Ken Akamatsu, king of harem manga, is starting a free manga download site for out-of-print titles called “J-Comi,” and has announced all 14 volumes of Love Hina will be its first release.
The service is completely free and without any time restrictions
Authors receive payment based on ad views/clicks
J-Comi themselves take a 0% commission
The comics will also be distributed as PDFs so anyone can read them
There is no DRM and copies can be made freely and given to friends
The beta test, consisting of all 14 volumes of Love Hina, is to begin on the 26th of November. Further manga (seemingly intended to cover mainly out of print titles) should follow, and Akamatsu himself says he expects other mangaka to take advantage of the service.
Judging from the screenshot provided, the comics will be accessible through a simple web reader as well as in PDF, a not infrequently despised format, and the comics themselves should be available in high resolution PDFs.
J-Comi’s official site is not yet open, but will be coming soon.
The background to the move is of course a publishing industry in rapid decline yet still refusing to realistically embrace new technology or loosen its control over mangaka, and an increasingly loudly voiced feeling amongst mangaka that in the Internet age they should be the ones pursuing new opportunities.
it’s up!
KEN I AM GOING TO FUCKING BUY EVERY LOVE HINA AND NEGIMA VOLUME BECAUSE OF THIS
BANZAI!!! 8D
Man, this is a dream come true. Finally we’ll have access to at least some raws without having to worry about getting arrested for piracy! :3
holy god its like some one is listenig to people
(030)!!!!!! YES!!!!!!!!!!!!!! WOHOOOOOO!!!!!
ARIGATOU GOZAIMASU KEN SENSEI!!!!
That is all I’ll say. When I view your mangas, I’ll be sure to click the ADs!!
They can also eventually have surveys up for more support/donations.
Some games right now allow you to do surveys instead of purchasing in-game credit with cash. It’d be optional of course, for those who really want to help out.
The can give out small tokens of gratitude for completing surveys like avatars and stuff.
We should construct a shrine to this guy (Ken Akamatsu).
Hell I’m tempted to send him some cash right now.
lehnerus2000
While Akamatsu’s work has fallen out of favor with me as I’ve gotten older, I have to admit, I’m impressed. He’s taking the initiative and more or less telling publishers to screw off by making it so that Mangaka will make money instead of handing over the benefits of their work to the publishers.
Good job, Akamatsu.
Good job.
Aw shit, I foolishly forgot it would probably only be in Japanese…
So you just download chapters of the manga you want to read? Freakin’ sweet! I’m really hoping for a few series…
Ken is a great man!
0% commission? That is actually REALLY impressive. If it takes off, then the mangaka business is going to make a lot of money.
I’m personally not a big fan of Ken Akamatsu’s manga, but this man clearly knows what he’s doing.
Ken Akamatsu, Love Hina…was fuckin awesome, Negima you get fuckin points for tricking the publisher into printing a damn amazing Manga instead of another Love Hina (as seen in the genre shift), and now, you are a god…He’s always been my favourite Mangaka now…theres just more shit to make his pedastal higher.
IT’S HERE! THE FINAL EVOLUTION!
THANK THE GOD! AKAMATSU-SENSEI HAS SHOWN THE WAY! ALL HAIL MANGAKA-MESSIAH!
THIS IS IT! This here will ensure free manga for all. This is it here! Right here! What we have all been waiting for! THE FINAL EVOLUTION!
KILL THE PUBLISHER CAPITALISTS! BRING FORTH THE FREE-NALY!
Hmm?????????? why couldnt Kubo Tite have done something like this instead of bashing other anime?
ok…time to forget my dreams to be an artist..
I hate to make it late, but I have had no choice lately.
Certainly, I wee the entrepreneurship spirit finally waking up in Japan. All that needs to happen is for everybody else to follow his example.
Akamatsu’s the man! I loved Love Hina, I’m following Mahou Sensei Negima and this news proves he still has some aces up his sleeves. One step towards freedom! I bow before the master.
Gotta hand it to Ken Akamatsu. He might just have hit the ultimate jackpot. You know, the one that Japanese publishers wanted to avoid so badly.
With a bit of luck, we will see that ugly slave-labour empire crumble down, while KA creates his very own harem fantasy society. Delicious.
I seriously teared up i joy after reading this.
THANK GOD! FINALY SOMEONE SMART ENOUGH TO PROFIT WITHOUT SELLING THE MANGA ITSELF! (it was gonna get pirated anyway, so at last they profit from it instead of the pirates.)
