Otaku Champloo

Category: Online Manga Reads

  • Digital Reads: Ebookjapan

    One of the things I dreaded when I moved to Australia was how I’m going to weed my precious manga collection. By then, my collection has blown out of proportion and to choose which ones to part with tore me apart. Quite literally, if you ask my heart.

    Painful as the process was, it had to be done. Thankfully, my uni’s Japanese department was willing to adopt some of them. And to fill the void of my lost manga, I turned to ebookjapan.

    Ebookjapan is a repository of Japanese digital reads: from novels, anthologies, to comics. The entire site’s in Japanese and only distributes Japanese language texts. It’s quite useless for those who don’t speak moon runes, but it is a treasure trove for those who can. Also a great learning tool for those studying Japanese.

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  • Digital Reads: Crunchyroll’s Manga Experience

     

    I think there’s some of us who felt that a part of us died when Jmanga announced that they’re closing shop. I really liked Jmanga and I enjoyed the convenience of their service. But as with things digital, the idea that what I own disappears with their sites just sucks a lot.

    Other manga apps (like Viz’s manga app) is available only to US and Canada. I tried purchasing digital editions here in Australia with little luck. Vertical digital editions can be bought in Australia via Amazon’s Kindle service so I’m thinking it’s okay elsewhere. You can also purchase DMG and Sublime books via Amazon.

    That leaves a lot of manga left untranslated. I’m a little fortunate since I can check ebookjapan for Japanese titles. But that leaves a lot of English readers who have little access to manga. So when Crunchyroll announced that they’re working with Kodansha in publishing some fan favorites in English via their website, I was excited. Totally excited!

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  • Scouting for Legal Online Manga: Sig Ikki

    Scouting for Legal Online Manga: Sig Ikki

    I am a print baby and I would sooner read my manga in print than in front of the computer. I will admit that since I am in front of a computer most of the time due to work, I cannot help but stray for a quick fix. But that was then and now, it’s a different game.

    In the last few years, manga has been shifting from print to digital. This was in many ways born in response of growing manga scanlation aggregators, but it’s also responding to the needs of some consumers. This year has been particularly exciting and let me share to you that there are now ways for you to enjoy reading manga online… legally!

    For this ‘column,’ I’ll be scouting for some places where you can read legal online manga. This means these are websites that have appropriately licensed and is distributed online some manga online by its publishers. Simply put: these are websites that makes sure the money spend to their website gives something back to their published authors. Your purchase for their digital manga puts food on those tired starving mangaka’s (and friends!) table.

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