Comici builds magazine-style digital manga apps
Technology startup is confident that the editorial philosophy of Japan's manga magazines can facilitate a better title discovery experience for digital manga readers overseas
This is a feature story from Animenomics, covering the business of anime and manga.
Shueisha’s Weekly Shonen Jump manga magazine has become a household name for manga readers outside Japan, but other manga magazines remain largely unknown to overseas readers, a dilemma that manga technology startup Comici wants to solve.
Why it matters: As Japan’s domestic manga market stalls, publishers are looking to grow their sales abroad, but overseas readers and Japanese readers consume manga very differently from one another.
Traditionally, manga readers in Japan discovered new titles through magazines, which are curated by a team of editors, but this system is unknown to overseas readers, who usually treat manga as auteur-driven works.
What’s happening: Comici launched an English-language digital manga app and web platform earlier this year, seeking to bridge the gap between manga magazine editors and overseas readers.
“I believe the most irreplaceable function of manga magazines has been their ability to bring diverse talents together within a single editorial context and help readers discover new works,” Comici founder and chief executive officer Daisaku Manda told Animenomics in a recent interview.
Comici Manga launched in 12 countries in January and hosts works from digital manga brands operated by Bushiroad Works, Kill Time Communication, Jitsugyo no Nihon Sha, Fusosha Publishing, Ohzora Publishing, and Hero’s.
Zoom in: Comici is best known in Japan as the developer of the Comici+ software-as-a-service platform that allows smaller manga publishers to build hosted digital manga services without needing to build their own web infrastructure.
Comici+ powers digital platforms for manga magazines like Hakusensha’s Young Animal and Shogakukan’s Weekly Big Comic Spirits. It surpassed 3 million users across all supported magazines in February.
“What Comici+ wants to recreate is not a simple digital copy of print magazines,” Manda explained. “We want to reconstruct the discovery, editorial context, nurturing function, and sense of closeness with readers that magazines originally had, in a form suited to the digital age.”
Taking an example from the growing use of data analytics in baseball, Manda says Comici shares Comici+ user behavior data with publishers in order to inform how editors can maximize the reach of manga titles in their portfolio.
Backgrounder: Founded in 2018, Comici is backed by manga publishers Shogakukan and Akita Shoten and by LINE Yahoo-affiliated Z Venture Capital and Mitsubishi UFJ Capital.
The bigger picture: Top Japanese manga publishers are attempting to forge a closer relationship between manga editors and overseas creators and readers.
At the Anime Expo fan convention in Los Angeles earlier this month, Kadokawa flew in a team of editors to conduct portfolio reviews and recruit promising manga artists.
In April, as part of Kodansha’s Manga Academy program, the publisher launched a virtual community on the messaging platform Discord, allowing creators and fans to read manga critiques written by editors.
Go deeper: Read about Manda’s approach to building a “common operating system” for digital manga, plus his full interview (for paying subscribers), below.
Comici’s primary business in Japan is a digital manga magazine production and publishing platform for small and mid-size manga publishers. What did publishers tell you they needed most? What surprised you about the operational realities inside editorial departments once you began building tools for them?
What publishers needed most was not simply a distribution system. I believe what they needed was a place where editorial teams could deliver their own passion and editorial intent directly to readers.
As manga distribution became digital, it increasingly centered around e-book stores and large-scale platforms. This is extremely important from a sales perspective. However, on those platforms, works that are already selling well, or works that can generate short-term numbers, naturally tend to stand out.
As a result, I felt that it had become harder for readers to feel the passion behind the works that editorial teams truly wanted to promote, the works they wanted to nurture, and the works into which creators had poured strong personal feelings.
In the era of print magazines, editorial teams had a clear voice—which work should be on the cover, what order the chapters should appear in, what kind of special features should be created. Behind all of that was the editorial team’s passion: “We want readers to discover this work.” That passion was closely connected to the passion of the creators. But through digitization, that magazine-like context and sense of closeness began to fade.
The web magazines provided by Comici+ are a mechanism for bringing that passion back into the digital space. Editorial teams can have their own magazines, deliver works directly to readers, see how readers respond, and then think about the next action.
Of course, selling through e-book stores and large platforms is important. But sales alone do not nurture works. I believe that when editorial teams can directly feel readers’ reactions, that sense of closeness creates a new kind of passion.
