Forum - View topicThis Week in Anime - Does It Pay to Read Manga on Manga Apps?
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Shay Guy
 Posts: 2352 |
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And lest we forget, they simulpubbed RIN-NE from chapter 1 years before that. Didn't make it all the way, but it was an unprecedented experiment. Worth noting also that their Shonen Jump platform does have the occasional non-shonen manga -- Kaguya-sama, Kubo Won't Let Me Be Invisible, Golden Kamuy, Boys Over Flowers -- but I think all of them have some connection to the Jump brand. Boys Over Flowers Season 2 ran in Shonen Jump+ (the predecessor being included for completeness), and the rest are Young Jump series. Given that Shueisha titles like Nana and Kimi ni Todoke are on the Viz Manga app, I doubt we'll see any more Shueisha shojo titles on the SJ app. |
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NikamiYuhara
Posts: 51 |
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Huge shame about K Manga and even Manga Up! last year. Great libraries and great work by the localization teams, but poor services. I will probably keep buying physicals and ebooks, but the only manga services I bother paying for are SJ, Viz, Mangamo and Azuki since they are just flat subscriptions. I am fan of Tomodachi Game and Baby Steps and to see them get official localizations that are good quality(based on the little I read on the app without having to pay), but being stuck behind the K Manga app kind of sucks since I really want to support them. Saw recently some Manga Up exclusives are being released as ebooks, so hopefully Kodansha will do the same for their exclusives at some point. Have to give Kodansha credit though, I prefer reading on my PC and not all manga services provide that option since most are focused on phones and tablets, so at least they got that right. Granted, I don't think the web version is out yet. At least SJ, Viz and Azuki also have web versions, if Mangamo ever gets a web version that would be amazing.
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kgw
 Posts: 1201 Location: Spain, EU |
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I wanted to add that Manga UP! is available worldwide. So far I haven't spent a single dime on them, but I am managing to follow several series like Dead Mount Death Play or Arakawa's Daemons of The Shadow Realm (yomi no tsugai).
Manga UP! and Manga Plus are perfect to combine for a worldwide audience: while you wait your time so more chapters get released for "free" tickets in the first, you can read the latest chapters in the second. Specially, since while WSJ chapters are restricted, J+'s are not. (btw, Make the Exorcist Fall in Love and Marriagetoxin are great). In any case, it's a shame neither Shogakukan nor Kodansha care about the rest of the world. |
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DamianSalazar
Posts: 776 |
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My experience with reading Asian comics on apps includes the times I used Manga Rock to read manga/manhwa/manhuas and sometimes they would have original content which was kinda bizarre. Manga Rock had a system unlike any other pirated manga app and that was them recommending manga based on topics like "Fantasy" or "Science fiction" as examples. It seemed like Manga Rock was building itself to be a legit manga service, until they discovered that hosting scanlations on their site made them liable to be sued, so they soft rebooted into INKR Comics. Manga Rock's spiritual successor would probably have to be Mangadex and how that site has built itself up in recent times.
That said I do have experience with legit services, the first one I used was Line Webtoon. I used Webtoon in such a way that I didn't read the high-profile series like Noblesse or Tower of God, I targeted new series like Unholy Blood and Homesick. One positive of Webtoon is that new series' first three chapters are free, and the most recent four chapters are locked behind a wait-a-week system that you can circumvent by paying for the chapter in coins. You could pay for coins, but you could also win coins by participating in whatever promo they were doing, which is how I won all the coins I used to pay for chapters. A major downside of Webtoon is the Daily Pass system. They use this for finished series that they have licensed (Senpai is an Otokonoko) or series that finished their run on the platform (like the aforementioned Unholy Blood and Wendybird) and it's infuriating how it's implemented. You read like three or six chapters, then get to the seventh and that's where the Daily Pass hits and stops your momentum. Manga Plus' greatest strength is that it's free. There that's it. It has a bevy of titles like the current WSJ heavyweights (One Piece, My Hero Academia, Jujutsu Kaisen), middleweights (Akane-banashi, Sakamoto Days, Mashle, Undead Unluck, etc.), newcomers (Ichinose Family, Tenmaku Cinema), the Jump+ big dawgs (Spy X Family, Kaiju No. 8, Dandadan, Chainsaw Man), and some other magazine undercards (Dragon Ball Super, Oshi no Ko, Blue Exorcist, Seraph of the End, Choujin X); but it's biggest problem is reading older titles. Reading older titles like Hell's Paradise and the recently finished Kubo Won't Let Me Be Invisible is impossible because both series only have their first three chapters on there, then there's the "re-editions". The Re-editions of old manga series and One Piece have the old business model of hiding chapters between the first three and most recent three instead of making them available only once. Manga UP! has a similar business model compared to Webtoon. In my opinion, its business model is better than Webtoon because there's more bang for your buck when you pay for the coins (e.g 1200 coins for ₤7.99), but the problem is that they split chapters into two or three. I understand why they do this, none of Square Enix's magazines in Japan run on a weekly schedule, in fact the closest they have to such a thing is Young Gangan (notable for My Dress-up Darling) which has a semimonthly schedule. |
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catandmouse
Posts: 221 |
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Ok, so I have a few comic apps on my phone/iPad, but I use some more than others for different reasons, mainly ease of getting “free” currency to buy a chapter and quality of translations (as far as I can tell since I can’t read the original language).
All read all of Noblesse for free on Line Webtoon without even needing an account, but I don’t think that’s possible now. The next app I downloaded was Tapas. I haven’t used it in a while, but last time I did it wasn’t too hard to get free currency. Besides the usual watch videos/do something, you could also buy something from an affiliate and get a certain amount of ink (their currency). I like that option because I can buy something I may need or looks interesting to me and I get ink to use on chapters. Then every Monday they give you a “fortune cookie” and you can get some good amount of ink. Oh and in the beginning they sold censored chapters without telling you it was the censored version. Eventually they started releasing the censored and uncensored versions of some series. Lezhin has you check in everyday and you get 10 coins for checking in. Most chapters cost 30 coins. Then you can also do things to get more coins. The only think that annoys me on the app is that before chapters cost 3 coins, but even though the price went up10x, the prices didn’t. So most easy things you can do to get free coins only give you a coin at a time, so before for example I only had to click on 3 actions, now I have to do 30. Oh and all the rated R stuff is only on the website. Webnovel gives you fast passes to unlock chapters depending on doing certain things. For checking in, for voting and you can also watch videos. Webcomics gives you gems, but I haven’t figured out how to get free gems without doing nothing. You have options to get free coins and gems, but gems are the currency needed to unlock chapters. INKR also gives you free somethings, but that’s not what you need to unlock chapters. Then there’s Bilibili. Used to be free, but now it’s not and i haven’t played around it too much to figure out if they offer ways to obtain free currency. |
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liatris
Posts: 67 |
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This is the point. Subscription model can not provide the Library of Alexandria. Therefore, there is a possibility that works that are popular and appreciated in Japan are buried in America. This is why Shojo and Jyosei don't increase outside of Japan. subscription model just locks in the existing fanbase and doesn't spread. I'm not saying that tickets, point systems are the best, but we need to think about expanding the market in some way. |
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