About.com Rating

Publisher's Site

Since its debut in August 2011, JManga.com has set out to fulfill some very ambitious goals: to provide manga readers with a one-stop shop to preview, browse, purchase, and read Japanese comics from multiple publishers.

Two months later, JManga is still working out some of the kinks, but it seemed like a fair time to take a look at what they have to offer, where they're succeeding, where they're missing the mark, and where there is room for improvement.

Read on for my first report card of JManga.com and my 10 suggestions to make JManga even better.

WHAT IS JMANGA.COM?

Created with the support of the Digital Comics Association, a consortium of 39 Japanese publishers, Bitway Co. Ltd., a leading digital comics distributor in Japan, and the technical / development support of Crunchyroll, JManga is Japan's answer to the digital publishing revolution that is changing how books (including comics) are bought, read, and enjoyed around the world.

Granted, with a project of this size and scope, it would have been something short of miraculous if JManga got everything right, right out of the gate. To be fair, a lot of things work quite well, like their manga reader app, with its easy-to-use interface. JManga also offers an interesting array of titles that have never been available (well, legally) in English before.

However, there's a faction of manga fandom that would never be happy with this site unless JManga.com:

• offered every manga ever made since the beginning of time

• posted every popular manga series in grammatically-perfect English days after it hits the newsstands in Japan
• AND did it either for free, or for a low, all-you-can-eat subscription price.

Sorry people, I don't think you'll ever get all of that -- or at least you're not going to get it at this early stage of the game.
It's now almost two months after their launch. So I think it's fair to give them a report card based on how they've done so far. I'll be grading them on a few key categories:

• Content
• Presentation
• Translation
• Customer service
• Ease of use
• Pricing

And to close off, I'll provide a wish list of 10 areas for improvement.
CONTENT (COMICS) - Grade: C

Grading criteria: Is JManga.com offering a mix of popular, classic and unconventional titles worth reading?

With content from 39 publishers to choose from, JManga should be able to offer a broad array of comics. A cursory look at Jmanga.com would give the impression that there are many titles available. But scratch the surface, and you'll find that JManga has put up a façade. Out of the 186 titles listed, only 52 are available for sale -- roughly only 28%. The vast majority of the titles listed on JManga offer only a few preview pages, or only covers.

This seems like a cruel tease. Look! Here's your favorite manga! One Piece! Vampire Knight! Junjo Romantica! Click through and most times, you'll only get a preview or a cover. Psyche!

That means 1 out of 3 times you click you'll get a buyable title. Yes, I'm looking at you, Kadokawa Shoten and Kodansha, for just posting covers of your titles and not much else.

What's left is a quirky mix of also-ran titles that don't exactly get otaku's hearts racing. There are several stories from creators like Takao Saito (Golgo 13) and Fumiyo Kouno (Town of Evening Calm, Country of Cherry Blossoms). There are many are interesting reads, but would I pay up to $10.99 to read Volume 2? Except for a handful of titles, I'd say no. Some are good, some are merely okay at best, while some, at worst, are deeply mediocre.

While JManga has given me a fun excuse to venture down some of the lesser-known, less-often-visited byways of Japanese manga, they need to up their game and mix in more of the popular stuff fans really want to buy and read.

CONTENT (ARTICLES & MULTIMEDIA)- Grade: B-

Grading criteria: Are the feature articles, videos and interviews interesting and entertaining? Do they look professionally produced?

At this point, there isn’t much by way of articles and interviews posted on JManga, since, presumably, they’re more focused on getting new titles posted and getting their site up and running smoothly.

But if these features are meant to provide that "value-added content" that would make JManga a satisfying alternative to illegal (and free) scanlation websites, then I hope JManga starts spending more time to generate more original content to make the site worth visiting and re-visiting.

The interviews with artists Fumiyo Kouno (To All Corners of the World) and Naoyuki Ochiai (Crime and Punishment) are full of fascinating insights and the video clips showing each artists’ creative process was great to see.

Meanwhile, the ‘man-on-the-street’ interviews in Akihabara was excruciatingly amateurish. The Comiket report had some good info, but not anything new or interesting to readers who can find more in-depth, fun, and photo-filled reports on the same event on other anime/Japanese pop culture blogs.

It’s not a bad start, but here’s hoping that the JManga crew puts a little more effort into developing the articles and interviews part of their site soon.

PRESENTATION - Grade: B-

Grading criteria: Are the pages presented with crisp and clear graphics?

Overall, it's easy to read the manga content on JManga using their on-screen reader. The dialogue and narration text is relatively clear and easy to read. While the lettering won't win any awards, it's serviceable.

But aagh! The moire on the screentone on some of these stories is just inexcusably bad (Ninja Papa, I'm cringing in your general direction). This grid/plaid effect is distracting, and it often makes it the stories muddy and difficult to read. I've heard from folks in the manga publishing biz who deal with this issue who tell me that this is something that's not that hard to fix. Please, JManga. Put a little pride in your work and fix this soon.

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