Launch HN: Azuki (YC W22) – All-you-can-read manga subscription
149 comments
Unsure if you’re doing this already or have plans to, but I highly recommend creating a group account on Mangadex and put the upload links in for each Manga you have license to. This way you can leverage the large audience of Mangadex and the apps that use it’s API , and advertise directly to your possible target audience for free. As a legal means of reading manga in the US Mangadex is your friend, not your enemy.
Greats minds think alike! We are putting our free chapter links on MangaDex and will be putting more there as we get more free chapters.
Oh, I've been hoping for something like this for ages! I signed up.
One thing that sticks out about the UI is the default one page at a time loading. This feels a bit weird for a paid service, compare it to Mangaplus, which is also official (although free.) I'm glad you have the option to switch, though.
Your reader works with the browser's built in zoom. This is great for accessibility, especially because so many readers don't. Thank you!
If I add a series to my list, will I get email notifications when it updates? That's what I want the most.
A 30 day free trial feels excessive, but I'll happily accept it.
Overall, looks great! Hope to see more series soon.
One thing that sticks out about the UI is the default one page at a time loading. This feels a bit weird for a paid service, compare it to Mangaplus, which is also official (although free.) I'm glad you have the option to switch, though.
Your reader works with the browser's built in zoom. This is great for accessibility, especially because so many readers don't. Thank you!
If I add a series to my list, will I get email notifications when it updates? That's what I want the most.
A 30 day free trial feels excessive, but I'll happily accept it.
Overall, looks great! Hope to see more series soon.
Yep, if you add a series to your list you will get email notifications for updates! And, if you're on Android, you will get push notifications (which is also coming to iOS and Web).
Noted on the default reader mode. Would you prefer it default to Vertical scrolling mode?
Noted on the default reader mode. Would you prefer it default to Vertical scrolling mode?
Great!
I would prefer vertical by default, yes. I tend to associate one page at a time with ad-heavy sites that are trying to save on server costs/bandwidth.
I would prefer vertical by default, yes. I tend to associate one page at a time with ad-heavy sites that are trying to save on server costs/bandwidth.
I just wanted to note that you should be applauded for your handling of this thread. So many people waste their launch by ignoring feedback and only responding with marketing jargon, but here you are asking new users questions about their experience, with the clear intention of making the experience better for them. Kudos to you!
Nice. Wish you luck in this space, especially with the _other methods_ of reading manga around. Will definitely take a look.
Question about the releases: are there any plans on having Japanese language versions of manga available as well?
Question about the releases: are there any plans on having Japanese language versions of manga available as well?
Not at the moment, but we’re definitely interested in expanding to other languages in the future. Japanese publishers usually don’t license out domestic distribution rights within Japan, so it’s a little harder to get permission to distribute the original Japanese versions. But that would be pretty cool!
Japanese language learner here. Would pay a subscription to read original Japanese versions.
Having Japanese would make it useful to me, and to many more studying the language.
Especially with English also available.
Especially with English also available.
I totally agree with this.
Moreover, integrating Japanese learning tools (reach out to Wanikani for their API?) would really elevate the product. I'd pay a premium right now if it could help me review kanji and vocabulary in a non-boring way! (eg. calculate a difficulty score for each manga, determine which manga have more vocabulary and kanji you know, etc.)
Granted, I know this is a niche feature and you probably need hands on deck elsewhere. Maybe you'll see other demand that confirms this as something to build later down the road.
Really awesome product though. Great execution. Wish you all the luck!
Moreover, integrating Japanese learning tools (reach out to Wanikani for their API?) would really elevate the product. I'd pay a premium right now if it could help me review kanji and vocabulary in a non-boring way! (eg. calculate a difficulty score for each manga, determine which manga have more vocabulary and kanji you know, etc.)
Granted, I know this is a niche feature and you probably need hands on deck elsewhere. Maybe you'll see other demand that confirms this as something to build later down the road.
Really awesome product though. Great execution. Wish you all the luck!
> I'd pay a premium right now if it could help me review Kanji and vocabulary in a non-boring way! (eg. calculate a difficulty score for each manga, determine which manga have more vocabulary and kanji you know, etc.)
FYI, I don't have manga yet, but a website that I'm running (https://jpdb.io) has exactly that for other types of media (anime, movies, light novels, visual novels, video games, etc.)
FYI, I don't have manga yet, but a website that I'm running (https://jpdb.io) has exactly that for other types of media (anime, movies, light novels, visual novels, video games, etc.)
Whoa this is a great idea! One of our founders, Evan, is studying with WaniKani right now and he would love that. Thanks!
Having Japanese language versions is a deal breaker for me for learning Japanese. There is amazon.jp, but it is not Netflix like service, kindle "unlimited" is pretty limited on what content is available.
Though I understand it is common practice for Japanese publisher to have region lock on Japanese version and ban international buyer to buy without obvious reason. Looking forward to see what you could do on this space. Wish you luck.
Though I understand it is common practice for Japanese publisher to have region lock on Japanese version and ban international buyer to buy without obvious reason. Looking forward to see what you could do on this space. Wish you luck.
If you want Japanese there are tons of sites like cmoa.jp or Amazon Kindle Unlimited, with a huge selection. They often geofence their site, though.
Why should anyone use this over one of the competitors, like Viz or Mangaplus? This is rapidly becoming a saturated market.
Viz/Mangaplus only stream Shonen Jump titles. We are currently focused on the thousands of other titles that are out there that aren't getting that level of love. We are here to bridge that major gap so even more is available in English.
That's fair, and I think it's great to find all of these titles that are just unnoticed in the west. However for me I think your UI is still falling behind these other sites (which do admittedly look like clones of each other) - the images scaling down when you mouse over the menu is honestly quite annoying, the front page is extremely sterile and basic, and it just doesn't follow the standard for the industry (both in the west and in japan) of typically 3 most recent and first 3 chapters are free. Another issue is at the moment you really don't have a lot of titles - 108 sure sounds like a lot but compared to what's out there it's absolutely nothing and there is no way that everyone who signs up will be interested in most of these. And maybe this is also a problem of it being very small in scale, but there is no option to search for more than one tag at a time which is the worst trend in the world and something that was solved on mangadex years ago. I hope you can address these things in future.
Thanks for the feedback on the homepage and reader overlay UI. I can see what we can do about those.
We are planning to add multi-select for the Genre filtering. Our backend supports it but haven't implemented the frontend portion yet.
Free chapter availability are currently limited by the original publisher's rights and we are working on that!
We're also working to add more series and have more coming soon. Adding each series takes time and money unfortunately.
We are planning to add multi-select for the Genre filtering. Our backend supports it but haven't implemented the frontend portion yet.
Free chapter availability are currently limited by the original publisher's rights and we are working on that!
We're also working to add more series and have more coming soon. Adding each series takes time and money unfortunately.
What about Crunchyroll though? They also seem to offer some of the same non-Jump titles as you (e.g. Cardcaptor Sakura CC)? And can I read offline with this?
I'm glad to see this service making it off the ground. With the rising popularity of manga globally there's a lot of room for innovation in this space, especially transcending the sometimes myopic focus of more traditional publishers on those "safe" titles which might be perceived to sell well (an attitude which both keeps excellent manga away from the Western market and foments the scanlation scene, for better or worse). Seeing you guys work with Glacier Bay and Star Fruit, acting as an intermediary with regards to digital content distribution, makes me hopeful that the conditions are ripe for even more indie publishers to spring up in the near future, and that this won't be the end of new resources that help facilitate that.
I suppose I would be most curious about your opinions on the viability of the simulpub model at scale. Viz, for instance, fully redoes their simulpubs for popular series like One Piece when releasing volumes, and it's not hard to see the challenges associated with rapid and consistent delivery of high-quality simulpubs on a tight schedule. I ask especially since you mention quality as one of your selling points, and beyond the major established print publishers quality has often been hit and miss, especially for digital-native services.
I suppose I would be most curious about your opinions on the viability of the simulpub model at scale. Viz, for instance, fully redoes their simulpubs for popular series like One Piece when releasing volumes, and it's not hard to see the challenges associated with rapid and consistent delivery of high-quality simulpubs on a tight schedule. I ask especially since you mention quality as one of your selling points, and beyond the major established print publishers quality has often been hit and miss, especially for digital-native services.
