I thought I might do something a little different with this article. In “Why I Loathe Manga Chapter Reviews“, I mentioned that one of my biggest issues is the use of scanlations. The question that follows might be “Where do I read these manga legally?”. I spoke before about how I personally prefer physical releases but I cannot dispute that many people choose to consume media digitally. Therefore, I thought I might make a list of legal services where you can read manga digitally.
I used to subscribe to the digital English language version of Weekly Shonen Jump. Since then, they have decided to shift from a magazine to a vault where you can read the latest chapters of many ongoing Shonen Jump titles for free. If you choose to subscribe to their service, you are able to read all of the chapters of each of their series.
Comixology is another digital service where you can read manga legally. In contrast to Shonen Jump though, Comixology focuses more on selling individual volumes although they do have a subscription service. I have mentioned Comixology in the past as they are one of the few ways to get access to some of Digital Manga Publishing’s Osamu Tezuka titles outside of their Kickstarter campaigns.
Crunchyroll is more known as a distributor of anime but has also developed a very respectable manga service in which they release chapters of various manga series (mostly from Kodansha). If you subscribe to their subscription service, you get access to all of their anime and manga releases.
I confess that I had not heard of Book Walker before writing this article but I have found out that they are a highly respectable distributor of manga and light novels. They run a variety of sales, have some free content and also release recent chapters of ongoing series. There is no subscription service available so you will have to purchase each title individually.
eManga is Digital Manga Publishing’s online store and distributes both physical and digital copies of their releases. If you are interested in Osamu Tezuka manga, you will probably want to use this service (particularly since it is the only way, as far as I’m aware, to read their recent Tezuka titles). They also have a variety of other titles such as GL (Girl Love) titles, BL (Boy Love) titles and their recent release Kimagure Orange Road. Again, there is no subscription service and you will have to buy each title individually.
Renta is a very unique service in which you can buy a title (in this case it is referred to as an unlimited rental) or you can rent a title for 48 hours. I think this is a very cool feature since you can spend a smaller amount to simply read a title without keeping it permanently.
Hopefully you have found this article interesting and informative and if you are aware of other legal digital manga services, don’t hesitate to mention them in the comments below. If you wish to seek the physical titles of any of the works I have mentioned, don’t hesitate to use bookdepository.com for all of your needs!