This is like an early Christmas! I hope it doesn’t fall through…..
Way to be awesome Akamatsu-sensei!!
I cannot wait until this expands to english versions being on their, regardless…about time someone did this though I will wait until more series are up before I use it…
That’s it! The new business model! I will test it as soon as it is available!
Hope other mangakas, even hentai ones, point to this new direction hehe.
Im going to click those ads, lets do a clicking competition.
What is love?
Shouldn’t they use the current free manga site models to maximise ad revenue? Page by page makes more sense than PDF.
SAILOR MOON FUCKING WHERE
Awesome!
If there’s anything useful to say, that is: CLICK IN THE ADDS LIKE CRAZY when the site is ready.
The more he profits, more and more authors will do the same.
I have all the Love Hina collection in my language. And wanna buy the japanese some day.
Oh shit this is awesome.
Power to him.
Looks like the best and most realistic model that delivers good quality content to the people without much sacrifice and makes a profit.
Works good for out of print stuff.
Openness will prevail. The Media Empire shall be democratized. The revolution will be YouTube’d.
One day, someday.
I want to see the 2ch response to this. They are hating on everyone foreign for being dirty theives (even though they probably secretly download stuff themselves) but now that the mangaka themselves are putting stuff up for free and relying on ad revenue it’ll be interesting to see what they’ll say to this.
god damn they should start doing this in older series as well.
damn licensing bullshit, great to see there still some good people left in the industry ^^
I can see his true plan. The king of harem manga wants to revive harem anime and manga. This is actually a great way to do it. I miss good harem shows already.
Love Hina was my first ever manga that I read at age ten (wandering through FYE, saw the cover of book ten and the abundance of teased titties, grabbed it and bought with my allowance). Once I began actually reading it for the story, I realized why it was a multi-award-winning manga, and that it’s author, Ken Akamatsu, was a frikken’ genius. I’ve been a fan of his ever since, right on through Negima.
Once again, I’m reminded why I was so sure that the man was a genius: this. Sure, he’s not the first with the idea. But he’s putting himself on the line with all of Love Hina up there and damn the torpedoes. Somebody link the website – I’m going to click all the ads and support him.
Always seemed like Ken was a clever guy and here it shows.
Finally a BandCamp for Manga!!
Ken Akamatsu, I’m now ordering the 14 volumes of Love Hina. I know you’re going to offer them for free, but is my way of saying thanks!
You’re a genius!!
Just.. WTF. Is it April 1st again?
Oh wait..
FINALLY SOMEONE USED HIS BRAIN. OH WOW.
This this this is
UNBELIABLE
I think i can…
HNNNGGGGGGGGGGGGG
Im gonna click in the ads like crazy for a day if need it so they see they can earn money that way and keep watching FREE MANGA, HELL YES!!!!
At this pace they can even contract translators and make it world wide release!!!!, this is one hell of wild dream come true… almost, still awesome news and keep an eye in this
Oh, Hooray for Akamatsu. Free manga? I’m in.
Cool looks like they are finally realizing manga should be forever accessed through the internet. Though I’d still collect manga, just for the collection
I jizzed in my pants .
The old stuff is a thousand times better than most of the stuff out today . Especialy suff from the 90’s or older .
This will be the El Dorado of the scanlation comunity .
I wonder if the publishers of his current series will ‘mysteriously’ drop him from their magazine, shortly after this service goes live.
I already have love hina and a.i. love you, but it wouldn’t hurt to have lh digital
Ken Akamatsu is well known enough in both japan and the states to pull something off to shake up the industry.
Mangaka should just move to the states and have american compaines be their primary publisher and have a company in japan just to re release their work in nihongo.
Why would anyone in their right mind want to move to the US?
Because they fucking PAY YOU enough money to live and then some. Hell Sometimes America just gives you money for no reason. Fuck Yeah.
This whole idea in itself isn’t new, but seeing something like this from Akamatsu Ken da man himself… is news to me.
Okay now, get on with it with other mangas too!
KAMI !!!!
8-D
That’s one of the best news I heard recently!
A crowd of geeks is gathering…
Ave J-Comi! Ave J-Comi! Ave J-Comi!
8-B
>8-]
8-P…
8-D
😯
8-I
8->
8-*
Wake me up when it’s in English.
