Price: $3.99 Rating: 10/10 By Anna Papachristos
Hold on to your cosplays, everyone – Studio Bebop has created a gold mine for all those manga and anime enthusiasts out there! Now, with the iManga Reader, fans can access countless manga series on-the-go with the tap of a button.
Linked to One Manga, iManga Reader brings every series available on the site to the palm of your hand. Users can tap the “Pick A Series” button to begin sifting through the available series alphabetically, or search for a specific series in the search bar at the top of the screen.
As readers come across titles that capture their attention, all one must do is tap on the name to be taken to a page revealing the manga’s cover art. The button in the top right corner provides details about the series, such as its title, license, source, author, artist, genre, available chapters, the date of the series’ last update, and a summary.
Hitting the back button, readers return to the cover art and the two buttons at the bottom of the screen. The button on the bottom left allows users to mark the particular series as a favorite. Users can then access their marked favorites through the main menu of the app. The button on the bottom right of the screen allows users to begin reading the manga, taking them to a menu list of all the available chapters.
Once you start reading, you can zoom in or out on any given page simply by expanding or contracting your fingers as you would in most other apps. iManga Reader also lets you effortlessly move the page with your finger so you can focus in closely on the specific frame you are reading. Readers can move from page to page by tapping the “Next” button in the bottom right corner. If you close out of iManga Reader while reading, the app will ask you if you’d like to continue reading on your last viewed page upon your return.
For a YouTube demonstration of exactly how iManga Reader works, visit Studio Bebop’s site dedicated to the app itself here.
While iManga Reader provides access to more popular, mainstream manga series such as Death Note, Naruto and Bleach, their access to the One Manga library puts classics, like Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure, as well as up-and-coming series, like Romeo x Juliet, into a portable, easy-to-use format. One of the most comprehensive and fulfilling apps out there for the manga fan, iManga Reader comes with a high recommendation, even for the anime/manga novice.
iManga Reader requires iPhone OS 3.0 or later and is compatible with the iPhone and iPod Touch.
October 16th, 2009 at 5:42 am
Like with the Pokédex App, is this app really legal and fair?
It’s pulling data off the OneManga servers without the advertisements or anything, so it’s essentially hotlinking the websites information, and would caused significant costs to OneManga’s service providers and web hosts.
As far as I know, OneManga aren’t under a specific Open Source license, but it’s still not fair play to make something like this and charge for it, when the they’re the one’s providing the manga and the server costs, and this application is gaining revenue for their efforts.
October 16th, 2009 at 11:00 am
So Studio Bebop is selling a commercial product that not only steals server resources directly from a website (while not displaying the advertisements that help keep the website up, no less), but the contents of the website are copyrighted works?
Wow. This is a lawsuit waiting to happen. Unless Studio Bebop has agreements with all of the respective copyright holders stating that they can make money by displaying the works of their authors – which I doubt.
Here’s a tip for Studio Bebop: Just because a website (probably illegally) displays copyrighted works doesn’t mean you should be selling applications that display said copyrighted works.
October 18th, 2009 at 5:04 pm
When will Version 1.1 come out? I’m sick and tired of waiting for Landscape Mode to be included next! C’mon Studio Bebop, get ur act together and have Apple approve it!
October 20th, 2009 at 1:36 pm
Studio Bebop = Thief
December 22nd, 2009 at 9:47 am
Well, since they are stealing onemanga, I bet they wont mind me stealing their app on my jailbroken
January 5th, 2010 at 12:04 am
Do you always have to be connected to the internet for this to work or can you download the manga onto the device?
January 18th, 2010 at 1:08 pm
this app and all other apps made by the thieves at studioebop have been remove from the app store
February 7th, 2010 at 4:56 am
The icons used in this app are stolen from this artist.
http://polimero.deviantart.com/art/Novo-Dangos-Icons-89901957
Spread the word people, these guys are stealing.
February 10th, 2010 at 9:51 am
Assholes, this is the best App ever, and now it crashed due to you fucking morale Fans.
FUCK YOU ALL.
February 17th, 2010 at 10:16 am
the app didnt crash, im still using it without a problem.