E-mail Based Manga Service from Mangasplaining

Date: 2022 January 31 21:17

Posted by Joe

The good folks at popular manga podcast Mangasplaining have just sent us details of their latest endeavour, titled MSX: Mangasplaining Extra its an e-mail based manga subscription. The substack news letter will be delivered to your inbox.

The first projects to be announced are Okinawa by Susumu Higa and These Days by Taiyo Matsumoto. Interestingly the press release credits everyone involved in each manga project, this isn't the standard (but we wish it was). Keen eyed readers will also notice that These Days is translated Michael Arias the director behind the anime version of Tekkonkinkreet (which is based of the manga by Taiyo Matsumoto), so it's clear that the translator is very familiar with the artists work!

Mangasplaining have partnered with Fantagraphics Books and UDON Entertainment as publishing partners, so it's going to be interesting to see what else they've got in the pipeline.

Subscription to the service costs $5(USD) a month or $50 (USD) a year on Substack . Pricing has been set to be sustainable so they can pay the licensors, creators, publishers, translators, and letterers who do this work. There's been a lot of discussion in manga fandom about fair wages for staff involved in production and the Mangasplaining people are making sure everyone involved in the process gets paid fairly.

We're excited about this project as the people behind Mangasplaining are more than just manga and anime fans, they're manga and anime fans who work in the industry. They've got a track record of successfully delivering various projects. We're wondering what this will grow into!

Full Story

Press release as follows:



"MSX: Mangasplaining Extra" launches new email-based manga subscription model
Substack newsletter will bring new manga translations, original articles and interviews, plus podcast-related content to readers through free and paid subscriptions.

Today marks the official launch of MSX: Mangasplaining Extra, a Substack newsletter that will serialize new, unique and informative Japanese manga in English, delivered directly to readers' in-boxes. Spinning out of the popular Mangasplaining Podcast, this new manga publishing endeavor (it's also the first manga-focused Substack newsletter!) will allow MSX to work directly with Japanese manga creators and licensors to serialize their work in English to readers through this exciting new platform. Some titles will also be available later as print editions through our publishing partners.

The first two MSX manga projects will be Okinawa by Susumu Higa, in partnership with Fantagraphics Books, and These Days (one-shot) by Taiyo Matsumoto Additional print publishing partners will include UDON Entertainment, with titles to be announced soon.

The MSX newsletter will also include additional content for manga fans, including weekly links to new episodes of the Mangasplaining Podcast, the podcast show notes, original articles on manga and interviews with manga creators. The project is being headed by Deb Aoki and Andrew and Christopher Woodrow-Butcher. A paid subscription at $5.00/month will be required to read manga serializations, but a free subscription to MSX will also be available and will give subscribers access to all of the non-manga content, plus previews of the manga that we'll be publishing weekly that are sure to entice new readers to check out the content that's available through our paid subscriptions

"We love manga, and we love all kinds of manga," said MSX co-founder Deb Aoki. "We're always discovering great new and classic manga that doesn't usually get published in English, and are often left wishing that it could. Well, now we're gonna start publishing some of these titles that we love!"

"We are creating a new way to read and enjoy manga - we're taking a curated approach that allows us to spotlight what makes these stories special, just like how we talk about manga on our podcast." said MSX co-founder Christopher Woodrow-Butcher. "But we're also choosing projects that will be interesting and entertaining for both newcomers and hardcore manga fans. Mangasplaining Extra is a weekly manga magazine for people who love manga."

MSX: Mangasplaining Extra launches today, January 31st, at MangasplainingExtra.com. Subscriptions are available at Free and $5/month levels. Podcast links and show notes will be published on Tuesdays, manga chapters will be published on Fridays, and additional articles and bonus content will be published every other Sunday.

For more information on the Mangasplaining Podcast and MSX, head to mangasplaining.com


About Okinawa by Susumu Higa:
The first project, Susumu Higa's Okinawa, was originally published as two thematically linked manga: Sword of Sand and Mabui. Okinawa begins as a chronicle of the particular impacts of the war on the Okinawan people, caught between the invading American forces and the Japan that annexed their once-independent nation only a few decades earlier. Rooted in that difficult history, the second half of Okinawa explores the present-day echoes of that war, which continue to affect the lives of the archipelago's residents. It's a gripping, powerful work, told in stand-alone chapters that can be easily read and appreciated on a weekly basis. Okinawa will be serialized 2 to 3 times per month, with a print collection planned for release in Winter 2022 from Fantagraphics Books.

Okinawa is translated by Jocelyne Allen, lettered by Patrick Crotty, and edited by Andrew Woodrow-Butcher. Licensing was arranged through the author, with the assistance of Jocelyne Allen, Mitsuhiro Asakawa, and Aki Yanagi.


About These Days by Taiyo Matsumoto:
These Days is a meditative short piece about a manga editor who quits his job, and then isn't sure what to do without manga in his life. This work was created as a prototype short story for Matsumoto's eventual series Tokyo Higoro, now serialized in Big Comic Original Zōkan (Shogakukan) in Japan. This early version of this story from the creator of Tekkon Kinkreet and Ping Pong has never been seen before - even in Japan - and will be released in its finished, inked form, as well as directly from Matsumoto's raw pencil artwork, offering an unprecedented look into the creative process.

These Days is translated by Michael Arias, lettered and edited by Christopher Woodrow-Butcher. This title is a digital-only exclusive, available in the MSX archive for one year from publication date. Licensing was arranged through the author, with the assistance of Aki Yanagi.

About Mangasplaining: Mangasplaining is a collaborative, multi-prong project, first expressed as a weekly podcast, and conceived by comics workers and friends Deb Aoki, David Brothers, Christopher Woodrow-Butcher, and Chip Zdarsky. It emerged from their appreciation of Japanese manga culture and the realization that some people were avid comics readers but didn't know how to start reading manga. The podcast is a great way to discover manga classics, exciting new works and to get a broad overview of manga in all its varieties!

About MSX: Mangasplaining Extra: MSX is a new project spinning out of the Mangasplaining Podcast, run by Christopher and Andrew Woodrow-Butcher and Deb Aoki. Our company is a digital publishing and creative services group. We license, translate, and publish manga digitally, released to readers through paid subscriptions of our Substack newsletter at MangasplainingExtra.com. MSX also digitally publishes lots of great additional material including our podcast episode show notes and new original articles about manga.