I don’t know what’s wrong with PDF. You just have to get a good comic viewer (CDisplayEx or ComicRack if you are on Windows; Evince and, in the future, hopefully Comix if you are on GNU/Linux) and presto, you can read them very comfortably.
vote ken akamatsu for prime minister @_@
Why Prime Minister?
Vote Ken Akamatsu for Emperor!
Anonanon, here,
I vote Ken Akamatsu for Overlord.
[quote]Comming soon![/quote]
Hmm… :}
I LOVE YOU KEN AKAMATSU!!!
That’s gonna be the first site in which every time I visit I will click every ad I see!!
lols at the “Comming Soon” placeholder on the site..
Seriously hanging out for this.
Nice to be able to give something back to the mangaka that created this classic.
I love this guy!
I must have awaken to some parallel world.
F’ing love Ken Akamatsu!
Three Cheers for Ken Akamatsu. I never tried any of his stuff before, but I’ll take a look at this. Hopefully he can make ad revenue from people outside of Japan, and hopefully an English version starts up soon.
What a great man. What a great idea. ^^
And I think it’ll definitely bring lots of money to the authors. One Manga prospered a lot just from adds as I heard.
However, I’ll still buy manga I like if I have access to it. It’s no good with anime and manga stuff in my country, however, I was finally able to get a few volumes of Higurashi no Naku Koro ni. Happy. ^^
They will start to sell new manga on such sites. They just have to! Digital manga is great for people like me who lack free room to store the books.
That reminds me i got to get rid of my old por*cough* books.
Ken Akamatsu : Harem King and a REAL genius.
May God bless you!
YES! This might be the only site where I don’t care about pop-ups!
Hallelujah!
Our savior has come!
Jesus is coming.
Grab a towel!!
ALL HAIL HAREM KING!
Finally! Well, someone was smart enough. Now lets sit back, observe the progress, and watch a good man go down in manga history.
Let’s hope that other mangaka will do the same instead of being fucked over by publishers.
Looks like its going to be in Japanese only…and most of the love hina scans online are translations from shitty chinese scans.
They have to start somehow. Maybe they’ll include translated versions later but even if they don’t it’s still amazing what they do.
Hm, I wonder if they’ll have donate button somewhere. I’m definitely for donations in this case. ^^
We just have to wait a bit longer. Sooner or later we’ll get new manga in multiple languages from sites like this. ^_^
We just have to wait. Sooner or later we’ll get new manga in multiple languages from sites like this. ^_^
Yeah, he’ll need some donation if he plans to keep the ‘0% COMMISSION TAKEN!’ policy for good, for his sake, the authors’, and ours as well.
Otherwise, service model similar to iTunes and steam would be good too(they only take a HELLA LOT LESS commision compared to Japanese publishers), but as cheap as those two services are, not everyone’s got a credit card…
There’s [url=http://www.mywirecard.com/en/Home.html] wirecard[/url] as a creditcard alternative (can be used anywhere where mastercard is accepted).
They have several ‘deposit’ options which should enable basically anyone who has money to pay using a ‘credit card’.
Akamatsu, stop being so good at what you do.
That’s what he said…
Yes, I speak of Tite Kubo.
Ken Akamatsu, he’s the man.
heavens just around the corner…
thats a good thing…right?
Did Hell just froze over?!
All the time, we thought cartoonists in Japan are all, forever, gonna continue to let themselves get buttraped by publishers until Kingdom come, and this happens!
Hope Akamatsu succeeds with his business model. He gets his cash, we get our Japanese comics.
…On the other hand, I hope he keeps a mechanism to at least make it difficult to ‘Save Picture As’…
You are familiar with pdfs, aren’t you?
Just looked it up…
Seems I was mistaken.
Though that would be kinda contradictory. Won’t his business model requires that people get all those mangas through HIS SITE ALONE…? Allowing viewers to distribute to others would cut down the pageviews…
In the case of manga that have already been released, (pirated) ad-free versions are already in circulation.
You can skip pages showing ads with one click. Excessive ads can and will be removed, resulting in the circulation of ad free versions. They know that quite well, so it will be reasonable.
That really depends on the ads. Imagine big red colored ads in your manga. I still don’t know how to feel about this, but if I learned anything from the past and they didn’t, than they’re going to fuck even this up.
If we get free manga legal some ads are no problem.
Depending on how those ads ‘tag’ along, I may not give a damn about it.
Too small price to pay for reading a manga if you ask me.
You can embed the ads in the PDFs, so the ads travel with the PDF.
Can’t do this with jpgs (could place ads into the pages but they would not be clickable of course), probably why PDF was a chosen – an unfortunate but understandable trade off.
