MangaPlaza Passes 1 Million Users in Fifth Year of U.S. Operation
MangaPlaza's growth shows a female-focused digital manga platform can build a large U.S. audience even as a cousin service, Manga Mirai, shuts down and migrates its content to the platform.
Reporting from 1 source: Animenomics.
NTT Solmare's digital manga platform MangaPlaza passed 1 million registered users at the end of July, five years after launching in the United States. Female readers make up about 90 percent of paying subscribers, and the platform carries titles from more than 120 publishers. A cousin service, Manga Mirai, is closing and moving its content to MangaPlaza. The Osaka-based operator also runs the Japanese platform Comic C'moA, and the two share a marketing and technology team.
MangaPlaza is one of nearly a dozen Japanese-run digital manga platforms that have opened in North America since the COVID-19 pandemic, as publishers work to counter online piracy. NTT Solmare, which has run the Japanese e-book platform Comic C'moA since 2004, built MangaPlaza's catalog of more than 120 publishers on relationships formed through that service, and the two platforms share a single marketing and technology team.
Senior producer Daichi Katsuki said North American fan communities for adult romance and boys' love manga are more established and more open than their Japanese counterparts. The company opened a subsidiary in Sunnyvale, California in February to pursue partnerships with Silicon Valley technology firms, and e-book division manager Ryusuke Ishii said the company would use tools that help it reach customers on the website.
Synthesized by Yomimono from the 1 cited source below, including Japanese-language reporting where cited, then editorially reviewed before publishing.
Sources
- Animenomics MangaPlaza scales up U.S. digital manga ops