Azuki is the latest manga reading service to launch. So while some of us here have shared their initial impressions already, it’s my turn to try it out!
According to a post from the CEO, most of the Azuki’s founders first met at Crunchyroll, and they branched out to various companies including Kodansha and Medium “only to come back together through our shared love of manga”. The name comes from his favorite easy-to-eat snack, mochi, as azuki beans are used in the paste. The parent company of Azuki is called KiraKira Media Inc. As I’m sure a lot of you manga fans know, “kira kira” = sparkle/shine. So shiny beans, I guess.
Well, first things first…getting there. I went to see how Azuki was doing the day after its launch, and well, it wasn’t loading. I went online to see if it was just me, and I figured out the issue: www was needed in the URL with my Firefox setup. You can see how even after I managed to get to Azuki, my tab without the “www.” part was still getting an error. I didn’t have this issue when launching a private browser tab or in Chrome, so I’m not exactly sure what extension or setting wasn’t playing nice with Azuki. This was later fixed, so there was something wonky going on.
Anyway, for now, Azuki is basically Kodansha R Us. Over 170 manga from the publisher is available on the service, including simulpubs, digital first/only titles, and print/digital releases. Outside of Kodansha Comics, Azuki has also teamed up with Kaiten Books to add four manga.
On the homepage, after their introduction and a couple of highlighted titles, Azuki shows what you’ve read recently. Then there are several sections including “Simulpubs: Simultaneous with Japan”, “Off on an Adventure”, and “Recently Updated”. These ones are self-explanatory, but some other categories are less so. “Something Different” is I guess whatever they consider unusual, and it includes Blame!, Chihayafuru, Nodame Cantabile, and Happiness. Categories involving new and recently updated don’t seem that useful right now. Because, obviously, everything is new!
Besides the simulpubs and other ongoing manga, Kodansha Comics’ releases on Azuki include both still-being-translated and translated-in-full works. And in line with Kodansha Comics’ website, most (all?) manga from the publisher have the first chapter free to read. But before you gather snacks for a reading marathon thanks to a current 30-day trial, be aware: many manga are being released in pieces and/or only have part of their volumes available on the service. You can browse Azuki without having to sign up or in, so you can find out what’s available before subscribing, but availability is not as clear on the app even according to Azuki.
Obviously, as with other places, simulpubs are only available in part, but beyond that, it’s seemingly random whether a series has 1 volume available on Azuki or 20. More chapters have been since the debut, and the service will be updated weekly.
I did notice availability of series is not the same as, say, Kindle Unlimited. All Out!!, for instance, has only two volumes on Kindle Unlimited but nine on Azuki. House of the Sun and Atsumori-kun’s Bride-to-Be is not on there at all but has chapters on Azuki.
One feature of Azuki is the ability to read across platforms. So unlike some of the competition, Azuki is available on mobile devices and via computer. There are mobile apps available on both Apple App Store and Google Play, or readers can just use their Internet browser. Either way, as I mentioned earlier, your recent history will be available on the homepage.
I first tried Azuki on my laptop.
Selecting a title brings up a chapter list with information about that manga. You can see which ones you’ve read and a progress meter. The platform keeps track of the page you’ve left off on, and Azuki will take you to where you left off on. I do wish finished chapters had a color difference. I mean, the little check mark with “Read” is nice, but since it’s aligned to the right, it’s a little ways away from the chapter title, which are to the left. Having a visual cue right with the chapter name would be nice.
I tested the search. It does not search by author or publisher, which is a huge bummer. Not so much the publisher search, but the author search, since I’m sure a lot of people will either want to see if another series by an author is available or just can’t remember a series name but remember the author. Search will also not check against the demographic, synopsis, or Japanese name, but it will bring up partial matches in any part of the word. So terms like “chi”, “hay” and “furu” will all bring up Chihayafuru.
To begin, I chose the latest chapter of Cardcaptor Sakura: Clear Card to try out, and the first thing I noticed was that it looked kind of small. There’s a lot of black space around the pages which is filled by the menu as needed, but I like the way most services just cover the page with the menu when it’s brought up or shrink the page when you tap the center or move your mouse or whatever. Because even when I force my browser to go into full screen mode with F11, you still get all the navigation stuff. I’d rather see it be taken up by the manga pages. I mean, how long and how often do you need the reading menu anyway? I’m sure some people constantly check the progress bar, but I imagine most readers don’t and just want a full screen experience while reading whether on desktop or mobile.
