Pictures of Real Hentai Comics. Also, Discussion about Digital vs. Paper.

[Sakunyuusha]

Many of you enjoy hentai doujinshi and hentai manga, but how many of you have ever purchased one? Explanation of pictures in the following post.

 

[Sakunyuusha]

Skip to the next post if you just want to see more pictures!

===Captions===
001: Here are the front covers of several eromanga tankoubons. I put an English/Metric ruler along the top and an American civil engineering ruler along the side. As you can see, Japanese eromanga tankoubons have roughly the same length and width as do the mangas you have found in your local bookstores. The Japanese ones are slightly larger and quite a bit heavier. This is because Japanese tankoubons are made with better paper than they are in the United States. (No idea about other countries' paper standards, sorry!)

002: Here is the front cover of a very famous erodoujinshi. I have deliberately placed it on top of the eromanga tankoubons in order to give you a better sense of scale. The doujinshi is approximately 7.2 inches wide by 10.1 inches long.

003: The front cover and back cover of the doujinshi is made of a glossy cardstock-sort of paper. It is rather rigid (and would certainly crease permanently if you were to bend it). It is very glossy, as you can see.

004: Here you can see the reverse side of the front cover, i.e. the infamous "Page 002" of most doujinshi, a page which is almost always either skipped when people scan doujins or else is scanned but is always blank. Now you know why if you didn't before.

005: This doujinshi is not made like American comics. It is not stapled down the middle of the center pages in order to be bound. Instead, it is resin-bound to a genuine spine, albeit a very thin spine! This makes it more similar in look and feel to American children's paperback books than it does to American comics.

006: Here, you can distinctly see the uninked edges of the pages as they come together to form the spine (top-center). You can also begin to appreciate one of the biggest problems with eromanga (whether they're doujinshi or tankoubons), and that is ...

007: ... that you can't see the entire page without roughing up the book! You are guaranteed to crease the spine of your book if you attempt to read the text near the center (where the pages go inwards towards the binding resin).

008: Here you can see the infamous warning from LINDA to not scan their work and upload it to the internet. More on that in a few seconds.


===DISCLAIMERS===
If there is anyone who is upset that I have taken photos of a LINDA doujinshi and uploaded them to the internet, I have only these things to say to you:

1. they're very small and grainy
2. they're not of the entire page (except the front cover, which is freely available to look at on just about any website)
3. I didn't even photograph anywhere near every single page
4. I BOUGHT YOUR DOUJIN, OKAY!? Cold, hard cash! I own it. I purchased it. So for God's sake, don't piss off people who are willing to buy your stuff, or else -- just to spite you! -- they may quit doing it, alright?

If there is anyone who wants to ask me to take better pictures or to scan some of my stuff,

• No. And "no" means no. Leave me the fuck alone.
• Anything I do own you should have been able to pirate months, even YEARS before now. So you're either a total noob, a total retard, or both if you really want something you see in these photographs but you don't know where to get it.

If you are interested in knowing where I have gotten my erotankoubons in the past, I have used YesAsia and J-List. The latter is more pricey and less reliable (imo) for tracking and shipping information, but the former has much fewer offerings nowadays than does J-List, who has really ramped up their eromanga sales department in the last year alone.

 

[Sakunyuusha]

Here are some pictures of the erotanks* I got in the mail today.

* eromanga tankoubon, エロ漫画単行本 , "h-manga" in common US parlance

 

[Sakunyuusha]

===Captions===

009: this is the front cover of a very famous eromanga. Eromanga tankoubons, like non-H manga and non-H light novels you may have purchased or seen in the past, are almost always adorned with dust jackets, cover slips, and ISBN slips. In this picture, you can clearly see the second of these, the cover slip: look at how the words びしょびしょ are not really part of the cover, but are instead on a glossy slip of paper that is wrapped around the cover?

010: in this picture, you can sort of see the fact that the book has a dust jacket. (We'll see a better picture later.)

011: This picture and the one before it both do a good job at showing you just how much Japanese eromanga look like regular manga you are familiar with. The important differences are size (as mentioned in the second post in this thread) but also paper quality. Eromanga are noticeably much, much heavier than regular U.S.A. manga of approximately the same page length. I mean, they're not as heavy as lead (lol!), but you can tell the difference. It's like asking a kid to hold 50 birthday cards (50 "sheets" of cardstock) versus 50 pieces of Xerox paper. Xerox paper ain't bad, but it's nowhere near as thick as cardstock. I think Japanese manga paper is somewhere in between American cardstock and American Xerox paper: tougher than our comics, but not so tough you can't flip the pages comfortably. A very nice balance for hentai collectors, were it not for the problem of binding. (Discussed earlier.)

