The ebook for the original volumes or the ebook for Complete Blend? Are you saying the ebook doesn’t match whatever the printed version does? If you’re just talking about the original version and it does match the printed version, I think that’s fair. It wouldn’t be right (in my opinion) to give exclusive better content to the digital version.
These each contain two volumes, yeah. As to the price, I had the same thought at first as well, but it’s not just the color pages. It’s also bigger paper size. Obviously that doesn’t matter for digital, but again I think there’s a general tendency not to give too much of a discount to the digital version, lest people stop buying the print version. Based on the dimensions, it’s about 1.4 the size of the original. 880 x 2 x 1.4 = 2,464. So it’s not really far off from the exact proportional cost.
In any case, do keep in mind that not every chapter has color pages, and when it does it’s (almost?) always the first two pages. The opening pages of each original volume (which are included in Complete Blend) are also in color, but those were in color in the original volumes anyway so it’s not really anything new. So without counting, I’d guess there’s about 30-40 color pages in Complete Blend volume 1 that weren’t color in the original print of the first two volumes. Since the page size doesn’t matter digitally, you’ll have to decide if it’s worth the extra cost for the color pages.
The original monthly manga release had color pages.
The original printed volumes…I don’t know if it had colored or grayscale pages. Having grayscale makes sense if you’re trying to keep the cost of the printing process down.
The original e-book had grayscale. Choosing grayscale over color doesn’t make sense to me, unless there is a file size limitation by e-book stores. (But if that was an issue, then it would apply to the Complete Blend release as well.)
If the original printed volumes were grayscale, I still think digital should be color. Don’t limit the e-book version because the print version went the cheaper route. (Just my personal opinion. I understand and can appreciate fairness arguments, even if I disagree.)
And now that I’ve downloaded the preview, here’s a side-by-side comparison of the two at 100% scale.
The pages do come over bigger in the new version, that’s cool!
And yeah, the original volumes were greyscale other than a few opening pages that were original to the volume (only in early volumes) and the first few pages of the first chapter in the volume. So even the pages that were originally color in the magazine are greyscale in the volume. That means the digital version is the same as the printed version, for better or worse.
That might be the main thing that pushes me to purchasing the Complete Blend. (When I have the money for it.) In the final screenshot I edited in above, you can see how bad the quality of the original images is (such as looking at the coffee, and at the tray Chino is holding).
Are there extras (such as artwork pages) at the end of the Complete Blend release? I think I recall mention previously (in this thread) that the Complete Blend page count was longer than the first two volumes combined.
Yep, I noticed how bad the coffee looked right away!
At the end of both volumes is a reproduction of the original front and back covers for the two volumes included. So nothing new, but a nice inclusion.
The first volume also shows a whole bunch of art prints that I think are from special releases of the original two volumes that some retailers do where they include a bonus. So stuff you could likely find online if you wanted, but again a nice inclusion.
The second volume doesn’t have anything like that, but it also has more regular content. While the first volume has 26 chapters (13 and 13), the second volume has 28 chapters (13, 14, and one chapter that was released in the magazine but wasn’t included in the original volume 3 for some reason). So that’s another good reason to get Complete Blend, since you’ll be able to read a chapter that’s probably hard to find elsewhere.
Turns out my previous order came with a large amount of bonus points which expire mid-February. These points bring the base shipping cost from 2300 yen down to 500 yen and I know nothing else I want is coming out before the points expire, so I ended up pre-ordering volume 10. I’ll post some pictures when I get it!
I just finished volume 10, which was great as always. Here’s the back cover, modeled after the Seven Rabbits Sins event from last year, which was also the final chapter of the volume. Chino makes for a good Envy.
The atogaki indicated that it’s going to be summer in the next volume. Up until now, each season of the year has been about one volume, though with the vacation arc taking up all of volume 8 and half of volume 9, I think things got shifted by a volume. It really seems like the mangaka is starting to hint towards an ending. I’ve suspected for a while that the series would end after three years in-world since that’s how long high school lasts in Japan. If the seasons hadn’t gotten shifted that would have been volume 12, but instead it’s looking more likely to be volume 13. However, considering that Complete Blend bundles two volumes into one, I wonder if the mangaka will push it to 14 somehow. Perhaps there will be one more volume for the season after graduation.
