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Launch HN: Azuki (YC W22) – All-you-can-read manga subscription

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111–120 of 150 posts

Re: Launch HN: Azuki (YC W22) – All-you-can-read manga subscription

#111

Congratulations on the launch. I wonder if a service like yours could licence distribution of digital editions in Japanese outside of Japan. I would sign up in a second for dual language access to Manga (and light novels). I think part of the reason for manga piracy relates to people who want to consume the originals and can't buy from a Japanese store front or afford the price of buying the physical manga all the ti…

You can actually access the real stuff on shonen jump's app, as long as you get the Japanese version of it. Lot's of free stuff on it too.

Re: Launch HN: Azuki (YC W22) – All-you-can-read manga subscription

#112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I run a competitor to Azuki, Comikey, and I'm happy to offer some insight into this growing industry. 1. Absolutely, Japanese publishers are interested, but maybe not for the reasons you think. They have realized that the Korean (webtoons) and Chinese (webcomics) markets are expanding rapidly into the international market, and webtoon services are crushing manga services. Even a lot of the manga audience itself is mo…

> some content is simply never going to be available to a company like Comikey or Azuki unless you become the size of e.g. Amazon. Why? What's the downside of licensing content to smaller publishers? Licensing doesn't cost the producers anything right?

Because most of the popular series are already tied up in exclusive licensing agreements with someone else, and if you want the publisher to reconsider the exclusive agreement with your competitor when it comes time to renew the license, then you have to have a lot of power to overcome the relationship between the licensor and licensee, especially in Japan. Licensing does cost the producers (once again, especially in Japan) when they are not super organized, and have to source the materials for delivery, and dedicate manpower to checking the contracts.

Re: Launch HN: Azuki (YC W22) – All-you-can-read manga subscription

#114

Are you guys accepting subscriptions from outside the USA? I found your service a while ago through Crunchyroll but I have backed off trying it out because of this. (Most US based services are unavailable abroad or have incomplete catalogs (hi, Crunchyroll) due to licensing)

All titles on our service are available worldwide outside of Japan and we support payments worldwide by Credit Card on the website and Apple/Google on our mobile apps.

Re: Launch HN: Azuki (YC W22) – All-you-can-read manga subscription

#116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> some content is simply never going to be available to a company like Comikey or Azuki unless you become the size of e.g. Amazon. Why? What's the downside of licensing content to smaller publishers? Licensing doesn't cost the producers anything right?

Because most of the popular series are already tied up in exclusive licensing agreements with someone else, and if you want the publisher to reconsider the exclusive agreement with your competitor when it comes time to renew the license, then you have to have a lot of power to overcome the relationship between the licensor and licensee, especially in Japan. Licensing does cost the producers (once again, especially in…

Suppose that there is no exclusive licensing deal and that it's just that they can't be bothered to source the material. What if you offer to source the material yourself through alternative means, say by ripping them from aggregators? So that licensing for them only means checking a contract and giving you an ok. Would that help?

Re: Launch HN: Azuki (YC W22) – All-you-can-read manga subscription

#118
I've done a couple impressions threads since your initial launch last year[1][2], and it's nice to see that there's been some improvements in regards to matters brought up in them, though there's definitely still room for more. The reader in particular is still rather janky and lacking in options (I would really like to see more fitting options than just forced fit to height as well as manual control over image quality) and the controls aren't great either - for example, trying to rapidly click forward with mouse works poorly because the click regions are image dependent rather than constant so the animated page transitions makes clicking in the same area unreliable. And speaking of transitions, it would be nice to have control over the speed of them, including making them instant. The current speed is slower than I'd like and it's a constant source of annoyance.

And while you've increased the image resolution since launch, there are still notable problems with the overall image quality. Some series have horrible looking screentones (like Domestic Girlfriend as a random example I just found) while others have incorrect black levels (black isn't RGB 0,0,0 but instead something like ~36,31,33)- The World of Summoning being one recent example. I know that in some cases you might have screentone issues at source level but manga is something where you have to really know what you're doing in terms of image scaling to not mess things up further, as screentones are incredibly fragile and easily turn into an ugly mess when resized.