012: All the books came with one, but here in Amatarou's Daisy you can clearly see the ISBN slip of paper. I always leave them in place, but if you tug it out, you'll see that it has a bunch of cashier's information on it, such as what the ISBN is, what the MSRP is, who the author is, who the publisher is, etc. I'm not Japanese, so I have no idea what the slips are really meant to be used for. My only guess is for use in the store, since the books almost always have publishing information in the very back for fans who need to give citations or something. :\

013: Gratuitous picture of Kanmu Ryou's work because I love it and think more people should give him a try. I also think his work is proof that 4chan's /d/ is full of retards who wouldn't know how to find good hentai if it came up to them and bit them on the face. There are PLENTY of good authors who draw stories with devil girls, and there are a few spectacular ones like Kanmu Ryou. Anyway, his work can be rather /d/ at times (bestiality, impregnation, monsters/aliens, etc) so stay the fuck away if you don't like that. But if you're interested, do check him out. He submits stories to Comic Unreal (a popular hentai magazine which covers /d/ fetishes like futa, genderswap, pregnancy, devil girls, etc).

014: Here's a good photo that shows you how all of the manga have dust jackets that are (visibly) separate entities from the genuine covers. Pretty snazzy! It's definitely not something which American manga fans are used to seeing. FYI, normal manga are like this too, judging from my copies of Genshiken and Minamike.

 

[HENTAIBEN]

Great post Sakun! Very informative, even if I have had some experience with actual physical copies of doujinshi before. Sadly I don't own any japanese doujinshi or manga myself, but I'm sort of inspired to after seeing this post. Next time I get some extra money I'll look into picking up some of my favorites if they're available.

 

[Sakunyuusha]

Click on the attachment to read the long version. For sake of space, I've really edited this post down to a bare minimum!

Hi-resolution digital scans of eromanga are here to stay. They are superior to tankoubons and other bound paper media in several ways. First, digital scans can be looked at with minimal need for use of one's hands whereas tankoubons require both hands in order to read them. Second, digital scans can be read in any lighting environment without involving your hands (as would a flashlight) or your posture (as would a lamp). Third, digital scans weigh only as much as the equipment needed to store and view them. For people with large collections, this means that digital scans are lighter-weight in the end than physical media like books are. Fourth, there is the very obvious danger of soiling a tankoubon if you're reading it and masturbating to it at the same time, whereas reading digital scans of hentai comics allows one (in a worst case scenario) to only soil the floor, the walls, his clothes, his keyboard, his whatever, but NOT the tankoubon itself.

However, there are also reasons why hentai collectors in particular have an interest in obtaining digital scans of their favorite stories.

One of the most basic reasons collectors like digital media is because just by using physical media (e.g. books) you ruin them. For example, in order to read the text buried deep inside a tankoubon, you have to open the book real wide -- but doing so creases the spine, which is a cosmetic gripe some collectors may have. Another example of ruining the tankoubon just by using it is by yellowing the pages with your thumbs. I'm sure we've all experienced this in our lives: your favorite book begins to show some yellowing along the outermost edges. Sometimes this happens naturally over the years because the paper "ages" in response to elements in the air around it, but usually it's accelerated by (if not primarily caused by) human body oils on one's fingertips transferring to the edges of the pages while he holds the book open. Never minding the creasing of the spine, general wear-and-tear of a much-loved book is another big reason why collectors love digital scans of hentai. It's because they can read their favorite manga 10, 20, 100 times and the real book on their bookshelf will still look brand-new. If you try to read a normal book over 20 times, you're going to begin wearing out the binding. And for a cheaply-bound manga tankoubon, you can guarantee yourself that 100+ reads is going to result in loose pages. Because collectors don't have infinite cash either, most of them are not likely to order two, three, four, etc copies of their favorite tankoubon just so they can enjoy the real thing. They're going to only want to buy it once ($15 is a lot of money for a 200-page comic book!) and put it on their bookshelf forever and ever.

So anyway, this is the point I'm trying to make: digital scans of hentai are in high demand from pirates but are also in (incredibly!) high demand from avid collectors. More on this tomorrow, maybe.

 

[Sakunyuusha]

(Load up the graph below, then resume reading. Have the graph side-by-side if possible. I have annotations on the bottom-left for colorblind readers.)

Last night, I believe I gave some basic but convincing arguments for why digital scans of hentai are in high demand not only amongst pirates but amongst collectors as well. I'd like to flesh out the demographics a bit before proposing my advice for the hentai industry.

