Bandai Visual from Bandai Namco group has just released a website (http://www.yomban.jp) for digital browsing of manga, novels and essays for the PC and mobile phones in Japan. Called YOMBAN, short for Yomu meaning read and Ban from Bandai Visual, the site started on February 2, 2009 and its contents would be refreshed every fifteen days. The surprise is, the contents are all for free!
The site targets men in their 20s, and has a triple H formula. H is not for Haruhi or anything else Echi but Human, Humor and Hero. Basically it means that the manga, novel or essay would be completely original and its Heroin or Hero would be a Humorous Human, hence the three Hs. It is scheduled to start with 11 works including Morioka Hiroyuki's (森岡浩之) novel Seikai no Monshou (星界の紋章) with famous and up and coming authors alike being featured. Part of Bandai Visual's aim is to discover and cultivate new talent.
What's more, you can even download wallpaper or calendar all for free for a limited time period. If free is not quite your thing, take part in a quiz after reading the novels to win 1 million yen worth of prizes.
Above: Some examples of manga and novels available on Yomban - Ontama by Sasaki Mutsumi and
Kaze to Tanpopo~ Wakuseikan Monogatari~ by Morioka
The interactive element of Yomban is that you can select parts that you like to insert onto your blog.
Other interactive tools include a tool that allows you to easily email the page's URL to your friend, book mark or even social book mark the page, add it onto viewer browser's book mark.
While Celsys is the market leader for such emanga browsers, yomban uses a browser developed by a company called Sabience who created this program in 2003.
Bandai Visual hopes to sell merchandise and games of the new titles if they get popular on yomban and even publish physical books of the digital contents if they become popular enough.
On the other hand, the market leader for emanga, BBMF does not provide its contents for free. In fact, it is making enough millions every month to be a cause for concern for publishing companies. Emanga is currently a fast growing market in Japan with many players trying to get a slice of the pie, but erotic emanga is something few big companies can stomache it seems.
wormy i like
BTW, We are STILL going through cosmetic sugery..
It would take some time to complete the makeover so please keep clearing your cache and refreshing your browser.
Please bear with us ><
A87 Gals High on Helium~
Oh, thats great, really a good idea.
My japanese lenguage is not good but I`m learning, I hope soon I can read some of this mangas, for now I settle with the images and the few words I understand. (I am from Argentine, my native lenguage is spanish, so I think my english is not really good too)