Should Manga Only Be Published Digitally?

Since the late 1950s, manga magazines have been pumping out content for people of all ages in a variety of different genres. With practically 95% of bookstores within Japan carrying these publications for prices under 5 U.S. dollars on a weekly to monthly basis, the companies behind them will make a killing off of people’s growing anticipation for a continuation of their favorite series. Yet, after 50 years of manga magazines being produced around the clock, one must wonder if this is the most efficient way to put out stories for people to read.

For example, releasing 1 chapter of a series every week or month creates a ton of pressure on the creators of your favorite stories and manga. I mean, imagine having to write, storyboard, and color 20 pages of manga every week while also having to attend meetings, eat, and sleep; it’s a lot easier said than done! In my eyes, that alone is extremely worrying and I would definitely not want to be in that predicament.

What if there was a simpler way to publish manga regularly but also doesn’t harm the creators and the market? It may seem silly at first, but hear me out: could manga be published solely on a digital platform?

Before going in depth, some ground rules need to be laid out. For a majority of this article, I will use numbers created by Shueisha’s Weekly Shonen Jump due to them being not only the biggest manga magazine but also since they’ve dipped their toes in the water and tested out a digital platform for their works. Both series currently being published in the magazine itself and on the Shonen Jump+ app will be compared to a degree.

The first advantage to manga being published digitally is that space isn’t an issue. For anyone who owns a copious amount of literature, running out of space for your books is a common problem and it doesn’t help that new books and manga come out regularly. This is where digital manga comes in; instead of constantly rearranging your shelves and deciding whether you want to say goodbye to some books, you’re able to have access to thousands of chapters of manga at the touch of your fingertips.

Being able to read any manga whenever you want by simply opening up an app or going onto the internet becomes extremely useful when realizing that manga can run for a very long time. Of course, any manga serialized for about 5 years creates hundreds upon hundreds of chapters spread across several volumes. And, boy, do those manga volumes add up quick!

This solution is also often cheaper compared to buying new manga volumes. In the U.S., manga volumes can range from $6 to $11, and in Japan they typically cost $4 to $5. However, these same mangas can be read for lower or even free depending on your location and app of choice. By using Viz Media’s Shonen Jump Manga & Comics app, available in the U.S, users can have access to all Weekly Shonen Jump series licensed by Viz Media as soon as they come out for just $2 a month. As for the Shonen Jump+ app, which I’ll mention more later, Japanese users can read a sizable chunk of Shonen Jump manga and several original titles separate from the print magazine for free. The app also sells eBook versions of Weekly Shonen Jump titles and a digital version of the magazine. The American version of Shonen Jump+, Manga Plus, only allows readers to read the first three and last three chapters of every series.

No matter which way you see it, digital manga is an overall better deal. Paying $2 a month for access to almost all of Shonen Jump’s enormous catalog is more worth it than paying $10 for one volume of a series.

Another positive aspect about manga being published on a digital platform is the leniency and flexible work schedule for manga creators. As stated before, constantly pumping out manga takes a lot of work for a single person. Shockingly, the example I used isn’t just a schedule I made up; it’s the actual work schedule of Hiroshi Shiibashi, creator of Nura: Rise of the Yokai Clan and an assistant on Hirohiko Araki’s series Steel Ball Run. In this infamous image, we can see Shiibashi’s treacherous work schedule throughout an unspecified week. He gets little sleep, barely any free time, and doesn’t have a life outside of work.

Sadly, this is the norm for manga creators and many Japanese citizens. In fact, there’s actually a special term used to describe those who’ve died because of how much work consumed their lives called karoshi, which translates to “death by overwork.” When overwork doesn’t result in death, it can definitely lead to plenty of health issues. Famous manga creators such as Yoshihiro Togashi, the creator of Hunter x Hunter and Yu Yu Hakusho, are notorious for the impact their health has on their work output; if you’re someone who reads Hunter x Hunter, you’ll probably know exactly what I mean.

Because of Togashi’s well known and severe, chronic back pain, Hunter x Hunter has been on and off hiatuses for the better part of the past decade and a half. Because of these continuous and long hiatuses, many know the series as Hiatus x Hiatus and there’s even a website dedicated to keeping track of the long periods of time between chapter releases.

Getting back on track, the poor and decreasing health of many mangaka, or Japanese manga artists, isn’t anything new. Luckily, by publishing manga online, there’s a chance these health issues won’t be as common!

