It wasn’t so long ago when the new English Shonen Jump was announced, making many of the magazine’s serializations free to read and allowing the back catalog to be accessed for $1.99 a month.
But now Shueisha, one of VIZ Media’s owners and the company which publishes the Japanese version of the magazine, is now releasing a new manga-reading platform. Is it different from VIZ Media’s Shonen Jump, and is it worth your time? Let’s take a look!
MANGA Plus Overview
The new service is called MANGA Plus. As they say:
Ignoring the odd use of quotation marks and Engrish, MANGA Plus is pretty much what it says. Manga fans worldwide can browse and read a bunch of manga in English (with Spanish due between February and March) for free.
So, right away, that’s the big advantage over VIZ Media’s big December announcement. If you’re someone outside of areas like the US, Canada, the UK, and the other seven regions, MANGA Plus is going to be for you. But what else is different between the two?
| Shonen Jump | MANGA Plus | |
| Region | 10 countries, mostly English-speaking | Worldwide except for Japan, China, South Korea |
| Language | English | English, Spanish |
| Cost to Access | Free | Free |
| Subscription | $1.99 a month | N/A |
| Manga source (Japan) | Shonen Jump, Jump Square | Shonen Jump, Jump Square, Jump+ |
| Number of titles (total) | About 85 | About 50 |
| Simulpubs | Yes, about 25 | Yes, about 40 |
| Finished series | Yes, about 50 | Yes, about 12 |
| Platforms | Website, Android, iOS | Website, Android, iOS |
| Offline viewing | Yes | No |
| Number of chapters for simulpubs | 3 | 3 |
| Number of chapters for back catalog | First 3 only (all for subscribers) | 7 (one added/removed a week) |
So, in short, they are very similar. Shonen Jump has a few extra features, including reading up to 100 chapters of completed Jump series for pennies a day. Readers can leave public comments on each chapter on MANGA Plus, but only in the app. Ads appear to be minimal to nonexistent. Manga fans in Japan, China, and South Korea will need to use Shueisha’s other services, like Shonen Jump+ for Japan.
Now, as for the manga itself. For most fans, it’s the current serializations they’re most interested in. The current big hits like One Piece, My Hero Academia, Blue Exorcist, The Promised Neverland, and Haikyu!! are available on both. Newcomers like Chainsaw Man and ne0;lation are also included. Finished series like Bleach and Naruto will be slowly added to MANGA Plus, but Shonen Jump subscribers can read these chapters at any time (limit 100 chapters a day). MANGA Plus has far more ongoing series, including some very recent additions like Moon Land, while Shonen Jump has many more finished titles including Black Cat and The Prince of Tennis.
That’s nice and all, but what about for reading manga?
Reading on MANGA Plus
I took a look at MANGA Plus’ site and the app. One of the first things I noticed was that it disables keyboard browsing, using buttons like the directional arrows and page up/down. That’s how I primarily browse the Internet, so I found it annoying to have to keep using my laptop’s touchpad to use the side scroller. (Directional arrows do work while reading manga though.) I was surprised when MANGA Plus’ app defaulted to the vertical orientation.
I’m also not a fan of the white text on black background, but that’s just me. I’m sure it’s easy on the eyes at nighttime, but during the day, it’s kind of a downer. It’s also a bit jarring if you go to a site like Google afterward, as then the colors seem really bright after the black background of MANGA Plus.
On the first day it went live, many of the completed manga (called “re-edition” or “revival publish”) were giving 404 errors, but fortunately this was fixed by the next morning. On both the site and the app, reading manga was snappy. My Shonen Jump app on my iPad would often hang while switching pages on my iPad, but I didn’t have similar problems with MANGA Plus.
However, on the website…
Now, if you look at most books (but particularly manga), you’ll notice that the book usually starts on a second page. What I mean is, when you open a book to its title page or beginning, there is usually a filler or whatever so that it doesn’t open awkwardly. Take a manga for instance. Hardly any volume or chapter starts on the right-hand side. It usually starts with a splash page on the left-hand side or a short intro before going into a splash page, and then the story kicks back off on the next left-hand side.
If you don’t understand, maybe this will clear it up.
Notice how the Shonen Jump website renders the first page of My Hero Academia by itself, with a blank page as filler. MANGA Plus, however, just shows the first two pages of My Hero Academia.
Some of you may recognize the issue already. Take a look at this excerpt from Blue Exorcist.
