More innovations in marketing Japanese manga and anime internationally. Yoshitoshi ABe, the writer/artist who has lent his soft-focus artwork to anime such as HAIBANE RANME and NIEA_SEVEN puts out self-published comics, or Doujinshi. (Indeed, HAIBANE RANME started out as a Doujinshi.) Doujinshi generally don't get commercially distributed in other countries, since exportation and translation would be prohibitive.
ABe has gotten around this by marketing his Doujinshi "Pochiyama at the Pharmacy" as an application for the iPhone and the iPod Touch. The app uses multilingual comics software to toggle between a Japanese-language version and an English version.
Only catch: You have to have an iPhone or an iPod Touch to view it; it's not viewable on an ordinary iPod or on a computer screen. If more creators go this route, fans might well boost sales for both devices.
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