... CLICK THE TEXT FILE ATTACHMENT BELOW TO SEE THE FULL POST! ...

More on this some other time, perhaps. For now, I think I've made my main points and basically have to wait for people to reply before I can say anything else productive.

 

[HENTAIBEN]

I think you have some good ideas, but I'm not so sure how many people would buy into it when digital scans are so easily obtainable. With that said...

Would I do it personally? Hard to say. As it is, I barely fit into the "purple". I've bought several Hentai Anime DVDs that have seen releases stateside, and I've purchased several CG sets on DLSite (mainly anything Ariyon does). So it's not unheard of for me to pay for hentai, but I've yet to purchase any doujinshi, manga, or magazines. There are a few reasons I haven't done that. One: Digital Scans are much more appealing to me for the reasons you've suggested above, Two: Free Digital Scans are so very easy to obtain, Three: I don't really have the funds for it.

Now with all that said, would it be more likely for me to purchase cheap digital scans than fairly expensive books? Yes. I could see myself paying a little money for my absolute favorites, the same as I do with the Hentai Anime DVDs. Would I do it regularly? Honestly, I don't think I would. The only reason I purchase Ariyon's stuff on DLsite is because I have no idea where else to get it. Meanwhile it's so tempting to just jump on AO, or TT, or many other sites and just pirate this stuff easily.

Would other people do it? Maybe. I usually* laugh at the idea of paying for music anymore, but as you said iTunes is quite popular. I'm sure hentai enthusiast who are much better off than me financially wouldn't mind spending some money on this. Or even people that still manage to feel a tinge of guilt from stealing stuff on the internet. The average pirate though? I think they still tend to download a bunch of free music despite the ease and cheapness of iTunes or Amazon. So why would they stop doing that for this? I dunno.

So like I said, some good ideas, just not sure how it'd work out. I'd be curious to see it though.

*Usually - I've actually paid to download two songs recently. It's the first time I've paid for music since Napster came out. And the reason I purchased them was because I couldn't find them anywhere else.

 

[Sakunyuusha]

That's the thing: I am just as skeptical of the plan as you are for the reasons you mentioned. But I was also just as skeptical, if not more so, of the iTunes experiment. And I am astonished even to this day by just how successful iTunes has proven to be for Apple. This is exactly why I'm proposing it for the hentai magazines: because their fanbase is even more zealous than the average mp3 downloader is. Especially in Japan, but even in most of the overseas countries, hentai fans are much more fanatical, dedicated, etc. etc. to hentai and the hentai industry than mp3 downloaders are to the music industry. I think that this is a solid foundation for why the hentai magazine companies should at least try this experiment out for a couple of months. If it backfires, then their sales may drop off over the next few months but they can always backpedal to the way things were before in order to correct for this. But if it succeeds, then they can push full steam ahead. You can't get ahead in the business world without taking risks. The ideal is to take calculated risks rather than blind ones, and I think iTunes has provided so much evidence for these hentai companies' boards of trustees that this is the very definition of "a calculated risk."

 

[Sakunyuusha]

For my third post on this essay-topic, I'd like to discuss the economic incentives for different hentai media.

If you release hentai as a physical paper magazine, you have the following costs:

• paying the original author-artist for his work
• paying someone to organize the magazine
• paying for paper and ink
• paying for the costs of operating and upkeeping printing machinery
• paying the salaries of the workers who keep the machines well-greased and whatnot
• paying the shipping fees associated with delivering the magazines to vendors across the country or to customers' homes for customers who have year-long subscriptions to the magazine

Some of these costs are covered by the magazine's cost, but clearly this is not enough. Otherwise, we wouldn't see so many commercial advertisements in hentai magazines, now would we? The fact of the matter is, hentai magazines -- however "cheap" they may be per individual product -- are quite expensive when you add up all the copies that are printed in a given month.

If you release hentai as a digital magazine, you have the following costs:

• paying the original author-artist for his work
• paying someone to organize the magazine
• paying for the costs of operating and upkeeping one computer
• paying the salaries of the worker(s) who keep the computer working
• paying the server fees associated with delivering the digital magazines to customers around the world and receiving financial compensation in return

While the list is similarly long, the costs of producing a digital magazine are far-and-away cheaper than those of producing a physical magazine. A PC's maintenance is much less expensive than printing machinery. Electricity (as a resource) is much cheaper per magazine delivered than are paper and ink per magazine delivered. Server fees are much less than the costs of mailing physical magazines by plane, truck, train, or van. There is no problem of waste with digital magazines (i.e. if 5,327 people want Comic Iknoo, then you only "print" 5,327 digital copies). With physical magazines, there is a huge problem of waste, because you never know how many people are going to want the magazine plus major printing machinery is designed to print things en masse, i.e. it's more expensive and time-consuming for them to print 5,327 magazines than it is to just go ahead and print 6,000 magazines even. But they're still printing hundreds, even thousands of magazines that will never get sold. Because of this, it introduces a huge problem of waste either onto them (the company printing the magazine) or onto the vendors who purchase the magazines from them only to find themselves unable to sell all of the extra copies.