What surprised me was not that publishers were reluctant to go digital. In fact, many editorial teams had a very strong desire to deliver their works to readers. What they lacked was the place and system to express that passion digitally and deliver it to readers. I see Comici+ as the common infrastructure for that purpose.
Your stated goal is to build a “common operating system” for digital manga distribution, which is also an objective in the Ministry of Economy, Trade, and Industry’s IP360 strategy. Platforms like Netflix and Spotify have become the default in many parts around the world for consuming entertainment content, but they also receive criticism for monopolistic practices. Why do you think it’s in the best interest of the manga industry to have a “common operating system” versus a diversity of distribution platforms?
I believe the greatest value of manga lies in its diversity: boys’ manga, girls’ manga, men’s manga, women’s manga, boys’ love, girls’ love, essays, experimental works. Entertainment has value precisely because it is diverse. Japan’s manga culture became strong because there are so many genres, creators, editorial teams, and labels.
The “common operating system” we are aiming to build is not something that integrates all of that diversity into one single form. Rather, it is a way to standardize the data foundation and distribution infrastructure so that diverse talent can properly reach readers.
On today’s large-scale platforms, data tends to accumulate on the platform side. Of course, e-book stores and distribution platforms are extremely important for sales. But when data is locked inside the platform, publishers, editorial teams, and creators cannot fully understand how readers discovered a work, where they felt passion for it, and how the work is growing. As a result, there is a risk that the initiative in creating and nurturing works gradually shifts toward the platform side.
We are not a company that creates manga, nor are we a company that intervenes in the talent of editors and manga creators themselves. Our role is to build a common data foundation, visualize the points of contact between works and readers, and return that information to publishers, editorial teams, and creators.
Infrastructure and data foundations should be shared. On top of that, editors and manga creators should compete through their talent. I believe this is the healthiest form for the manga industry.
Manga can become a hub for the entire entertainment industry, including anime, film, games, merchandise, and overseas expansion. For manga to function as that hub, data should not be locked inside a specific platform. It needs to return to the people who create the works, so it can be used to create future works and build relationships with readers.
In other words, a common operating system is not a mechanism for reducing diversity. It is a foundation that allows diverse works, diverse editorial teams, and diverse talents to be properly evaluated and delivered to readers in the digital age.
We believe Comici’s reason for existence is not to lock works inside our own platform, but to return value to talented creators as a common operating system.
What do you see as the most irreplaceable functions that manga magazines provide, and how does the Comici+ “common operating system” recreate those functions?
I believe the most irreplaceable function of manga magazines has been their ability to bring diverse talents together within a single editorial context and help readers discover new works.
Manga does not exist through collected volumes alone. Print magazines had an editorial philosophy, a publishing order, special features, and covers. Readers bought magazines to read the works they were already following, but they also encountered works next to them that they had not yet discovered. In that sense, a magazine was not merely a distribution surface. It was an editorial device for discovering and nurturing works.
In e-book stores and large-scale platforms, search and rankings tend to be centered around individual works. Of course, this is very effective for sales. On the other hand, readers tend to concentrate on highly ranked works or works that are already selling well. Works that editorial teams want to nurture, or works that are still small but have strong passion behind them, can become harder to discover.
That is where the value of manga magazines lies. An editorial team thinks, “We want readers to discover this work.” A reader thinks, “If it is in this magazine, I should try reading it.” New creators and works grow within that relationship of trust. Comici+ is trying to recreate this function of the magazine in the digital space.
With web magazines, each editorial team can express its worldview and the context of its label. Instead of simply lining up works, they can deliver the works they want to promote through special features, update flows, recommendations after reading, campaigns, and social media initiatives.
In addition, Comici+ can visualize reader responses through data: Which works are bringing in new readers? Which works are being read repeatedly? Which works are leading to purchases? Which works have strong core passion? This makes it easier for editorial teams to find not only works that are already selling but also works that have the potential to grow.
In other words, what Comici+ wants to recreate is not a simple digital copy of print magazines. We want to reconstruct the discovery, editorial context, nurturing function, and sense of closeness with readers that magazines originally had, in a form suited to the digital age.
Manga magazines were hubs connecting talented creators and readers. I see Comici+ as the magazine infrastructure of the digital age, supporting that hub function with data and technology.
Japanese readers are more familiar with the characteristics of various manga publishers and have an affinity toward certain labels. Readers abroad don’t usually pay attention to the label or publisher of a manga series. What makes you confident that Japan’s manga magazine‑style community model can be scaled globally in Comici Manga?
