Crowdsourced Advice Creates E-Manga

New title from Bandai’s Yomban online publishing site offers classic content with a contemporary twist

Bandai Visual Co.’s “Yomban” site publishes original manga, novels and essays in mini e-book form. At any given time there are over a dozen available to read for free on the site.

While titles span genres, their latest release is a riff on the classic young woman’s magazine and manners manual—a manga called “Ready lady’s how to.” This 25 page comic tells the story of two young women looking for love, making mistakes, following advice, and inventing new strategies along the way. Bandai presumes this tale will be not only entertaining but also informative to its target audience of 20 and 30-something female readers.

To content, however, is created in part by teaming up with the popular survey site Goo Ranking. Goo posts daily questionnaires and responses that span topics from travel to anime, pets to fashion. Serious (flu-related) and fun (dating tips) Goo rankings are posted on countless blogs in Japan.

Bandai’s “Ready lady’s how to” is based on practical advice gleaned from Goo Ranking research, which is user-generated, and aims to provide not only practical advice, but popular advice gleaned from the masses.

Trend Impact: Crowdsourcing of advice is a popular web concept, but Yomban is unique in aggregating the tips and creating a mass media products (such as manga) to deliver the information in a new way.

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Bandai Visual Co.

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