Long time readers of the blog may remember I like to read manga, but being an Amazon Kindle user my options were limited and they had none of my favorite series (including Bleach and most Viz media).
Apparently that has changed.
After a couple of layers of Amazon “you may like” or “customers who bought this item also bought”, I discovered Rurouni Kenshin – Restoration, a two volume retelling / tie-in with the live action movie (also discussed on this blog). Each volume is priced at $5.79 and are welcome editions to my Kindle (I’ll evaluate the story and the movie in a future post once the live action arrives on my doorstep).
It turns out Amazon has a lot of good titles: Naruto, Bleach, Attack on Titan, Rurouni Kenshin and Neon Genesis Evangelion. Single volumes all seem to be priced at around the $5.79 price though the Evangelion title’s offer three-in-ones priced at $9.39. Absent though is Fullmetal Alchemist, Trigun, Love Hina and numerous others that I would have loved to see.
As I have long suspected it would, manga looks great on the Touch. Barnes and Noble, who used to be the only game in town, did not offer manga on their eReaders, only supporting it on their tablet models. There are some quirks, however:
- Manga is compatible with my Touch but not my first generation Fire. This seems odd since the Fire has a better resolution and supports a variety of other comics. It works on my crappy generic Android, however. To my understanding the Touch and the Fire are the same hardware generation so I find it a little odd that the Touch works and Fire does not.
- The manga pages are ordered backwards, or more to the point they are placed back to front as a real printed volume would be. I think it’s a little weird to have to hit the previous button to get the next page, and the effect is not as natural as it is with the actual book.
The price point’s not bad, though I wish they offered more of the long running series in the same format as the Evangelion books (the equivalent of buying each volume for $3.13 instead of $5.79). Kenshin is a 28 volume series, and Bleach and Naruto have 50+ volumes. Manga has never been the cheapest hobby to sustain, and Amazon is cheaper than most print runs, but it’s still expensive to have a complete collection.
Overall I’m happy, particularly for trying new series like Attack on Titan that I haven’t read. One of these days I’ll have to review a real book so you don’t think all I read is comic books 🙂
What other manga titles do you like?
[BTW] : Ben Trube, Writer 
Yes, anime, manga and anything of the sorts like official merchandises are very expensive as a hobby. Sadly, most of the members of the fandom do not experience this because of the illegal manga and anime hosting sites.
I’m not one who’s so clean either because I utilize these sites but I make it to a point to order the volumes and DVDs abroad whenever they become available. (Well, the ones I really like at least.)
So back to your post, I don’t own a kindle but based on what you wrote, I also think it is odd to click the previous button. I hope they make a special interface for manga sooner or later.
I read all of the series you’ve mentioned and many more. I read everything.
Do you also like webtoons?
I’m not sure I could read manga well on my kindle (it’s an older model, the screen is a bit small), so I’m sticking with paper manga. At the moment I’m only following dengeki daisy, black butler, and pokemon black/white (in French, since they release faster =P), if you’re looking for ideas of things to read… And the novels for haruhi suzumiya and spice and wolf (which technically don’t count… But if I can read the original novels I always prefer that to manga adaptations). Now if only they would translate more of the slayers novels… It might be faster for me to learn Japanese.
Black Butler and Death Note would be popular I think, and I can’t believe they don’t have Fullmetal Alchemist. People are crazy for One Piece in Japan (at least they were a year ago), so that’s another that should show up soon.
I love that the book reads back to front (as I would say it) in the kindle. Changing my automatic actions are part of what help me focus on the different world in my hands when I’m reading manga.