Joseph Luster
August 18, 2008 The man behind the designs for legendary mind-melter Serial Experiments Lain and the creation of Haibane Renmei, among others, is back with an interesting means of distributing his dÅjinshi title, Pochiyama at the Pharmacy. Thanks to the fact that it’s being published digitally on iTunes, the manga is available for download on the app store in 20 nations for $4.99 (600 yen).
Its widespread use is made possible only by this particular format, as Ubiquitous Entertainment’s multilingual comic viewer makes switching languages as simple as matching the dialogue with the language to which your iPod Touch or iPhone settings have been configured. Pochiyama is not only the first manga of its kind to be released in 20 countries, but the first to ship in a single, dual-language edition, as well. ABe had a few things to say about the format and its benefits:
“When I am invited to overseas conventions, I hear a lot of requests from anime and manga fans who want to read Japanese dÅjinshi. Until now, we could not present dÅjinshi to overseas [fans] easily because of the problems in translating and the costs of shipping books — but this form of electronic comics can make that a reality.”
Source [ANN]
