Online legal Japanese manga site JManga launched back in August with a lot of titles never before available to English speaking readers. One could see from the number of titles and the scope of the site that it was indeed an ambitious undertaking involving most of the major manga publishers in Japan. But early reports were quick to note that many of the titles, though listed, were not yet available to read online. Not only that, the prices were much higher than those of similar online titles such as those from Viz, and the Flash based reader did not work in iOS devices such as Apple’s iPhone and iPad.
Since that time, JManga has steadily added new titles, and most recently announced the JManga Lover’s Sale slashing the prices of manga on the site by up to 60% during the month of October. JManga also gave a 50% rebate on titles already purchased prior to the October 4th beginning of the sale. And to top it all off, Anime News Network reported that JManga has announced, via Twitter, their plans to release an iPad app by the end of the year.
Clearly, JManga is listening to its customers which can only bode well for manga lovers everywhere! In particular, support of the iPad is essential as Apple’s popular tablet computer has become the place for digital comics and manga.
Thank you for the post regarding JManga! Thank you for your continued interest – and to pre-empt a question we are sure is coming, we are working on getting Macross Frontier ready for release sometime in the near future, along with other series that the community has asked for. We would be the first to admit that JManga is a work in progress, and so we ask for the input of our customers and other manga lovers so that we can refine the site to provide the best possible user experience.
Hence, when customers noted that print-level pricing was unacceptable in this age, and voiced an outcry for an iPad app, we went to work, with the result the announcements on October 4th – prices being slashed up to 60% sitewide (with a partial refund to those who bought manga earlier, so early adopters would not be penalized!), and the announcement of an iPad app to be released hopefully by year’s end, with the intention to work on Android and Kindle apps shortly thereafter.
More changes are in the works as well, thanks to feedback from our community, so we ask that you stay posted for updates, and further ask for your patience as we work on making these suggestions a reality.
Thanks for that response! The sale, along with the coming iPad and even Kindle support were all I needed to become one of JManga’s newest paid subscribers. ^_^
Well, thank you very much for that. We’re glad you’ve decided to join us, and we hope you enjoy your time at JManga. ^^
well it’s July 2012 now and still no iPad reader 🙁
I’m hoping that they will announce it during San Diego Comic Con this week. Otherwise their iPad prize winners won’t be able to read manga on their site. That would be a little sad.