals

The goal was to build a fast, modern reading companion that unifies fragmented scanlation sources into one dependable place to discover and follow series. It needed to handle a large catalogue and a high update frequency with a snappy, app-like experience — instant search, real-time chapter tracking across sources, and a personal library that stays in sync wherever a reader left off.

Tech Stack

To achieve this, the following technologies were used:

• Java (Micronaut):Powered a fast, lightweight backend API.
• Keycloak:Handled authentication and identity management.
• React:Built a dynamic, app-like user interface.
• TanStack Router:Handled type-safe client-side routing.
• TanStack Query:Managed server state, data fetching, and caching.
• Tailwind:Applied utility-first CSS for responsive design.

Features

Discover & Browse

Discovery sits at the heart of Toraka. The home page surfaces trending and top series alongside a live "recently updated" feed, while a full Browse view lets readers search 3,000+ titles and filter by status, source, genre, author, artist, type, and more. A global command-palette search (⌘K) makes jumping to any series instant from anywhere in the app.

Series & Chapters

Each series has a rich detail page: cover art, alternative titles, synopsis, genres, score, status, popularity rank, and the official sources it's drawn from. A Chapters tab lists every chapter with its scanlation source and release time, sortable newest- or oldest-first, so readers can pick up exactly where they need to.

Reviews

Readers can share their take on any series with a simple recommend / don't-recommend review and a short write-up. Reviews appear on the series page with helpful votes and replies, and a quick modal lets anyone add their own in a few clicks.

Bookmarks & Tracking

Bookmarks turn Toraka into a personal reading tracker. Members build a library they can view as a grid or a list, filter and sort by status, source, tags, and type, and see current-versus-latest chapter at a glance. An update modal captures everything about a title — current chapter, source, reading status, tags, notes, a 1–10 rating, favourite and hidden flags, and even a binge mode.

Reading History

A detailed history logs every chapter a reader opens, grouped by day and showing the chapter jump, source, and timestamp. It makes it easy to retrace steps across dozens of ongoing series and pick back up without losing the thread.

Notifications

When a followed series releases a new chapter, Toraka notifies the reader. A notifications panel separates unread from all alerts, links straight to the new chapter, and supports marking chapters as read or clearing everything at once.

Profile & Settings

Each member has a public profile with a bio, follower counts, reading stats, and an activity feed, plus tabs for their reviews and bookmarks. Settings cover profile visibility, account details, and social links, and — usefully for a tracker — importing bookmarks from Comick, MAL, or Kenmei and exporting the whole library to CSV.

Challenges

The hardest part was unifying many independent scanlation sources into one coherent catalogue — matching the same series across sources, reconciling differing chapter numbering, and keeping a large, frequently-updated library fast to browse and search. Delivering real-time chapter tracking and notifications across thousands of titles, without the interface ever feeling sluggish, took careful data modelling and caching.

Initiatives

To keep the experience fast and app-like, the frontend leans on TanStack Query for aggressive caching and background refetching and TanStack Router for type-safe navigation, while a lightweight Micronaut backend serves the aggregated catalogue efficiently. Global search, grid and list library views, cross-source progress tracking, and import/export from other trackers make Toraka a genuinely central home for a reader's collection.