This is the way the author intended, to show the creepiness of the Gehenna Gate spanning across two pages at once. Unfortunately, MANGA Plus’ version is less effective.
The second part, showing the demon coming out, isn’t shown until the next page. Even without images that take up two pages, this looks bad.
Here, it appears as if someone did a poor job of lining up the pages, like there was a scanning error or someone did a bad pasting job. But they’re not supposed to be lined up. It’s the previous page with the cake that is supposed to be neatly lined up with the page with Boruto’s outburst. See how nice it looks?
But because of the way MANGA Plus always starts off with two pages, two pages that would normally be back-to-back are now side-by-side. And things get messed up. Ugh!
Obviously, if you are going to browse MANGA Plus on your phone or tablet in portrait mode, you are going to be looking at pages one at a time anyway. But the Shonen Jump app will automatically show two pages at once in landscape mode; MANGA Plus won’t. MANGA Plus also does not have a fullscreen option. It automatically did fit to my screen, but I couldn’t minimize my browser menu. While that disappointed me, it was better than some of the default ways Shonen Jump rendered chapters. This is how Boruto looked on my computer once I scrolled down to get rid of the Shonen Jump menu.
The color insert — which is shown on Shonen Jump — is not available on MANGA Plus. But I didn’t have to do any adjusting to make it look nice on my laptop.
Shueisha is using VIZ Media’s releases when applicable, although I did notice a couple of minor corrections in MANGA Plus’ version. I suspect that MANGA Plus is using the collected volume (graphic novel) editions of the chapters, which may have made corrections from the simulpub versions from VIZ Media’s Shonen Jump. That may explain while the latter has “my dad” in the first set of BORUTO images instead of “mydad” (as well as not having color pages).
Combined with the fact that comments can only be left on the apps, the Android and iOS versions appear to be the way to go for MANGA Plus. I’d rather see two-page spreads broken up rather than having two obviously mismatched pages appear on my screen at once. Perhaps in the future, they’ll correct this and add the filler pages so that the layout is as the author intended.
Overall Thoughts
I am surprised there isn’t some sort of subscription initiative, but perhaps accepting currencies from around the world or ensuring legal compliance from all of them is a big hurdle.
Regardless, Shueisha is trying to strike a direct hit into the various reasons for scanlations. “It’s not available in my region!” is a common one, but now, that’s pretty much gone. Yes, it may not be in a reader’s native language, but English is the most popular second language in the world (and second-most popular language overall). Spanish comes in second, third, or fourth depending how you calculate the number of speakers (native vs bilingual).
However you calculate it, a large portion of the world will have some understanding of one of these two languages. For those that don’t, if they can access MANGA Plus, chances are, they can also access Google Translate or a similar translation website. They can also use some sort of social media to reach out to fellow non-English/Spanish speakers to help clear up any confusing lines. Or they could use the comment system right in MANGA Plus. Fans do seem to be using it (and commenting in a variety of languages, although many are part of an initial “thank you” and “so excited” wave.
For those English-speaking fans who live in an area where English Shonen Jump’s subscription is available, MANGA Plus is not a replacement — for better or for worse. Shonen Jump has the back catalog while MANGA Plus has more simulpubs. MANGA Plus is faster to load in my experience, and parents won’t have to worry about kids accidentally spending money on the app. There’s also the comment system for some interaction with other fans. However, Shonen Jump has the ability to download manga, a must for many fans, but it’s region-limited. Chances are that fans will use both services if they can.
For manga readers worldwide, though, it will be interesting to see how other publishers will respond to Shueisha’s recent moves. US and English-speaking fans have options like Crunchyroll and all the Kodansha digital-first titles, but there is a large segment of manga fandom that can’t or won’t pay for these titles. Shueisha appears to be luring these readers, but will other publishers respond? Can they afford to let Shueisha establish dominance in some of these secondary or emerging markets, or is all this because Shueisha is the only one who can afford a venture thanks to hits like One Piece and My Hero Academia?
Even if Shueisha is leading the way, there are some ways they can improve MANGA Plus. The service is almost exclusively shounen titles, and adding more variety could reach a bigger audience (younger, older, female). Features like the ability to know what chapters you’ve read or offline access might be nice. That’s not to mention fixing the manga layout issues.
Still, for all of you scanlation fans who have been arguing, “If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em!”, well, Shueisha has answered the call. Now it’s time for you to live up to your end of the bargain. If you want to see more Shueisha titles or prove to the other manga publishers that this free-to-view-the-latest model is the one that works, get to readin’ ASAP.