Mangabu - a self made study plan using manga - would you use it?

Mangabu - a self made study plan using manga - would you use it? - Printable Version

+- kanji koohii FORUM (http://forum.koohii.com)
+-- Forum: Learning Japanese (http://forum.koohii.com/forum-4.html)
+--- Forum: Learning resources (http://forum.koohii.com/forum-9.html)
+--- Thread: Mangabu - a self made study plan using manga - would you use it? (/thread-12917.html)

Mangabu - a self made study plan using manga - would you use it? - Takez0 - 2015-08-02

Hey guys, first post but I've been a lurker for a while ever since going through RTK. I'm attempting to start an open source project called Mangabu which lets readers build their own lesson modules using popular manga.

It's in the planning stages, but I'm trying to get as much feedback as possible while building the prototype, so if you wouldn't mind stopping by: Mangabu.org
and checking out the video, that would be awesome.

The idea came from using manga as a study tool, attempting to keep me motivated and such.

Is it crap? Would you use this?

Please let me know, and thanks for checking it out!

Mangabu - a self made study plan using manga - would you use it? - Bokusenou - 2015-08-02

Just letting you know that parts of the site are unusable/overlap for me (using an android tablet). The sign up page won't even load. Maybe either make the site responsive or make a mobile version. The concept and video look nice though. If I was a beginner or an intermediate learner I would probably sign up.

Mangabu - a self made study plan using manga - would you use it? - Takez0 - 2015-08-02

Yeah it's strange that it's not working well on mobile. I'll have to figure that one out.
Thanks for the feedback. I'll get to work on optimizing the mobile site asap.

Mangabu - a self made study plan using manga - would you use it? - Zarxrax - 2015-08-02

Well, it looks cool, but the question is, how does creating the lesson modules work? If its a ton of work, how many people could really be expected to work on it? And are you getting rights to the manga? What happens a few months/years down the line when the publishers demand you take everything down?

Mangabu - a self made study plan using manga - would you use it? - Takez0 - 2015-08-02

Ideally Mangabu would be a stand alone program similar to photoshop, using scans which rely on an OCR like kanjitomo. Meaning that publishing study manga would come down to checking OCR translations to make sure they're accurate, and researching back info or contextual phrases to explain in chapter intros typed up by the author. It would be some effort but nothing extreme.

Rights to the manga fall into a grey zone under the free-use clause, as far as I can tell. I'm no copyright attorney, but as long as it's a free platform that significantly chances or re-purposes the content for educational ends, it's possible it would just fly under the radar. There's really no way to know for sure unless it was actually brought to court.

If it ever did get large enough to attract the scorn of publishers, well then it must have worked and we've helped people learn/enjoy Japnaese, and we've provided publishers with a tool to combat piracy if they decided to monetize it instead of suing us into oblivion.

Also, assuming it was popular enough, we could go the Crunchyroll route and begin legitimizing the content.

Mangabu - a self made study plan using manga - would you use it? - Takez0 - 2015-08-02

Also, I think I got the mobile site into at least a useable form. The images are kinda all over the place, but the video/survey should at least work.

Also, thanks to all those who took the time to check it out already! I've got some awesome feedback so far.

Mangabu - a self made study plan using manga - would you use it? - jcdietz03 - 2015-08-03

There's a list of recommended manga here: http://forum.koohii.com/showthread.php?tid=10869 along with degree of difficulty.

Quote:It would be some effort but nothing extreme.

Hmm, seems pretty extreme to me. You should record a video of yourself preparing three or four pages.

There's Japanese the Manga Way http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1880656906?psc=1&redirect=true&ref_=oh_aui_search_detailpage which is a textbook based on this concept.

Mangabu - a self made study plan using manga - would you use it? - Bokusenou - 2015-08-03

Nice job on the mobile site! One more tiny suggestion I might have is to possibly vary the kinds of manga screenshots you have on the site a bit more. When all the images are of angry-looking guys, I kind of have this "Women, stay out! This is only for super macho manga."-vibe. Even some series like Mushishi or Natsume Yuujinchou, or even any smiling manga character might help dispell that feeling. Could just be me though.
Of course, if you only plan on focusing on certain types of manga, feel free to ignore this.^-^

Mangabu - a self made study plan using manga - would you use it? - Takez0 - 2015-08-03

Bokusenou Wrote:Nice job on the mobile site! One more tiny suggestion I might have is to possibly vary the kinds of manga screenshots you have on the site a bit more. When all the images are of angry-looking guys, I kind of have this "Women, stay out! This is only for super macho manga."-vibe. Even some series like Mushishi or Natsume Yuujinchou, or even any smiling manga character might help dispell that feeling. Could just be me though.
Of course, if you only plan on focusing on certain types of manga, feel free to ignore this.^-^

Agreed! As it grows the site will get a lot of redesigns.

Ideally each manga would be ranked on difficulty. We don't want Japanese 101 students tackling vagabond right out of the gate.

The next major update should be a working reader with some (not all) of the mentioned functionality.

Mangabu - a self made study plan using manga - would you use it? - Stansfield123 - 2015-08-03

I've been using the fan translated manga for years (pretty much from day one), to help follow along the Manga I was reading.