Perhaps the most lucrative incentive of all to the private corporation for distributing hentai magazines digitally as opposed to physically is that digital distribution cuts out the middleman. By this, I mean that the only people you need to worry about paying to distribute hentai to your customers are the electric company and the server company. That's it. But this is analogous to the ink, paper, and mail companies for physical magazines. Physical magazines have the unfortunate added cost of vendor profits, i.e. the MSRP for a comic might be 380 yen but that's because the street vendor needs to make profit too, so the real cost of the magazine may have only been 300 yen and for each copy sold the vendor gets 80 yen of his own. With digital magazines, you cut this middleman out entirely. In other words, even if you sold the digital magazine for 300 yen (80 yen cheaper than before), you'd be making no more nor less money than you did when you sold it physically on the street for 380 yen. What this means is, if the cost of making and distributing one digital magazine is (say) 100 yen, and the cost of making and delivering one paper magazine is (say) 300 yen, then you can charge people 200 yen for your digital magazine and make a killing. You double your profits overnight, and the general consumer thinks, "WOW! 200 yen versus 380 yen? HELL YEAH!"

Last but not least: tankoubons. The existence of eromanga tankoubons is the final blow to the physical magazine in my opinion. Why? Because: most fans who purchase hentai magazines still go on to purchase their favorite artists' tankoubons, too. This is because as hentai users they'd rather have the artist's chapters all together in one convenient place than have to pull out 10 different magazines and flip to 10 different places to read each chapter. And it's because as hentai collectors they feel that it's more fulfilling to have the author's tankoubon than to have the corporate magazine with tons of different authors. To give you an idea of what I mean,

• Most fans of Garfield comics of Calvin & Hobbes comics or Far Side comics still wound up buying the compilation books rather than collecting every single newspaper the comics first appeared in.
• Most fans of manga who subscribe to Shonen Jump to read Naruto will still get the Naruto tankoubon later.

Given this fact, there is an easy way to please both the fan of collecting physical media and the pirate-collector alike: you make hentai magazines digital but keep printing physical hentai tankoubons. This way, people can still subscribe to the (digital) magazine to read the newest chapter, and now they have even MORE incentive than ever to buy the the tankoubon (because it's an entirely different medium than the original!).

For all of these reasons and then some, I think that it's not a question of If but of When the major hentai magazine companies start shifting to digital distribution. It's way more profitable and (thanks to tankoubons) hardcore collectors don't have to wet themselves about not being able to have bookshelves full of hentai anymore. You can have your cake (the bookshelf) and eat it too (the digital download on your hard drive).

 

[redrooster]

In case someone is interested there are a lot of tankoubons downloadable at DLsite against cash now, I did not have the time to check it more intense yet, perhaps soemone else can do it. If the amount increases this may have some influence to the hentai manga torrent / download section and for other sites as well.

(talking about digital magazines here...).

 

[Sakunyuusha]

I'll be perfectly honest: hentai magazines are what brought me to A-O in the first place. When I signed up, back then people here posted magazines before anyone else I knew. But they've all since disappeared or quit caring, and other sites I visit are now the ones who post the magazines the fastest while A-O tends to post them secondarily (e.g. Caotics or IdolFan posting sukebe's torrents). If the hentai magazine section was to die because of the relationship we have with J-List and DLSite, it'd pretty much kill the hentai torrents section.

I mean, sure, Hentai Anime is back on two feet for now, but it's because the mods are obviously choosing to look the other way. I mean, allowing Shin Ringetsu 2 to be posted? Thanks, but I still remember the burn of writing so much for the first Shin Ringetsu thread only to have it all deleted 24 hours later because of licensing. And the question is, if the Hentai Anime forum trend keeps up, DLSite is going to notice and is going to care. If we copy&paste those same arguments for manga tankoubons, magazines, etc., then the only board left would be hentai games: and almost every single new thread there is a crosspost by DeathMarine from his own board, i.e. I doubt that anybody comes to Akiba for the eroge anyway. :\

Meanwhile, the JAV fans are left unscathed, it seems. Lucky for them. ;p ^^;

 

[soletta]

Firstly, thanks for taking the effort to write these informative posts Sakunyuusha.

