A ways back, I tried out a variety of manga apps to see which one was the best. I had (and still mostly use) Kindle, but I was particularly impressed with BOOK☆WALKER’s options despite being slow to load and unable to purchase content in-app.
Now, I’m visiting BOOK☆WALKER again to read some manga…but in a completely different way!
TATESC COMICS
In November, KADOKAWA announced their BOOK☆WALKER platform would be debuting a new line: TATESC COMICS.
TATESC launched in Japanese in August 2021. The name is pronounced “ta-te-sk” and is inspired by the Japanese words for “vertical” and “scrolling”. Because, as the name suggests, these are comics readers vertically scroll through.
TATESC has 24 titles in its initial lineup. There are some exclusives (Hero Raising Project, Villainess Outrage) and others are currently available in standard manga format (The Devil is a Part-Timer!, Interspecies Reviewers). Anime News Network reached out for more info:
“Kadokawa confirmed with ANN that some titles will be in full color and some will retain the black-and-white manga format. Some titles are being colorized and reformatted for the vertical-scrolling format, and others are created as vertical-scrolling manga. Kadokawa also stated the three publishers that are providing content to the brand include Kadokawa, Yen Press, and Kadokawa Gempak Starz.”
On BOOK☆WALKER’s site, these titles are grouped together under the V-Scroll Comics banner. The first five chapters are free; after that, prices range from $.42 to $1.02 each.
So I decided to try them out.
Now, I’m going to be upfront: I do not like to scroll. Yes, I have a cell phone and tablet where I do need to swipe up to read more, but it’s not my preferred reading method. I’d rather use a keyboard with page up/down buttons. I find it quicker, and I like not having to move the page into perfect position to continue reading.
That’s part of the reason why I haven’t really gotten into the webtoon phenomena. As I move the panel into position, I’ve probably already read the text and seen a cut-off image. And it ruins the experience for me. I’d rather have a book-like experience where everything is already aligned and optimized in landscape or portrait format.
So I went into this analysis highly doubting I would be inspired to check out more V-Scroll Comics.
First Impressions
Anyway, I redownloaded BOOK☆WALKER on my iPad Air 5. As with the website, there is a quick link to V-Scroll Comics right on the main page.
Despite KADOKAWA announcing the TATESC COMICS brand, this name doesn’t seem to be used on the platform. Instead, they’re tagged as “V-Scroll Comics” while the TATESC logo is on the covers. You can search for “Tatesc” and get all the results, but there is no actual TATESC link or category.
Also, sometimes the app could be slow. Like I would click a link, and there would be no indication my tap would be registered. I would just have to wait and hope in blind faith I was getting the page I wanted. I mentioned this in my original impressions, but the service doesn’t seem any faster five years later.
Anyway, I decided to try out The Devil is a Part-Timer! since it’s a series I’m familiar with and can compare, and it’s also one that has been now colored.
The menu is the same as a standard manga, with a progress bar, contents list (which is in Japanese for some titles), and settings for brightness and more. But unlike how with standard titles you can choose whether the pages flip horizontally (like a book) or vertically, you are locked in to vertical. Not surprising of course.
So here are a couple of screenshots from the original manga version:
And here are some of those panels in the vertical scrolling format:
As I alluded to in the opening, I dislike vertical comics because you see the panel as it moves up, spoiling it before you can actually read (and enjoy) the text and visuals. Combined with my previous complaints of the app being slow…yeah, I was not having a good time. It could be very choppy to get the pages to load. This can be avoided if you wait for the chapter to load in its entirely, but if you start reading while it’s loading, it’s very easy to get ahead because of all the whitespace.
You can forward with a tap, but you are either going to have to deal with partial picture or adjust manually anyway. Here’s those images when I only use taps to navigate:
The second one is very similar, but that’s because I happened to align the first to show the “rotten food” panel in full. The “Your Demonic Highness” is what you are likely to see on most tap pages: half-pictures.
I will say this is not a problem exclusive to TATESC COMICS, but yes, planning out the whitespace or panel sizing to avoid a lot of these partial images would have been great. Like here’s a naturally centered one:
That looks so much better than, say, this:
The coloring though is nice, although I think it tends to over-accentuate screentones, like in Maou’s (blue) shirt.
Also, it’s important to note this isn’t a 1:1 port of the original. For instance, TATESC COMICS’ Chapter 7 of The Devil is a Part-Timer! is the start of Chapter 3 in the actual series. It’s perhaps easy to be misled with chapters here formatted with so many pages, as you can see from the sample images. I really wish they had at least named each entry as, say “Chapter 1-1”, “Chapter 1-2”, etc.
I went to try A Polar Bear in Love next, as it was another series I was familiar with. The V-Scroll version, like I believe the rest of TATESC line, is colorized, but there’s definitely a difference between it and The Devil is a Part-Timer!. This one looks like it was always full color. The fact that the main characters are white and live at the North Pole makes it even easier to believe.
Between these two, I noticed the translation seemed to be the same, although there were slight editing differences. In The Devil is a Part-Timer! manga second image, the speech bubble where Ashiya is asking if fast food would be good for his liege’s health looks slightly off-center. But in the vertical comics version, it seems centered. In A Polar Bear in Love above, you can see the “beam” sound effect is written in different locations in the two and drops the romaji in the colorized version. So there are probably these sorts of touches throughout these previously released series, although you’d likely have to have them side-by-side to notice.
I tried an exclusive, Villainess Outrage, next. Again, the art is catered for coloring, and the paneling is better suited for scrolling. Still get partial text or visuals, but the awkwardness I didn’t find as nearly as severe as The Devil is a Part-Timer! or A Polar Bear in Love.
Final Thoughts
Still, though, by this time, it was as I predicted: I was tired and bored of these V-Scroll Comics. No disrespect to webtoon format fans, but it’s just not for me. I do applaud KADOKAWA for selecting a variety of titles for their TATESC line, including yuri and BL. There is also a mix of old and new for fans to re-experience faves or start a new series, and unlike some competitors’ platforms, you can read on a computer.
Still, I’m not sure if the previously licensed content is worth buying again. And the online format (versus, say, a print version) may not downplay enough the fact color was added later.
The price is competitive at $1 or less per chapter, but for content that’s already available as a full eBook (or physical book), you will probably end up spending more. Yes, you are getting a colored release, but readers need to factor that in if they’re on a budget. And if you just want to see certain parts in vibrant colors, you’re going to have to rely on previews, reviews, and/or guesses since the chapter numbers won’t necessarily match. And it may take quite a while for these currently available titles to catch up to where the standard volumes.
More importantly, nothing here really wooed me into the webtoon format. I might have revisited The Devil is a Part-Timer! or tried out Specialty for the Fallen Knight, but vertical scrolling is not a format for the book lover in me. If you do like vertical comics and buy one of these titles, make sure you wait to start reading until the whole chapter downloads to your device. BOOK☆WALKER counts some of these chapters as 50, 70, 100, even 130 “pages”, and it’s very easy to go faster than the app.