{"id":378,"date":"2013-11-06T15:04:09","date_gmt":"2013-11-06T20:04:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sharkpuppet.com\/?p=378"},"modified":"2013-11-06T15:04:09","modified_gmt":"2013-11-06T20:04:09","slug":"digital-shelves-first-impressions-on-crunchyrolls-manga-service","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/sharkpuppet.com\/wordpress\/digital-shelves-first-impressions-on-crunchyrolls-manga-service\/","title":{"rendered":"Digital Shelves: First Impressions On Crunchyroll’s Manga Service"},"content":{"rendered":"

Way back when I was in high school (and dinosaurs roamed the earth), there was a mythical idea floating around within groups of awkward teenage geeks.\u00a0 \u201cImagine,\u201d we would whisper, \u201cif the school library had\u2026 manga.\u201d\u00a0 Fueled by wild rumors that some school in some town in some state had started lending out volumes of Death Note<\/i> or Dragon Ball<\/i>, our minds would spin with possibilities.\u00a0 Just think: a way to read all the manga we wanted without shelling out ten bucks per volume, and we wouldn\u2019t even have to camp out in the graphic novel section of Barnes & Noble or deal with the awful grammar of pirated online translations.\u00a0 Of course, it never happened in my school, and the legendary \u201cShelf of Unlimited Manga\u201d remained an unfulfilled dream.<\/p>\n

Countless eons later, enter the new online manga service from Crunchyroll<\/a>.\u00a0 I\u2019ve been a paying subscriber on this particular anime streaming site for around two years now, and they\u2019ve been doing a remarkable job of offering a huge number of simulcasts every season.\u00a0 Frankly, they\u2019re the primary reason Shark vs Anime<\/a> is able to stay current with its reviews.\u00a0 So naturally, I was curious to see how they intend to handle publishing manga online.<\/p>\n

\"CRManga1\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Read ALL the things!<\/em><\/p>\n

As far as content goes, the catalog of titles isn\u2019t huge, but a there is a nice variety of genres.\u00a0 Some of the series appear to be quite good as well, and I\u2019ve already found myself binging on the manga version of Space Brothers<\/i>.\u00a0 My biggest gripe thus far is that some titles have a significant gap between the current chapter and the available back issues.\u00a0 I\u2019d like to see the site fill in the back catalogs for their titles, since it\u2019s awfully hard to follow a series that skips two dozen chapters.\u00a0 Still, it\u2019s a promising start.<\/p>\n

On technical terms, I\u2019m impressed with the performance of the service considering it\u2019s only just launched.\u00a0 Text is legible and translations are good, and I\u2019ve only found one typo in around 50 chapters so far.\u00a0 I\u2019d be happy with that level of quality in a print title.\u00a0 The service is stable, and the resolution is good enough to look good, even on my desktop\u2019s enormous 27-inch monitor.\u00a0 There\u2019s a mobile app as well, which is free and functional.\u00a0 Fast readers will be frustrated by occasionally slow load times, especially during peak evening hours.\u00a0 I also ran into a couple of bugs with the Android app, but a recent update seems to have stabilized things a bit.<\/p>\n

\"CRManga2\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Not sure if the chapter progress bar limits or encourages binge-reading.<\/em><\/p>\n

Given that the manga service is included with the all-access subscription that I already pay for, the value proposition for me is excellent.\u00a0 I\u2019m essentially getting more stuff while paying the same amount.\u00a0 If you\u2019ve been on the fence about subscribing in the past, the addition of manga to the site adds to the appeal, but it\u2019s not a huge gain at the moment.\u00a0 There\u2019s just not quite enough content as of yet to justify jumping in for the manga service alone.\u00a0 On the other hand, Crunchyroll\u2019s anime catalog started out just as small, and now it\u2019s become downright enormous.<\/p>\n

At present, the promise is outperforming the product to some extent.\u00a0 I love the idea of paying a small amount of money a month to be able to sample a wide variety of titles that I\u2019d never have the budget to buy individually.\u00a0 Just in the process of writing this article, I\u2019ve already come across a couple of series that I\u2019m tempted to read in their entirety.\u00a0 There\u2019s potential for a solid new business model for manga here, and Crunchyroll\u2019s success with anime simulcasts leads me to give them the benefit of the doubt.\u00a0 It\u2019s worth seeing where this project goes, and I hope it will eventually give me a virtual version of the mythical Shelf of Unlimited Manga.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Kawaii Overthink is written by Paul Jensen. You can follow his ramblings about anime on\u00a0Twitter<\/a>.<\/address>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Way back when I was in high school (and dinosaurs roamed the earth), there was a mythical idea floating around within groups of awkward teenage geeks.\u00a0 \u201cImagine,\u201d we would whisper, \u201cif the school library had\u2026 manga.\u201d\u00a0 Fueled by wild rumors that some school in some town in some state had started lending out volumes of [Read more…]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[10],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/sharkpuppet.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/378"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/sharkpuppet.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/sharkpuppet.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sharkpuppet.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sharkpuppet.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=378"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/sharkpuppet.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/378\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":384,"href":"http:\/\/sharkpuppet.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/378\/revisions\/384"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/sharkpuppet.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=378"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sharkpuppet.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=378"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sharkpuppet.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=378"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}