It's a great way to study, but you can't use manga that doesn't have furigana. The readings are just too difficult to figure out (I guess you might be able to use an OCR of some kind, but then it all just gets way too involved).

And even with manga that does have furigana, having this format, with the reading and dictionary entry a click away would be a huge upgrade.

Mangabu - a self made study plan using manga - would you use it? - Takez0 - 2015-08-03

Having spent years studying and living in Japan, I understand the advantages to having to manually make anki cards, highlight vocab in workbooks and do things the "hard" way. Although what I would find is sitting down to actually study would be such a pain in the ass, despite the benefits in memorizing vocab, I would more often than not put it off.

Where as a program like anki is so simple. It sits in my dock and taunts me to do some flash cards. I would want mangabu to be similar, only that people are reading manga they're interested in and so they're more inclined to actually "study" if we can still call it that to move on in the story they're reading.

This was the experience I had reading Akira and Give My Regards To Blackjack, which both taught me a lot of vocab that was surprisingly functional in everyday conversations.

Mangabu - a self made study plan using manga - would you use it? - Takez0 - 2015-08-03

Stansfield123 Wrote:I've been using the fan translated manga for years (pretty much from day one), to help follow along the Manga I was reading.

It's a great way to study, but you can't use manga that doesn't have furigana. The readings are just too difficult to figure out (I guess you might be able to use an OCR of some kind, but then it all just gets way too involved).

And even with manga that does have furigana, having this format, with the reading and dictionary entry a click away would be a huge upgrade.

You should check out Kanjitomo, which is a pop up OCR reader that you can use with manga. I'd love to get that guy on the team Wink

Mangabu - a self made study plan using manga - would you use it? - Stansfield123 - 2015-08-04

Takez0 Wrote:You should check out Kanjitomo, which is a pop up OCR reader that you can use with manga. I'd love to get that guy on the team

I know about Kanjimoto, but I keep running into roadblocks using it. On my old laptop it was too much of a resource hog, and now that I have a new computer I can't get a hold of a copy (kanjimoto.net is down).

If anyone uploads it some place, and shares the link, it would be greatly appreciated.

Mangabu - a self made study plan using manga - would you use it? - Takez0 - 2015-08-04

To be honest I've only ever used a friend's version. I tried for hours to get it running in OSX and never figured it out.

Mangabu - a self made study plan using manga - would you use it? - Vempele - 2015-08-05

Stansfield123 Wrote:I know about Kanjimoto, but I keep running into roadblocks using it. On my old laptop it was too much of a resource hog, and now that I have a new computer I can't get a hold of a copy (kanjimoto.net is down).

Try spelling it right? http://kanjitomo.net is up.

Mangabu - a self made study plan using manga - would you use it? - cracky - 2015-08-06

I like the community notes idea, I might use it for those. A community translation with up votes and stuff could be useful for people too. I think this program with the annoying cursor changing website has something like that: http://sakuradite.com/

The export to anki option is useless out of the box for me because it's just dictionary definitions which is kind of throwing out the whole useful part of learning this way. It would be cool if community members could mark the edges of the panel and then when you export a word, it also saves an image of the panel which can be exported to the card too. I'd find it even more useful if it could also highlight the word in the image for recognition cards, or cloze delete it for production but just capturing the panel would be much more useful in my opinion.

Mangabu - a self made study plan using manga - would you use it? - Takez0 - 2015-08-06

cracky Wrote:I like the community notes idea, I might use it for those. A community translation with up votes and stuff could be useful for people too. I think this program with the annoying cursor changing website has something like that: http://sakuradite.com/

The export to anki option is useless out of the box for me because it's just dictionary definitions which is kind of throwing out the whole useful part of learning this way. It would be cool if community members could mark the edges of the panel and then when you export a word, it also saves an image of the panel which can be exported to the card too. I'd find it even more useful if it could also highlight the word in the image for recognition cards, or cloze delete it for production but just capturing the panel would be much more useful in my opinion.

I was toying with the idea of including the manga's text on each flashcard instead of a random dictionary entry, but I like your idea of capturing the whole manga panel at once even more, which acts much like the Core 2k/6k deck with images.

Great idea!

Mangabu - a self made study plan using manga - would you use it? - Stansfield123 - 2015-08-06

Vempele Wrote:Try spelling it right? http://kanjitomo.net is up.

Yeah, it wasn't up when I asked the question.

Mangabu - a self made study plan using manga - would you use it? - Takez0 - 2015-08-18

So for those of you that use digital manga readers, which one's do you like the best and why?

We're designing the UI and we want to have the most seamless reader available. UI that doesn't take up screen space (or any space for that matter) while you're reading is what we're aiming for.

Any input in this regard would be great too.

Thanks!

Mangabu - a self made study plan using manga - would you use it? - cracky - 2015-08-19

Takez0 Wrote:So for those of you that use digital manga readers, which one's do you like the best and why?

I usually just use Comicrack, both on my pc and tablet. It has a pretty heavy interface but it hides it while you're reading. I have CdisplayEx installed too for stuff I don't plan on adding to my library.