In general holding a physical book and reading it is a different experience from reading it on a computer monitor and that to me seems to be one of the main reasons why people worldwide haven't taken to electronic-books so well.

I think that one of the things you get when printing a paper magazine is space to sell for advertisements. I'm not sure how well companies would take to buying digital advertising space instead. For some reason, I get more annoyed by digital ads than ads in magazines. Since I'm not an expert, I can only say that my feeling is that there are some differences or perceived differences between digital and print advertising that may make the takeup rate for digital advertising lower.

Also, when there are excess copies of magazines, I believe that most shops have some sort of arrangement to take back unsold copies. For tankoubon there is probably some limit to the number of returnable copies or some more complex arrangement.

With regard to the 'Type of collectors' diagram that you posted earlier, part of the problem might be that companies are reluctant to spend the money to create and maintain a digital site and a storehouse of digital media when pirates are already doing it. Given a choice between downloading a pirate copy for free and paying for a copy of the same material, most pirates would go for the free stuff. The expected return for companies is thus very low. Pirate collectors or pure collectors who would like to give money to the company in return for the material in some way can go out and buy the physical object if they want to anyway.

Another possible reason why companies are reluctant to give up physical books is that simply by being on the bookshelf the physical books create an awareness of their existence among potential buyers. You walk into a bookshop, see stuff you like, browse and buy what you like. Due to competition, unless most or all companies come up with some pact to simultaneously pull out from the physical material realm, those that pull out first will probably lose out. They therefore cannot enjoy the cost savings of not printing physical books without losing out in terms of earnings.

So which companies are likely to benefit from going digital? Companies that publish mainly digital products eg CG collections or hentai games that need a computer anyway. While these companies may still lose out in terms of making consumers aware of their products, they will save production costs, and since their material is meant to be viewed on a computer anyway, there is no difference in experience.

Another possible reason why companies are reluctant to switch is that Japanese people, who are the main market, may not use computers as much as other people. From personal experience, I have met many Japanese university students who are computer literate, but simply do not use their computer much other than for work/study purposes. Some of them didn't even have web based e-mail addresses. If such people form a significant number of consumers, shifting to digital might alienate them.

 

[Sakunyuusha]

No clue. I only ever knew Japanese college kids (who even if they were ethnically born-and-raised in Japan were still very much part of the youth culture and therefore very iPod, iTunes, this-and-that savvy) or Japanese grad students and college professors (neither of whom I ever saw in front of a computer except for when they were in their office or using the PC at the front of the class). But I think it does vary, because one of our TAs in college started a blogging project for us (mandatory) where we'd submit a sakubun, 作文, or writing sample/essay once per chapter of our text. We each had log-ins for the blog but she was the admin, she ran it, etc., and it was a pretty famous Japanese blog service I suppose (although I've long since forgotten its name), something sort of like Blogger or Xanga, not like MySpace or Facebook or Twitter. Anyway ...

As for the diagram, I dunno, I think iTunes encroaching on Napster's territory is the single greatest example of our times for the possibilities I'm speaking of here. It's not like it's unheard of for the majority of the population to shift from downloading stuff for free to downloading it for a fair price. Furthermore, iTunes never originally offered lossless files to its consumers, and iirc it originally sent people 196 kbps at max. (Maybe it still does. No idea. I never buy Western music outside of the occasional CD album of classic rock or '80s rock or some such.) Obviously 196 is not 320, and 320 is not lossless. To me it may as well be, but I know some people claim to be able to tell the difference and insist on getting lossless media. For them, you'd think iTunes would sound like an imminent failure. And yet it wasn't: because for most people there was no difference between a 196 kbps mp3 from iTunes and the same mp3 encoded at 320 kbps ripped from the CD they might have bought from their local electronics store.

When you consider this, I think it lends support to my supposition that the hentai industry will press forward into digital releases of eromanga. Just as eromanga are (for very valid reasons you pointed out) not quite the same digitally as they are in print, so too is a 196 kbps file not the same as a lossless file. The thing is, to 90% (made-up number) of people, the kilobit difference is insignificant. And I suspect, too, that this could prove true for eromanga as well. Sure, maybe a subset of the population would feel ostracized by a move from printed media to digital media, but I think most consumers would welcome cheaper copies of the much more end-user-friendly hi-res digital scans that can be easily read anywhere at any time with both hands quite free to do whatever.

 

[soletta]

Upon reflection, this question appears to be a subtopic of the larger question: Is all media fated to go digital?

