San Diego Comic-Con 2012

JManga Panel

First introduced in August of last year, JManga celebrated their second year at San Diego Comic Con. Now available worldwide, the digital manga distribution service, which has partnerships with 39 Japanese publishers such as Shueisha, Kodansha, Kadokawa, and many others, now offers 376 volumes of manga and pay-as-you-go payment plans (along with the monthly subscriptions offered at last year's launch), with some priced as low as 499 points.

Currently, JManga is adding approximately ten new books every week, with recent and upcoming titles like Namori's Yuru Yuri, Fumiyo Kouno's Pippira Note, Nanae Chrono's Peace Maker, and Sakura Kinoshita's The Mythical Detective LOKI. Coming soon, readers will also be able to read Yūichi Yokoyama's Garden, which was previously released in English, but will now be available digitally for the first time, Boichi's Sun-Ken Rock, and Setona Mizushiro's Dousei Ai.

For those wanting to read manga on the go, a JManga app will be available for iOS and Android this coming October.

A special announcement was made by a representative from the Japanese Agency of Cultural Exchange. In partnership with JManga, there will be a manga translation contest, titled “Manga Translation Battle 2012.” The contest is text-only, and thus will not require any typesetting skills. The grand prize winner will receive a trip to Japan, while runners up will receive new iPads and other prizes; it will be open to contestants worldwide. The titles available for translation have not been announced yet, but will include a shoujo title from Shueisha, a seinen series from Kodansha, and a seinen series from Futabasha.

Near the end of the presentation, JManga also announced that they will be offering several Kodansha titles previously published by Del Rey and Tokyopop. Although they're not yet able to name the titles, it was mentioned that several of the properties are still being serialized in Japan. It was also mentioned that the Tokyopop releases would be reworked to fix some of the mistakes that were pointed out by readers. Other titles, available from Japanese publishers, will also soon by announced, including several from Ichijinsha.