While I was listening to her walkthrough of the program, she mentioned a unique feature of the program: a chat service for users to discuss the comics they're reading. This feature isn't available in the "baby beta" yet, but it made me think of Nico Nico Douga's (in)famous commenting feature, which slaps the comments on the videos themselves.
I don't think Graphic.ly's feature will doodle comments on the comics themselves, of course, but it made me wonder: could the program be good for manga as well, setting aside the (I would think) minor technical issue of setting up right-to-left reading?
See, it occurred to me that manga fans-- many of whom are used to reading manga on computers already, due to scanlations, and virtually all of whom already discuss what they read online, since this fandom has grown exponentially via the Internet --may really dig the chat function. They might even like it better than the set of comics fans who are used to hanging out at their local shops and chatting in person there.
Here's Sara's video, to give you a general gist of the program:
The software is still pretty young, but I dig the panel-by-panel viewing ability, in the American comics exampled. I wonder if it would be as effective for manga, where the panels aren't always as sharply separated, but it looks like a pretty effective way to accomplish the actual reading-- one of the hardest tasks when reading manga online, since for the text to be readable you usually have to blow up the page too large to fit on a single screen, resulting in scrolling.
As such, I'm not totally convinced that Graphic.ly in its current form would be stellar for manga, though with a few adjustments it could be good. On the other hand, perhaps its functionality will inspire some of the companies who already have an online manga-reading presence to tweak their own software.
I don't see why it wouldn't work...
Except for the fact that you can read manga for free at othere sites... Here you would have to buy it!
and I am guessing this a good thing for people that are not from the US and can't get the comics they want... this way they could!
Yeah but mostly the readers who do end up buying them (and don't get me wrong, I'm one of them), buy them so they would look good on their shelves!
So if the option is to buy them on a store so they can have it nice and preety on the shelf opposed to buy it and hav it on a computer software then i would go for ink and paper.... not putting words into anybody's mouth or anything, it's just how I see it!
But I still think this would be amazing for people out of the US who don't have a way of getting the comic/manga other than ebay and amazon!
This is what I wrote on Comic Vine about this story:
I think the concept is interesting and could possibly appeal to a person who might not be able to find the comics they want. Not everyone has a comic store available to them, or the selection could be really bad.
As for me,.....I don't think I would ever use it. I do see one way I could be interested. There is a Japanese manga series that is simply my favorite above any other. It's a detailed murder mystery series. The fun thing about it is that the series honestly gives the reader the opportunity to try and solve the case with the evidence they show you before the solution chapter is released.
Sadly, the publisher here in the US made drastic alteration to the series to the point where the story has been damaged. This means that the only place I can get the manga I want to read is from online fan translation sites. These sites do a superb translation job. What they don't do is provide revenue back to the series creator.
If a site like this could have properly translated mangas, and do it in a manner that provides proper revenue to creators. I'd support that. I don't think that could happen though. There would surely be an issue with copyright and licensing.
As with a standard book. I would much rather be able to hold it in my hand as I read. Great if you can't find these comics.
None.
;)
That way the book is exactly as intended, but people who can't read the language can still enjoy it. Kinda like getting a subtitled version of an Anime or Movie instead of a Dubbed copy.
Well, that's an intriguing prospect. It is actually my enjoyment of the Detective Conan series that influenced me to try and learn to read Japanese.
As concept it sounds great, but I really foresee issues with licensing when it comes to that. I know as a fact that VIZ bullied one site that was providing the manga series in both Japanese format and translated with the proper character names. The site had to remove links to all the older volumes and replaced them with links to the VIZ published versions on Amazon only. The product VIZ produces is just filled with alterations and translation errors.
If you can find a way around that. More power to you.
A graphic.ly like app for windows phone 7 to read comic and mangas would by so awesome!