Thanks! We’re also really proud of our partnership with smaller publishers like Kaiten Books, Star Fruit Books, and Glacier Bay Books. It’s been great sharing their titles with more fans.
The simulpub model is definitely expensive to run at scale, especially if the localization staff is paid fairly, which is something we believe in very strongly. We’re currently experimenting with some other models as well, including serializing completed series one chapter at a time. There’s a balancing act between quality and speed obviously, and one nice thing about releasing digitally on a streaming service is that we can more easily experiment to find the right balance compared to a print publisher.
The simulpub model is definitely expensive to run at scale, especially if the localization staff is paid fairly, which is something we believe in very strongly. We’re currently experimenting with some other models as well, including serializing completed series one chapter at a time. There’s a balancing act between quality and speed obviously, and one nice thing about releasing digitally on a streaming service is that we can more easily experiment to find the right balance compared to a print publisher.
The reason I turn to piracy isn't that I don't want to pay, it's that there's no legal option for the manga I want to read.
Do you see a realistic path to a world where scanlations are unnecessary because any manga I would like to read has an official translation?
Do you see a realistic path to a world where scanlations are unnecessary because any manga I would like to read has an official translation?
This is a complex issue. Even with Crunchyroll, we were unable to stop all piracy or even get all anime translated since we can't force people to release their work overseas or on a subscription service. Scanlation and piracy will continue to exist for monetary reasons, availability, ideological, and personal preferences. For example, some people don't like the style of some official translations in terms of either the wording of the translation or the visual presentation of it on the page and will go to piracy to get a scanlated copy the matches their style. Though there is a path to severely reduce the amount of manga that isn't officially translated for series that are available for overseas distribution so that it can garner a fanbase. That reduced reliance on scanlations is what we are focused on.
> Most of us worked together at Crunchyroll
Are you a hybrid publisher translating these in-house, or are you a middleman service working with publishers who are handling the translation?
Are you a hybrid publisher translating these in-house, or are you a middleman service working with publishers who are handling the translation?
Currently we are a middleman service for other publishers but we are looking into in-house translation.
To be honest, hearing that you're a middleman with a feature-rich client is very appealing. I was on the fence before your response but now I'm way more comfortable knowing my subscription would be used to further the service and negotiations with publishers, rather than gamble upon your company's Crunchyroll heritage with regard to translations (not a good thing).
I'm openingly against Crunchyroll's low pay for translators and have posted publicly to that extent so I completely understand that.
Cool idea! I’ll sign up. Few UX things:
* The page scroll at the bottom of my iOS Safari browser doesn’t work
* Right to left makes sense for Japanese but if I’m reading it in English I’d expect the scroll to be Left to Right
My free chapter if it’s series specific - https://www.azuki.co/series/edens-zero/read/c607c182-5317-4e...
* The page scroll at the bottom of my iOS Safari browser doesn’t work
* Right to left makes sense for Japanese but if I’m reading it in English I’d expect the scroll to be Left to Right
My free chapter if it’s series specific - https://www.azuki.co/series/edens-zero/read/c607c182-5317-4e...
Do you read manga? The books, in English, are still right to left pages.
Thanks for the feedback! We'll take a look into the scroll issue and see if we can add an option to reverse the reading mode to left-to-right.
Finally! Its been incredibly frustrating with the current model of paying $7-$10 for a manga volume. Gettign caught up with a series can cost over a hundred dollars vs being able to stream the anime with just crunchy roll or netflix. It just didn't make sense to me that the anime would be cheaper to consume given the relative production costs.
That's exactly why I started Azuki! I just want to read as easily as I can watch anime without blind buying a bunch of stuff.
I am curious how this pricing model affect the publishers/creators. I understand that from the consumer point of view, it looks quite appealing but wonder if for the players in the other side it would be the same.
Is the idea that in the long term there will be a bigger user base paying for this new model which translates into a higher revenue stream than the actual one even if they end paying way less compared to buying those titles individually?
You got it right! Since each user is paying less per chapter read, you need more subscribers on the service to surpass the revenue that would have been received with a-la-carte only. And there is a huge opportunity to get more subscribers paying to read than there are people paying under the traditional a-la-carte structure due to the much lower barrier to entry. This is exactly how Crunchyroll pushed the anime industry forward where physical sales are mostly downstream from digital subscription services.
Looks awesome! Slight naming collision but pretty different industries. https://www.azuki.com/
We actually launched Azuki a while before this project started!
A little off-topic, but what is the best way to translate manga into other languages? I have been looking for a tool that makes this easy, but i haven’t found anything yet.
I’m talking about making new translations myself, not tools that will scan the page and run it through google translate.
I’m talking about making new translations myself, not tools that will scan the page and run it through google translate.
If you already read Japanese and are just looking for a tool to help with the workflow, one tool that’s really promising is Serifu, a translation markup language being developed by translator Paul Starr: https://github.com/papatangosierra/serifu
This looks great, but how do you convert it to a comic?
You need the comic author to use the format, but what tool does the author use? They need to define the dialogue boxes on the pages and somehow link those boxes to the markup format, right?
You need the comic author to use the format, but what tool does the author use? They need to define the dialogue boxes on the pages and somehow link those boxes to the markup format, right?
Shameless plug: my current project https://www.nekostrips.com aims at making the process as frictionless as possible. Still very rough around the edges, but useful for hobby purposes. I have several improvements in the works.
Awesome! I will follow the development and try it out!
Any plans to open source it? Is there a roadmap? My guess is that you’ll be adding custom font support (some unicode isn’t support by mainstream fonts and you can probably find a niche by supporting minority languages). also i suppose you’ll be adding bulk export to common comic book formats like cbz or cbr?
Any plans to open source it? Is there a roadmap? My guess is that you’ll be adding custom font support (some unicode isn’t support by mainstream fonts and you can probably find a niche by supporting minority languages). also i suppose you’ll be adding bulk export to common comic book formats like cbz or cbr?
Firstly, thanks for your message, it genuinely made me smile :)
As for your questions:
- No plans to open source it, unless I stop working on it.
As for the roadmap, it is extensive. In random order (both in terms of importance and release horizon) I am planning:
- exports as archives (if I remember properly, .cbr and .cbz formats are just renamed .rar and .zip respectively) as you mentioned
- proper font selection/customization (and eventually, bring your own) as you surmised
- workflow improvements (shortcuts, bulk commands vs current clicking item by item)
- specifying bubble type, from visual type (text in closed bubble opaque or not, text over background) to purpose (speech, onomatopeia, in-world written text, meta explanation) and source (who is talking, to whom, etc)
- moving the current "zoom" level from chapter to series: link to Knowledge Base, for easier lexical reference (with regards to man(ga|hwa|hua) names are often transcriptions of foreign words / names which are often translated back with varying degrees of success).
- multiplayer
- making the app not just usable but ergonomic on mobile screens
- a lot more.
I will add a roadmap section on the app.
Origin story:
I worked as a translator (handwritten medical forms, business communications) during my studies and got interested in what was considered the state of the art for CAT tools. I ended up building my own out of scripts, macros and rule-based processing because nothing provided the ease, flexibility and low overhead I was looking for.
With nekostrips, I am convinced I can deliver a compelling tool for comics.
If you or anyone else feels like discussing further, you can contact me through the form on the app, or on social networks.
As for your questions:
- No plans to open source it, unless I stop working on it.
As for the roadmap, it is extensive. In random order (both in terms of importance and release horizon) I am planning:
- exports as archives (if I remember properly, .cbr and .cbz formats are just renamed .rar and .zip respectively) as you mentioned
- proper font selection/customization (and eventually, bring your own) as you surmised
- workflow improvements (shortcuts, bulk commands vs current clicking item by item)
- specifying bubble type, from visual type (text in closed bubble opaque or not, text over background) to purpose (speech, onomatopeia, in-world written text, meta explanation) and source (who is talking, to whom, etc)
- moving the current "zoom" level from chapter to series: link to Knowledge Base, for easier lexical reference (with regards to man(ga|hwa|hua) names are often transcriptions of foreign words / names which are often translated back with varying degrees of success).
- multiplayer
- making the app not just usable but ergonomic on mobile screens
- a lot more.
I will add a roadmap section on the app.
