While onboarding with Aftermath, I went on a tangent, laying bare all my frustrations with manga-reading apps while pitching a blog. After spewing a word salad for what felt like a century, I was met with horrified expressions from my colleagues. The leading cause for concern wasn’t my pitch (thank god) but my casual comparison of the manga-reading ecosystem to streaming subscription services with the bonus of predatory practices rife in live service games. Reading the latest chapter of your favorite series involves jumping through a series of overcomplicated hoops that include microtransactions and earning points.
The source of my ire are Square Enix’s MangaUp and Kondansha’s K Manga. Like every good drug dealer, K Manga and Manga Up let you read the first couple chapters of a series for free. After that, you have to play ball with their respective ticketed and microtransaction coins to read new manga chapters. Similar to Hoyoverse’s umbrella of gacha games, K Manga and Manga Up gamify reading comic books through log-in bonuses, accruing bonus points for completing assigned chapters, and “paying to win” to give yourself a modicum of freedom from their respective bullshit.
Tickets and coins galore
In K Manga’s case, completing dailies starts with logging in every day. Doing so greets you with a pop up window tracking your streak of logins on a calendar and rewarding you with five tickets each day, which expire a week after they’re claimed. You can rent a free chapter for three days by spending a ticket. Once you’ve progressed past the amount of free chapters in a series (which varies depending on their popularity), K Manga blockades readers by asking them to purchase points to read further.
K Manga’s points cost $1 for 100P, or 2580P (its highest point option) for $25. You’ll need 69P or 99P to respectively read the lead ups and newest chapters of a series piecemeal, or you can pony up the real cash for points to “buy chapters in bulk” and read the entire collection of paywalled chapters. For example, buying Wind Breaker’s 168 paywalled chapters in bulk cost 11622 points or $116.22. K Manga gamifies things even further with assigned reading, where completing the first chapter of a series nets you 5P. The only solace in K Manga’s points system is that they’re permanent, meaning you can reread to your heart’s content once you’ve spent points on a chapter.
Manga Up gamifies its experience with a three-tiered system: Up points, XP, and Coin. (Writer’s note: I pinched my forehead a bunch trying to explain Manga Up’s microtransaction system in layman's terms, so we’ll be reading from its FAQ page together from here on out until I recover).
Manga Up’s “Up items” are granted twice a day and let users read “normal chapters” (we’ll get to that later). XP is given as a reward for completing chapters, participating in in-app events like flash sales or reading the first chapter of a new series, or as a bonus for purchasing coin. Coin, like K Manga’s points, are purchase-only items you buy from its store to read chapters.
Now, the hierarchy of how these items are consumed (yes, that’s how Square Enix words it) are separated depending on if something is considered a “normal” or “advanced” chapter. Normal chapters are early chapters in an ongoing series; advanced chapters are later chapters in a series. Normal chapters consume items like so: “UP→XP→Coin.” Advanced chapters only consume XP→Coin. The brass tacks of this whole charade breaks down to either accruing enough XP to read a chapter or paying up for points.
Manga Up’s point to cash conversion works like this:
Should the circus of it all prove to be too much to handle, Manga Up has something called a “Vault Pass.” For $4.99 a month, users can read 200+ chapters, new or old, without ads at the butt-end of chapters. Manga Plus’ gamification of reading comic books has an extra layer of scummy added on to its offer of free chapters when you take into consideration that it splits first chapters (often 40-50 pages) into four parts and later chapters in half. In short, you’re spending points to read half chapters.
How I finesse the system
K Manga and Manga Up have the most complicated systems for what could otherwise be a library where you pick up a book and read it. Although these apps couch the incentive to buy into systems meant to trap you by signposting them as a means to support artists, it has actually led users like me to game the system. Instead of using K Manga’s log in incentive as intended by clocking into work, reading five chapters, going to sleep, and doing it all over again, I’ve opted to clock my log in bonuses every morning, close the app, and check back in at the end of the week to read chapters before my tickets expire. The corporate bigwigs can tout their daily user log ins (despite them being a curt hi-bye to claim tickets), and I can bank tickets to binge-read new series like Gachiakuta or whatever else catches my eye.
Manga Up gets less use and therefore love from me. On the rare occasion that I awaken the app from deep sleep on my phone, it’s sole purpose is to keep me up to date on new chapters of a series and new crops of titles before fleeing to my local bookstore (or take to the high seas) to check them out myself. K Manga and Manga Up playing by gacha system incentives to make manga reading a live service experience cheapens the pleasure of reading for fun. It turns it into something like a job, where users are expected to clock in and do menial tasks out of obligation instead of genuine love for a series. It sucks eggs.
Alternatives that aren’t shit
Not all manga reading services are the pits. Apps like Shonen Jump and Viz Manga are on the up-and-up, giving readers access to titles like Chainsaw Man, Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End, and Dandadan for a flat rate of $2.99 a month (SJ) and $1.99 (VM). You can even download chapters for work commutes or what have you. The only real downside is that some series are backfilling chapters toward the middle half of their series with no date when they’ll be available. Another catch is that you are limited to reading 100 chapters a day, but if you exceed that generous limit, you should probably put your phone down.
Other services like Shuiesha’s MangaPlus offer two-tier price caps: a $1.99/mo standard subscription without ads giving you access to 90 ongoing titles, and a $4.99/mo deluxe subscription with access to 200+ ongoing and completed titles. Its biggest selling point is its more mature lineup of seinen series like Fire Punch and chapter comment sections for those longing for a sense of community. The light novel and fantasy series equivalent of this mess is Azuki manga, which also offers a $4.99 a month service for reading manga—the de facto price cap for manga services until someone breaks the mold by having the audacity to ask for more.
The Crunchyroll chilling effect
The manga reading pool looks to get fuller with Crunchyroll looking to get back into the manga app game (after unceremoniously shuttering its service) later this year. Y’know, the Sony-owned company, who’s already been monopolizing anime with its merger with Funimation. Sony plans on re-launching Crunchyroll Manga as a “new premium option for Crunchyroll members” with an app rollout on iOS and Android and later plans for a web browser version. Cruncyroll’s subscription prices are already some of the steepest in anime, with a three-tier system: Fan ($7.99 a month), Mega Fan ($11.99 a month), and Ultimate Fan ($15.99 a month), all of which eclipsing the ceiling price of the aforementioned manga reading apps. While Crunchyroll Manga hasn’t disclosed what series will be offered on the app, a cursory look over at Sony being the largest share owner of FromSoftware’s parent company, Kadokawa, spells it out, including series like Delicious in Dungeon, Re: Zero, Oshi no Ko, and Mushoku Tensei: Jobless Reincarnation. Big title incentives to buy in, sure, but there’s also a non-zero chance its premium price tag won’t trickle down to other companies.
In short, the practice of reading manga online is as needlessly complicated as digital ownership of video games. You’re better off checking out manga from your local library or buying them from brick-and-mortar stores than completing dailies to read new chapters of peak fiction.
