Kodansha Ltd. has announced that it will launch a new manga distribution service exclusively in the United States named K Manga on May 10, 2023. The service will launch as a smartphone app on that day, and a full website will open at a later date. There will be approximately 400 manga titles at launch.

The service will include simulpub releases of 70 ongoing titles, with their chapters debuting on K Manga before on other platforms. The manga include:

  • EDENS ZERO
  • Blue Lock
  • Rent-A-Girlfriend
  • The Seven Deadly Sins: Four Knights of the Apocalypse
  • Don’t Toy with Me, Miss Nagatoro

Other catalog titles on the service will include The Seven Deadly Sins, Fire Force, and Chihayafuru. Kodansha stated that its editorial team is managing the service.

Kodansha said the K Manga service will offer a limited number of chapters for free, adding, “the amount of free manga that can be read per day is limited and varies from manga to manga.” The company did not mention if it will offer a way of payment to read more chapters.

Kodansha USA Publishing ended distribution of simulpub chapters of its manga titles on the Azuki digital manga service on January 16, 2023. The company removed previous simulpub chapters from Azuki on January 31, 2023. Early non-simulpub chapters of some of the series removed, as well as several of Kodansha’s non-simulpub series remain unaffected on the platform.

The company then removed a number of its manga titles from Crunchyroll on January 31, 2023. Kodansha had issued a statement to Crunchyroll, saying that its suspension of simulpub updates was due to “changes” in its simulpub distribution program.

Source: ANN

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