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Written by maehara
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Wednesday, 03 September 2008 16:00 |
 While it's not perfect, it's becoming clear that Apple's App Store for the iPhone and iPod touch could well be an easy route to self-publishing - add your book or comic to a simple app that provides page-turning facilities, and you're all set. This idea hasn't escaped Yoshitoshi ABe, the man behind Haibane Renmei and other works, as his latest doujinshi manga has just appeared on the App Store...
Pochiyama, in case the title didn't already give it away, runs a pharmacy. She's not what you'd expect a pharmacist to be, though: for a start, she doesn't speak, instead "saying" anything she needs to say through written signs. Not because she can't speak, you understand - she just chooses not to. Hardly the ideal attitude for someone in charge of a store, and she just gets stranger from there. Unsurprisingly, the pharmacy isn't exactly doing well as a business - but Pochiyama has some ideas about how to turn things around, with the help of an unsuspecting customer...
First, let's get the technical stuff out of the way. The iPhone's screen is perfectly-sized to reproduce a printed page, so each page of ABe's manga is reproduced as a single screen on the handset. Tap or flick right to go forward a page (layout is in Japanese right-to-left style), flick left to go back a page; pinch to zoom in (although the app doesn't allow you to zoom too far). Text is displayed in either English or Japanese, depending on your handset's regional settings. It's dead simple to use - apart from the physical feel of the pages you're not losing anything over having bought the real manga.
...and with this being a doujinshi, the chances of getting hold of a real copy would be pretty remote. In case you're not familiar with doujinshi, an explanation: they're self-published works, often derivatives of other, commercial manga or anime, but sometimes (as is the case here) original works. They're typically created out of a combination of love for the artform and self-promotion - if you were looking for a career in the manga industry, having a few doujinshi to your name certainly wouldn't hurt. But the self-published nature of them means that print runs are rarely more than a few hundred, and copies are hard to find outside of major conventions like Comiket. The App Store breaks that limit, though: stick an electronic copy of your doujinshi on the App Store, and suddenly you have a potentially worldwide audience and an unlimited "print run".
But enough of the technology. Pochiyama is a slapstick comedy - the titular pharmacist generally hasn't a clue about life, and the ideas she comes up with (be it for improving her business or just making dinner) are the sort that leave you shaking your head in disbelief. Our un-named male lead finds himself somehow drawn into her strange little life, where he's split between trying to talk some sense into her, and wondering how he can get away from her as quickly as possible. It's a fun little story - or at least it seems to be, from what I can understand of it. While there is an English translation included with the app, it's of the quality that you would normally expect from the worst anime bootlegs - "Engrish" is too kind a word to describe it with - and making sense of what you're reading can be a battle at times.
On the plus side, the artwork is immediately noticeable as being ABe's, and it's very well-drawn - not too much detail to distract from the characters, yet very easy on the eyes. The translation quality is a real problem that really holds the idea back, though. The problem is that, with doujinshi being self-published, there's often not the language skills or money at the author's end to make sure that there's a proper, "professional" translation done, which perhaps explains why the vast majority of doujinshi on the App Store are Japanese-language only.
So, a verdict. Pochiyama at the Pharmacy is an interesting toe in the water, and a pointer as to what's possible with handsets like the iPhone, and if you can read Japanese well enough there's probably very little to complain about. The English translation is poor enough, though, that you'll want to think carefully before you tap that "Install" button.
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