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I’m pouring one out for JManga. Today, May 30, 2013 is the last day of the service before its complete shutdown. Can’t really say why exactly it failed. I’ve read elsewhere that even its most popular titles only sold in the hundreds of copies. And I’ve read speculation that the marketing was not as good as it could be, or that there were just too many pirate manga sites to complete with.
In any case, I was a paying customer who will miss them. Thank you JManga.
Is this the JManga Android app? I was greeted with the news of the release of the JManga Android app in the morning email and eagerly clicked through. And, now armed with the Android powered Nexus 7, I was looking forward to taking the new app for a test drive. Instead, I encountered a page full of one star ratings and negative reviews. I was disappointed and was not planning to install the app at all given the many reviews that said that the app flat out did not work. Still, I had to see for myself. So I installed the free app.
JMANGA, I AM DISAPPOINT
The best thing I can say about the JManga Android app v1.0.6 is that it is a quick download. Do not bother installing this application. Right now, when the app loads you’re taken to a starting screen where you may choose either JManga or JManga7. In my testing, tapping the JManga button opened the Chrome browser on my Nexus and then took me to a blank page which from the URL appeared to be intended to be a mobile version of their web site. Tapping the JManga7 button just took me to the full JManga7 site. This is both a broken app and a broken design. If the intent of JManga is to merely launch a mobile site, then why bother with an app at all? In light of comic and manga reading apps already available from Viz, Comixology, Dark Horse, and others, this is a shameful effort. I can only hope that the upcoming iOS app does not share the same design. This is not the app that JManga readers have been looking for, move along.
Update 2012-10-17: Since this initial release, the app has been updated to v1.0.8 and apparently a lot of issues on the server side have been worked out so that I could finally use to app to read manga.
Cutting to the chase, the reading experience so far is just average. If you like the manga you are reading, for the most part you will not notice the shortcomings of this reader all that much. Those shortcomings include occasional page turn failures wherein the page bounces back when swiped or doesn’t turn at all when tapped.
I think there are definitely still issues with gesture sensitivity as it took on average 2 or 3 taps to get the page header and footer to display. And as for pinch and zoom, forget it. There is not currently a way to freely zoom in on text and of course there is no panel to panel mode.
On the plus side, continuous reading from chapter to chapter does seem to work well. Image quality of pages is very good, and they load quickly.
The app still needs a lot of work, most of all, it needs bookmarks! On the main site, lack of bookmarking capability continues to be a sore spot as well. But other than that, the app is usable now and given the progress I’ve seen from JManga over the last year, I think there is good reason to believe that their Android app will improve as well.
JManga iPad Give-Away: Is App Far Behind?
A couple of days ago I received a curious bit of news in my JManga newsletter email. JManga announced that a lucky person attending their panel at this week’s San Diego Comic-Con (SDCC) would receive a free iPad. Anyone using the site knows that currently  manga cannot be read there on an iPad because the JManga online reader is Flash based. Flash doesn’t work on iPads, but a native JManga  iPad app has been in the works for some time now.
While I was able to come up with a work-around to reading JManga titles on an iPad, I and many other JManga members, still hold out hope for native apps for our tablets. I can only hope that their iPad give-away tomorrow will signal the arrival of the JManga app at last!
Update:Â JManga announced that apps for iOS and Android will be available in October!
I’ve been reading manga on the JManga website on my laptop while patiently waiting for an iPad app for a few months now. The current JManga reader is Flash based which will not work on the iPad.
I don’t really like reading manga on my laptop, as a result I really haven’t been finishing many titles. Not only that, because there’s no way to save a bookmark in the current reader, I always lose my place if I have to stop reading before completing a chapter.
So I started wondering how I might get around the restrictions and read JManga titles on my iPad using the current reader. Remote desktop apps immediately came to mind. I’d heard that there were such apps for the iPad, so I decided to see what the available options were.
The iTunes App Store has a fair number of remote desktop apps listed, but I decided to go with the Splashtop Remote Desktop app  for iPad because of its high ratings and low cost ($4.99 as of this writing).
