Japanese manga animates Indian cell phones

A new service from Tata DoCoMo gives users the chance to download the Japanese cartoon phenomenon

By Mark Hiratsuka 8 January, 2010

Geobreeders – coming soon to a phone near you...if you’re in India, that is.

Tata DoCoMo has brought the best of Japanese cartoon culture to potentially hundreds of millions of Indians via the Tata DoCoMo mobile phone service. From today, phones using the Tata DoCoMo service have access to a selection of Japanese manga comics specially tailored for life on the small screen. A spot of technical wizardry even adds a little life with sound effects and pop-out speech bubbles.

Titles like Geobreeders, Aqua Planet Chronicle and Tamahagane can be downloaded in their English translations for just Rs 15 a pop, the equivalent of around US$0.30. There are no network charges for the data hit.

Should the manga toons not appeal to all, there’s a fallback in the shape of a selection of Marvel comics, including old faithfuls Spider-Man and the X-Men.

Given that the manga market is currently worth about ¥30 billion (US$323 million) annually, driven mainly by the 127-million-strong Japanese population, Tata DoCoMo will be hoping for big things from India’s 1 billion plus population.