Origin story:
I worked as a translator (handwritten medical forms, business communications) during my studies and got interested in what was considered the state of the art for CAT tools. I ended up building my own out of scripts, macros and rule-based processing because nothing provided the ease, flexibility and low overhead I was looking for.
With nekostrips, I am convinced I can deliver a compelling tool for comics.
If you or anyone else feels like discussing further, you can contact me through the form on the app, or on social networks.
Last time I checked (years ago haha), you would use Tesseract OCR and some other translation tool. There are more sophisticated methods now that include AI to include visual context for translation (https://syncedreview.com/2020/12/31/japanese-manga-translati...).
Not sure what’s most popular or open source now
Not sure what’s most popular or open source now
As far as I know, you hand the translation to someone who knows Photoshop, and they do the lettering.
Are you guys accepting subscriptions from outside the USA? I found your service a while ago through Crunchyroll but I have backed off trying it out because of this.
(Most US based services are unavailable abroad or have incomplete catalogs (hi, Crunchyroll) due to licensing)
(Most US based services are unavailable abroad or have incomplete catalogs (hi, Crunchyroll) due to licensing)
All titles on our service are available worldwide outside of Japan and we support payments worldwide by Credit Card on the website and Apple/Google on our mobile apps.
If you get Berzerk, I’ll sign up :) that’s what I’m looking to read next, one way or another.
I really enjoy the Shonen Jump app on my iPad for reading One Piece so I’m definitely keen on a service like this with an expanding catalog!
I really enjoy the Shonen Jump app on my iPad for reading One Piece so I’m definitely keen on a service like this with an expanding catalog!
I'm a Berserk fan myself and got the brand tattooed on my neck so getting that would be awesome!
Always good to see more official subscriptions beside Viz/Crunchyroll in North America.
I see that you share some overlap with Crunchyroll's licenses but not all of them e.g. Attack on Titan but not Orange (is this a cost/popularity/publisher decision?). I also see that some series don't start at ch1 e.g. Grand Blue (I assume different publishers pre ch50?).
It's a shame the catalog is not that big yet. Here's hoping future seed rounds can raise more capital for licenses.
Hopefully you guys can pick up licenses for source material of currently airing anime too.
I see that you share some overlap with Crunchyroll's licenses but not all of them e.g. Attack on Titan but not Orange (is this a cost/popularity/publisher decision?). I also see that some series don't start at ch1 e.g. Grand Blue (I assume different publishers pre ch50?).
It's a shame the catalog is not that big yet. Here's hoping future seed rounds can raise more capital for licenses.
Hopefully you guys can pick up licenses for source material of currently airing anime too.
Both Crunchyroll and Azuki have Attack on Titan from Kodansha, but Orange is part of a different deal CR has. Sorry about the missing chapters on Grand Blue and some other series! That’s a licensing restriction on Kodansha’s end that we’re doing everything we can to change.
Great idea for a product. Glad this exists! If anything, you guys should be charging more for this service!
Calm down - we're in the middle of a massive upward inflationary spiral across the Western world. I know I'd love to buy this, but I'm already double-guessing myself on whether it's worth $60 a year...
This is off topic but as someone who grew up in a household that made their living selling things in markets, where prices were openly negotiated, I just want to share a thought:
While you're absolutely allowed to express that a product may not be worth a price, it seems tactless to make such a comment on a thread where the founders are announcing their product. I understand you're replying to someone who feels the product could command a higher price, but to say you're double guessing the price just seems like something you should keep to yourself.
I can only imagine the amount of work this team puts into crafting these translations - similar to how family put a lot of work into the goods they sold.
While you're absolutely allowed to express that a product may not be worth a price, it seems tactless to make such a comment on a thread where the founders are announcing their product. I understand you're replying to someone who feels the product could command a higher price, but to say you're double guessing the price just seems like something you should keep to yourself.
I can only imagine the amount of work this team puts into crafting these translations - similar to how family put a lot of work into the goods they sold.
The irony: people spend their lives telling each other semi-formalized bullshit about something not being worth the asking price, as part of ancient rituals meant to make both parties feel like they got the better of each other, but god forbid one might actually say out loud that they honestly think something might not be worthy to them.
I honestly wouldn't have said anything, if it weren't for people trotting out the "charge more" mantra - which at the moment really is insensitive towards people struggling to keep the lights on.
To people living and breathing manga, I'm sure this is a steal; to me, for my circumstances, it's a nice-to-have that may or may not be be worth the expense. This has nothing to do with the quality of the product - a Ferrari is a sweet piece of machinery, but to me it's not worth the sacrifices I would have to make to afford it.
I honestly wouldn't have said anything, if it weren't for people trotting out the "charge more" mantra - which at the moment really is insensitive towards people struggling to keep the lights on.
To people living and breathing manga, I'm sure this is a steal; to me, for my circumstances, it's a nice-to-have that may or may not be be worth the expense. This has nothing to do with the quality of the product - a Ferrari is a sweet piece of machinery, but to me it's not worth the sacrifices I would have to make to afford it.
I imagine a post-seed startup founder is actually VERY interested in peoples negative opinions on their product, and what they would change
and by VERY I mean would pay good money for a reputable company to collect said opinions
and by VERY I mean would pay good money for a reputable company to collect said opinions
Often pricing is an important aspect of the feedback the team wants. I agree it can seem like it lacks tact, but not taking these things personally is also something important to be ready for when launching a product.
However, I do appreciate your attention towards being kind and supportive to people!
However, I do appreciate your attention towards being kind and supportive to people!
> it seems tactless to make such a comment on a thread where the founders are announcing their product (…) to say you're double guessing the price just seems like something you should keep to yourself.
If you identify a pain point and keep it to yourself, you’re doing a disservice to the founders. If they charge too much and no one ever tells them, the business will fail and they won’t learn why. Honest (polite) feedback is more beneficial than trying to spare their feelings.
> I can only imagine the amount of work this team puts into crafting these translation
This team is for now a middleman, they haven’t put any work into the translations: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30807307
If you identify a pain point and keep it to yourself, you’re doing a disservice to the founders. If they charge too much and no one ever tells them, the business will fail and they won’t learn why. Honest (polite) feedback is more beneficial than trying to spare their feelings.
> I can only imagine the amount of work this team puts into crafting these translation
This team is for now a middleman, they haven’t put any work into the translations: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30807307
I actually was just running into this problem this week, but on Kindle/eReaders. The solution I found was getting a out-of-state library card to a big city library ($50 a year) and borrowing books. The library also has all the manga that I wanted to read available to borrow with 3-4 copies of each volume, which ensures that I'll always be able to check out one of the ebook copies and put it onto my kindle
I highly recommend this to anyone, not only for manga but for any ebooks
I highly recommend this to anyone, not only for manga but for any ebooks
If you don't mind me asking, what city library do you use or recommend? This sounds interesting but I'm just unsure how to go about applying for one
The Brooklyn Public Library is one such option: https://disc.bklynlibrary.org/card/
Congrats on the launch! Any plans of offering other languages? I coincidentally the other week decided to experiment with reading manga in target languages I'd like to learn (or freshen up on). After talking to a friend I realized she actually learned French that way. I just ordered Akira in French, but would love to have a subscription to a bunch of manga in other non-English languages.
For now we are focused on English language so we can give the translations the care and attention it needs and only expanding to more languages when we can do the same for them.
Do you see yourselves as adding light novels eventually? I read a couple series, like _Sword Art Online: Progressive_, and usually need to buy each new official translation. They aren't expensive, but I would much prefer a subscription model where I can just pay to read them (and potentially reread/review a previous one to catch up) as they're released or all at once.
J-novel club only has certain titles, but they are a good deal if you have more than a couple that you read. You can read recently released (60ish days?) chapters as part of the fee, if you buy complete books they are DRM free, and they have RSS feeds for each series.
No SAO though; literally the only thing I want that j-novel club doesn't offer is Yen-On's catalog; their technical execution is that good.
No SAO though; literally the only thing I want that j-novel club doesn't offer is Yen-On's catalog; their technical execution is that good.
That’s definitely something we’ve considered, since a lot of manga fans also read light novels. But novels are much more expensive to translate than manga (way more words!), so that’s something we’d have to figure out.
Looks like they're using a pretty interesting DRM scheme involving somehow scrambling the images on the wire and then decoding them in a service worker? Props for an "innovation" I hadn't seen before.
