Wireless Watch Japan
Search Results for: manga

Search Results for: manga


MangaNovel Launches Multilingual Offering

Toshiba has announced that they will bring the universe of Japanese manga to the global market with the launch of MangaNovel, an on-line service that allows readers not only to download and read manga in Japanese but to post and offer for sale translations of content in other languages. Apparently the product will be used at MIT to help students study Japanese pop culture and comics.

Mobile Manga on BusinessWeek

BusinessWeek posted a good op-ed, by Kenji Hall, about the Manga for Mobile market niche in Japan. WWJ has been covering this evolution ever since Mobidec back in 2004 [video here] and it’s nice to see the concept is finally starting to get some air-time overseas. Manga is a natural content to port for wireless devices here and obviously this simple concept to render text and images, for whatever print media is popular in any given region, makes sense. Note; we also had a fantastic presentation from Digital Garage at Mobile Monday Tokyo in Feb. 2006.

The Girls Love Mobile Manga

We noticed in a online recent article that the most prominent mobile manga viewers are actually female! Apparently statistics show more than half of the viewers are women and some stories are dominated by majority of 70 percent or more. So, when do those ladies watch manga..?!? According to the story a spokeman said: “Midnight, just before falling asleep in her bed, she watches quietly under the blanket… that’s the trend, I guess.”

TOKYOPOP – Manga to Go

TOKYOPOP Inc., has teamed up with uclick, LLC, a leader in mobile entertainment, to bring “TOKYOPOP Mobile Manga” to mobile phone users worldwide. This unique, downloadable manga application plays manga titles in their original multi-panel format on mobile phones. uclick has developed a new JAVA and BREW subscription application that offers new manga content every day. With a clean, rich graphic presentation coupled with a simple user interface, the manga application puts this popular Japanese art form into the hands of dedicated fans looking for that dose of manga on the go.

Manga Publishers Moving to Mobile

Cartoon-strip publishers, whose printed-matter sales have been losing steam, are actively embracing mobile media because cell phones are what young people are spending their time and money on. Cell phone sites for cartoon strips are booming, as is demand for popular titles. But at the same time, some famous “manga” artists are bypassing publishing houses to offer their works to “keitai” (cell phone) sites directly. (See WWJ’s initial video report on this topic — from Sept. 2003!! — Ed.)

Sony Announcement Makes Cell Phone Manga News, Again

Sony Announcement Makes Cell Phone Manga News, AgainThanks to the folks over at AP Newswire and BusinessWeek, the recent announcement on Sony Pictures Entertainment Inc.’s plans to move into Japan’s mobile manga market is spreading like wildfire [Google] across the Web today. The Sony Corp. unit confirmed they have signed exclusive contracts with 10 popular manga artists, including Shigeru Mizuki, creator of Gegege no Kitaro. The company also stated plans to increase the number of titles now offered to over 300 by next year. That’s more than double the number offered by NTT Solmare and Toppan Publishing combined.

Wireless Watch Japan has been following the ‘Comic Surfing’ story since September 2004 with a video preview of CelSys’s mobile manga technology at Mobidec and again more recently with another video program from KDDI’s EZ Book launch event held in April this year. Sometimes dubbed the crowning jewel of the mobile entertainment content triple-play (games, music, manga), we have been bullish on this sleeping giant since first sight. Wonder how long it will take before Superman launches in the US?

Manga Doctor for 3G Phones

Manga Doctor for 3G PhonesAn unlicensed but brilliant surgeon — himself terribly scarred — prepares to take on another apparently hopeless case, this time right on the cell-phone screen. Black Jack, a series of immensely popular comics from Tetsuwan Atom’s (Astro Boy) creator Osamu Tezuka has decided to make the jump to wireless and is coming to KDDI 3G mobile phones. For 315 yen a month, readers can download Black Jack’s medical adventures twice a week on Mondays and Thursdays. Stories of this anti-hero have been serialized for 30 years in Japan, continuing long after the death of Tezuka. Black Jack has had his own live TV drama, video animation and animated TV series, and now he’s going mobile.

Manga for Mobile: Video Preview

Manga for Mobile: Video PreviewJapan’s 3G networks enable new types of high-bandwidth mobile content that weren’t viable under 2G for either economic or technical reasons. One of the coolest is mobile manga, delivering full-color comic book magazines to cell phones. There’s a manga stuffed in every Japanese commuter’s back pocket (together with a ketai), so porting manga to keitai could make an awful lot of money for content producers. It’ll also save a bunch of trees. Wireless Watch Japan was at Mobidec 2004 recently held in Tokyo and files this sneak preview from Digital Garage Mobile’s booth.

link