There also happens to be four characters that have appeared in the character intro pages but haven’t been on the featured character page / spine of the book: Rin, Yura, Eru, and Natsume. If there are only two more volumes, it would surely be Eru and Natsume. But if there ends up being 13 or 14 volumes in total, there are characters to use. (Of course there could be a repeat as some series do, but it hasn’t happened yet so it seems unlikely to me.)
Of course, I’d love to see the series go on all the way through to Chino’s graduation from high school. If nothing else, this volume has shown that Fuyu, Eru, and Natsume help fill out the cast nicely, and focusing on the three of them plus Chino, Maya and Megu would still be entertaining. But the series is already approaching the longest length Manga Time Kirara series, so I’m predicting it’ll end after 12-14 volumes.
Not certain I really understood the rules, but completing one of the games gave me enough info to bypass and download the images, so it all worked out!
The rules are “guess randomly until you reach the end of each room” because there’s no logic to the correct answers. You missed a ton of images by the way.
My final downloaded image (the one not shown above) is Fuyu, a character I haven’t seen yet as I’ve only read the first two volumes and watched the first season.
Did I miss any other images of the GochiUsa characters? (I wasn’t interested in the smartphone wallpaper ones.)
Ah, I had the gameplay right then. (I did get through all of them. Once I determined that each game has you pick one character’s answer, then the other, the last one I did you have to pick the same character’s answer twice…)
Maybe the ones to the left of the smartphone wallpaper ones on the download pages. I think those were the highest quality images. Plus a picture of Chino and Fuyu together. If you don’t manage to get them in time I’ll share them with you later.
All these new characters were introduced in volume 8 by the way. Now that all three of the new characters have seiyuu (the two characters featured in this event literally didn’t have announced seiyuu before this), hopefully season 4 of the anime is getting more likely. That season is where these characters would likely show up for the first time.
I’m not certain which this is. (I only see the thin background to the left, which I’m not interested in.)
Oh, thanks for the reminder! I didn’t download this one at first because I was expecting I’d be able to poke around and find one of Chino by herself. (Edit: Oh, I did get one of herself, actually.)
(Just the other day, I was telling myself I need to cull my network-attached storage of all the random official artworks I’ve downloaded over the decades…)
@ChristopherFritz There’s a bunch of Kirara manga half off on Amazon (and maybe elsewhere), but amazingly Complete Blend is also half off. If you wanted to get them now’s the time!
That sucks. Hopefully they put it on sale for you at some point… I suppose you could always buy the kindle version and remove the DRM so it works on Kobo.
I’m not even certain how to download a Kindle version.
I do have some manga that I bought via a digital comic site that Amazon bought. I was able to find the online reader by going a web search for “amazon view ebooks” (couldn’t figure out how to get to it from within Amazon.com…).
Perhaps I’ll go down the rabbit hole of trying to figure how to do this on Linux without a physical Kindle in 2022. While I prefer to buy digital books from sites that support EPUB over a proprietary format as a rule, if there was any way I could get these these at half price, and still have the end result of de-DRM’d copies, I’m willing to waste away some time doing some computery things =D
You can download your kindle purchases on this page. To remove the DRM via Calibre you have to have a device or app associated with your Amazon Japan account. This works really easily if you have a physical Kindle device (e.g. Paperwhite). Theoretically it works with other devices and even Kindle apps as well (at least, the Calibre de-DRM plugin lists other options), but I never got it to work for them.
I recommend testing it with some free manga before buying one.
Luckily I bought a digital manga on Amazon.co.jp a few years ago to test with.
Looks like downloading only works if I have a physical Kindle (which I don’t).
By the way, I do appreciate your help with this @seanblue. With everything not working out for me to be able to do this, it might give the impression otherwise!
