Crunchyroll, a streaming service for anime and live action Japanese drama, is now tentatively branching out into manga. The selection is very small right now and I don’t see anything there I must absolutely read. Plus, I already took out a 12 month anime membership anyway.
Curiously, though, Crunchyroll is also offering for sale a program called ComiPo!, which claims to be something for non-artists to make their own manga with. You create 3D models of your own characters by picking their bodies, hair styles, clothes, and so on, then placing them picking the environment and the camera angle for each panel in your manga. Of course, you’ll have to supply your own story.
All this is well and good, but apparently most of the stock characters are female and most of the settings are in school, meaning the program is mostly for creating high school stories. I’d like to think there might be some good female-oriented stories being made with this system but I rather suspect there are a lot more insipid male fantasy harem series. You know, where the male protagonist has the personality of a formless blob who girls find inexplicably attractive.
But hey, plop down $50 and you can be making your own brand of shitty manga right in your own home.