Manga Corps

Amazon’s Kindle e-reading service offers a handful of different subscriptions for readers with one being specifically focused on manga and comics—Comixology Unlimited. Is what’s offered worth your money? Let’s dig in and see what’s on offer and how it compares to other manga subscriptions.

Comixology Unlimited Subscription Details

Comixology Unlimited is a subscription by Amazon that allows you to check out 50 books of comics and manga at a time for US$5.99/month.

When you return a book, you’re able to check out another. I found it very easy to stay under the 50 volume limit. If you’re planning to go on a trip without internet access, you can checkout a bunch of volumes and download them for offline reading. 50 volumes would keep you pretty occupied for a bit!

Comixology Unlimited offers comics from across the globe, not just manga. They offer comics from a bunch of different publishers and various genres. For non-manga, you’ll find some Marvel comics, series targeted at kids like Diary of a Wimpy Kid and Sonic. There’s Sandman and Saga and Scott Pilgrim. Lots to read and dig into for fans of comics, which if you read both manga and western comics, you’ll likely find a lot more value in the subscription than someone who is only interested in reading manga.

I’m going to focus on the manga offerings though, as that’s what I’m most interested in. Comixology Unlimited currently offers manga from one major publisher: Kodansha. There are also some manga series available from smaller and independent manga publishers like Fantagraphic. You won’t find anything from Viz, Shonen Jump, Square Enix, Yen Press (excluding some western comics in manga style), Dark Horse, or Seven Seas on Comixology Unlimited.

Many publishers have their own apps with their own subscriptions or purchasing programs, and it’s unlikely they’d also include their manga on Comixology Unlimited.

What series are included with the Comixology Unlimited subscription changes over time, much like Netflix and other streaming services. The availability is usually for a specific window. What’s there today may not be there tomorrow. If you want to read a series well into the future, buy it digitally or in print rather than relying on it being available through the subscription. For example, when I started writing this review, Appleseed and Lone Wolf and Cub from Dark Horse were available through Comixology Unlimited, but no longer are.

What Series Are Available

Whether or not Comixology Unlimited is worth it comes down to one thing: is there manga available that you want to read included with the subscription?

While there’s a lot of manga available, there’s one big caveat: many series don’t have all of their volumes included in the subscription.

For example, there are currently 12 volumes of Vinland Saga released in North America. Only volumes 1, 2, and 3 are available to Comixology Unlimited subscribers. Once you read the first three volumes, you’re expected to purchase the remaining. It’s unclear whether or not the future volumes will be eventually added to the service.

This is a big red flag for me. Imagine if halfway through a Netflix season they said: “Hey, are you enjoying this show? You’ll have to purchase the remaining episodes to finish the season.” People wouldn’t accept that, and it’s strange to me that Kodansha and/or Amazon would think people would be okay with that for manga on Comixology Unlimited.

One particular offensive practice across many series is to include all but the last volume in the subscription. That’s cruel and unusual!

You could view this as a way to sample different series, but that’s generally not how manga’s read. Manga series are typically dozens of volumes that tell one continuous story. As a reader, if I’m enjoying a series, I’d want to continue to read all of it. If Amazon and the publishers included in the subscription want people to subscribe, they need to offer the entire series. VIZ, Shonen Jump, and Manga Plus all offer subscriptions that do make the entire series available to subscribers (and at a lower price).

Completed Series With Full Availability

Here are the manga that stand out to me in Comixology Unlimited and are available from start to finish:

• Baki the Grappler
• Battle Angel Alita
• Beck
• Drops of God
• Initial D
• Shaman King

You might notice that this list seems a bit short… And that’s because it is. There really aren’t that many complete series of manga available with the subscription, which is a bummer.

I didn’t check every series, but I browsed through hundreds of volumes and those six are the ones that stood out as interesting and complete.

Maybe (hopefully) more will become available over time.

Limited Series Availability

There are plenty of interesting manga series that have finished publication and have some volumes available through the Comixology Unlimited subscription but not all. Here’s a list of these series and how many volumes are available at the time of writing:

• Attack on Titan (8 volumes of 34)
• Air Gear (30 volumes of 37)
• Blame! (5 volumes of 6)
• Cells at Work
• Edens Zero (3 volumes of 29)
• Fairy Tail (first 50 volumes)
• Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex (4 volumes of 5)
• Happiness (8 volumes of 10)
• Knights of Sidonia (12 volumes of 15)
• Love Hina (4 omnibus volumes of 5)
• MF Ghost
• Rave Master (28 volumes of 35)
• Spaces Brothers
• That Time I Get Reincarnated as a Slime (Manga)
• Vinland Saga (first 3 volumes of 12 currently released)
• Your Lie in April

While this isn’t a comprehensive list, it gives a sampling of what’s available. Very few of them are new series still being published. It’s sort of a Greatest Hits sampler of Kodansha’s manga.

