6 of the Best Places to Read Manga Online

I’m not sure anyone expected manga to be as well received in the West as it was. A niche Asian comic-style with a completely different way of storytelling and very Eastern art, I doubt anyone would have put money on how popular it would become here. If you’re new to the genre or need to feed that appetite, here are some of the best places to read manga online.

As any early adopter will tell you, things weren’t great in the beginning. Most manga was in Korean or Japanese and scanned from the originals. Things gradually improved with better translations and the emergence of eBooks and websites dedicated to offering legal access to manga. There are even specific apps to read mange and comic books. There has never been a better time to be a manga fan!

So here are those best places to read manga online.

Comic Walker

Comic Walker is regarded as one of the premier repositories of manga on the internet. Most of it is available for free and there are hundreds of titles to choose from. Titles render in the browser so there is no need for a PDF reader or other app to read your manga. The site works quickly, books load fast and the browser controls are intuitive and work well.

Weekly Shonen Jump

Weekly Shonen Jump, or WSJ for short, is the perfect way to find new titles and to discover what’s new in manga. It is a magazine that features a bunch of different manga titles and even runs series concurrently in each issue. This is the oldest source of manga information around right now and has been running for years.

It isn’t free but for a little over 50 cents an issue or $25.99 a year you get one of the best manga magazines out there. It is in English too and not translated which just adds to the appeal.

Crunchyroll

Crunchyroll is another solid entry into this list of the best places to read manga online. It is also one of the best places to legally access anime too. The site specializes in both mediums and does a good job with both. The selection of mange is huge with some primary titles and some lesser known ones. The website is easy to use, works fast and renders titles in the browser. Anime also plays in the browser seamlessly with a decent internet connection.

Crunchyroll isn’t free but is worth the investment if you love mange and/or anime. Access costs $6.95 a month after a 15 day free trial. That gets you access to everything and no ads.

Mangapanda

Mangapanda is a superb resource for manga but does come with one warning. It may not be safe for work or minors. The current ad on the home page is for a sex game with the C-bomb in the title. Aside from that, Mangapanda has hundreds of titles that cover everything from the earliest mange right up to present day.

The site renders the titles in the browser and loads them exceptionally quickly. Most are free as the site is ad-supported and are legitimate as far as I can tell.

MangaFox

MangaFox is very similar to Mangapanda. It offers hundreds of titles accessible from within the site but does not seem to cover the mainstream manga like these other sites. There are a lot of titles on here that I have never heard of so is very useful for finding new stuff to read.

The site works quickly and has both search and category selection. Titles render quickly, in the browser and everything works as it should. A great site to read manga online.

Comixology

Comixology is owned by Amazon and offers access to thousands of comic books, including manga. The selection is very good and includes lots of very popular titles and promises some of them on the same day as their Asian release. If you like to be the first to read, this is the place for you.

The website is clean and works well. There are dozens of categories and manga is prime among them. Some titles are free but the others you have to pay for by title. You have to buy or add to cart before getting to read anything but aside from that, the site works well.

There are hundreds of other websites out there to read manga online but these are some of the best. The selection covers the free, the collectable and the premium so there is something here for everyone.

Got any websites to share? Tell us about them below!