Manga only released on the Shonen Jump+ app may have different release schedules than in print works. While One Piece, Dr. STONE, and Jujutsu Kaisen chapters all need to be finished in time to be printed every Sunday, other works like ‘Tis Time for “Torture,” Princess, Spy x Family, and Kaiju No. 8 can all release on different days of the week. ‘Tis Time for “Torture,” Princess gets released on Mondays, Spy x Family gets a new chapter every other Sunday, and new chapters for Kaiju No. 8 release on Thursdays with the manga creator taking a weeklong break every 3 chapters. Even though the system still isn’t perfect and won’t be fixed overnight, I believe allowing mangakas to take breaks when needed is something that should be encouraged.

Although everything listed above sounds amazing, arguably the most important part of whether manga can be published on an online only basis is through their sales of physical manga volumes. So, how do they add up to their competition?

Easily, the two biggest franchises from the Shonen Jump+ app are Spy x Family and Kaiju No. 8. According to Anime News Network, Spy x Family tells the story of Agent Twilight, the greatest spy for the nation of Westalis, who has to infiltrate an elite private school. However, he must assume the identity of psychiatrist Loid Forger, adopt an orphan girl, and marry a city hall employee. Unknown to him, his daughter Anya is a telepath and his wife Yor is an assassin. Throughout the story, the three learn to become a family while working to complete Twilight’s missions and maintain world peace.

The tenderness and charm of this manga is abundantly clear through the storytelling and panels, making it one of my personal favorites to come out in the past couple years. Surprisingly enough, the sales numbers for this series are astronomical! Despite the series not having an anime adaptation, Spy x Family sold 4.5 million copies in 2020 alone, making it the 8th best selling manga series in the world that year. A series being able to sell this many volumes without an anime adaptation is impressive, and Spy x Family is the only series within the top 10 to not have one. If the heavily rumored anime adaptation for the series was to come within the next few months, just imagine the sales numbers after!

The second giant of Shonen Jump+ is Kaiju No. 8. Using the Kaiju No. 8 wiki as a reference, the series contains Godzilla-like monsters called “kaiju’’ that’ve been popping up around Japan for many years. In order to fight them, an elite military unit known as the Defense Corps risks their lives to protect the world around them. Yet, Kafka Hibino, a 32-year-old man, is not one of these people while his childhood best friend, Mina Ashiro, is.

Following a chain of unfortunate events and an interaction with a coworker, Kafka encounters a parasite-type kaiju that forces its way in through his mouth and allows him to turn into a kaiju himself. With his newfound powers, Kafka has a second attempt at fulfilling his childhood promise of being a member of the Defense Corps alongside Mina.

Upon release, the first chapter of this manga went viral on Twitter and amassed a record-breaking amount of views. Within its first five weeks of volume sales, it’s estimated that Kaiju No. 8 sold over 270 thousand copies, completely wiping out the in-print competitors released around the same time.

With that being said, we have two Shonen Jump+ titles on our hands that have dramatically outperformed their in-print competition and are on their way to accomplish even more great things. Yes, obviously the other major Shonen Jump titles such as One Piece and Demon Slayer have sold way more than these series as of now (especially Demon Slayer with their whopping 82,345,447 copies, which is almost 10 times the amount of the second place title.). But for a series to only be published on a digital platform with no anime adaptations, both have done outstanding things in only their first few years of existence.

I definitely believe that the manga industry should use this new tool. Digital publications have less cutthroat schedules and encourage more diversity in storytelling and their audiences. There’s a ton of potential for this up-and-coming medium. Despite all these wonderful advantages to digital manga, of course there will always be the downsides.

As everyone knows, there’s absolutely nothing else like holding and reading a physical book. The smell of the fresh pages, the texture of the paper, and the sound of you flipping the page can never compare to holding a phone and swiping down to read the next manga panel. Plus, these tangible works are more collectable and are more high quality than a scan of the mangaka’s original work.

Yet, the biggest issue with digitally released manga has to do with one’s ownership of the story they’re reading. In short, people don’t really own whatever book, comic, or manga they buy an eBook version of. When purchasing eBooks, what people are actually receiving is a non-transferable licence to use the book in restricted ways. For example, companies may not allow their consumers to let a friend borrow the book like they would with a physical book. In addition, there’s already been plenty of times people have had their access to digital media revoked at a later date such as Scott Pilgrim vs. the World: The Game and what Microsoft did with the books category of its digital store.

Despite these being understandable reasons why people still prefer buying literature in a physical format, digital manga, without a doubt, still thrives on the internet with their easy storage, affordable prices, and crazy sales numbers. The internet is changing the manga industry and how people experience its stories. Shueisha and other manga companies have a lot to gain by embracing this new generation of manga rather than trying to keep it traditional. With many long-running and defining manga series ending in recent years, I can’t see a better way to find more than encouraging the new wave of manga to go above and beyond and keep entertaining fans, old and new.