Are you a fan of manga starring two men falling in love — particularly explicit titles? Well, for you fujoshi and fundashi, there’s a new manga reading service you may be interested in.
Futekiya
Futekiya launched in July 2018 as a manga news site focusing on boys’ love (BL). According to the website, futekiya is run by FANTASISTA, INC, a company that started in CG production. They have worked on Aikatsu! and some VR games/events for Shonen Jump titles. FANTASISTA also runs another English language site called MangaPlanet, but it hasn’t been updated since January of this year. Futekiya is not their first digital manga-related venture. In 2013, they teamed up with another company to create an ebookstore on Facebook in Japan only.
Now, futekiya has debuted their BL subscription service. For $6.99 a month, fans can read all of futekiya’s available manga titles. First chapters of multi-chaptered works are free for all readers, otherwise, a subscription is required to read. Futekiya “will be adding features over the coming months”, although they don’t specify what those will be. The launch lineup included 10 titles from Japanese publisher Shodensha, and seven from independent artists have been added as a week afterward.
The Service
When I first visited futekiya, I didn’t have a good first impression. The archive section, featured right under an ad on the right hand side, emphasized the lack of updates on futekiya. All the posts add up to only four pages. While their other social media accounts have had updates between November 2018 and July 2019, it still doesn’t look very impressive to a new visitor.
This blog section of futekiya does have nice posts on each of the manga, but if you go directly to the reader, you won’t see these characters introduction and samples as seen above. They really need a manga link at the top of their site so that it’s easier to see all their series. And, of course, a link to jump directly to the reader if you start on the futekiya page.
While 17 manga to start does sound impressive, only about half had more than one chapter a week after launch. Considering only some shounen magazines have a weekly schedule, that may not be a surprise. But six of the doujin have no timeline on when additional chapters will launch. Other manga (like Shining Stars in Line) are a single volume in length, so they’ll be finished by the end of the month. Even if more titles are added in short order, Futekiya right now seems a site where you’d subscribe for a month, read everything, and cancel in short order.
How does it feel to read futekiya?
There is no app right now, so both mobile and desktop users will have to use the online reader, and chapters cannot be downloaded. Unless signing up for the site gives additional options, futekiya does not provide a list of manga (a problem I mentioned earlier on the blog site), so you have to go through the latest updates to find the series you want. Clicking on a title brings you to a page with an image header, information about the series, and chapter list with upcoming updates (if available). I do like how they include the title both in Japanese and romaji. It makes it easier for people searching the Web to find it.
I read through a few of the free chapters. The reader defaults to two-page viewer. Arrow keys can operate the reader along with clicks/taps. You can switch it to show only one page at a time, but control then switches to using up/down clicks or arrow presses instead of left/right in the default mode. Once did a page take a little while to load, but otherwise, it seemed snappy. I don’t like the clicking the bottom though in mobile mode. Maybe it’s more natural to others who read on their phone perhaps, but I kept trying to flip the page like normal on my iPad.
The translation seemed good overall. There were a few times where the dialogue seemed a little unnatural, but perhaps the original was a little oddly repetitive or poetic as well. There were no honorifics from what I saw. The series I sampled were all for 18+, so BL fans who want tamer manga (i.e. shounen-ai vs yaoi) will likely have to either wait or go elsewhere.
Final Thoughts
The BL market has been growing rapidly, no doubt thanks to its dedicated fanbase. I’m sure a lot of them will subscribe just to show support for an all-you-can-read BL feast. That’s probably going to be the biggest market, as right now, there isn’t a lot to encourage long-term subscriptions. I don’t see a discount for paying for multiple months, and there isn’t a huge back catalog or long-term series to keep readers hanging on. Plus, at $6.99, it may be overpriced right now. Futekiya may have done well with an introductory offer of $4.99 for newcomers for as long as they stay subscribed. After all, almost $7 a month puts it in the range of Crunchyroll/Funimation, although they cater to anime fans, and it’s well about Shonen Jump+, although that’s mostly male-oriented series. The $7 pricetag could also get you about three volumes to borrow at Renta! (one to two to own); they have quite a large BL library. That’s not to mention sales from other publishers.
Still, if you normally rent or buy BL titles, you’re probably not going to get as much to read as you will on futekiya. I’m concerned that after the first month, users will be paying for just a few chapters a month. That might not be so bad if subscribers had some top-tier series around for the long term.