Introduction to Mangamo (Manga Reader)
We’ve all had the frustration of switching back and forth between manga apps to follow our favorite series. The problem of not only keeping track of which app hosts what series but having to pay for multiple apps in order to get official translations is one of the key points of frustration. We apricate the work put into fan translations but sometimes it just doesn’t have the accuracy you need to understand the plot. The people behind Mangamo say they are the answer to all that frustration. Mangamo touts their app as connecting you to more online manga than any other mobile manga service; citing agreements with 11 publishers, and it’s created by a team of executives and leaders from Hulu, Crunchyroll, and VIZ. We took Mangamo for a test drive while in beta and here is our review.
Intuitive Interface
The interface was easy to use so you didn’t need a tutorial to figure it out. You just hit the icon on your iOS device to open the app and it takes you straight to its home page filled with nice large tiles with colorful images and titles in bold to encourage you click. You can scroll down countless titles with ease. You have three simple to distinguish icons at the bottom of the screen “Explore”, “Browse” and “My Manga”. The Explore tab is the home screen we mentioned, the Browse tab you get the option of paring down your options by tapping three hashes at the top of the screen and opening the genre options. You simply tick the boxes for the kinds of stories you like and hit done to get a customized list of manga that fits your tastes as part of a list. The My Manga tab takes you to titles saved in your personalized list that also “holds your place” in the story when you need to click away.
Zoom-Zoom
The manga pages are clean and crisp making the edges of the lines look even sharper than in print. The edges don’t even blur when you zoom. Yes, you can easily pinch and zoom the image and it doesn’t degrade. We know that not all of us have the best eyesight and the chance to zoom into the dialogue especially when you are trying to read on your phone because your iPad isn’t an option is a major bonus.
One Grande Mocha
We know what you’re thinking. You don’t need another subscription service! The subscription to the Mangamo app is about the cost of one fancy coffee. You know the coffee chain with the name they keep ripping off in all the manga. We think it’s called Starbacchus or Sudoh-Bucks or something. You just have to decide, do you want coffee loaded with calories or Mangamo with 100 percent more manga and no calories.
Final Thoughts
We’ve tried many different apps by many different companies and have never found one that meets all our needs. The manga reader's functionality was either no good or library they had access to was extremely limited. We understand the beta version we got access won’t be the final product, but it looks damn good. We can only guess that the final version of this product will be amazing. We in our humble opinion will give Mangamo a chance to be our electronic manga shelf.
Author: Zeke Changuris