TOKYO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Jul 1, 2026--
emaqi, the digital cross-publisher manga app, today launched emaqi Premium, a monthly subscription service for readers in the United States and Canada. Priced at $6.99 USD / $9.99 CAD per month, the service provides access to over 400 manga series spanning more than 2,000 volumes from more than 10 publishers, including Kodansha USA Publishing, Shonengahosha Co., Ltd., and AKITASHOTEN Co., Ltd. Plus, VIZ Media/Shogakukan titles will be added in the coming weeks.
This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20260701595694/en/
The launch catalog ranges from fan-favorite series to approximately 100 series available exclusively on emaqi, many receiving their first official English-language release. By bringing officially licensed manga from across the industry to a single destination, emaqi Premium gives readers an incredibly seamless way to discover new stories while directly supporting the creators, publishers, and rights holders behind the manga they love.
The catalog will continue to expand, with approximately 100 new volumes expected to be added each month. This continuous growth ensures that readers will always find fresh, exciting content to dive into every single time they open the app.
“Orange was founded to help more licensed manga reach readers around the world, and distribution has always been a critical part of that mission,” said Shoko Ugaki, CEO and founder of Orange Inc. “ emaqi Premium contributes to a healthier manga ecosystem by creating more opportunities for licensed works to be discovered and supported by readers worldwide. This is an important next step in expanding access to those stories while helping connect rights holders with new audiences. We are deeply grateful to the publishers participating in the launch for their trust and collaboration, and we look forward to continuing to grow the catalog over time so fans can enjoy an even broader range of manga from across the industry.”
Featured series available through emaqi Premium include:
Kodansha USA Publishing, LLC
VIZ Media/Shogakukan: Coming soon
Shonengahosha Co., Ltd.
AKITASHOTEN Co., Ltd.
Futabasha Publishers Ltd.
COAMIX Inc.
Shinchosha Publishing Co., Ltd.
Earth Star Entertainment Co., Ltd.
Nihonbungeisha Co., Ltd.
Shogakukan Inc.
Yajima
Industry Partner Perspectives
Publishers participating in emaqiPremium shared their enthusiasm for expanding manga readership and making more series accessible to fans around the world.
“At VIZ, we're always looking for new ways to connect readers with great manga, and discoverability remains a key priority as the manga market continues to expand,” said Masaya Ueno, Sr. VP, Publishing Licensing and Strategic Initiatives, VIZ Media .“emaqi Premium offers an innovative way for fans to discover and explore a broader range of stories while supporting the creators and publishers behind them. We're pleased to support this launch and look forward to helping even more readers discover their next favorite series.”
“At Shonengahosha, we have great respect for the Orange team’s deep love for manga and their sincere, thoughtful approach to each work,” said Masahiro Ohno, Director, Media Division, Shonengahosha Co., Ltd. “That commitment gives us confidence in entrusting our series to them. While it is not always easy for us to reach overseas readers on our own, we are excited that, through emaqi Premium, we can bring a wider range of our catalog to more readers and help them discover stories that may become their next favorite series.”
“Manga artists pour their uncompromising passion and soul into every single work they create,” said Ryo Sumimoto, Advertisement Department Section Manager, AKITASHOTEN Co., Ltd. “For our authors, seeing their stories cross borders and reach a brand-new overseas audience is both a profound joy and a huge opportunity. Through emaqi Premium, we are truly excited to see these incredible works touch the lives of even more readers worldwide.”
Launch Promotion Campaign
To celebrate the launch of emaqi Premium, eligible new subscribers can begin their membership with a seven-day free trial.
In addition, emaqi is offering a limited-time emaqi Premium Referral Program through July 31 at 11:59 PM EDT. Users who invite friends to start an emaqi Premium trial will receive 3,000 reading coins per referral, while invited users who register using a referral code will receive a 30-day free trial. Each user may invite up to 10 friends per month.
Readers can also participate in a Read-to-Earn Coin Campaign, which rewards users for reading manga. During the campaign period, users who read five chapters of participating series can earn 50 coins per title across 21 eligible series, for a maximum of 1,050 coins. The promotion runs through July 31 at 11:59 PM EDT. Readers can downloademaqi on the App Store and Google Play to start a free trial of emaqi Premium, or visit emaqi.com to learn more about available series, publishers and current promotions.
