Yoshitoshi ABe Doujin in App Store; DMP’s eManga Promising
Posted on August 15th, 2008 by CalAggie in Manga
Earlier this week, ANN reported that numerous Kodansha and Bbmf manga such as Hataraki Man and Keroro Gunsou have been or will be added to the Japanese iTunes App Store to be read on iTouchs and iPhones. The chapters are mostly priced at 115 yen (a few are free in the case of Keroro and many BBmf offerings) and are in both English and Japanese, which I guess is why these are apps for that functionality alone.
An slightly different offering under the “Books” category is a 3-volume, 53-page Yoshitoshi ABe doujinshi called Pochiyama at the Pharmacy for 600 yen, which I would like read except I don’t currently own an iPod touch - a condition I hope to rectify in the near future as there is a rumored price drop/update happening next month. It would be my first Apple hardware product ever even though I have previously used Macs in campus computer labs and played with an iPhone inside an AT&T store. All those free games… [Just after posting this, I found out ANN wrote a story about Pochiyama a hour before. Whatever.]
I guess I should also talk about DMP’s initiative to also provide digital manga to the masses. Their method involves renting a volume for 72 hours for $4 that can be upgraded to unlimited use by re-renting for a total of $8, but the starting 3-day limit shouldn’t be a detraction for many people. The current offerings are BL and how-to drawing books, neither of which particularly pique my interest - Gia had some recommendations of non-yaoi titles they could add such as Enchanter. The interface was not perfect for me because while Panel Focus zooms in on each panel so you can read the text, I read manga while surveying the whole page. Luckily, I was able to switch to actual size at medium scaling and just drag around to see the rest.
The chapter drop-down menu, keyboard shortcuts and bookmarking features are nice touches that compete with Tokyopop’s online “player”, which allows you to view opposite pages simultaneously with readable text but at a lower resolution that what DMP is offering. (How do you play manga, anyway?) The eManga site is easier to remember and to navigate than Tokyopop’s site so I might use it in the future to preview titles or even rent one. The points system has a logical ratio of 100 pts to $1 but the option to actually add points 1,000 at a time isn’t available at the moment.
Entries (RSS)
This is one of those times when I feel like a dinosaur - I only use my mobile for text messages and phone calls! I don’t even like to use the camera (I’m saving up for a digital hand-held) so the idea of reading manga on a phone screen never occured to me. I’m a huge fan of ABe’s work though, so maybe that would encourage me to try it.
Even so, I’m not sure a small screen would do his talents justice…maybe digital manga is the future of the medium (it certainly saves paper in our environmentally conscious times!) but that old git in me still likes to sit at home or on a train with a cup of coffee and a good book.
If nothing else it’s great to see another piece of work from ABe - after Texnolyze he’s been keeping a disappointingly low profile, even by his own standards.