If you’re a fan of Japanese culture and entertainment, then you’ve undoubtedly heard of Crunchyroll, which is one of the most popular streaming platforms on which you can watch your favorite anime series.
For those of you who have wondered if you can also read manga on Crunchyroll, here’s a helpful guide.
So can you read manga on Crunchyroll? Yes, you can read manga on Crunchyroll, but you’ll need to subscribe to Crunchyroll’s membership program. You can also get access to Crunchyroll’s manga library by subscribing to the site’s Mega Fan membership, which will allow you to access the site’s content offline, as well.
Of course, there are a few details that you’ll need to know about being able to read manga on Crunchyroll that I simply can’t fit into a single paragraph to sum everything up neatly. If you’re interested in learning more, bear with me as I cover all of the relevant details about reading manga on Crunchyroll.
Can I Read Manga on Crunchyroll?
Being able to read manga on Crunchyroll has been possible since 2013, when the platform rolled out its first manga titles. When you think about it, the ability to read manga on the site was a logical progression from the ability to watch anime on it, since the two genres are closely interlinked.
Manga and anime share a lot more than just being from Japan and featuring similar art styles. Many manga are converted to anime and the same holds true in reverse. If an anime series becomes popular, you can bet that it will have manga spin offs since they tend to be easier and cheaper to produce.
Some of the first manga titles to reach Crunchyroll included fan favorites such as Fairy Tale and Attack on Titan, but over the years, we’ve seen a massive growth in the number of manga that are available on the site. This is due to the amount of effort and dedication that Crunchyroll put into ensuring that the most popular manga is accessible online and through legal sources.
A huge motivating factor in releasing Crunchyroll’s manga program was the fact that it has traditionally been difficult in the west to attain legal copies of certain manga titles. Many fans were resorting to illegally downloading the manga out of pure necessity when they would have loved to have paid for their favorite titles.
Crunchyroll Manga Memberships
The most basic kind of membership if you’re just looking to read manga on Crunchyroll is the Fan membership, which only costs about five dollars per month, and this allows you to access Crunchyroll’s entire library without any limitations, and it also ensures that you don’t have to deal with ads.
However, you will only be able to view content on one device at a time when you subscribe to the Fan membership program. If you’d rather not be limited and you’d like your whole family to be able to enjoy your Crunchyroll subscription, you can also bump yourself up to the Mega Fan tier.
As a Mega Fan, you will have access to everything that you did as a Fan, but you will also be able to read manga and watch anime on four different devices at the same time. This is a great deal when you consider that it only costs twice as much as a fan membership, so you’re essentially getting access on two more devices for free.
You will also be able to view your favorite content offline when you have a Mega Fan membership, making it an excellent choice for long trips where you may not have full connectivity. The Mega Fan subscription can also be purchased a year at a time so that you can save about 16% on it.
How Do Content Creators Get Paid Through Crunchyroll Manga?
If you’re worried about your favorite publishers and authors getting paid for their hard work, then you shouldn’t be concerned. Crunchyroll manga has a partnership with all of the publishers that have their work on its site and it uses a revenue sharing model to ensure that they get their fair cut of the deal.
As you’d expect, this is based on the popularity of particular manga titles, which Crunchyroll has access to through its analytics. It’s also likely that Crunchyroll pays a licensing fee for each of the manga titles that it features in its online program, especially the ones that are already popular.
Is Certain Manga Unavailable on Crunchyroll Manga?
Unfortunately, it’s a simple fact of life that you won’t find everything available on Crunchyroll Manga because of publishing obligations and other issues. For example, some chapters may be exclusive to the physical books that they were published on, so all may not be available for a particular series.
Another issue that you may run into is the fact that a particular manga is unavailable in your region. This can either be due to censorship imposed by the country that you live in or the fact that there is no existing publishing agreement with a company in your country to distribute the manga.
However, it may be possible to access content that is region locked if you use a VPN. While this may be a bit of a grey area, it’s the single most effective way to access the manga that you want to see short of buying a plane ticket to a different country so that you can access the content.
Are There Any Competitors to Crunchyroll Manga?
Some users aren’t quite impressed with the rather unintuitive interface that Crunchyroll manga features, since it makes it rather difficult to find a series that you’re interested in. If you’re looking for something a little better than Crunchyroll manga, then you may want to check out MANGAPlus.
This is another fully legal alternative to Crunchyroll manga, and it allows you to find the titles that you’re looking for with relative ease. I’d recommend trying out both of these options to see which of them suits you best and which features the series that you like most.