No clue. I only ever knew Japanese college kids (who even if they were ethnically born-and-raised in Japan were still very much part of the youth culture and therefore very iPod, iTunes, this-and-that savvy) or Japanese grad students and college professors (neither of whom I ever saw in front of a computer except for when they were in their office or using the PC at the front of the class). But I think it does vary,

Yes it varies greatly and arguably the otaku who are into anime/manga/games are probably well versed in using the computer. As computer literacy increases, digital media will probably become a more viable option.

As for the diagram, I dunno, I think iTunes encroaching on Napster's territory is the single greatest example of our times for the possibilities I'm speaking of here. It's not like it's unheard of for the majority of the population to shift from downloading stuff for free to downloading it for a fair price. Furthermore, iTunes never originally offered lossless files to its consumers, and iirc it originally sent people 196 kbps at max. (Maybe it still does. No idea. I never buy Western music outside of the occasional CD album of classic rock or '80s rock or some such.) Obviously 196 is not 320, and 320 is not lossless. To me it may as well be, but I know some people claim to be able to tell the difference and insist on getting lossless media. For them, you'd think iTunes would sound like an imminent failure. And yet it wasn't: because for most people there was no difference between a 196 kbps mp3 from iTunes and the same mp3 encoded at 320 kbps ripped from the CD they might have bought from their local electronics store.

The comparison of Napster and iTunes here must keep in mind that Napster was shutdown in a court of law due to illegal practices. iTunes provides a legal option of obtaining music, whether or not it is lossless or not, to people who want to be careful about not breaking the law due to the chance of getting punished.

When you consider this, I think it lends support to my supposition that the hentai industry will press forward into digital releases of eromanga. Just as eromanga are (for very valid reasons you pointed out) not quite the same digitally as they are in print, so too is a 196 kbps file not the same as a lossless file. The thing is, to 90% (made-up number) of people, the kilobit difference is insignificant. And I suspect, too, that this could prove true for eromanga as well. Sure, maybe a subset of the population would feel ostracized by a move from printed media to digital media, but I think most consumers would welcome cheaper copies of the much more end-user-friendly hi-res digital scans that can be easily read anywhere at any time with both hands quite free to do whatever.

Your focus on the idea that digital goods are a good subtitute for physical goods based on insignificant quality differences is a valid factor, and I presume that your argument is based on the idea that this is the most important factor. Although I agree that your hands get freed up, books are still more portable than a laptop. The reasons for preferring either kind of media are many and worthy of a separate debate, but on the consumer side it is highly arguable that digital has more benefits.

As argued in my earlier post, however, my opinion is that it is a supply side problem: Whether companies believe that they will earn from setting up the online shop. To encourage consumers to make a switch to legal digital material, Japanese companies will likewise probably have to pursue legal action to reduce the amount of illegal file sharing. This will incur additional costs that may or may not pay off in the end.

Roughly speaking, if

[Cost of setting up digital store] + [Cost of encouraging consumer switch to digital(legal)] < [Expected profit] + [Print savings]

then companies will not make the switch. Especially when there is uncertainty in the values and consumer response companies may be reluctant to take the risk.

Another possible factor is the business ties that publishing companies have with printing firms. Deciding to stop printing products will cause printing firms to lose business in a way that is difficult to compensate. For new firms it is easier for them to go straight for digital, but at the same time they lose the exposure that printing physical books provides as well as advertising revenue.

 

[Sakunyuusha]

I see now (about the supply side issue). Good points.

I don't want to impose my views on others, but speaking from my own experience, when I feel like masturbating, usually I like to have the liberty of picking from whatever I like, be it my imagination, hentai, porn, whatever. And if it's hentai, what kind? Anime? Manga? And if it's manga, which author? Which fetishes? Etc. That's the advantage of having portable media which can hold a bunch of hentai (i.e. digital media): yes, it requires a visual output (i.e. a monitor) in the immediate vicinity of where I plan to masturbate, but it permits me to pick from a wide, wide, wide array of sources.

On the other hand, let's say I am going to go somewhere away from home for a 3 or 4-day weekend (as I have done many times). I may opt to bring a hentai tankoubon along with me, but instead I normally bring print-outs for those occasions. The print-outs offer the same exact convenience as the actual book, and they're actually more convenient because I don't have to worry nearly as much about them getting ruined (bent in the bag, waterlogged, body sweat, whatever) the way I would have to worry about my tankoubons. If the print-out gets ruined, I throw away that page and reprint it once I get home. And when I do get home, I shelve the print-out for later use. Which is what I have done. I've got lots of printed-off hentai for short vacations away from home and I've got my computer for when I am at home. Either way, I don't have to worry about mucking up my tankoubons.