I'll be investigating ways to defend against this further, for now fortunately thanks to the open nature of the web we can write a script that listens on load, paints the final image onto a canvas, turns the canvas into a data-uri and then saves the resultant unencumbered image to your hard drive as you're scrolling through the manga.
Essentially the code in this SO question is all you need.
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/10673122/how-to-save-can...
I'll be investigating ways to defend against this further, for now fortunately thanks to the open nature of the web we can write a script that listens on load, paints the final image onto a canvas, turns the canvas into a data-uri and then saves the resultant unencumbered image to your hard drive as you're scrolling through the manga.
Essentially the code in this SO question is all you need.
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/10673122/how-to-save-can...
I'm looking forward to a decent digital option that's not Amazon or Amazon owned. So this is nice.
RIP Comixology. I hope we can at least start alleviating your manga needs.
This is awesome and I am getting two accounts - one for me and another for my daughter. Can you please add a "completed" tag so that I can binge read ?
It's on the feature roadmap!
Congratulations on the launch.
I wonder if a service like yours could licence distribution of digital editions in Japanese outside of Japan. I would sign up in a second for dual language access to Manga (and light novels).
I think part of the reason for manga piracy relates to people who want to consume the originals and can't buy from a Japanese store front or afford the price of buying the physical manga all the time.
I wonder if a service like yours could licence distribution of digital editions in Japanese outside of Japan. I would sign up in a second for dual language access to Manga (and light novels).
I think part of the reason for manga piracy relates to people who want to consume the originals and can't buy from a Japanese store front or afford the price of buying the physical manga all the time.
You can actually access the real stuff on shonen jump's app, as long as you get the Japanese version of it. Lot's of free stuff on it too.
Awesome project! I saw a similar app in France called Mangas.io! They are doing a great job as well, maybe you guys could work together?
Thanks for the suggestion. We’ll look into them and maybe we can figure something out.
On a related topic, as a Japanese learner, I would really like to see a Japanese-text version manga subscription service available for people outside Japan, but I doubt if it will ever happen due to licensing reasons. Likewise, CrunchyRoll hasn’t been able to provide native Japanese subtitles.
I've done a couple impressions threads since your initial launch last year[1][2], and it's nice to see that there's been some improvements in regards to matters brought up in them, though there's definitely still room for more. The reader in particular is still rather janky and lacking in options (I would really like to see more fitting options than just forced fit to height as well as manual control over image quality) and the controls aren't great either - for example, trying to rapidly click forward with mouse works poorly because the click regions are image dependent rather than constant so the animated page transitions makes clicking in the same area unreliable. And speaking of transitions, it would be nice to have control over the speed of them, including making them instant. The current speed is slower than I'd like and it's a constant source of annoyance.
And while you've increased the image resolution since launch, there are still notable problems with the overall image quality. Some series have horrible looking screentones (like Domestic Girlfriend as a random example I just found) while others have incorrect black levels (black isn't RGB 0,0,0 but instead something like ~36,31,33)- The World of Summoning being one recent example. I know that in some cases you might have screentone issues at source level but manga is something where you have to really know what you're doing in terms of image scaling to not mess things up further, as screentones are incredibly fragile and easily turn into an ugly mess when resized.
One thing that I'm decidedly not happy with that you've done after launch is the exclusive streaming deal you made with Kaiten Books a while back. The manga distribution market has generally been one of the few bright spots in the area of Japanese media where things are not exclusive by default and customers can actually have real choice and preference in terms of where they get their manga from. In other words, competition that's actually beneficial for consumers, the same which can't be said for eg. anime streaming services where the only difference is in which service has what shows, which does not benefit the consumer in any way. I would be more understanding of exclusivity if Azuki actually did in-house licensing and translation, but signing exclusive distribution deals with a third-party publisher just comes off as trying to pull up the ladder after yourself to the benefit of no-one but yourself. This is a sincere plea from me: please keep any possible future exclusives to in-house licenses at most, please. The world does not need any more anti-consumer exclusivity than what it already has.
Seriously, it's not a problem especially for manga subscription services to share the same content. If there's multiple places to read the same things, then I can choose the one that offers the best service, and while Azuki has issues, I do think you have potential too. The only real problem with shared content isn't the sharing itself but rather Kodansha, the publisher that shares its content the most, and their goals in sharing, which seems to be to primarily selling ebooks rather than letting consumers actually read their series in full via subscription services. That's really the primary problem for the subscription services to tackle - actually having series to read in full. This is why I also see the calendar features I talk about in the Twitter threads as so important - if a back catalog series isn't fully available, then it's really important to be able to see when I could expect it to be, because I sure don't want to be stuck as a subscriber for months only to see new content for a series I like come out once in a blue moon, if ever.
Going back to more technical matters - I do have to wonder, what made you decide as a small team that you'll build entirely separate versions on three platforms? Having built a web-based manga reader professionally myself, I know that it's not an easy task to develop an actually good one, and you've essentially made that three times harder with separate codebases for every platform. At the very least, I would recommend only focusing on the web tech reader and reusing that across the platforms, as right now the burden of 3x development is really showing with how a web can get a feature and then we'll have to wait months and months for one of the mobile apps to get them and then even longer for the other to get it too.
Anyway, that's all that I can bother to write for now. I do intend to make another Twitter thread on the service at one point - maybe in three months at the one-year mark?
[1] https://twitter.com/Daiz42/status/1409670066925228035
[2] https://twitter.com/Daiz42/status/1428413172516544512
And while you've increased the image resolution since launch, there are still notable problems with the overall image quality. Some series have horrible looking screentones (like Domestic Girlfriend as a random example I just found) while others have incorrect black levels (black isn't RGB 0,0,0 but instead something like ~36,31,33)- The World of Summoning being one recent example. I know that in some cases you might have screentone issues at source level but manga is something where you have to really know what you're doing in terms of image scaling to not mess things up further, as screentones are incredibly fragile and easily turn into an ugly mess when resized.
One thing that I'm decidedly not happy with that you've done after launch is the exclusive streaming deal you made with Kaiten Books a while back. The manga distribution market has generally been one of the few bright spots in the area of Japanese media where things are not exclusive by default and customers can actually have real choice and preference in terms of where they get their manga from. In other words, competition that's actually beneficial for consumers, the same which can't be said for eg. anime streaming services where the only difference is in which service has what shows, which does not benefit the consumer in any way. I would be more understanding of exclusivity if Azuki actually did in-house licensing and translation, but signing exclusive distribution deals with a third-party publisher just comes off as trying to pull up the ladder after yourself to the benefit of no-one but yourself. This is a sincere plea from me: please keep any possible future exclusives to in-house licenses at most, please. The world does not need any more anti-consumer exclusivity than what it already has.
Seriously, it's not a problem especially for manga subscription services to share the same content. If there's multiple places to read the same things, then I can choose the one that offers the best service, and while Azuki has issues, I do think you have potential too. The only real problem with shared content isn't the sharing itself but rather Kodansha, the publisher that shares its content the most, and their goals in sharing, which seems to be to primarily selling ebooks rather than letting consumers actually read their series in full via subscription services. That's really the primary problem for the subscription services to tackle - actually having series to read in full. This is why I also see the calendar features I talk about in the Twitter threads as so important - if a back catalog series isn't fully available, then it's really important to be able to see when I could expect it to be, because I sure don't want to be stuck as a subscriber for months only to see new content for a series I like come out once in a blue moon, if ever.
Going back to more technical matters - I do have to wonder, what made you decide as a small team that you'll build entirely separate versions on three platforms? Having built a web-based manga reader professionally myself, I know that it's not an easy task to develop an actually good one, and you've essentially made that three times harder with separate codebases for every platform. At the very least, I would recommend only focusing on the web tech reader and reusing that across the platforms, as right now the burden of 3x development is really showing with how a web can get a feature and then we'll have to wait months and months for one of the mobile apps to get them and then even longer for the other to get it too.
Anyway, that's all that I can bother to write for now. I do intend to make another Twitter thread on the service at one point - maybe in three months at the one-year mark?
[1] https://twitter.com/Daiz42/status/1409670066925228035
[2] https://twitter.com/Daiz42/status/1428413172516544512
Thanks for the constant feedback, Daiz, brutally honest as it always is ;)
We're tracking all of the reader issues and feature requests like the ones you mentioned, but of course with a small team handling everything from development to licensing (our five founders are the only employees) we have to be really careful about what we prioritize.