A couple of non-Kodansha manga stood out that are currently available:

• Nijigahara Holograph by Inio Asano
• Dementia 21 by Shintaro Kago

Browse through all of the manga titles available through Comixology Unlimited here.

It’s Difficult to Browse Series

Because Comixology Unlimited is baked into the Kindle experience, especially on the Amazon website, it’s very difficult to browse what series are available. You’ll instead be met by each volume listed as its own product, which isn’t useful. It’d be much better if there was a view that showed all of the manga series available with the subscription with some of the cover art. It’d make it much easier to find series rather than sifting through volumes in a specific series.

This is a byproduct of Amazon purchasing and integrating the Comixology service with its Kindle experience, and it’s a bit of a shame, as it used to be better before the merger.

The Reading Experience

A major factor when evaluating the subscription is how it is to read through Kindle’s various apps.

Read Nearly Anywhere

Because Comixology Unlimited works through the Kindle app, you can read your manga anywhere Kindle has an app: from the web to iOS to Windows to macOS to Android to your Kindle Fire tablet to your dedicated e-Reader. Kindle is broadly supported across many different devices, which is fantastic.

If you’re looking to have a subscription to access manga specifically on a Kindle Fire tablet or Kindle e-reader, then Comixology is your best bet.

Read Offline

Since you’re borrowing volumes of manga through the Kindle app, they must be downloaded in order to read them. It makes sense since volumes are quite large in terms of file size. A benefit of this style of reading (as opposed to “streaming” chapters from Shonen Jump or Manga Plus) is that you can read your manga offline. This is convenient when traveling.

High Resolution Pages

Manga on Kindle (and therefore through Comixology Unlimited) are the highest resolution of all the digital manga services I’ve used. VIZ and Shonen Jump in particular offer low resolution pages, which look quite bad on high pixel density tablets. But pretty much all of the manga I’ve read through Kindle/Comixology Unlimited look crisp on any device.

Weird Kindle Quirks for Manga

There is one major problem with some manga on Kindle (and title available through Comixology Unlimited). Inexplicably, some titles show white background beyond the bounds of the page rather than black. Because virtually all manga is black ink on a white page, it distorts the page size and makes panels that go full bleed look wrong.

This may seem like a nitpick, but it does a disservice to the artists who made the manga and is distracting when reading. The artists did not intend for there to be a white border around their artwork.

It was not this way before Amazon bought Comixology, so I’m guessing it’s just part of a careless transition when manga were migrated over? I’m honestly not sure, but it’s enough of a problem that it makes me not want to read manga through the Kindle app.

I wish there was a way to configure the background color or that it defaulted to black like every single other manga service and app out there.

What’s possibly most infuriating about it is that it’s not all manga. Just many. Some have a black background like you’d expect. It’s inconsistent across series and publishers.

There are some other quirks too with the manga on Kindle. Most read in the native Right to Left format one expects with manga. But Beck, which reads Right to Left has the swipe direction for Left to Right. How this got past any form of quality control is baffling. When your brain is used to reading in a specific direction and swiping to match it, to have that incorrect makes it difficult to read the manga.

Pairs Nicely with Digital Purchases

If you purchase any manga (or comics or even novels) through Kindle, you’ll see your Comixology Unlimited borrows right alongside them in the app (or on your Kindle e-reader). If you’ve already got a digital manga library through the platform, it’ll fit in seamlessly. And it’s possible to filter your library by your Comixology Unlimited borrows.

Comixology Unlimited vs Prime Reading vs Kindle Unlimited

There are three different subscriptions that Amazon offers related to reading manga:

1. Comixology Unlimited
2. Kindle Unlimited
3. Prime Reading

Let’s break them down into what they offer.

Comixology Unlimited

Comixology Unlimited is Amazon’s subscription focused specifically on comics and manga. It costs US$5.99/month. This entire review is focused on it, so there’s not much more to say here about it.

Kindle Unlimited

Kindle Unlimited is a subscription service Amazon offers independently of Amazon Prime that offers some comics and manga but is primarily focused on written e-books. Kindle Unlimited is currently US$11.99/mo, therefore about twice as expensive than Comixology Unlimited.