So for this personal reason, I still think that there's merit to digitizing hentai (again, at least from the consumer side. You present very good reasons about the disincentives for suppliers to take the risks involved with leading in the conversion from print to digital). Summed up:

(1) If you do have access to a private computer wherever you're going, a flash drive or USB stick is just as portable and holds much more content than paper books or magazines do.

(2) If you don't have access to a private computer wherever you're going, you can still print the hentai off from home before you leave and take the print-offs with you instead. Most hentai is B&W so this really is not a big deal. And if the print-offs are low-quality, that's not much of an argument either -- because you'll settle for lower-quality prints if the trip is short than having your high-quality and expensive merchandise get ruined, lost, or stolen while on vacation. (What do you do if Customs checks your bags at the airport, hmm? I'd rather they confiscate computer paper than my tankoubons! And I'd rather have the USB stick and print my hentai off at my destination than bring it with me on the airplane in the first place! ^_^; )

Btw, if you have a B&W laser printer like I do (< $100 to get a good one these days if it's dedicated B&W like mine), the cost to print your own hentai off comes out to ~around~ the same average cost page-for-page as the actual book, if not a little less. So yes, this is an added expense, but it's one I choose to add -- it's like I've got "travel porn" and I've got "collection porn," and the books in one set aren't the books in the other.

 

[soletta]

The discussion has veered pretty far from the thread title "What do hentai comics really look like?" I would like to propose a split thread so we can hopefully draw in more people who already know what a hentai manga looks like, and would like to discuss digitalization ventures instead.

The reason why I don't place much emphasis on demand factors is because is quite obvious that us consumers really want our digital copies which we can archive forever. We as consumers obviously strongly demand digital.erfectplan: It is the best way for us to maximize our utility.

Rippers and scanners together with the internet are currently providing this digitalizing service to us consumers for free for most material, although for less popular material it is definitely more difficult to source pirate copies. And the rippers are doing quite a comprehensive job. Print material scans often come out in different resolutions, high quality and low quality. Scanslation groups provide language translation for those of us not fluent in Japanese.

So the main question for me seems to be whether or not companies want to provide instead:hero: and what are the factors and relative importance of the factors influencing this decision.

Read original article here.

Monday, April 27, 2009
'Manga' publisher airs Net English version

The article that daremondai's new post linked shows a good example of where a company hopes for a decent return on investment and thus makes a the leap. While scanslations (fan made scans + translations) can be pretty professional jobs, companies can do without the watermarking and consumers are assured of (hopefully) quality professional translation. Viz has an established practice of approaching site which post material that has been licensed by it, so they have the legal experience to deal with piracy of their material.

Also, Viz has size on its side. As a joint setup by Shogakukan, publisher Shueisha Inc. and Shogakukan-Shueisha Productions Co.(according to the article) I would argue that it has a certain amount of influence, and also capital to risk in such a venture.

On the other hand, let's say I am going to go somewhere away from home for a 3 or 4-day weekend (as I have done many times). I may opt to bring a hentai tankoubon along with me, but instead I normally bring print-outs for those occasions.

You're pretty dedicated. I would argue that in most situations it is pretty risky to carry hentai around in any unsecured form. Revealing, even accidentally, that one is someone who carries porn around on one's person is usually not beneficial for your social networks. I also keep thinking of cases where people take nude photos of themselves on their handphones, end up dropping their phones and get screwed royally.:death: I'd rather use my vivid imagination (or abstain:attention than take the risk.

 

[Sakunyuusha]

I don't see the risk. On the USB stick, the data is encrypted with a 128-character key. In the form of the print-offs, I only ever take those with me when I'm traveling by car, which means the only way for me to get caught is if wherever I'm staying (home, hotel) snoops around my stuff. I trust my parents not to do this and welcome the lawsuit if a hotel chooses to do it without a legal search warrant (and even then they're still not going to find anything illegal -- comics of adult men and adult women and fictional beings like demons and angels? Try again, wanna-be censors in the US legal system).

Other than that ... I dunno about "veered" so much as "evolved." I definitely instigated this as early as the first post, so maybe rather than split the thread, it'd be better for me to just rename the thread to reflect the two topics inside. One being pictures of real manga, the other being discussion of digital vs. printed hentai media.

 

[soletta]

Shit happens =/ The local newspaper once reported a guy who got busted for porn. The only reason why the cops came to search his place was because his employer was suspected of tax evasion.:dunno:

Other than that ... I dunno about "veered" so much as "evolved." I definitely instigated this as early as the first post, so maybe rather than split the thread, it'd be better for me to just rename the thread to reflect the two topics inside. One being pictures of real manga, the other being discussion of digital vs. printed hentai media.

