Over the past four years, Shueisha’s MANGA Plus has quickly become one of the biggest platforms to read manga around the world, featuring the latest chapters from popular series such as Chainsaw Man, One Piece, and SPY x FAMILY.
Appearing at New York Comic Con 2023 represented a big milestone for MANGA Plus, as it was their United States convention debut. MANGA Plus had a dedicated booth in the exhibit hall showcasing artwork from some of their biggest titles, photo opportunities, and free badge pins for attendees who downloaded the MANGA Plus app. It was a sight to behold for any manga lover, and a very strong first showing for MANGA Plus on the convention scene.
Manga Mavericks owner Varun Gupta and contributer Sakaki had the opportunity to talk with Shonen Jump+ and MANGA Plus Editor-In-Chief Shuhei Hosono about MANGA Plus and their exhibit at the convention. Check out our full interview with Hosono below:
Manga Mavericks (Varun): This is the first time MANGA Plus has been at New York Comic Con. What was the decision behind having a huge presence at an international convention like this?
Hosono: Last week, we started a subscription service, so we wanted to promote that service to the audience here.
Manga Mavericks (Varun): Regarding the subscription service, what was the business perspective behind adding the new standard and deluxe plans to MANGA Plus?
Hosono: On the free plan that we had previously, you could only read the first three chapters and the latest three chapters. But we knew there was high demand from people who wanted to read the chapters in-between that. Since we’re doing this globally, initially our idea was to kind of connect each of the local publishers such as Viz Media and other publishers. If you wanted to read the in-between chapters of a series, you would go to those local publishers. But we felt that wasn’t working so well, and that it was better to provide all the chapters in our app. So, we kind of changed our idea.
Manga Mavericks (Varun): I often find on MANGA Plus that there are a lot of titles that aren’t available from local publishers. Like some of my favorites are Dricam!! and Kindergarten Wars by You Chiba!
Hosono: Yes, that is the basic idea that we have for MANGA Plus. With all the titles we have on Shonen Jump+ in Japan, we want to bring them over to MANGA Plus as well. So as time goes on, there should be more titles that are exclusively only on MANGA Plus.
Manga Mavericks (Varun): Since MANGA Plus has titles in multiple languages, what is the biggest challenge in doing so many simultaneous releases?
Hosono: For English, there’s a lot of people who can do it, so we’re capable right now, but we’re doing eight languages. So for the other seven languages, we are having a lot of difficulties.
Manga Mavericks (Varun): Do you think that there’s anything that could ease that localization process in the future?
Hosono: The first thing is if the new MANGA Plus subscription service succeeds. That model will help us discuss internally to increase our support to the other languages as well.
Manga Mavericks (Sakaki): When localizing titles, do you give more priority to choosing titles that will be popular overseas or are already successful in Japan?
Hosono: Not really. For popular titles we have in Japan, we will put effort into having them globally, but in the future, we expect that there will be some titles that may not be popular in Japan but will be popular in the US or other countries as well. We’re kind of expecting a different situation to come out of our service. The real grand goal for doing this service is to find the next hit content that emerges from outside of Japan. For example, an American manga artist who posts their manga to our service.
Manga Mavericks (Varun): Related to that, how did MANGA Plus Creators come to fruition? I really love it, as it allows creators to independently release their content.
Hosono: So on Shonen Jump+ in Japan, there’s a service called Jump+ Rookies, and we found a lot of great new content emerging from there.
Manga Mavericks (Varun): Ah yes, I remember Kindergarten Wars started there!
Hosono: Yes, exactly. So, we similarly have the MANGA Plus service and MANGA Plus Creators for creator-submitted content. To be honest, we have a lot of content on MANGA Plus Creators that is beyond our expectations and has great potential.
Manga Mavericks (Varun): I’ve noticed MANGA Plus will often highlight MANGA Plus Creators content through awards as well.
Hosono: Yes, the awards are meant to highlight the content that we think is going to work well.
Manga Mavericks (Varun): Do you think that some of that content will become full serializations in the future?
Hosono: Yes. That’s exactly what we’re thinking. It’s not an easy process, but that’s what our goal is.
Manga Mavericks (Varun): Totally! It definitely makes MANGA Plus feel even more like a global manga service. In general, Shueisha has some of the biggest manga titles in the world. What do you think makes Shueisha titles, especially those from Weekly Shonen Jump and Shonen Jump+, so popular and compelling around the world?
Hosono: Looking back at our history of Jump, we’ve always had many new and upcoming artists. Even today, our goal hasn’t changed. We want to focus on the new artists and make them and their titles big. We’ve provided opportunities to many artists that nobody initially knew, and that’s always what we should do.
Manga Mavericks (Sakaki): Nowadays, with the internet making it easier for anyone to make a manga, how do you think that’s changed the job of an editor?
Hosono: Even in Japan, there are a lot of people posting their works on Twitter (X), and there are some titles that have become very famous from that. Still, I think that way of distribution is only one route. I think some artists feel it’s better to work together with an editor in posting your work, rather than just posting it by yourself. A few years ago, there were a lot of people on Twitter saying that editors are no longer needed. Now, the opinion seems to be that it’s actually better to have an editor to improve the quality of your work. For a publisher like us, with MANGA Plus we’re providing an opportunity for artists to globally distribute their works. So I think that’s another value that we’re adding to it.
Manga Mavericks (Varun): How has your relationship changed between you and local publishers now that MANGA Plus is releasing titles in multiple languages?
Hosono: We’re actually working very closely with the local publishers. Like for many English translations, we need Viz Media. Also for digital-first, we can directly release titles, but when taking titles to physical print, we of course need the local publishers. The local publishers also do marketing and other activities to promote the work, so that’s very important.
Manga Mavericks (Varun): At the MANGA Plus booth, there’s an area where you can vote for your favorite title. What is your favorite title among the options?
Hosono: Red Cat Ramen! The reason is because I’m simply curious how that will be viewed by the local market. Ramen as a food is also getting popular outside of Japan. It’s also very much a “healing” story, which is needed since we’re living in a difficult world.
Manga Mavericks (Varun): When we were in Tokyo in September, we saw Red Cat Ramen in a lot of different bookstores, which was very surprising. I really hope that it gains a big international audience!
Manga Mavericks (Sakaki): While in Japan, I heard some people say that they prefer Shonen Jump+ series now over Weekly Shonen Jump. Has there been an audience shift from the regular Weekly Shonen Jump magazine?
Hosono: I don’t think that’s how it is personally. The production capability of Weekly Shonen Jump is very strong, so I feel it’s like a rivalry. We cooperate at times and we both try to make each other better. We actually sit next to each other in the same office.
Thanks again to MANGA Plus, Shuhei Hosono, and New York Comic Con for making this interview possible.