As for image quality, we'll look into the specific issues you mentioned to see if they're present in the source files we get from Kodansha or not.
Re: Kaiten exclusivity, what we can say publicly right now is that our partnership goes deeper than just exclusives, and we're working on some projects that we'll hopefully be able to talk about soon. One visible thing it has helped us do is collaborate with Kaiten on cross-promotions for their titles without worrying that our efforts will push people to competitor services.
In terms of the calendar feature, we put out a release calendar a little while ago! https://www.azuki.co/release-calendar If you have more features you'd like to see from it, just let us know.
Azuki was always intended to be cross-platform. We believed really strongly that web had to be there because it's so accessible via links and search engines. But a lot of manga fans also look for places to read in the app stores, and we have competitors in those stores, so it was important to be able to compete there as well. You're right that cross-platform development is a challenge, but we get a significant share of our readership from Android and iOS, so we think it was the right call. We will continue to improve all platforms and everyone is free to decide when is the right time for them to use Azuki based on the features and content we have available.
We're tracking all of the reader issues and feature requests like the ones you mentioned, but of course with a small team handling everything from development to licensing (our five founders are the only employees) we have to be really careful about what we prioritize.
As for image quality, we'll look into the specific issues you mentioned to see if they're present in the source files we get from Kodansha or not.
Re: Kaiten exclusivity, what we can say publicly right now is that our partnership goes deeper than just exclusives, and we're working on some projects that we'll hopefully be able to talk about soon. One visible thing it has helped us do is collaborate with Kaiten on cross-promotions for their titles without worrying that our efforts will push people to competitor services.
In terms of the calendar feature, we put out a release calendar a little while ago! https://www.azuki.co/release-calendar If you have more features you'd like to see from it, just let us know.
Azuki was always intended to be cross-platform. We believed really strongly that web had to be there because it's so accessible via links and search engines. But a lot of manga fans also look for places to read in the app stores, and we have competitors in those stores, so it was important to be able to compete there as well. You're right that cross-platform development is a challenge, but we get a significant share of our readership from Android and iOS, so we think it was the right call. We will continue to improve all platforms and everyone is free to decide when is the right time for them to use Azuki based on the features and content we have available.
I did see the beta calendar. It's a start for sure, but most back catalog titles still have zero information in terms of when to expect new chapters for them, so there is definitely still work to be done in that regard. And on the calendar itself: entries should ideally be grouped by day. Multiple entries for the same title on the same day should get grouped to one entry (so eg. "Again!! c74-76" rather than "Again!! c74" "Again!! c75" "Again!! c76"). And this one's especially important: if a user is logged in, the calendar should highlight titles in My List by default, and you should also be able to filter the calendar to only show My List titles. For an external reference, I can recommend taking a look at J-Novel Club's release calendar, as it covers basically all of these points and then some: https://j-novel.club/calendar
On the subject of apps, I'm not saying you shouldn't have apps, I'm just saying that there are certain things you should share across the web and apps, like the reader. Basically, you could have the reader running in a web view inside the mobile apps, and this way you could have just one reader codebase that gets reused across all the platforms. You could take this even further and build your mobile apps with web tech inside web views as well. You probably wouldn't do that at this point, but I would still recommend looking into using the reader in a web view at least, as that's no doubt the most complex frontend component in the entire system.
On the subject of apps, I'm not saying you shouldn't have apps, I'm just saying that there are certain things you should share across the web and apps, like the reader. Basically, you could have the reader running in a web view inside the mobile apps, and this way you could have just one reader codebase that gets reused across all the platforms. You could take this even further and build your mobile apps with web tech inside web views as well. You probably wouldn't do that at this point, but I would still recommend looking into using the reader in a web view at least, as that's no doubt the most complex frontend component in the entire system.
[deleted]
Congrats on your launch! I have been an anime/manga fan for 30 years now, been following the development of the industry for a long time, and I have questions/comments.
1. Are Japanese producers interested in the foreign market now? How does this affect you?
Piracy has been a phenomenon in the foreign market for a looong time, and for the longest time the Japanese weren't interested in the foreign market at all. Even as recent as circa 2010 (by which time anime fan subs had been a big thing for nearly a decade), Japanese producers were expressing surprise upon learning about this phenomenon, as if they had been sleeping under a rock. Has this changed?
I am not merely interested in this as a trivia, because it has practical implications. Until relatively recently — and relatively late — the anime industry lacked a legal streaming service with comprehensive content library. (It's still suboptimal: why the heck is Dragon Ball Super not available to Europeans on Crunchyroll!? Why can't I get Fate/Grand Order anywhere?! But I digress) The reason why it was so late was because Japanese producers weren't interested in foreign markets and weren't cooperative.
The manga industry is in a much worse state. Are they beginning to change their minds now about the importance of the foreign market? How (dis)interested are they, how does that affect you, and how do you deal with that?
2. How interested is the Japanese industry in building a comprehensive digital distribution platform?
The #1 advantage that piracy manga reading sites have over legal sites, is breadth. I find it ridiculous that in 2022, when the value of digital reading should be obvious, and when the foreign market has shown for more than a decade that demand exists, that the Japanese manga industry still hasn't standardized on ways to let people read all their manga quickly and easily.
You have little islands like Viz and Shounen Jump, but people don't want islands, they want continents: everything together instead of scattered in hundreds of places.
How interested are they in the vision of a "continent"? Do they see the value in this? What do they think of piracy sites (other than that they're illegal)? Does the industry recognize that those sites fill a certain demand, and does the industry recognize that they've failed to meet demand, i.e. that the proliferation of piracy sites is part of their own making?
3. Do you have any plans regarding non-Japanese manga?
Korean manhwa has been up and coming for years now. Titles like The Gamer, Noblesse, The Great Mage Returns In 4000 Years, etc. have attracted quite a lot of fans, and have proven that Koreans are capable of making high-quality, competitive works with styles that are either very similar to or strongly influenced by Japanese manga. More and more Japanese manga fans are reading Korean manhwa.
Unlike the Japanese, which seem to be strangely conservative w.r.t business models and distribution media/channels, the Koreans are much more progressive: manhwa are typically drawn to be read on a digital screen and are produced to be distributed in digital format first. They are very open to distribute through more Internet channels.
To a lesser extend, all of the above also applies to Chinese manhua. Their quality is lagging behind Korean ones, which impedes their adoption somewhat, but that will change in the future as Chinese talent develops. But the one big competitive advantage Chinese manhua has is the sheer production volume of them. On many non-legal manga reading sites, Chinese manhua has been dominating the front pages (which list new releases). Chinese manhua not only have more titles, but also release much more quickly. Quantity is a quality all on its own.
This phenomenon (of Chinese manhua) has not escaped the eyes of other legal manga reading parties. INKR Comics (formerly MangaRock, now they are going legal) is distributing a lot of Chinese comics, presumably so they can easily beef up their library volume.
In some ways, manhwa and manhua compete with manga for attention. And for me (and many others), they have succeeded, taking a significant amount of "market share" in the stuff that I read.
What is your opinion about the phenomenon of manhwa and manhua? Do you plan to do anything with them?
1. Are Japanese producers interested in the foreign market now? How does this affect you?
Piracy has been a phenomenon in the foreign market for a looong time, and for the longest time the Japanese weren't interested in the foreign market at all. Even as recent as circa 2010 (by which time anime fan subs had been a big thing for nearly a decade), Japanese producers were expressing surprise upon learning about this phenomenon, as if they had been sleeping under a rock. Has this changed?
I am not merely interested in this as a trivia, because it has practical implications. Until relatively recently — and relatively late — the anime industry lacked a legal streaming service with comprehensive content library. (It's still suboptimal: why the heck is Dragon Ball Super not available to Europeans on Crunchyroll!? Why can't I get Fate/Grand Order anywhere?! But I digress) The reason why it was so late was because Japanese producers weren't interested in foreign markets and weren't cooperative.
The manga industry is in a much worse state. Are they beginning to change their minds now about the importance of the foreign market? How (dis)interested are they, how does that affect you, and how do you deal with that?