Yes, renaming might be helpful =)

 

[RyuKaze]

:study: Where to begin?

First of all, thanks Sakunyuusha, once again you raise a thought provoking topic with many good points. (And not to forget the other users fine contributions too.)

So anyway, this is the point I'm trying to make: digital scans of hentai are in high demand from pirates but are also in (incredibly!) high demand from avid collectors.

From my own personal experience, avid collectors tend to want to own the physical product and showcase it in some elaborate bookcase, filled with works they may have purchased years ago. Although this image is more associated with games; I know several people who fall into your 'rich' category who demand only the physical works and shun everything that is digital. (This is of course my own experience, I can hardly speak for the wider market.)

This is exactly why I'm proposing it for the hentai magazines: because their fanbase is even more zealous than the average mp3 downloader is. Especially in Japan, but even in most of the overseas countries, hentai fans are much more fanatical, dedicated, etc. etc. to hentai and the hentai industry than mp3 downloaders are to the music industry. I think that this is a solid foundation for why the hentai magazine companies should at least try this experiment out for a couple of months. If it backfires, then their sales may drop off over the next few months but they can always backpedal to the way things were before in order to correct for this. But if it succeeds, then they can push full steam ahead. You can't get ahead in the business world without taking risks. The ideal is to take calculated risks rather than blind ones, and I think iTunes has provided so much evidence for these hentai companies' boards of trustees that this is the very definition of "a calculated risk."

While it is true that hentai fans are certainly more tenacious than the casual MP3 downloader; even the movie collector, the hentai market, although becoming more accepted, is still a relatively 'niche' market for the wider population. Due to its adult nature, and add on-top of this the artistic depiction of adult themes (as opposed to photographs or movies of real people), there is still an air of taboo surrounding this subject. Due to this, I would say that the 'calculated risk' you refer to has indeed been calculated and seen to be counter productive at this time.

Don't get me wrong, I have been interested in this market for many years (much less now than before), but in terms of the 'general populace' this is still only a small proportion of the world adult industry.

In recent years, there has been a growing symbiotic relationship between print and electronic media, partially due to the fact that conventional print media has recognised the demand for the electronic counter-part; with this said, the business models for distributing the two forms differs greatly. The publisher can certainly pass this responsibility onto a third-party, but this introduces the 'profit' margin scenario and also may give way to a difference in quality between works. (Of course, the quality difference can be solved by introducing a standard to which all media is rendered, but different works can be produced in varying resolutions depending on the source material provided by the publisher/artist.)

I think that one of the things you get when printing a paper magazine is space to sell for advertisements. I'm not sure how well companies would take to buying digital advertising space instead. For some reason, I get more annoyed by digital ads than ads in magazines.

Advertising is certainly a consideration, as the general trend is online advertising receives a much higher audience than printed advertising, but it nearly always receives a much lower revenue. Although discussing newspapers, I think this article illustrates the divide in viewing numbers and revenue.

Another possible reason why companies are reluctant to switch is that Japanese people, who are the main market, may not use computers as much as other people.

I fear that this is the major obstacle in this whole scenario - The target market. With the advent of tightening censorship laws in the US and around the world, it would be increasingly difficult to distribute certain material (containing specific themes) to the Western market; although they could easily and legally distribute it to their local market. As you can see from the attachment (albeit from 2007), the music market (a massive and non-tabooed market) has had problems distributing to Japan through digital means.

Scanslation groups provide language translation for those of us not fluent in Japanese.

This picks up the last point; it is fine for people who understand the text (not including those who simply look at it for the images - as they would hardly hand over money for this simple luxury when they can have it for free), but for those who do not bear this gift, there is little choice but to:

1. Send the material to someone to translate (i.e. friend/contact who isn't part of a translation group)
2. Send the material to a translation group, who will then upload it to the 'pirate' market
3. Use a dictionary/online translator (both would prove time-consuming and would hardly be enjoyable)

I personally would support your idea on a digital distribution option, but I fear that the legal situation would be questionable at best due to:

• Different countries having separate laws concerning the viewing and distribution of certain material (Just because a file is hosted in a country which can legally store the material, it does not automatically grant that right to someone who downloads it in another country)
• Licensing would have to be granted for non-Japanese markets

As for where I fit in the whole equation of 'pirates', I am in the purple zone, leaning towards the blue. I personally want to support the authors of the works I enjoy (such as Amazume Ryuta), I know if I put as much effort as them into a work, I would want to be remunerated by a large number of fans and not see my works frequented by the free-loading community. (Lucky I'm not an artist then?) :joker: