Bottom line up front: while Crunchyroll Manga provides an excellent UI and user experience for Crunchyroll members seeking to read the bulk of chapters for popular series, the lack of up-to-date chapters for the biggest titles makes it a hard sell for those who aren’t already Crunchyroll subscribers. It’s a decent deal for those already on a Mega Fan plan, though rather than paying for its add-on you may as well get the Ultimate Fan plan for 50 cents more.
What is Crunchyroll Manga?
The new Crunchyroll Manga app launched this past October, bringing well over 200 popular manga titles to its collection, with more (26 Titan Manga titles) being added earlier this month. The service provides access to titles from multiple publishers and that serves as the basis for a lot of its appeal in my opinion; readers can check out manga series from publishers including VIZ Media, Square Enix, AlphaPolis, COMPASS, Yen Press, and now Titan Manga. On its face, the value proposition is clear to manga readers. There are a lot of apps from a lot of publishers and a lot of services these days. In order to read a wide variety of manga legally, you have to maintain subscriptions for just about every publisher or magazine you want to consume content from.
With Crunchyroll Manga, that list can be coalesced into a smaller one since multiple publishers may make their popular titles available via Crunchyroll. The service is described as “a premium add-on” “that lets fans dive into hundreds of comics created in Japan.” There are no ads on Crunchyroll Manga and it’s available on IOS and Android devices, including tablets. It’s worth noting that this isn’t the first Crunchyroll Manga, as some fans may be confused at this being positioned as a “new” service. Crunchyroll previously had a digital comics platform also called Crunchyroll Manga.
Old vs New
The old Crunchyroll Manga service was available to both free and premium members, with the service initially beginning with an offering of 12 titles licensed from Kodansha, the largest publisher in Japan at the time of launch in October 2013. The old Crunchyroll manga offered simulpub chapters for these initial chapters released at the same time they were released in Japan with no delays. The service would also go on to include other catalog titles from Kodansha. These chapters were available for free with limited ads or, for those who purchased either (1) the Crunchyroll All-Access membership which was at launch $11.95 a month or (2) a manga-only premium membership for at the time $4.95 USD a month, the catalog was available ad free. By 2018, many of the Kodansha titles would be removed from the Crunchyroll Manga platform, including 14 simulpub titles in February of 2018 and 10 catalog titles in March of 2018. Kodansha then removed an additional number of Kodansha USA Publishing titles in January of 2023. Kodansha would go on to launch a manga distribution service called K Manga, initially launched exclusively in the United States in May of 2023. Digital manga was no longer available on Crunchyroll as of November 7, 2023.
I bring up the old version of the service both for broader context and to describe the new service via what it is not: a simulpub service. The current Crunchyroll Manga feels like a more fleshed out version of what was previously offered as part of the old service’s supplemental catalog. The new Crunchyroll Manga (in the United States; I will be referencing US prices for these plans) is an additional $3.50 (for a total of $15.49 a month) when bundled with the Mega Fan subscription, with the Ultimate Fan subscription, which includes Crunchyroll Manga, costing $15.99 a month. The relative prices here obviously favor just going in on the Ultimate Fan subscription, especially if you ever place orders from the Crunchyroll Store and can take advantage of the added discount and free shipping included in the Ultimate tier.
The Good
During a press demo at New York Comic Con this year, I had the opportunity to check out the Crunchyroll Manga app on both mobile phones and tablets, browse the initial catalog, and ask questions to representatives from Crunchyroll, and I’ve since used Crunchyroll Manga on my own. While the user interface for the app is straightforward, I found it responsive and pleasant. The homepage includes lists of manga from different genres, a place to pick back up on chapters you’ve recently read, a list of the most popular titles, and newly added content. The reading interface is standard, though it includes a mobile feature I personally am a big fan of, which is the ability to tap the side of the screen to turn a page rather than swiping with your finger. The web interface on desktop is pretty similar and just as good, if a bit resource intensive.
Favorite titles can be both saved to a list and also downloaded. A maximum of 50 chapters can be downloaded at any given time (currently) and there is a maximum of 100 saved items for the “My Lists” option. The maximum downloaded chapters makes sense; it’s not abnormal to see this limit and rarely will I need to prepare over 50 chapters of manga for reading offline. That’s enough to last me the duration of a decently long flight, and on a longer one I would usually have wi-fi anyway. For comparison, while I don’t know if the Shonen Jump app had a specific separate download limit, there was a 100 chapter daily reading limit until recently. Other apps, like K Manga, use a ticket and coin system that isn’t really comparable. The maximum saved items feels a bit unnecessary and I am not sure of its broader purpose.
