As the world of Japanese animation, called anime, has seen a rise in popularity over the years, so too has its graphic novel counterpart — manga. Almost every anime usually starts as a manga before getting its own show. If you’re a fan of these but are running short on cash to pick up some new books, there are great manga sites online for reading your favorite manga digitally.
The sites listed below make it easy to find popular manga or discover lesser-known series that might interest you. The manga on these sites are put up through high-quality scans, allowing anyone access to them. It’s a great way to keep up on your favorite series.
So, here are the eight best manga sites you can check out now.
1. Crunchyroll
While most well-known for its anime streaming service, Crunchyroll also provides manga lovers access to manga series. There’s lots of free manga on the site, and there’s also an app available so you can read on the go too.
To read all the manga available, you can sign up for Crunchyroll Premium for $7.99/mo. This gives you access to both the anime and manga on the site. The site also provides what it calls “simulpubs,” where you can read manga at the same time it’s released in Japan.
Crunchyroll is great for an ad-free experience if it hosts the series you’re interested in.
2. Manga Kakalot
If you’re looking for a little more variety, Manga Kakalot has what you need and more. It hosts manga series spanning 40 different genres, and you can find all the popular series as well as plenty of lesser-known ones.
Each manga chapter is collected on one web page, so you can scroll to read the entirety of any chapter. You can also change a couple of options to make reading easier, such as choosing which image server to use (if one of them has an error, you can switch) and changing the margins around the pages. This site is one of the best overall for manga reading.
3. Manga Owl
There are over 100 genres of manga to browse on this site, so you’re likely to find whatever niche series you may be looking for. Especially if you’re a fan of romance manga, Manga Owl has a huge collection to look through, including extremely popular series like Naruto. There are also many more adult-oriented manga on this site, so keep that in mind.
If you register to join the site, you can create collections of your favorite manga and participate in discussions. It has an active community and plenty of content to keep you busy reading.
4. Manga Reborn
Since most manga needs to be translated from Japanese to reach an English audience, many smaller series never get translated or make their way out of Japan. The purpose of this site is to get these lesser-known series out to a larger audience, with the help of translators who volunteer to make them accessible to English readers.
There are plenty of free series on this site, or you can pay to read certain series if you wish. This manga site is an excellent service for all those who love manga to ensure that smaller creators and artists have the chance they deserve to get their work read.
5. Comic Walker
This is a big site in Japan for manga, and you can easily change the language to English to make your reading experience easy. You can find lots of popular series with the latest updates, and if you wish you can choose to buy more of a particular series for those that aren’t available entirely free.
Each page for the manga provides lots of information so you can find other similar series or other parts of the same series. Also, the scanned chapters are extremely high quality and easy to read.
6. Book Walker
Book Walker is a sister site to Comic Walker, where you can buy lots of manga. However, they also provide many free titles for you to read in e-book form. The free manga offerings get updated often, so you never know what you might find to read.
Book Walker also has steep discounts on many manga titles, so if you do want to own them, it’s a great place to buy manga as well. Once you download a title, you can read it in your browser with a suitable viewer and see all downloaded manga in your booklist. This site is one of the best ways to read free manga and all manga in general.
7. Kiss Manga
Kiss Manga is one of the original sources of free digital manga and thus has tons of content available. This manga site is excellent if there is a specific manga you have in mind to read and can search it up on the site. You can also see popular series that others are reading.
Each manga series has some info about it on their page, and you can read each chapter on one page, so you don’t need to refresh every time. The scans are high-quality, and there are many manga series translated to English that you may not be able to find otherwise.
8. Readm.org
Readm.org is a very cleanly formatted site, showing you the best and most popular manga series on the front page, as well as lots of genres to browse through. The scans of the series’ are high-quality and easy to read.
You can take part in the active community and discuss your current favorite manga with others. Take advantage of the advanced search, subscription alerts on new updates, and the ability to create or find collections of manga series.
Reading Manga Online
A lack of money shouldn’t keep you from the joys of reading manga, so try out some of the free manga sites listed above to find your favorites.
What are some of your favorite manga series? Let us know in the comments below.