A new digital comics website called Manga Samurai Style was recently launched in Japan. It’s an initiative by publishing companies Gakken Holdings and Gakken Publishing which will host digital manga.

There are other digital books services for the manga genre, such as Kodansha’s ‘D-morning’ which which we have written about previously. But what differentiates Manga Samurai Style from competitors is that content is provided in both Japanese and English.

The manga featured on the site are ‘Wa-fu’ (or ‘Japanese style’) comics, where many of the characters are samurai or ninja. So in addition to manga fans, this might be of interest to history buffs as well. The stories are written exclusively for the site by well-known authors, and all of the stories can be read for free.

The very first title to be released is ‘Nobunaga no Yabou’, which is created in collaboration with the hit historical simultion game to mark its 30th anniversary. Another unique manga title is ‘Stray Wolves’ which will be released on November 8th. This latter story will take in readers’ opinion to determine how the story will evolve. Manga Samurai Style has given a name to this type of user-participation in stories: ‘Join the Story’ or JOS. The readers can expect to see more such JOS stories on the site.

New episodes will be released every Friday and they can be enjoyed on the web as well as on mobile. It will be interesting to see if Manga Samurai Style can expand the existing fan base of Japanese manga or enhance Japanese creative culture . You can follow the most recent news from the site on their Facebook page.