This is a nice move, and the best thing it comes from the mangaka itself,not the publishers. This will surely be a starter point for every other mangaka.
Think about it guys, mangaka will be able to create new manga titles that is free from publishers constraint. No longer there would be manga's with premature ending because the publisher force them to end a title (except if the mangakas is stuck on ideas lol). This would become the future of manga publishing \o/

dont worry, if they choose to publish it without a strict DRM maybe some fan translator could contact them, asking if they could help promote their site by translating their work to english.

Akamatsu's series are all classic in my book, but it's hearing about this that really marks him as one of my favorite manga artists, one who not only creates landmark series, but also has an eye on the future of manga.

It's great to see authors taking their own financial initiative, as the Japanese industry is dominated by the likes of Shueisha.

Interesting.... I'd like to see how this unfolds.... I find it amusing that the first scanlations I ever read online were Akamatsu's Love Hina over a decade ago.... I'll be keeping an eye on this if only out of curiousness....

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Actually I dont think they would be able to compete with OneManga due to the fact that it most likely would only contain a fraction of the manga that OM did and it wont have the super popular current manga series that brings in most of the views. Personally I think its a step in the right direction, however i doubt that it would have 90% of the manga currently being scanlated. I'm guessing this will have a lot of manga from the 60's-90's.

Years ago, we saw great reluctance from publishers who wanted to stick to the old paper based business model. This intransigence was similar to the music industry's approach towards internet and file-sharing. Hence, albeit the idea for a Japanese site that makes manga available online, I still believe that the current approach is very open-minded.

Let's admit that the Japanese artists and mangaka deserve their money for their hard work - The presence of American lobbies such as Viz is doing very little to get the money to those who deserve them. Manga sales in Anglo-Saxon market through services like commercially interested groups like Amazon and publishers like Viz does NOT result in commensurate profit-sharing with artists - This is the reality.

The Japanese artists stand to gain a lot more money by breaking away from their bondage with publishers - The publishers are simply middleman who simply make more profit for themselves. Yes, it's nice to read manga on paper, but this is definitely not the future of manga.

Manga is about sharing culture with the world and culture should be "freely" available to those who want to access it - Adverts and multi-lingual version of manga on internet is definitely the way forward. Adverts and control of ad-channels will generate vast amount of profit - The additional cultural significance of such an approach should also be considered - If the artists own this endeavor, things would be most ideal, but that's probably wishful thinking... Oh well, I wish the best for Mr. Ken and his team!

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Last edited by krytorii at 1:38 pm, Jan 24 2021

Awesome!!, what ken is doing now its going to be HISTORY in the manga/anime World, this might change everything, its pettry clever to make a legal website for online readers to read your work with adversitements stuff, that way online readers dont need to pay a thing and ken gets money per visit =O!!! thats an awesome way to make money!!

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I think you people are missing the point. The whole point was not to detract from paper publishing, but to put already out of print manga on the net. To be out of print, it should be relatively old, like maybe about 10 years back, the publisher isn't printing any more copies of the manga. In short, this is NOT breaking away from bondage with publishers.

If you're hoping to see the latest chapter of Bleach or One Piece on the site, that's 100% not going to happen. Period.

you got some point. less-well known mangaka may actually post their works, just like authors who can publish their book through self-publishing company. nice idea akamatsu-sensei

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well its a start. First the out of print titles, then someday new titles will also appear in there. Don't forget, there are still a lot of out of print titles out there that we havent read yet. Beside who want to see the latest chapters that are still in print right there anyway?
The main thing is i hope their business model works ><.

This is a great idea and hope it works out (and that it can be done in english).

And since it'll be official the quality of the scans should be excellent (providing that they want people to keep reading their manga).

I've seen some people comment about the possibility of posting the latest chapters up there and while it is something to hope for I doubt it will unless the amount of money they make from the advertising is equal to or greater than what they would make from selling individual chapters and then the volumes. This is simply because they want money for their hard work (I'm presuming Mangaka's work hard but I only have manga to go off) and the more money they make the longer they can keep producing new chapters.

I can't even begin to guess how much the Mangaka of Bleach or Naruto make per chapter they release nor how much they make when they collect them together in volumes but if they put it online for free many people wouldn't buy them since they would have it available whenever than want it so it wouldn't be until years later that new chapters would be added when they are sure the amount of money they can earn from the chapter/volume is negligible.

There are important ramifications that you should consider - Out of print manga may not mean "not in demand" manga. I don't and I won't expect to see the latest chapter any manga in this reader.

However, I am interested in seeing how the public and advert channels react to this site -- If there is enough demand for older content, this indicates a possibility of revenue for the mangaka. Revenue, which is sent to mangaka through less

There are important ramifications that you should consider - Out of print manga may not mean "not in demand" manga. I don't and I won't expect to see the latest chapter any manga in this reader.

However, I am interested in seeing how the public and advert channels react to this site -- If there is enough demand for older content, this indicates a possibility of revenue for the mangaka. Revenue, which is sent to mangaka through less number of middle-man and lobby groups.

That said, I have opinions from a business perspective - The current operation provides online content that is made available in Japanese. It's provided freely, as a download so users can read content from their home computers - I do not object to this freedom, but, I do think that this approach will not bring sustainable traffic to the site. Perhaps, the site also needs some form of forum integration to enable discussion between fans and staff involved with manga production. Any form of social interaction has a chance of improving the system.

On the other hand the paper based distribution model is well established inside Japan. I can buy manga cheaply from sites like bookoff.co.jp at about $1 USD. I've seen rental sites renta.papy.co.jp sell online access to manga for few hours at the same price. While such rental price may be valid for hard to obtain manga say Rose of Versailles which sells at $60 USD per volume(check Amazon), the model fails when it tries to sell online access to a "Detective Conan" volume at $1USD - You can buy a paperback copy at the same price. Hence, I don't think selling access to manga online in the Japanese language would result in profit for the mangaka.

The real money is made through audience in North America, Europe and Oceania - They're richer economies and the ads that target the users from these regions have higher chance of resulting in purchase of products. They're what I'd call credit-card economies. However, the audience of this region are mostly English speakers. Hence, it's necessary for mangaka to understand the current limitation of their business model, its language barriers and the limited potential of their ad channels and work towards richer Anglo-Saxon markets for greater financial benefits.

I'd like to wish that mangaka adopt clever strategies to directly control their Anglo-Saxon markets where their content is sold at exorbitant and unreasonable prices through a corrupt mult-layered middle-man system.

I can't decipher the small Characters even in the HQ-Version. How should I read it if I don't understand most of the Kanjis.