As for the overall selection? It’s actually quite good. I saw a lot of titles I recognized. Of course, some Shonen big hitters like Jujutsu Kaisen, One Piece, and BLEACH were in there, but there was also a healthy selection of slice-of-life, romance, and comedy, genres I often see neglected when it comes to limited offerings. The app features a content restriction option as well in case younger users under your Crunchyroll account need to be limited to content deemed suitable for those under 18, under 16, and under 12. It’s worth noting that these are just the titles available in the first few months of the service too. Crunchyroll representatives during the Comic Con demo noted that more titles will be added continuously, and the Titan Manga additions earlier this month are proof of that.
For those concerned about any sort of AI translation when it comes to manga titles specifically, a representative confirmed to me that Crunchyroll is not handling the translation of these titles. The publisher handles the translation for the titles that are being offered on the Crunchyroll Manga service.
The Less-than-Good
In my opinion, the most glaring flaw for Crunchyroll Manga is this: it’s missing the latest chapters for many of its series. Just from a quick check of its most popular series at the time of this article’s publication: Jujutsu Kaisen has 135 chapters available out of 275, One Piece has 491 out of 1166, My Dress-Up Darling has 79 out of 115, The Apothecary Diaries has 53 chapters out of 82, and BLEACH has 334 out of 698. Tsukimichi: Moonlit Fantasy is seemingly the only manga out of the six most popular titles that is up-to-date with 90 chapters.
This is most surprising for completed series, but is probably the biggest missed opportunity when it comes to ongoing series that have an anime adaptation. One of the biggest drivers toward manga outside of Japan is the existence of an anime adaptation, both because it increases the name recognition and word-of-mouth popularity of the series and because people often want to continue the story of an anime after finishing its latest season. One of the new quality-of-life features introduced with Crunchyroll Manga is the addition of a small button that lets you immediately jump from a show’s Crunchyroll anime page page to its corresponding Crunchyroll Manga page.
A feature that enhanced this by jumping from an episode of an anime to its corresponding chapter would be absolutely incredible for keeping users engaged with the platform and providing an easy starting point for those looking to read on after a season completes. Add to this the fact that Crunchyroll Manga is an add-on service, meaning that anyone making use of the service is also paying to watch anime on the same platform. Based on that, I would have expected included manga at a bare minimum to include chapters beyond the pace of the anime adaptation. For reference, Jujutsu Kaisen Chapter 135 roughly corresponds to the penultimate episode of the anime’s season season.
The Verdict
Because of this gap in included chapters, I think Crunchyroll Manga will best serve those who want to (1) read the early parts of a manga, including the chapters covered by an anime adaptation and (2) those who mostly watch anime and want to give some popular manga a try without having a million extra subscriptions. For those looking to keep up with the latest One Piece chapter? This service isn’t for you, at least not yet. If Crunchyroll Manga manages to add some popular simulpub titles it will be a no brainer in terms of value-add, but presumably that kind of access will also come with a higher price. It’s unlikely we see the return of Kodansha titles on the service in the near term now that K-Manga exists, though from some quick searches online it does seem like the flat subscription pricing model is more popular, so who knows.
I think this service will be a good fit for the casual manga readers who are just looking to get into a series and already have a Crunchyroll subscription. But, unfortunately, if they hit the chapter limit before Crunchyroll adds more for popular series, they will be forced to either wait an indeterminate amount of time or cough up money for yet another subscription. Other flat-fee-based subscription services like Shonen Jump or VIZ Manga cost $3.99 a month and $1.99 a month respectively. The former offers the newest 3 chapters of ongoing series for free and will contain the sorts of titles that the average Shonen manga reader will be looking for. Given the price point per available chapters + recency on similar services, I would expect Crunchyroll Manga to be maybe a dollar cheaper than it is currently in the United States.
Ultimately, it’s your money and you should decide how you want to spend it. For me personally? The amount of manga I read makes it reasonable to maintain a Shonen Jump subscription and add additional services like Crunchyroll Manga to it. If you feel like the selection will be a worthwhile addition to your digital library, definitely go for it.
Featured image: © Crunchyroll, LLC
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