I have recently discovered Omoi (www.omoi.com) which is a digital manga service that makes it easy to read hundreds of legally licensed manga series across a variety of genres and publishers, for one low price. It distributes manga from English manga publishers like Kodansha and J-Novel Club, as well as exclusive series licensed directly from Japan. Fans can read manga on the Web, or with an iOS and Android app. Omoi pays royalties back to publishers based on readership data. 

When you register, the first fourteen days are free and the first chapter of each series is also usually free (with ads). More chapters available with a Premium subscription ($4.99 US / mo) and the latest chapters of a series are generally unlocked “with a one-time payment” (each volume costing between  $7.99 and $19.99 or between $6.39 and $15.99 with a Premium subscription).

Here is what I think:

Pro:

• Interesting way to sample titles
• With the premium subscription it might seems like a good deal…

Con:

• …however it seems impossible to read an entire series without paying extra. What’s the use to pay a monthly premium if you have to pay for the last volumes in the end ? Therefore, it looks like a bait and switch scam (which is minimally immoral and, in some places, illegal).
• What’s the advantage to read in electronic format if the cost of a volume is roughly the same or just slightly less than a printed volume (considering that 60% of the cost of a printed volume is the distribution in stores which is not necessary with an electronic format) ?! It seems to me that the Japanese publisher are simply too greedy.
• Some series are incomplete
• No possibility to search by author

At first, I really thought that this was an interesting way of reading manga. However, I have nearly a thousand manga in my library and I paid for just a few of them. Most titles are press copies that I received in the days of Protoculture. And I am not planning on starting paying for manga now (anyway, most of the manga I read lately came from my local public library). So, I applied for press copies, but considering that my blog has only a small readership (between fifty and an hundred visits daily), I doubt I would get any.

Anyway, I don’t think it’s worth to pay so much for an electronic version of a manga (for which you can lose access at any moment, which is not the case for a physical book in my library), but with the fourteen-day trial and the premium subscription, it’s a great way to sample titles before committing to purchase a series (electronically or otherwise). 

In their catalog, I found just a few titles of interest (for me anyway):

