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.
Launch HN: Azuki (YC W22) – All-you-can-read manga subscription
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Re: Launch HN: Azuki (YC W22) – All-you-can-read manga subscription
#82The 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?
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.
Re: Launch HN: Azuki (YC W22) – All-you-can-read manga subscription
#83Cool 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...
Do you read manga? The books, in English, are still right to left pages.
Re: Launch HN: Azuki (YC W22) – All-you-can-read manga subscription
#84Congrats 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…
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...
Re: Launch HN: Azuki (YC W22) – All-you-can-read manga subscription
#85Exciting!
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?
Re: Launch HN: Azuki (YC W22) – All-you-can-read manga subscription
#86Congrats 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…
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.
Re: Launch HN: Azuki (YC W22) – All-you-can-read manga subscription
#87I 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 re…
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/
Re: Launch HN: Azuki (YC W22) – All-you-can-read manga subscription
#88Earlier quoted context omitted.
Having Japanese would make it useful to me, and to many more studying the language. 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 n…
Whoa this is a great idea! One of our founders, Evan, is studying with WaniKani right now and he would love that. Thanks!
Re: Launch HN: Azuki (YC W22) – All-you-can-read manga subscription
#89Any 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!
Re: Launch HN: Azuki (YC W22) – All-you-can-read manga subscription
#90Awesome 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.