mangaon

Japan now to have two WiiWare manga services

by 

JC Fletcher

12.22.2008

Sunsoft's WiiWare manga viewer, through which users can download manga for a fee, is a great idea. At least, Shonen Jump seems to think so. At their Jump Festa event, the publication offered demos of a WiiWare service called Mangaon, branded with the name of Jump's online manga site Jumpland.Posters indicate that the service, also available on DSi, will have some kind of "game" element -- a 3D world with original characters to interact with. This could be the navigation system for the manga. The real draw here is Jump's stable of manga: One Piece and Dragon Ball were on display in the demo. Surprisingly, the web version of Jumpland actually includes a site for English-language manga, and, of course, Shonen Jump is outrageously popular in the West, so it's not entirely unbelievable for Jump to consider bringing this service over.