• Apollo’s Song, Osamu Tezuka (Kodansha) [Chap. 0 free with ads / Vol. $11.99]
• Arte, Kei Ohkubo (Coamix) [Chap. 1 free with ads / Chap. 2-15 unlocked with Premium]
• Ashita no Joe, Asao Takamori, Tetsuya Chiba (Kodansha)[Vol. $19.99 ea]
• Ayako (Osamu Tezuka, to come later from Kodansha)
• Battle Angel Alita, Yukito Kishiro (Kodansha)[Chap. 1 free with ads / Vol. $10.99 ea]
• Battle Angel Alita: Last Order, Yukito Kishiro (Kodansha) [Chap. 1 free with ads / Vol. $19.99 ea]
• Battle Angel Alita: Mars Chronicle, Yukito Kishiro (Kodansha) [Chap. 1 free with ads / Vol. $10.99 ea]
• Battle Angel Alita: Holy Night and other stories, Yukito Kishiro (Kodansha) [Vol. $14.99]
• Black Jack, Osamu Tezuka (Kodansha) [Chap. 1 Free with ads / Vol. $7.99 ea]
• Beck, Harold Sakuishi (Kodansha) [Chap. 1 free with ads / Vol. $10.99 ea]
• Blue Period, Tsubasa Yamaguchi (Kodansha) [Chap. 1 free with ads / Vol. $10.99 ea]
• Buddha, Osamu Tezuka (Kodansha) [Chap. 1 Free with ads / Vol. $11.99]
• Delinquent Detective: Sukeban Deka (available Fall 2026)
• Descending stories, Haruko Kumota (Kodansha) [Chap. 1 free with ads / Vol. $12.99 ea]
• Dororo, Osamu Tezuka (Kodansha) [Chap. 1 free with ads / Vol. $12.99]
• Ghost in the shell: Stand Alone Complex, Shirow Masamune, Yu Kinutani (Kodansha) [Chap. 1-3 free with ads / Chap. 4-18 unlocked with Premium / Vol. 3-5: $10.99 ea]
• Initial D, Shuichi Shigeno (Kodansha) [Chap. 1-3 free with ads / Chap. 4-305 unlocked with Premium / Vol. 25-48: $10.99 ea]
• Le chevalier d’Eon, Tou Ubukata, Kiriko Yumeji (Kodansha) [Chap. 1 free with ads / Vol. $10.99 ea]
• Manchuria Opium Squad, Tsukasa Monma, Shikako (Kodansha) [Chap. 1 free with ads / Vol. $10.99 ea]
• Message to Adolf, Osamu Tezuka (Kodansha) [Chap. 1 Free with ads / Vol. $11.99 ea]
• Mushishi, Yuki Urushibara (Kodansha) [Chap. 1-3 free with ads / Chap. 4-20 unlocked with Premium / Vol. 5-8: $10.99 ea]
• MW, Osamu Tezuka (Kodansha) [Chap. 1 Premium / Vol. $11.99]
• Neo Faust, Osamu Tezuka (Ablaze) [Chap. 1-2 with Premium]
• Ode to Kirihito, Osamu Tezuka (Kodansha) [Chap. 1 Free with ads / Vol. $11.99]
• One Hundred Tales, Osamu Tezuka (Ablaze) [Chap. 1 Free with ads / Chap. 2-4 unlocked with Premium]
• Paradise Kiss, Ai Yazawa (Kodansha) [Chap. 1 Free with ads / Vol. $10.99]
• Princess Knight, Osamu Tezuka (Kodansha) [Chap. 1 Free with ads / Vol. $7.99 ea]
• Sakuran, Moyoco Anno (Kodansha) [Chap. 1 Free with ads / Vol. $9.99]
• Shakespear Manga Theatre, Osamu Tezuka (Ablaze) [Chap. 1-2 free with ads / Chap. 3-6 unlocked with Premium]
• She and her cat, Makoto Shinkai, Tsubasa Yamaguchi (Kodansha)[Chap. 1 free with ads / Vol. $7.99]
• The Apothecary Diaries, Natsu Hyuuga, Nekokurage, Itsuki Nanao, Touco Shino (Square Enix) [Vol. 1-15: $7.99 ea / $6.39 ea with Premium]
• The Book of Human Insects, Osamu Tezuka (Kodansha) [Chap. 1 Free with ads / Vol. $7.99]
• The Drops of God, Tadashi Agi, Shu Okimoto (Kodansha)[Chap. 1-3 free with ads / Chap. 4-219 unlocked with Premium / Vol. 23-44: $10.99 ea]
• The Drops of God: Mariage, Tadashi Agi, Shu Okimoto (Kodansha) [Chap. 1 free with ads / Vol. : $9.99 ea]
• The Ghost in the shell, Shirow Masamune (Kodansha) [Chap. 1-3 free with ads / Chap. 4-11 unlocked with Premium / Vol. 1.5-2: $15.99 ea]
• The Ghost in the shell: The Global Neural Network, Max Gladstone, Alex de Campi, Brenden Fletcher, Genevieve Valentine (Kodansha) [unavailable?]
• The Ghost in the shell: The Human Algorithm, Shirow Masamune, Junichi Fujisaku, Yuki Yoshimoto (Kodansha) [Chap. 1 free with ads / Vol.: $10.99 ea]
• The Heroic Legend of Arslan, Yoshiki Tanaka, Hiromu Arakawa (Kodansha) [Chap. 1 free with ads / Vol.: $10.99 ea]
• The Tale of Genjj: Dreams at Dawn, Waki Yamato (Kodansha) [Chap. 1-3 free with ads / Chap. 4-27 unlocked with Premium / Vol. 6-10: $13.99 ea]
• Vinland Saga, Makoto Yukimura (Kodansha) [Chap. 1 free with ads / Vol.: $17.99 ea]

When I discovered Omoi, I was hopeful, but in the end their offering is rather disappointing.

And what about the other platforms ? 

• ComiXology (owned by Amazon, similar to Kindle; app with flat fee of $5.99 US/mo; not publisher specific, offers unlimited access to over 45,000 digital comics, GN and manga)
• Crunchyroll Manga (expensive flat fee at $13.99 or $17.99 per month, but includes anime). Notable: Initial D, Salary Man Kintaro, The Apothecary Diaries.
• Manga Plus (owned by Shueisha, flat fee standard at $1.99 or Deluxe at $4.99). Notable: Rurouni Kenshin (255 chap.), Thermae Roman Redux (15 chapters).
• Mangamo (app with a flat fee of $4.99/mo). Notable: Blue Period.
• Viz Manga offers a flat-rate subscription ($3.99 US / mo), but it’s mostly Shonen Jump titles (shonen, obviously, so of little interest to me). Notable: Golden Kamuy (314 chapters or 31 volumes) and Tokyo These Days (3 vol.)

However, none of those platforms offers enough interesting titles to justify a subscription. Short of learning Japanese, the best option remains the public library… Although I might try one or two of those for a short time…