2. How interested is the Japanese industry in building a comprehensive digital distribution platform?
The #1 advantage that piracy manga reading sites have over legal sites, is breadth. I find it ridiculous that in 2022, when the value of digital reading should be obvious, and when the foreign market has shown for more than a decade that demand exists, that the Japanese manga industry still hasn't standardized on ways to let people read all their manga quickly and easily.
You have little islands like Viz and Shounen Jump, but people don't want islands, they want continents: everything together instead of scattered in hundreds of places.
How interested are they in the vision of a "continent"? Do they see the value in this? What do they think of piracy sites (other than that they're illegal)? Does the industry recognize that those sites fill a certain demand, and does the industry recognize that they've failed to meet demand, i.e. that the proliferation of piracy sites is part of their own making?
3. Do you have any plans regarding non-Japanese manga?
Korean manhwa has been up and coming for years now. Titles like The Gamer, Noblesse, The Great Mage Returns In 4000 Years, etc. have attracted quite a lot of fans, and have proven that Koreans are capable of making high-quality, competitive works with styles that are either very similar to or strongly influenced by Japanese manga. More and more Japanese manga fans are reading Korean manhwa.
Unlike the Japanese, which seem to be strangely conservative w.r.t business models and distribution media/channels, the Koreans are much more progressive: manhwa are typically drawn to be read on a digital screen and are produced to be distributed in digital format first. They are very open to distribute through more Internet channels.
To a lesser extend, all of the above also applies to Chinese manhua. Their quality is lagging behind Korean ones, which impedes their adoption somewhat, but that will change in the future as Chinese talent develops. But the one big competitive advantage Chinese manhua has is the sheer production volume of them. On many non-legal manga reading sites, Chinese manhua has been dominating the front pages (which list new releases). Chinese manhua not only have more titles, but also release much more quickly. Quantity is a quality all on its own.
This phenomenon (of Chinese manhua) has not escaped the eyes of other legal manga reading parties. INKR Comics (formerly MangaRock, now they are going legal) is distributing a lot of Chinese comics, presumably so they can easily beef up their library volume.
In some ways, manhwa and manhua compete with manga for attention. And for me (and many others), they have succeeded, taking a significant amount of "market share" in the stuff that I read.
What is your opinion about the phenomenon of manhwa and manhua? Do you plan to do anything with them?
I've been reading a lot of Chinese novels and web comics. Discovering new genres based on chinese mythos, fresh takes on western fantasy and japanese manga tropes, and all the weird and wonderful new types of story has been a lot of fun.
Censorship over the last few years has changed the scene a lot. It is now very hard to tell a political intrigue story for instance, and gay themes are apparently heavily censored. This has been really sad to see, and I can't see many of my favourites (even fantasy/sci-fi classic 'release that witch', which is quite pro-chinese but essentially about a rebellion in the first half) being written today.
Nationalistic themes seem to be encourage, and there are rumours authors are told to include them so that the censors accept other parts of their story. These range from racist diatribes to chapters just showing how bad life is in america or japan. People say they are equivalent to every fantasy japanese protagonist showing their new world how great japanese cooking is, but it's really not the same thing at all - less pro, more anti. I think this will be the biggest barrier to popularity in the west.
Tencent has a massive amount of IP in this area, and an anime studio, and I had expected Chinese pop culture to be exported in much the same way as manga finally really saturated the west in the late 2000s. After the changes of the last few years, I don't see that happening.
Censorship over the last few years has changed the scene a lot. It is now very hard to tell a political intrigue story for instance, and gay themes are apparently heavily censored. This has been really sad to see, and I can't see many of my favourites (even fantasy/sci-fi classic 'release that witch', which is quite pro-chinese but essentially about a rebellion in the first half) being written today.
Nationalistic themes seem to be encourage, and there are rumours authors are told to include them so that the censors accept other parts of their story. These range from racist diatribes to chapters just showing how bad life is in america or japan. People say they are equivalent to every fantasy japanese protagonist showing their new world how great japanese cooking is, but it's really not the same thing at all - less pro, more anti. I think this will be the biggest barrier to popularity in the west.
Tencent has a massive amount of IP in this area, and an anime studio, and I had expected Chinese pop culture to be exported in much the same way as manga finally really saturated the west in the late 2000s. After the changes of the last few years, I don't see that happening.
Can you show examples of nationalistic themes?
A lot of what chocolatkey said is accurate. Also hi chocolatkey! I really hope manga survives too and I’m happy to see folks like Comikey out there alongside us trying to push the industry forward.
1. Publishers are definitely interested in the foreign market. The issue is that many of them are very conservative about making lots of content available via subscription. They’re used to a traditional a-la-carte model for print and ebooks, and it’s taken years of advocacy from overseas publishers and services to start to convince them that there’s an untapped market that subscriptions can tap into.
2. That leads to the issue of, as you said, comprehensive platforms. chocolatkey is right that getting this is very challenging, for the reasons above. The big publishers are very conservative, and no one wants to be the licensing person who gave away the farm to a foreign startup. That said, we’ve had success with smaller publishers who are more nimble and willing to experiment. We plan to use these partnerships to prove out the model and level up to larger publishers.
3. Non-Japanese comics are on our radar for sure, but like chocolatkey said, that market is very concentrated at the moment so it would be challenging to compete with the big players head-on. Manhwa and webtoons are huge right now, but anime and manga have withstood decades of potential competitors and continue to grow. Fans still want to read Japanese comics and experience the unique stories and perspectives they offer, even if they’re part of a diet of other types of comics.
1. Publishers are definitely interested in the foreign market. The issue is that many of them are very conservative about making lots of content available via subscription. They’re used to a traditional a-la-carte model for print and ebooks, and it’s taken years of advocacy from overseas publishers and services to start to convince them that there’s an untapped market that subscriptions can tap into.
2. That leads to the issue of, as you said, comprehensive platforms. chocolatkey is right that getting this is very challenging, for the reasons above. The big publishers are very conservative, and no one wants to be the licensing person who gave away the farm to a foreign startup. That said, we’ve had success with smaller publishers who are more nimble and willing to experiment. We plan to use these partnerships to prove out the model and level up to larger publishers.
3. Non-Japanese comics are on our radar for sure, but like chocolatkey said, that market is very concentrated at the moment so it would be challenging to compete with the big players head-on. Manhwa and webtoons are huge right now, but anime and manga have withstood decades of potential competitors and continue to grow. Fans still want to read Japanese comics and experience the unique stories and perspectives they offer, even if they’re part of a diet of other types of comics.
> The big publishers are very conservative, and no one wants to be the licensing person who gave away the farm to a foreign startup.
What is the risk to them? Don't they get paid no matter who they license to? Or is this about fear of cannibalizing the print business?
What is the risk to them? Don't they get paid no matter who they license to? Or is this about fear of cannibalizing the print business?
Some of it is fear of cannibalizing the traditional print and ebook business, uncertainty of newer strategies, and desire to retain control of their properties.
About 1, one of the factors for renewed interest in expanding the reach of manga is that the Japanese government started paying very good money for it, over the last 10 years or so: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cool_Japan#Creative_Industries...
You are correct, this is the reason many JP publishers are hiring agencies (of varying quality) to localize their content and publish in English themselves, or exclusively on their platform. Because they get those subsidies
I run a competitor to Azuki, Comikey, and I'm happy to offer some insight into this growing industry.
1. Absolutely, Japanese publishers are interested, but maybe not for the reasons you think. They have realized that the Korean (webtoons) and Chinese (webcomics) markets are expanding rapidly into the international market, and webtoon services are crushing manga services. Even a lot of the manga audience itself is moving towards reading webtoons. The most scary example for the Japanese publishers is probably Piccoma, a Japan-only (for now) manga/webtoon service launched by Korean webtoon giant Kakao. They entered the Japanese market fairly recently and now are now top on the Japanese app stores, and offer webtoon content as well as all manga. The Japanese publishers have realized, perhaps a bit too late, that they need to spread their content quickly, and that there is a lot of potential in doing so. I can't speak too much about what's happening behind the scenes, but Japanese publishers have woken up and most of them are no longer sleeping under a rock. They're even making webtoons themselves now... But licensing is still very difficult for Japanese content compared to e.g. Chinese content, and it takes a long time for deals to go through. I hope that answers your question.