Ken Akamatsu confirmed for AWESOME.
Soon everyone will be calling him Ken Awesome.
Akamatsu Ken must be glowing right now.
Akamatsu is our modern day Jesus. Except better, cos he provides us with harem, comedy and Jack Rakan.
Ken Akamatsu, I love you more now.
He’s da man! ^_^
Decent manga, shitty anime.
Well Many American companies are using Sites like hulu to make money and help stop illegal downloads. Having a free site supported by the creators with ad funded content. This is probably the best solution for them to make money and for fans to see their works.
thats what im talking about share the love… a good author shouldnt care about money but that people are enjoying the work he has created.
They are going to earn more money with that. The publishers only pay slave wages.
This is the kind of thing we need to support! Click away!
This is a great idea.
Very. Finally the mangaka noticed they can do what the doujin artists do for years already.
Very. Finally the mangaka noticed they can do what the doujin artists do for years already.
Will they profit only from ads?
Ask Google how that’s going.
Isn’t google in the world domination business as well?
Yep. Fuck google, use ixquick.
goggle blocked LWB and they’re fine, dude
Google is SkyNet. They already dominate the world.
We just don’t know it yet because we haven’t realized that we all must bow down to the almighty overlord Google.
they will not be dependent on only ads
they will most likely adds premium member area or something
it’s like cocaine, you get to sample them for free
but i’m o.k. with this.
looks encouraging.
More likely they’ll rely on selling copies to people who want to read them in paper format, and such.
No, paper creates a heap of costs. This should and probably will stay pure digital distribution.
No, it’s more like supplying you cocaine for free, but you can buy premium service for $10/month where you get the same cocaine but in a gold wrap.
Agreed. This could be quite promising but, I’ll keep my optimism low for the time being until more time has passed (and this has had the chance to grow).
What is this Feeling…
This era is truly the decline of book publishing which will be replaced by online and electronic reading
GO! GO! GO!
Go, Ken, Go!
There must be a chance for us all to pay only for what we like and to have a guarantee that the money go directly to authors.
I have a dream that one day all these parasites like major labels and major publishers go to hell.
>>”What is this Feeling…”
That tonight’s gonna be a good night?
Epic comment Peter.
wrong song Peter….
The numbness from getting super punched by Naru.
A refreshing tingle on your toes from hell freezing over?
wow… am I dreaming? It sure is refreshing. And he’s my new idol. =/
Sooner or later they are going to sell new manga, other languages will be follow, then the publishers will finally fall.
We’ll get cheap new manga fast, the mangaka will earn more than the slave wages they get now. Everyone is happy.
i think its snowing in hell. i get laid it froze over and the devil is sick in bed
And once again, Ken Akamatsu has saved the day against the evils of evil corporations!
Remember folks, he gave for you, so remember to give to him in return. ^_^
Do no exaggerate or fool yourself.
It’s not now, but in the future.
It’s not lots of manga, but love hina.
If this was the year 2000, I would second your comment. Now it’s kinda too late to be happy so the feeling is difficult to describe.
It’s like,… imagine yourself to be a woman, 10 years after some war. Your then missing boyfriend finally comes home, but you’re already married to a rich guy and have kids. It’s that kind of feeling now.
i bet they are doing this for the sake of marketing, since Akamatsu probably made f*ck load of money anyways, posting old stuff on the web makes him look a bit… generous (Even though a large sum of money has already been sucked from us)
No, it’s more like the rich guy stays rich and can offer you anything, while the poor guy can only offer you the past. Of course you can take both but if you stay too long with the poor guy he will grab _your_ money.
Hope everyon got that the rich guy means pirating manga while the poor guy means getting only few manga for free and to be expected to buy manga later on.
so you got two guys to choose from to jam it in?
don’t forget to add that the rich guy is getting poorer along that past 10 years as well, and the kids have aids.
Need to get back to bed.
Must be dreaming….
*boom*
Great, now I need to pick the rest of my brain that got stuck on the ceiling :/
Brb.
anon 02:07, you fucking troll-shit, learn to respect your God and beg forgiveness!
what kind of douche calls Ken Akamatsu’s manga garbage?
“Nobody would pay to see ken akamatsu’s garbage…. ”
In which false reality are you living in?
