I just watched the first episode of Oshi no Ko which reminded me of how I basically can’t read the manga. Because 1) the digital quality for the first 9 volumes is meh (based on previewing the first volume and the file size for volumes 1-9 being roughly the same). And 2) the manga releases 3-4 volumes per year. As someone who doesn’t live in Japan, getting physical manga that frequently is a hassle, and regardless it takes up a lot of space. While I do like buying physical manga as well, for cases like this I’d normally lean towards the digital version, if it weren’t for the quality issue. (Most of the manga I buy physically only gets one volume per year, and very occasionally two.)
So I’m kind of curious what people do in cases like this where there are 3-4 volumes per year. Buy the physical volumes, buy the digital volumes, don’t read the series, or something else entirely?
(In this case I think the digital quality is just passable enough that I can probably go with it if I decide to read the series. But there are plenty of series with worse quality, so I’m still curious.)
I deal with this by not having any standards. I’ll shake my head in disbelief and anger that someone would find that level of quality acceptable, and then read it anyway. This is because I’m extremely lazy. It’s not an approach I want to recommend, because needlessly low quality products shouldn’t bee sold.
At least some meh quality manga like Oshi no Ko or Shadows House are legible. One that’s so low quality I could never read it is Maoujou de Oyasumi. It’s awful.
I’m doing this for ながされて藍蘭島 (series) | L19 currently.
I buy them when they are released, but I bundle it with other books. The reason is because I like the series, and I’m already quite invested having the rest of the volumes (that I bought cheap second hand)
Funny enough, I’ll be picking up Volume 39 in Japan personally, as it’s released just 7 days before I arrive there.
For most of the cases I just go digital. If the quality is not good, I’m downloading it from other sources, because I’m not paying premium for not being able to barely read the kanjis (Specially the furigana)
I’ve looked into the same for cases like this, but the quality from those “other sources” is also hit or miss in my experience. Maybe I just don’t know the right places to look.
I usually don’t have a problem with digital editions, it’s what I’ve read from the beginning so I guess I’m used to it. I also read a lot from other sources, and in the case of oshi no ko I read the chapters directly from the magazine because I can’t wait for the next volume to be released.
That said, I have read volumes in such quality that I don’t know how I was able to decipher the kanji or furigana, having gone through that I think I can read anything by now
Ps: This has helped me some times for increasing the quality of images, you can try it and see if it’s enough for you waifu2x
Have you compared Amazon vs Bookwalker? I’m usually very picky but haven’t really had problems with quality from BW, although sometimes the furigana could certainly be clearer. Looking at 推しの子 with a 4K display doesn’t look terrible. Granted, the Shounen ones seem to be usually much more higher quality. Checked that 炎炎の消防隊 was almost 80MB.
I’ve actually sometimes used ‘other sources’ first but then got fed up with the quality and started using BW. These days I’m just so fed up with their app, which consistently just gets worse, that I’m reluctant to buy anything from there (web browser version is passable) .
From the few times I’ve compared I think they’re usually about the same. I’ve seen one example (Maoujou de Oyasumi) where Bookwalker is notably better. But that was just Amazon being atrocious and Bookwalker merely being very bad. Either way, I won’t use Bookwalker since their books aren’t downloadable.
I just buy them digitally via Bookwalker or Amazon, or sometimes find scans (as well as fanlations) of varying quality via Tachiyomi. I only recently bought my first physical copies at Kinokuniya. It’s nice having the physical, but I actually prefer the white background of digital vs the off-white of printed manga. Plus the USD cost is marked up 2x there (understandable, but still), and it’s hard for me to get to, cuz of work.
If I can’t find decent digital quality, is probly just drop the series or be fine putting it off until I have time + extra cash to buy physical.
There are some ways of getting higher quality images from amazon. for some reason they downsize the quality but the high quality files are still accessible if you know how. At least, for LN, that is. I would assume the same to be true for manga, though. But since it involves De-DRMing the kindle file and downloading a tool to extract the high res images, it’s a bit of work.
(Japanese usually simply use a manga app to buy and read stuff. cmoa, etc. e.g. よふかしのうた looks pretty decent.)
What tool is this? Also, is it truly just extracting the high res images or is it actually upscaling them? I’m not likely to use this in general because I still like the convenience of downloading to the kindle app. But perhaps I’d use it in extreme cases if it isn’t too much of a hassle.
At this point, given surugaya.com’s frequent free shipping, I just get them when I make an order there (usually once a month).
You can download books on Bookwalker, I do it all the time. Unless you mean downloading them in a way that you could view them outside the app (like how some ppl convert Kindle books). Even on desktop there’s an app, where you have to download the books: https://help.bookwalker.jp/faq/en/1471 (tho you can’t do lookups or copy text with it) . I’d use it for manga if my monitor was better.
. I’d use it for manga if my monitor was better.