2. Comikey is working very hard towards that goal, as I am sure Azuki is too. It's been our goal since day one to become a replacement for aggregator sites, but that is extremely challenging. Some of the biggest titles are made exclusively available to Japanese subsidiaries of the major publishers, other publishers are convinced that making their own app with only their own content is the way to go. Our only way to convince them otherwise is to show them the appeal of a platform like ours (especially in terms of sales), but even then, some content is simply never going to be available to a company like Comikey or Azuki unless you become the size of e.g. Amazon. Note that the bulk of Azuki's content comes from Kodansha's USA subsidiary, which happily licenses its content to many platforms out there. They are an exception to the rule.
3. You are correct that webtoons (Korean manwha or Chinese manhua) were born in the digital generation, and there are huge advantages they have over the Japanese manga culture/industry and its focus on physical releases. Take for example a fun insider fact - many of the original files for manga are basically held hostage by the printing companies, and the printing company must be paid money in order for us to receive a copy of the files for localization. File organization in general appears to be very poor, sometimes files are simply "lost". Something important to realize though is that companies like Azuki and Comikey cannot easily license most good/popular webtoons. There is a huge webtoon duopoly in Korea, most content is held up (exclusively) by either Naver or Kakao, and they sublicense it to English platforms they have a stake in. As you mentioned, Japanese manga fans are also shifting towards reading webtoons, even some of our own co-founders admit to doing so ;). Go to an anime convention and look at a few home screens, you'll see the average person has webtoon apps installed, not manga apps.
Overall, it's been intense so far, and the industry is evolving at a scary (for us) rate. It will be interesting to see where we are a few years from now. Personally, I hope manga survives
1. Absolutely, Japanese publishers are interested, but maybe not for the reasons you think. They have realized that the Korean (webtoons) and Chinese (webcomics) markets are expanding rapidly into the international market, and webtoon services are crushing manga services. Even a lot of the manga audience itself is moving towards reading webtoons. The most scary example for the Japanese publishers is probably Piccoma, a Japan-only (for now) manga/webtoon service launched by Korean webtoon giant Kakao. They entered the Japanese market fairly recently and now are now top on the Japanese app stores, and offer webtoon content as well as all manga. The Japanese publishers have realized, perhaps a bit too late, that they need to spread their content quickly, and that there is a lot of potential in doing so. I can't speak too much about what's happening behind the scenes, but Japanese publishers have woken up and most of them are no longer sleeping under a rock. They're even making webtoons themselves now... But licensing is still very difficult for Japanese content compared to e.g. Chinese content, and it takes a long time for deals to go through. I hope that answers your question.
2. Comikey is working very hard towards that goal, as I am sure Azuki is too. It's been our goal since day one to become a replacement for aggregator sites, but that is extremely challenging. Some of the biggest titles are made exclusively available to Japanese subsidiaries of the major publishers, other publishers are convinced that making their own app with only their own content is the way to go. Our only way to convince them otherwise is to show them the appeal of a platform like ours (especially in terms of sales), but even then, some content is simply never going to be available to a company like Comikey or Azuki unless you become the size of e.g. Amazon. Note that the bulk of Azuki's content comes from Kodansha's USA subsidiary, which happily licenses its content to many platforms out there. They are an exception to the rule.
3. You are correct that webtoons (Korean manwha or Chinese manhua) were born in the digital generation, and there are huge advantages they have over the Japanese manga culture/industry and its focus on physical releases. Take for example a fun insider fact - many of the original files for manga are basically held hostage by the printing companies, and the printing company must be paid money in order for us to receive a copy of the files for localization. File organization in general appears to be very poor, sometimes files are simply "lost". Something important to realize though is that companies like Azuki and Comikey cannot easily license most good/popular webtoons. There is a huge webtoon duopoly in Korea, most content is held up (exclusively) by either Naver or Kakao, and they sublicense it to English platforms they have a stake in. As you mentioned, Japanese manga fans are also shifting towards reading webtoons, even some of our own co-founders admit to doing so ;). Go to an anime convention and look at a few home screens, you'll see the average person has webtoon apps installed, not manga apps.
Overall, it's been intense so far, and the industry is evolving at a scary (for us) rate. It will be interesting to see where we are a few years from now. Personally, I hope manga survives
> some content is simply never going to be available to a company like Comikey or Azuki unless you become the size of e.g. Amazon.
Why? What's the downside of licensing content to smaller publishers? Licensing doesn't cost the producers anything right?
Why? What's the downside of licensing content to smaller publishers? Licensing doesn't cost the producers anything right?
Because most of the popular series are already tied up in exclusive licensing agreements with someone else, and if you want the publisher to reconsider the exclusive agreement with your competitor when it comes time to renew the license, then you have to have a lot of power to overcome the relationship between the licensor and licensee, especially in Japan.
Licensing does cost the producers (once again, especially in Japan) when they are not super organized, and have to source the materials for delivery, and dedicate manpower to checking the contracts.
Suppose that there is no exclusive licensing deal and that it's just that they can't be bothered to source the material. What if you offer to source the material yourself through alternative means, say by ripping them from aggregators? So that licensing for them only means checking a contract and giving you an ok. Would that help?
Hey, congrats on the launch!
My feedback: Please pre-load all the chapter images (or at least a few in advanced) while starting to read a chapter. Having to wait on the next page while reading is a bit cumbersome.
Which platform are you using? It should already be preloading a few images in advance but maybe we can do a better job on this on a particular platform.
Thanks for replying! I'm using the iOS app.
This is awesome. Are you considering support for internationalization by any chance? My daughter has been learning Chinese and she's been into manga recently, to boot. It would make for good study material.
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Great product, definitely going to try it out for a month or so.
It would be nice if you guys provided a Tachiyomi plugin; most of what I read is in Tachiyomi so it'd be inconvenient to switch between two apps.
It would be nice if you guys provided a Tachiyomi plugin; most of what I read is in Tachiyomi so it'd be inconvenient to switch between two apps.
This is a really cool idea, thanks for suggesting it! We’ll look into what it takes to build a Tachiyomi plugin and if it can support the terms of our publisher contracts.
What's your policy on same account with multiple users (like Netflix)? Usually I split those things with friends so services like this can become quite affordable in our currency (BRL).
No restrictions on account sharing, and adding profiles a la Netflix is something we can consider down the line. We’re happy to have more people using Azuki and talking about it with their friends :)
Congrats to Adela, Krystyn, and the rest of the Azuki team for all their hard work on this! Hope this continues its growth.
This sounds like a fantastic idea. I'm not a fan of mangas myself but my kids are!
Any chance anything will be available in French (and/or other languages) at some point?
Any chance anything will be available in French (and/or other languages) at some point?
Exciting!
I live in Japan but prefer to read in English. However it seems your iPhone app is not available in Japan? Any plans to also provide your service inside Japan as well?
I live in Japan but prefer to read in English. However it seems your iPhone app is not available in Japan? Any plans to also provide your service inside Japan as well?
Unfortunately publishers are not providing the the rights for content to be released in Japan through foreign services like Azuki. If we can make it work, we will.
I can't figure out to view raw instead of translated (I can't stand localization). Also searching for manga in Japanese doesn't work.
Was excited but didn’t find Vagabond. Does anyone have a suggestion of something they do have if Vagabond is really my only toe dipped in manga?
You may like "Blame!" (pronounced BLAM). It's not a similar story at all as it's more hard sci-fi action but may be up your alley. Let me know if you end up liking it.
https://www.azuki.co/series/blame
https://www.azuki.co/series/blame
Did you have to set up deals with each of the publishers individually to publish their manga in your app? How did those conversations go?
Yep, we've got deals with six English-language publishers. The conversations have generally been pretty smooth. Most of the publishers we work with are excited to get their series in front of a larger audience through a streaming service.
I know nothing about manga, but my kids are bang in to it. What's your target demographic? Are these titles child friendly? (< 12 yo)
We do have some series like Chi's Sweet Home which is very child friendly but also fun for all ages. But our service is more suitable for teens and adults at the moment so you would need to guide your kids on Azuki so they don't read other types of content. We have discussed adding better filtering for age groups so that is something we are considering.
This is, to me, a vital feature.
My niece loves manga, and I would buy her a subscription, but there would have to be some kind of age filtering. What I would personally love would be the ability to select exactly which series she can read, as sometimes simple age restrictions aren't good (some teen series are fine, others really aren't).