Anyway, speaking of the menu, you can access a few different options while reading. By default for me on desktop (and maybe on mobile as well), the reader showed pages in a two-page spread. You can change this to viewing a single page at a time or vertical scrolling. Otherwise, you have the usual back/forth buttons and progress bar. There is also the name of the series you’re reading as well as what chapter you’re on. I do like how you can access the chapter list from right in the reader. Most readers only allow you to quickly jump to the previous or next chapter, but here, you can choose any chapter without having to go to the series page.
Arrow keys can be used to navigate the reader, and hitting left or right on the first or last page will bring up the previous or next chapter respectively. Zooming in can magnify a manga quite a bit.
Uh, yeah, quite a bit.
I tried out several several different manga, sometimes trying to mash the arrow key just to test the speed, and pages were loading quite quickly. Quality of the manga themselves were good, but that’s mostly due to the publishers.
But I was curious about Azuki’s Tweet about the app, so it was time to test it out with my iPad Air 3. But just to compare the mobile experiences, although it would be an imperfect comparison, I brought out a Galaxy Tab S7+, an Android device. To be clear, the bigger device on the left is the Galaxy Tab, the smaller one on the right is the iPad running the Azuki app.
The app removes the “Your digital manga cafe” header, and so my initial impression of the app was how dull it looked thanks to no color or icon. The app did automatically change to dark mode at sunset, so then the app went from dull to all the chapters looking super bright, like a movie screen.
Also missing from the app was the Continue Reading section, which is the first list on the browser version, and search at the bottom. There’s no way to search for a title on the app, which was very surprising. I guess maybe it was because of how sensitive the search is?
Sync worked very well. I would have the same page open on both (and even all three) devices, and I would go one page further in one. As soon as I could access the chapter list, the percent read would be updated.
However, the app shows the progress of read chapters in terms of percent instead of pages. The app was definitely snappier, as compared to Firefox Mobile on my Android tablet, based on my rough estimates, it was about 1-3 seconds to load a series info/chapter list page versus 3-6. This was about the same no matter if I had Firefox Mobile in desktop mode or not. The nice “jump to another chapter right in the reader” feature was not available in the app. Scrolling was smoother on the app, but tapping would not flip the page in the app.
But you know how I was complaining about the extra space? Well, while playing around, I switched to vertical mode in both just to see how it was. But somehow, no matter if I turned on desktop mode or not, I could not find a way to get out of it on my Android tablet. Landscape, portrait, logging in or out, forcing single page on my laptop desktop, nothing. I finally got the menu back after force closing the browser. I tried experimenting to figure out exactly the cause, and I think it’s a combination of the site not playing friendly with desktop mode on tablets and needing the page in the exact spot and dimensions as default to pull up the menu. So I wouldn’t recommend messing with mobile/desktop modes with Azuki.
Even the chapter page was different between the app and the browser. Logging out, you can see the locked symbol on chapters, but the comment feature and the My List disappear on the app. But hey, you can see dates!
Outside of the simulpubs, I think that’s going to be a huge question for Azuki. How much of what’s on there is going to be continue to be added? Take All Out!!, which I mentioned earlier. Will readers need to go to their favorite eBookstore to read volumes 10 to 17, or if they’re patient enough, will Azuki add them? But how patient will they have to be? There’s no release calendar or anything available, so there’s no easy way to know when or how often to check in with Azuki, even though they’ve announced that the service’s offerings will be updated every Thursday.
So while Azuki did have its bumps, it definitely was a much better launch than, for example, Mangamo, which is probably going to be Azuki’s main competitor.
Still, I think Azuki needs more of its own identity besides being Yet Another Service Kodansha Comics Puts Some of Its Manga On ™, with guest star Kaiten Books. Mangamo, INKR Comics, Kindle Unlimited, Crunchyroll Manga all tend to have some differences in their Kodansha Comics lineup, but I think it’s easier to see at a glance how those services are different. Crunchyroll, for instance, is mostly anime, and INKR Comics has Western comics, manhua, and webtoons all easily available to browse by those genres along with manga.
Right now, Kaiten Books’ My Dad’s the Queen of all VTubers?! is highlighted on the homepage, but as I mentioned, that section is MIA on the app. So I think some people may instantly recognize some of titles available on Azuki which are available elsewhere (like simulpubs) and don’t feel it’s worth browsing to learn more. The service is still new, and hopefully it can grow to be a reliable source of cheap all-you-can-read manga.