About emaqi
emaqi is a digital cross-publisher manga platform that brings together officially licensed manga from a wide range of Japanese and international publishers for readers in the U.S. and Canada. Through a growing catalog spanning multiple genres, emaqi makes it easier for readers to discover, purchase and enjoy manga from across the industry in a single destination. The platform also features series that have never been officially translated into English, offering readers access to new stories alongside established fan favorites.
emaqi Launches Manga Subscription Service, Giving Readers Access to 400+ Series and 2,000+ Volumes from More than 10 Publishers
Mark Sherman has covered the Supreme Court for The Associated Press for 20 years during some of the most momentous decisions in history. He retired on Tuesday, the last day of the court term, and reflects on his experience. He has witnessed how by both happenstance and design the court has moved to the ideological right.
At the end of my first term covering the Supreme Court, Justice Stephen Breyer departed from his prepared remarks to offer a sharp courtroom rebuke of his conservative colleagues.
“It is not often in the law that so few have so quickly changed so much,” Breyer said, dissenting in a school integration case.
The moment was instructive to me as a new reporter on the Supreme Court beat. It encapsulated a term in which a new conservative majority had prevailed in one 5-4 case after another. But more than that, it was a very human reaction from a frustrated justice whose black robe was meant to convey a certain dull sobriety.
I would be on the lookout for such departures for the rest of my 20 years at the court.
In that time, almost by happenstance more than design, the court has marched to the ideological right. Unexpected vacancies, brute force political maneuvers and the rise of Donald Trump all combined to give the court a conservative supermajority, and with that change the direction of the country.
When I started covering the Supreme Court in 2006, the center of gravity had just shifted slightly to the right, from Sandra Day O’Connor to Anthony Kennedy.
Together they had helped preserve abortion rights in 1992, then been part of a five-justice majority to insure George W. Bush’s election in 2000 in Bush v. Gore.
Kennedy is lionized in some quarters for his opinions in favor of gay rights, including the landmark decision that declared same-sex marriage a constitutional right. In different settings, it’s his majority opinion in Citizens United that comes in for high praise, which enabled a flood of independent spending in political campaigns.
But a larger change was afoot. It started when Antonin Scalia died suddenly of a heart attack, in February 2016.
Liberals salivated at the prospect of a court that might pivot left, rolling back gun rights and reimposing campaign finance limits that had recently been overturned.
Certainly abortion and affirmative action would be safe, as Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg assured me when we spoke that summer.
Sitting across from me in her court office filled with modern art and mementos, Ginsburg seemed confident that the next occupant of the White House would be a woman, Democrat Hillary Clinton. The next president, “whoever she may be,” Ginsburg said, might get to fill three vacancies, not just Scalia’s seat. At least two other justices in their 80s or nearing that milestone might retire, herself included.
I broke the spell. What if Clinton were to lose, I asked. “I don’t want to think about that possibility, but if it should be, then everything is up for grabs,” she said.
Ginsburg was more right than wrong. She was incorrect about the outcome. Clinton lost the election, in part because of conservative voters’ worries about the future of the Supreme Court.
Senator Mitch McConnell, the Majority Leader at the time, had maneuvered to keep Scalia’s seat open until after the election, even after Obama nominated the well-respected federal appeals court judge Merrick Garland, who had previously won broad bipartisan support.
But she nailed just about everything else. The next president, Donald Trump, did appoint three justices. And everything was on the table, including abortion and affirmative action.
Instead of writing about a new liberal court majority, one on which more moderate justices like Breyer and Elena Kagan would play decisive roles, I have reported on the triumph of the conservative legal project, decades in the making, and to the great satisfaction of Republicans who wanted to reverse liberal rulings from previous decades.
It has become commonplace for justices to time their retirements so that they can be replaced by someone with the same judicial philosophy.
Ginsburg, having decided to remain on the court, died less than two months before the 2020 election and her deathbed wish that her seat not be filled before then was ignored.
