Manga artist's thoughts on the weaknesses and strategic mistakes of "vertical reading manga" at the end of "comico"

Comico, a manga distribution app, has announced that its service will end on January 6, 2027. comico is a Korean-originated vertically reading manga distribution service for smartphones that is read by scrolling vertically on the screen, but the service will end approximately 13 years after its launch.

In July, it was announced that Sega Sammy would be dissolving its capital and business alliance with Papyres, which also provides the manga distribution service Renta!. The two companies had jointly announced a new label for vertical reading manga, but it seems that the situation is no longer producing the results originally expected.

Vertical reading manga services started in Japan around 2011. Up until now, there have been some big hits like ``ReLIFE,'' which was serialized on comico. Still, why has this situation come to be? I tried to think about it from my perspective as a manga artist.

First, vertically read manga has a narrower range of expression than Japanese manga. Compared to Japanese manga, I get the impression that there are more restrictions on the methods of expression than in Japanese manga, such as the lack of flexibility in the size of the panels to fit the screen size of smartphones, and the lack of freedom in panel arrangement since the panels can basically only be arranged vertically. It also has a relatively short history compared to Japanese manga, so while there is a possibility that innovative methods of expression will emerge in the future, I don't think it can compete with Japanese manga's current methods of expression.

There seems to be a reason why it is difficult to be accepted in Japan due to the production environment. While Japanese manga is basically created by one author or by a small group of people with the addition of several assistants, Korean vertical reading manga is said to be created by a large number of people with a complete division of labor. If there are many people involved in one work, each person's share will naturally decrease.

Also, looking at posts from people who appear to be involved on social media, it appears that the contract itself is advantageous to the distribution company. I think that's why there has been an increase in new entries into distribution services, but on the other hand, there is no advantage for Japanese manga artists to draw manga that can be read vertically. If there are fewer works, it will be difficult to create hits.

Personally, what I found most questionable was the advertising method for vertically read manga that I used to see a lot. It was probably at a time when distribution services were increasing and gaining momentum. I've seen a number of articles about vertical reading manga that include claims like ``Korean manga is the world standard'' and ``Japanese manga is boring.''

Japanese people don't like it when people put down others in order to uplift something, and they would feel bad if it was something they liked. I think that's why some people became anti-vertical manga readers (source: my editor).

I've written a lot about this, but I personally think vertical reading manga still has a lot of potential. This is because the manga in this series is also in a vertical reading format. It's basically in full color and can be easily read on a smartphone, so please give the manga a try too!