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NEWS: Mangamo Licenses Kamisama Death Game, Guardian Angel: The Games Bring Girls Together 3 More Ma

I kind of feel bad for these manga subscription services like Mangamo and Azuki, because it doesn’t seem like they’re working out yet (I don’t know anyone who subscribes). And TBH, I think they’re barking up the wrong tree.

The biggest question customers have for any subscription service is going to be “do they have enough stuff I’m going to like?” Maybe that’s going to be answered by having stuff that’s already popular, but maybe it can also be a matter of genre awareness. Because if what they’re trying to do is to be “Crunchyroll, but for manga”, I don’t think that’s going to work.

Once streaming got going, Crunchyroll quickly became the place that had almost everything, or at least so much that you were going to get your $10/month worth. Manga’s much bigger, and nobody can really lay claim to that much of it. And if the way in to any of these services is to look over their available titles and read all the descriptions, that's way too much of a barrier.

The elephant in the room is Shonen Jump, which already has so much popular stuff. But I’d argue that there’s also value in explicitly marketing what Shonen Jump is: shonen, duh. It’s not a place where you’re going to find shoujo, or seinen, or BL, or yuri, or indie comics. You know what you’re getting into, and it’s the most popular genre of manga.

But that’s exactly why I don’t subscribe to SJ: I’m way too old for most shonen. But there are other genres where I’d be open to a subscription model. When I’m at the San Francisco Kinokuniya, I always buy Dengeki Daioh and Dengeki G’s Magazine, because even though I can only read a little of it, I just know demographically that it’s going to hit on stuff I like: dark magical girls, idols, mecha, action manga that’s borderline seinen, etc. (And if I’m feeling a little risqué, I might also pick up Monthly Comic Alive).

So, if there were a subscription service for the Dengeki brand, I’d be on it in an instant. And I’d certainly take a look at something that marketed itself as seinen. Same goes for other genres. I support Erica Friedman’s Okazu site on Patreon, and every time she reviews Yuri Comic Hime, I’m like “man, it would be great to be able to get that in English.” And you could do this for other genres too. Instead of burying shoujo under a vague brand name like “Mangamo” or “Azuki”, why not just put out a licensed Ribon, Margaret, or Ciao? Or, god, just bring back Shojo Beat as a subscription service; the brand name is still there, attached by Viz to lots of beloved titles.

The brands, and their identities, matter. Newtype USA was a thing once. When ADV lost the license and tried to convert it into a generic pop culture magazine called PiQ, it died after four issues.

So, best of luck to Mangamo and Azuki, but TBH, I think they’d be better off rebranding as multiple demographic-specific services, building on an existing JP brand where possible.