One thing that I'm decidedly not happy with that you've done after launch is the exclusive streaming deal you made with Kaiten Books a while back. The manga distribution market has generally been one of the few bright spots in the area of Japanese media where things are not exclusive by default and customers can actually have real choice and preference in terms of where they get their manga from. In other words, competition that's actually beneficial for consumers, the same which can't be said for eg. anime streaming services where the only difference is in which service has what shows, which does not benefit the consumer in any way. I would be more understanding of exclusivity if Azuki actually did in-house licensing and translation, but signing exclusive distribution deals with a third-party publisher just comes off as trying to pull up the ladder after yourself to the benefit of no-one but yourself. This is a sincere plea from me: please keep any possible future exclusives to in-house licenses at most, please. The world does not need any more anti-consumer exclusivity than what it already has.

Seriously, it's not a problem especially for manga subscription services to share the same content. If there's multiple places to read the same things, then I can choose the one that offers the best service, and while Azuki has issues, I do think you have potential too. The only real problem with shared content isn't the sharing itself but rather Kodansha, the publisher that shares its content the most, and their goals in sharing, which seems to be to primarily selling ebooks rather than letting consumers actually read their series in full via subscription services. That's really the primary problem for the subscription services to tackle - actually having series to read in full. This is why I also see the calendar features I talk about in the Twitter threads as so important - if a back catalog series isn't fully available, then it's really important to be able to see when I could expect it to be, because I sure don't want to be stuck as a subscriber for months only to see new content for a series I like come out once in a blue moon, if ever.

Going back to more technical matters - I do have to wonder, what made you decide as a small team that you'll build entirely separate versions on three platforms? Having built a web-based manga reader professionally myself, I know that it's not an easy task to develop an actually good one, and you've essentially made that three times harder with separate codebases for every platform. At the very least, I would recommend only focusing on the web tech reader and reusing that across the platforms, as right now the burden of 3x development is really showing with how a web can get a feature and then we'll have to wait months and months for one of the mobile apps to get them and then even longer for the other to get it too.

Anyway, that's all that I can bother to write for now. I do intend to make another Twitter thread on the service at one point - maybe in three months at the one-year mark?

[1] https://twitter.com/Daiz42/status/1409670066925228035

[2] https://twitter.com/Daiz42/status/1428413172516544512

Re: Launch HN: Azuki (YC W22) – All-you-can-read manga subscription

#119

Oh, I've been hoping for something like this for ages! I signed up. One thing that sticks out about the UI is the default one page at a time loading. This feels a bit weird for a paid service, compare it to Mangaplus, which is also official (although free.) I'm glad you have the option to switch, though. Your reader works with the browser's built in zoom. This is great for accessibility, especially because so many re…

Yep, if you add a series to your list you will get email notifications for updates! And, if you're on Android, you will get push notifications (which is also coming to iOS and Web). Noted on the default reader mode. Would you prefer it default to Vertical scrolling mode?

I just wanted to note that you should be applauded for your handling of this thread. So many people waste their launch by ignoring feedback and only responding with marketing jargon, but here you are asking new users questions about their experience, with the clear intention of making the experience better for them. Kudos to you!

Re: Launch HN: Azuki (YC W22) – All-you-can-read manga subscription

#120
post #6

I know nothing about manga, but my kids are bang in to it. What's your target demographic? Are these titles child friendly? (< 12 yo)

We do have some series like Chi's Sweet Home which is very child friendly but also fun for all ages. But our service is more suitable for teens and adults at the moment so you would need to guide your kids on Azuki so they don't read other types of content. We have discussed adding better filtering for age groups so that is something we are considering.

This is, to me, a vital feature.

My niece loves manga, and I would buy her a subscription, but there would have to be some kind of age filtering. What I would personally love would be the ability to select exactly which series she can read, as sometimes simple age restrictions aren't good (some teen series are fine, others really aren't).

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