My niece loves manga, and I would buy her a subscription, but there would have to be some kind of age filtering. What I would personally love would be the ability to select exactly which series she can read, as sometimes simple age restrictions aren't good (some teen series are fine, others really aren't).
We've kept age filtering in mind even before we launched but haven't been able to prioritize it yet even though we agree and want to support it. But we hadn't thought of allowing a guardian to select the things a kid can read which is a wonderful idea! We'll keep that one in mind when we get around to age and content filtering.
Different cultures have different ideas of what "child friendly" means. As an example, Sailor Moon was targeted at 8yr old girls in Japan but deals with topics that many parents in the USA are not comfortable with for 8yr olds. For example lesbian relationships (I'm not making a judgement on that, only pointing out the fact that many USA parents would object to that topic for their 8yr olds and in fact that facet of Sailor Moon was edited out of the USA anime version).
Another example is One Piece which is also targeted pretty young but nearly every female character dresses super sexy and one of the main characters smokes at every opportunity.
Also, in general manga != for kids. There are tons of very adult manga and I don't just mean porn manga, I mean manga about adult topics targeted at adults. There are similar adult comics in the USA but the selection and market is arguably a order of magnitude or more larger (by percentage) in Japan.
Another example is One Piece which is also targeted pretty young but nearly every female character dresses super sexy and one of the main characters smokes at every opportunity.
Also, in general manga != for kids. There are tons of very adult manga and I don't just mean porn manga, I mean manga about adult topics targeted at adults. There are similar adult comics in the USA but the selection and market is arguably a order of magnitude or more larger (by percentage) in Japan.
Manga is a medium and basically spans the whole gamut, similar to books. You'll find kid friendly adventures, adult thrillers and everything in between.
Just checked their website, and I could see both teen and adult titles.
Just checked their website, and I could see both teen and adult titles.
interested in how your licensing works across the globe. how do I know which titles I have access to from an arbitrary country?
For all the titles we have right now, they are available worldwide except within Japan itself so you don't need to worry about restrictions. We plan to keep it that way but are uncertain if Japanese publishers will start restricting this more in the future by dividing up the rights.
This is so good to see! I actually was an evangelist to support comics & manga at scribd.com a decade ago with this idea.
Checking it out!
Checking it out!
How are new titles chosen / added to the library?
Can premium users request for titles?
When will you allow searching titles by author?
Can premium users request for titles?
When will you allow searching titles by author?
We choose new titles by talking with our publishers to figure out what they have English streaming rights to and what we think fits well in our catalog.
Premium users can send us a message on social media or via our support portal to request series, but we’re considering adding a more dedicated way to send requests.
Searching by author is on the roadmap! We have the metadata so it’s just a matter of integrating that into search.
Premium users can send us a message on social media or via our support portal to request series, but we’re considering adding a more dedicated way to send requests.
Searching by author is on the roadmap! We have the metadata so it’s just a matter of integrating that into search.
> Manga magazines
Missed a great opportunity for marketing wordplay: Mangazine
Congrats on your launch!
Missed a great opportunity for marketing wordplay: Mangazine
Congrats on your launch!
Antarctic Press would probably have significant objections to that.
Aw, no Hunter x Hunter?
Yeah, sorry about that! We’d definitely love to get it on Azuki but the process isn't too straight-forward and can take some time between negotiating with publishers and creators.
If you get it, I'd subscribe immediately. I just need to read volumes 33-36 to finish it out, but I don't want to buy them, as that seems kind of a waste... and I don't want to pirate them either.
> I just need to read volumes 33-36 to finish it out
The story is still fantastic and interesting, but not anywhere near an ending. Gon meeting Ging is as close to it as you’ll get. From there it ramps up again in full force with a huge new set of characters and the idea of a new world to explore.
Togashi has said he’d either finish Hunter × Hunter or die. Given the pace of release[1] and the state of the story, don’t bet on a conclusion.
Those extra chapters are still worth it, but be prepared for it to stop abruptly.
[1]: https://hiatus-hiatus.github.io/
The story is still fantastic and interesting, but not anywhere near an ending. Gon meeting Ging is as close to it as you’ll get. From there it ramps up again in full force with a huge new set of characters and the idea of a new world to explore.
Togashi has said he’d either finish Hunter × Hunter or die. Given the pace of release[1] and the state of the story, don’t bet on a conclusion.
Those extra chapters are still worth it, but be prepared for it to stop abruptly.
[1]: https://hiatus-hiatus.github.io/
Any chance you could add full screen mode on the web app?
We had some cleanup to do with our custom reader to support this but we cleared that hurdle and have full screen support on our roadmap!
Only English, or is it possible to switch to Japanese?
are u guys using Flutter for your mobile app?
We are using native Kotlin/Java for Android and Swift for iOS as we have a dedicated engineer for each platform!
that’s quite impressive, not so many startups can afford to do this
Aw thanks! We believe in building products that will last and be scalable so we wanted to do as much as we can to keep things sustainable. That's why we sought out founders with dedicated Android and iOS experience.
FYI, the Uzamaid amazon link is broken.
Thanks for the report! We'll get that fixed up.
A long time ago, I used to read mangas on Mangarock. It was completely free to and seemed to have most of the mangas. So, what value are u adding here?
What teraflop said! But beyond that we are also releasing translated chapters before they hit pirate sites since we release them in high quality at the same time as they release in Japan.
It's right there in the description: "we wanted to make it as easy as possible to support creators by reading official releases."
The value of legality.
We’re in a golden age of manga. More and more series are getting translated and released in English, but publishers still can’t keep up with fan demand. Print shortages due to Covid and the long production pipeline of print books mean that lots of series take months or years to get official releases in English. And believe it or not, print sales still dwarf ebook sales for English manga!
We are huge manga fans and wanted a way to easily access lots of new manga without filling up our bookshelves, paying for thousands of individual ebooks, or resorting to piracy. That last one is important, since manga piracy is still rampant, and we wanted to make it as easy as possible to support creators by reading official releases. Most of us worked together at Crunchyroll (the anime streaming service) where we learned a lot about how to grow a subscription product and an associated fan community. Evan also worked for many years as an anime/manga journalist and podcaster, and Adela had experience in manga localization.
All that led to Azuki. For a single subscription fee ($4.99/month), we offer unlimited access to high-quality official translations of new chapters from more than 20 ongoing series including EDENS ZERO, The Seven Deadly Sins: Four Knights of the Apocalypse, and The Yakuza’s Guide to Babysitting. Most new chapters are available in English at the same time as they go on sale in Japan! The subscription also includes a huge back catalog, with hit series like Attack on Titan and Fairy Tail, and acclaimed indie manga like Pop Life and Children of Mu-Town.
All of this is available to read in our apps on Web, iOS, and Android, with series progress and reading lists shared across the apps. Fans love us compared to other manga reader options because of the easy access to the latest chapters (no need to buy individual ebooks for each one), our diverse catalog featuring series from six different publishers, and our dedication to presenting manga pages in the highest possible quality.
By the way, there are over 150 currently running manga magazines in Japan, with each usually releasing either weekly or monthly. Each magazine serializes anywhere from five to over 30 series on a chapter-by-chapter basis. That‘s a huge amount of comics, and only a fraction of it makes its way to English-speaking markets right now. We need more!
The most popular and visible genres of manga are action and fantasy adventure (things like EDENS ZERO and Four Knights of the Apocalypse), but there are a lot of fans looking for other genres, especially romance (A Sign of Affection) and comedy (Grand Blue Dreaming). We were a little surprised by how popular some of those series ended up being!
Our customers primarily use us to read new manga chapters released simultaneously with Japan, known as “simulpubs” in the manga industry. But we also offer community features to let fans talk about their favorites, in comment threads and in our official Discord. It’s been really cool meeting these fans and watching a community grow up around the service.
In terms of our business model, we charge a monthly subscription. We pay out royalties to publishers based on how much each user reads of each series, and keep the remainder to pay for our operations.
We’d love for you to give Azuki a try! Most series have the first few chapters available for free (with ads), and there’s a 30-day free trial so you can try our Premium membership before you pay anything. We seriously appreciate any feedback you have about the service and how we can improve, and we look forward to talking manga in the comments. Thank you!