The last two justices who retired, Anthony Kennedy, appointed by Ronald Reagan and Stephen Breyer, appointed by Bill Clinton, were replaced by people who once served as their law clerks.
It’s not a criticism of Brett Kavanaugh and Ketanji Brown Jackson, each with a sterling legal resume. Instead, it’s telling that the effort to coax a justice into retirement might be more likely to succeed if a former clerk is in the running for the seat.
The country accepts that the direction of the court turns not just on who the president is, but the late-in-life decisions of the justices themselves.
There are no Trump judges or Obama judges, only an independent judiciary, Chief Justice John Roberts told me several years ago after I asked whether he’d have any comment on President Donald Trump’s criticism of an “Obama judge.”
Roberts was right in one respect. Judges, justices included, don’t vote robotically in favor of the president who appointed them. In just one example, two Trump-appointed justices voted against the president’s unilateral, global tariffs, for which Trump criticized them in harsh, personal terms.
But Trump clearly was right, too. In this era, presidents nominate justices because their records show they can be counted on.
Since 2010, the conservative justices all have been appointed by Republican presidents. The liberals, by Democrats. The consistent message from both sides is that too much is at stake to risk a selection mistake.
One of the advantages of zealously keeping cameras from the courtroom is how little known most justices are. Some of that has changed as seven of the nine justices have written or are writing books which they then go on tour to promote. They have collectively earned millions of dollars.
It’s remarkable how unobtrusively justices used to move around town. It was not uncommon to run into Ginsburg and her family at a movie or a play, see Thomas making his way to and from Mass most mornings, bump into Kagan at a supermarket or get in line behind Sotomayor at a weekend farmer’s market on Capitol Hill.
The justices drove themselves to work most days. Scalia once got a traffic ticket for a minor fender-bender on his way into work.
Early in my time in Washington, I recall walking past the court and seeing a Volkswagen with New Hampshire plates parked on Maryland Avenue. The dry cleaning lying in the back erased any doubt about whose car it was. “Souter,” the label said, as in Justice David Souter of New Hampshire.
Security concerns have grown exponentially over the years. By the time Kavanaugh joined the court, security was much tighter. Federal agents were stationed outside Kavanaugh's house in suburban Maryland when a would-be attacker armed with a pistol, knife and zip ties showed up there late one night in 2022 and eventually pleaded guilty to trying to assassinate the justice.
Until the COVID-19 pandemic, I felt strongly that the world, as it were, was waiting for my assessment of what had happened in the courtroom on any given morning. I was among a handful of reporters who hurried downstairs after arguments ended to bat out a first take on where the court appeared to be headed in its biggest cases.
News organizations regularly asked for live access to big arguments and the response was always, No. Then the pandemic shut down the world and institutions scrambled to figure out how to cope. For the court, that meant remote argument sessions, with no choice but to allow the public to listen in, live.
That experiment produced the occasional embarrassing moment, including an audible and unexplained toilet flush. But mostly it worked, and Americans could hear the court in action. Even when the justices returned to the courtroom in 2021, the livestream remained.
Selfishly, my coverage feels less vital because anyone who cares can listen and assess what is being said. Decisions post quickly to the court's website. No one is hanging on my words.
The growth of emergency appeals also has changed covering the court, and not for the better. In years past, I could know from a glance at the calendar when I’d be very busy. But emergency appeals can pop up any time (and did with alarming frequency during Trump’s second term) and decisions on those appeals also could come at any time, during the regular workday or even after midnight.
FILE - Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is interviewed by Associated Press writer Mark Sherman in her chambers in Washington, Aug. 3, 2010. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon, File)
Interns run to deliver documents to the media after a Supreme Court ruling outside the Supreme Court on Capitol Hill, Tuesday, June 30, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)
A group prays outside of the Supreme Court ahead of the court's ruling on whether transgender girls and women can play on school athletic teams, Tuesday, June 30, 2026, on Capitol Hill in Washington. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)
The Supreme Court is seen as the Justices release opinions, in Washington, Monday, June 29, 2026. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)
Mark Sherman poses for a photograph outside of the Supreme Court Tuesday, June 30, 2026, on the last day of the Court term on Capitol Hill, Tuesday, June 30, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)
