Jump goes Digital - some manga guys learn Flash
Starting April of 2007, Jump launched their “Jump Digital Manga” site. They have four titles available for online viewing. This is truly digital manga, not just web comics. The manga is animated with Flash, and there is plenty of animation and sound to separate it from static, paper manga. Here are some short profiles of the titles.
Straight Girl is a static, user-prompted flash manga. The art is all CG, and often uses blur effects to give the impression of movement. This is a gag manga, and sometimes the CG distracts from the comedy. But other times the CG makes things funnier than they could’ve been drawn. Even the usage of CG is a joke in itself. It’s really just a new type of art that the reader and the author will take time to adapt to. Other artists have tried to use CG before and have totally failed, but Straight Girl seems to be doing a fine job of it.
Kokusai Youkai Keisatsu Okei (or International Yokai Police Okei) is a hand-drawn, bu heavily computer processed, flash manga with lots of animation and sound effects (like the creepy laughter of Okei-sensei). The animation is genuinely entertaining, and it’s surprising how fun it is to read, even when I can’t understand everything. The story follows a young lady who gets drafted into the International Yokai Police against her will. There is a weird grandma looking character named Okei-sensei. And there’s lots of senior-citizen-looking ghosts. Quite entertaining and eccentric for an action manga.
Sora kara Furatarou (Futarou from the sky) has really thick lines and lots of animation. It only requires a next-click when there is text. Otherwise it’s fully animated, and looks good. This is a light-hearted comedy with thick lines and cute characters. It’s a self-contained story without chapters, unlike the other manga on the site.
Marurabo Raifu is the most interactive of the four titles. The title screen lets you select between 1st or 2nd year of school or summer break. Once you click one of these, it takes you to an interactive screen with several characters in a location. Mousing over each will activate a character animation, and clicking on them will open a word balloon with a link to a chapter or chapters of the manga. Once you select a chapter, you’ll see lots of animation with the word balloons and frames moving in and out of the screen, but no actual character animation. The story is a school comedy, and the art is nice and bubbly with thick lines.
Overall, the standouts are definitely Straight Girl and Kokusai Youkai Keisatsu Okei. They are fun to watch and give the reader something more than can be accomplished on paper. We’ll see how much more support Shueisha gives the site. They haven’t expanded past four titles, but they have been adding new chapters of the titles regularly.
Also, this Flash manga really sets itself apart from most Flash animations I’ve seen. The quality is extremely high, and I’m sure there was a group of people working on these rather than one person. It’s almost a half-way point between manga and anime, while still keeping what makes manga great.
Posted: December 6th, 2007 under Web, Reviews.