Installation was pretty easy on the iPad of course. Next I needed to download the free Splashtop Streamer for my Mac. I installed the streamer, started it, and then set an access code for the remote connection from the iPad.
The iPad app easily detected my Mac and I had no trouble connecting using the access code I’d just set. I was greeted with a cheat sheet of gestures to interact with the desktop. The desktop looked great on my iPad and I had no trouble at all accessing JManga in my desktop browser. I opened Girlfriends in the reader and then went to full screen mode just tapping the left or right to turn pages.
Girlfriends looks pretty good on my iPad!
Before I knew it, I’d finally finished volume 1! To escape full screen mode, I just tapped the keyboard icon on the lower righthand corner and then tapped the escape key. It all worked like a charm! Quite readable and very responsive page flips.
This method should work with other tablets as long as similar remote desktop apps are available. I still want that JManga iPad app, but this workaround will do for now.
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.
Since closing down their North American manga publishing operations back in May, it seems that Tokyopop’s manga aspirations are doing anything but resting in peace. The Tokyopop Facebook page is still active and recent news that they may still publish Hetalia volume 3 has brought mixed reactions. The plan calls for a limited retail print release along with digital.
Prior to the shutdown, there had been indications that Tokyopop was going to expand their digital manga offerings. Perhaps this is being revisited in their Hetalia plans. But is it too late? Japanese manga publishers seem to be putting much, if not all, of their digital manga efforts behind the JManga project. Tokyopop would have to figure into this somehow, and it is unknown how much the May shutdown strained relations with their Japanese partners. Most of Tokyopop’s Japanese licences have reverted back to their owners, and some believe that fans would be better served if they gave up any remaining ones so that they may be published by more stable organizations.
Still, love ’em or hate ’em, Tokyopop is a well known brand in the United States. As a manga lover, I’d be very happy to see the return of Tokyopop.
Anime News Network reported that the JManga web site had launched with a lineup of titles that included manga never seen in print in the United States. These new titles include Macross Frontier.
It was the Macross Frontier part that piqued my interest primarily. JManga is a web portal where manga can be purchased and read online in the most popular web browsers. Reading manga online is not new, but being able to do so legally is, for the most part. And any anime or manga fan can attest to the very loud absence of anything Macross Frontier (legally) on US shores. So as a Macross fan, I put aside my general dislike for web based manga reading and signed up for a JManga account to look around.
Well first, I should note, that at this time Macross Frontier is not yet available on JManga, but still there was quite a lot to see. And I wanted to see if the site would work on my iPad. All of the legal online manga reading sites make use of Adobe Flash based readers which don’t work on Apple iOS devices like the iPhone and iPad. I had hoped to find that JManga was iPad friendly. Unfortunately, the JManga reader is also Flash based and didn’t work on my iPad.
The Flash based manga reader wasn’t really a surprise. But I was surprised and a little disappointed at the price of manga on the site. On JManga, readers buy manga using points. These points are worth a penny a piece. Many titles on the site do not have prices listed as yet, but of those that did, I found the range from 895 to 899 points for a volume. Nine dollars is not a bad price for a printed manga volume, but charging that for digital seems excessive considering that Viz typically charges $5.99 for their iPad friendly digital manga. JManga does have a $10/month subscription plan that currently has a one time bonus of 500 points and then a 50 point/month bonus after that. This brings the cost down a bit, but not enough to escape the fact that they essentially charge print prices for digital.
Pricing aside, I’m happy to see that new titles are being made available to US readers in digital format and hope we’re seeing the beginning of a trend. The general decline of retail bookstores and loss of Borders and publisher Tokyopop in particular has made it more difficult for US manga readers to find new titles. JManga was established by the 39 Japanese publishers who make up the Digital Comic Association with the goal of making manga available worldwide in a fashion that benefits the publishers, artists, and readers alike. If manga is to have a future in the US, JManga is going to be part of it.
With 39 publishers to manage, issues like pricing and availability will take some time to work out. But yes, even at print price I’ll be there for Macross Frontier!
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