Why free? They just might get a small piece of the manga sales. Everyone profits. ^_^
thats going to be huge. I hope it will be made that fan scanlations can be submitted for other languages and the profit goes to the mangaka. Its could be hard for the fanscanlations but i think it would be a good idea because the editors would get the money and the scanlators do it for free like always
This is a very interesting news, indeed. Now, will there be any english release? This, I am curious about. The answer will entertain me nevertheless.
But in any cases. I put my points to the “Respect” skill and uses it on Ken.
A God has shown himself among us.
Ken Akamatsu is a genius. That is I can say.
Negima~~~~~~~~~~~ One of the best manga I’ve ever read. One of the worst anime I’ve ever watched.
All I can say is thank you. 😀
They did it! The mangaka revolution finally started! ^____^
Doesn’t matter if there’s no other language yet. They are going to realize they can profit from it soon enough.
They did it! The mangaka revolution finally started! ^_^
Now we just need the Hentai/Doujin version HAHA.
It’s kinda like a manga equivalent of Youtube. Where they get by with ads.
It’d be funny if I look at a character’s face and it’s tattoo’d with an ad.
No wonder Ken is my hero. Breath-taking harems, that’s his signature, simple but no one else got the formula right like him.
I’ll send him one of my daughters when I got one for all the good work.
i feel a sudden urge to buy al issues of love hina
Argh! The ships surrendered without a fight.
My sentiments exactly Seele. Now everyone adorn your ceremonial vestimants and celebrate.
I bow before my god! We are not worthy! Our lord has graced us with our hope and dreams!
I… I am… in love! I cannot… words… Should have… sent a… poet!
official legit japanese version of mangaone for out of print titles
Is the manga in english?
Nobody would pay to see ken akamatsu’s garbage…. I mean, this guy created love hina ¬_¬
seriouely people,
i understand that this makes you happy and that this guy indeed is awesome but it’s not like this is gonna change anything.
we all pirate our stuff anyways so it won’t really matter for any of us.
Deep hate for PDF. IT’S WORSE THAN DRM!
PDF is indeed quite a pain. All adobe products are like blood-sucking leeches on your computer.
right click, save image, ctrl+v in mspaint, save in whatever format you want. That’s the crudest but one amongst millions of other ways to turn a pdf into anything else you want… why did you say you hate pdf again?
There are tons of alternative readers. Try PDF-Xchange or Foxit Reader, both are better, faster and smaller than the original bloatware.
ISO/IEC 32000-1:2008
Your trolling sucks ass, Anonymous.
# mkdir comic
# cd comic
# convert ../comic.pdf page%02d.png
# zip ../comic.cbz *.png
# cd ..
# rm -rf comic
I bet there are more elaborate ways to do the job, but this one is easy to understand, scriptable and needs only ImageMagick and Info-Zip plus a Shell. And I’m sure you can even do it with cygwin.
Congratulations on suggesting the lamest way ever to copy a PDF…
The official reader sucks balls and introduces tons of security vulnerabilities for it’s users. Not to mention it’ss a pile of over bloated crap that takes forever to start (or at least it did on my old P4). The format itself is neither open, nor standard, making available alternative readers less than ideal.
Wait, what?… Why the hate for PDF?
Easy to convert to any other format (if you got *nix at least), no DRM worth its salt and well… just nice with the right reader.
let’s see how successful the service is gonna be.
i’m certain the site admins (i.e. ken) will listen to people if many ask for cbr instead of pdf.
i hope this isn’t an elaborate hoax!
The PDFs are without DRM, so converting should be no problem. I’d prefer CBR or simple RAR.
What’s wrong with jpg? It’s so easy to read with irfanview.
Well i might understand how he feels and why he does this, showing 14 free volumes of love hina show people what harem is suppose to be like.
English version of the site?
Not unless you’re going to deal with all the copyright holders in Japan and America. For that matter, anyone else that has the rights in English. It’ll be messy.
The print culture in Japan also is much faster, so things go out of print much sooner than here in the US.
Printing out of print titles in Japan online is actually much more viable because of this (ironically).
The copyright situation for existing titles is complicated – but new works are owned by the mangaka alone. Prepare for a better future. ^_^
The rights for English versions are carved up amongst a patchwork of regional distributors so any sort of cohesive agreement amongst them to distribute something internationally seems unlikely.
This is cool, can’t wait to try it out. Oh wait is it going to be untranslated, if so screw this…
I opened the site, and just started randomly clicking ads everywhere.
HAVE MONEY, TAKE IT!!
Oh, how long will it be before 2ch blame Gaijin for this?