Kindle Unlimited appears to offer a subset of what’s available in Comixology Unlimited but also included a lot of self-published books (some of which are manga and comics) that aren’t available through Comixology Unlimited.

If you’re interested in reading novels and comics and manga, Kindle Unlimited might be worth the higher cost. You can browse the available manga for Kindle Unlimited here.

Prime Reading

Prime Reading is included as part of the regular Amazon Prime subscription, which is currently US$14.99/mo. A very small subset of their Kindle Unlimited library is available to subscribers. Of the manga available, there are just a handful of series eligible with only the first volumes. Manga series currently available through Prime Reading are: Attack on Titan vol. 1, Fairy Tail vol. 1, Initial D vol. 1, Shaman King vol. 1, and some others.

If you already subscribe to Amazon Prime, it’s a somewhat useful way to check out these manga series, but it’s not a viable way to read anything beyond the first volume. Don’t expect to get much manga with your Prime Subscription.

How does Comixology Unlimited compare to other manga subscriptions?

There are a few other manga subscription services out there that we can compare Comixology Unlimited directly with:

1. Shonen Jump (Shueisha) – US$2.99/mo
2. VIZ (Shonen Sunday, VIZ Signature, Shojo Beat, etc.) – US$1.99/mo
3. Manga Plus (Shueisha) – US$1.99 for serializing titles, US$4.99/mo for back catalog
4. Manga UP (Square Enix) – US$4.99/mo

While the prices and available titles vary, these four other subscription services are all cheaper than Comixology Unlimited and offer much more manga (including complete series and new series being released).

Generally speaking, the resolution of the manga on these services is lower than Comixology. But they have a huge selection of titles.

While they might not be available for Kindle Fire tablets, they are mostly available on iOS, Android, and web devices. So that’s one thing to consider—what digital device you’re reading manga on.

If you’re new to digital manga, I’d suggest subscribing to the VIZ app, as it gives you access to a wide variety of different manga series. Shonen Jump has a lot of the popular titles, like Chainsaw Man, Jujutsu Kaisen, Naruto, One Piece, etc. with all of their chapters available. For US$4.98 for those two subscriptions, you’ll have access to a ton of manga and a pretty good reading experience. And still be spending less money than Comixology Unlimited costs.

Manga UP, which offers manga by Square Enix, has series like Fullmetal Alchemist, Soul Eater, and a bunch of other titles.

We unfortunately live in a world where a lot of manga is sequestered into different islands by the different publishers, which isn’t too different from the world of television and film streaming services. As a consumer, it’d be awesome if there was one subscription to access manga from a bunch of different publishers, but that isn’t the world we live in.

Comixology Unlimited has tough competition: the other major manga subscription services offer much more manga of a wider variety and at a lower cost.

So is Comixology Unlimited worth it for manga readers?

Honestly, it’s really tough to recommend Comixology Unlimited for manga readers. There are some positives—in particular the higher resolution pages compared to other subscription services. But with only six full manga series available that I’m interested in, that’s not something I want to subscribe to for the long term.

Comixology Unlimited is also considerably more expensive than the better offerings out there, like the VIZ and Shonen Jump subscriptions.

Having essentially just a small sliver of Kodansha’s titles, many of which aren’t the full series, is quite disappointing. If you’re looking to read all of Shaman King or Beck or Initial D, it’s surely the cheapest way to do so digitally. And it’s easy enough to cancel the subscription when you’re done. But short of wanting to read those series in their entirety or to sample some of the other series, there’s not much of a reason for manga readers to subscribe to Comixology Unlimited.

That being said, if you’re a fan of western comics and manga, you might find a lot to enjoy and keep you around. Western comics seem to have a lot more variety compared to manga on Comixology Unlimited. Manga on Comixology Unlimited seems like an afterthought.

If Comixology Unlimited wanted to keep me as a subscriber, they’d have to do the following:

• Offer full series for the manga available
• Allow the background color surrounding the page to be set to black
• Include manga titles from more publishers than essentially just Kodansha
• Add way more series
• Create a dedicated view for browsing included manga series (that doesn’t list all of the volumes)

Hopefully this helps you get some perspective on whether or not Comixology Unlimited is worth it. A free trial is available so you can give a shot yourself. But it’s best to know what you’re in for, as Amazon’s various subscriptions and interface for browsing what’s available are confusing.