#Did you know librika was also responsible for distributing manga on the PSP's PSN

[everydaydg]

That wierd time manga was on the 3DS eshop

Available only in Japan and France

Dokopon Choice

While looking for MH Stories on hshop (not gonna sugarcoat it, that was what I was doing)

I ran into something that caught my eye... a strange name Ive heard of every MH game on the platform so something was off when I saw a name I didnt recognize.

MH Flash... huh?

It coudnt be a game considering it was literarly 75MB and there were like 7 different volumes

looked it up and realised that was a manga... I thought it was going to be some sort of tie in bonus, like a series of 3D videos, because I never heard of anything like the 3DS having actual manga publications but...

No that wasnt the case actually, it was just a whole issue of Monster Hunter Flash

The menu did leave me asking some questions. it didnt look like something capcom themselves made, instead a platform that was made by a third party which lead to the question

"are there more of these?"

yes. there were.

And so I present to you one of the neatest things ive ever ran into while looking into the 3DS's catalogue

The French and Japanese eshop's selection of digital manga!

"どこぽんちょいす" - "Dokopon Choice”

Sadly its french equivalent had no such name holding everything together

No this is not homebrew, no this isnt a joke. This happened.

Where do I begin...

The 3DS has a neat history with ebooks

There were two services that provided ebooks on the system, these being: HONTO for 3DS and Dokodemo Honya-San. both exclusive to japan.

Honto had a more general ebook line up. no manga

Honya-San was kinda like that but you also had a whole lot of manga baby

So where does Dokopon Choises fit into this?

Well Dokopon Choise was the name for standalone releases of things found on Honya-San

Imagine it this way, in Honya-san, releases are treated like DLC

Through Dokopon its treated as its own app.

Purchases of Dokopon apps and Honya-San books are treated as separate so you could end up buying the same thing twice (its actually aknowledged on every dokopon release on the eshop, be careful that you dont buy the same thing twice by accident)

Both were managed by Librika, a digital book distribution company

That leads the question as to why I didnt make this post about Dokodemo Honya in general as that service has alot of things to talk about

Well Honya-San didnt make it out of japan... The only one that got out of japan was Dokopon Choise which is why I want to focus on it.

its an incredibly neat oddity for the system

Some day Ill have to do more propper research on HONTO for 3DS but for now lets focus on the french manga

So Japan makes sense but... France? why france of all places

Well from what ive read, apparently out of most countries in Europe. France had the largest audience for manga, which made something like this profitable.

Even then because of the small selection that made it over, it mostly feels like a small experiment more than anything

The french eshop had the following series:

Nisekoi

Professor Layton

Little Battlers Experience

Rock Lee (Manga spinoff)

Blue Exorcist

Monster Hunter Flash

Inazuma Eleven

Beyblade Metal Fusion

Beyblade Shogun Steel

List of series originally found on GBAtemp by user "Asia81"

I did go ahead and verify this list and indeed. this was everything that came out of this in france.

All of these with various amounts of volumes released. I believe the series with the most volumes on the service was that of beyblade metal fusion at a whopping 11 Volumes

What an odd bunch. France never got Dokodemo Honya san in any shape or form. only these series.

I wonder if the experiement worked out in any way.

Something I find wierd is that some of the ones here never got a Dokopon release in Japan. They most likely were stuck on Honya San

I sadly dont have any pricing information on these, there is alot I havent been able to find about the french releases... I hope some day more about these comes to light

So what about Japan? well to start, the selection was waaayy bigger

98 volumes of multiple series made it into the eshop. Thats quite a substancial increase.

(The following list is comprised (mostly) by the localised names of the series for the sake of making it easier to read. Romaji will be provided for some so they are easier to look up

and so you can see a few familiar names -w-

its also organized in order of release on the service)

The JP selection was:

Attack on Titan

Love's Reach

Magi

Detective Conan

Neon Genesis Evangelion

Screaming Lessons

DRAGON BALL (colored version)

Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha ViVid

Monster Hunter Flash

FAIRY TAIL

Yozakura Quartet

Chihayafuru

HUNTERxHUNTER (colored version)

Sweet Devil Laugh - 甘い悪魔が笑う

Today, Our Love Begins (Kyō, Koi o Hajimemasu)

Grandpa Danger

Kuroko's Basketball

Kitchen Princess

Hiyokoi

My Little Monster (Tonari no Kaibutsu-kun)

Hell Girl

Hell Girl R

Thermae Romae

Stardust Wink

MONSTER HUNTER EPIC

Ro-Kyu-Bu!

Lotte's Toy!

Spice and Wolf

Ayakashi Hiougi - あやかし緋扇

The World God Only Knows

Monster Hunter Orage

1st grade, 5th group, Ikimono-gakari - 1年5組いきものがかり

Kings of My Love - Oresama Kingdom

Hozuki's Coolheadedness - Hōzuki no Reitetsu

Kenichi the Mightiest Disciple - Shijō Saikyō no Deshi Kenichi

Yamada-kun and the Seven Witches

BLACK BIRD

Space Brothers - Uchū Kyōdai

We Were There - Bokura ga Ita

Tonari No Atashi - 隣のあたし

Shugo Chara!

Kids on the Slope

Inazuma Eleven

Lucky☆Star

Super Mario-kun

Blood Lad

Fate/kaleid liner Prisma Illya

Sgt. Frog

Gakuen Basara

Nobunaga Concerto

Mushishi

Monster Hunter Play Manga

To Love-Ru (color version)

Prince & Hero - Ouji to Hero

Jimikoi

2.5D Boyfriend - 2.5 Jigen Kareshi

iShoujo - i・ショウジョ (color version)

I”s

Aoha Ride - Ao Haru Ride

Ane Doki

Ichigo 100% (color version)

Tokyo Ghoul Remastered Edition

Hatsukoi Limited.

Nisekoi

MY GOD thats alot more stuff than the french eshop

Something I would like to note is that these were sold as multi packs on the eshop. Tonari no Atashi has a Vol.1-10 pack which retailed at ¥4,400

The prices for the packs with multiple volumes are all over the place but they tend to float arround ¥1,800 to ¥5,125

Price depends on the amount of volumes offered and the series.

Jimikoi and 2.5D boyfriend were the cheapest of the entire lot at ¥400 and ¥880 respectively

And the most expensive release was in fact Tokyo Ghoul Remastered at a whopping ¥7,000 for Volume 1-14

Source

The list here did not include prices because most of these had multiple... multi packs like dragon ball.

Dragon Ball had like 1 pack for every arc and that would have been a pain to keep up with. maybe some other time I will go ahead and organize that info.

Something I found interesting is how the file size for the JP manga are considerably bigger than that of the french releases, most likely due to the french releases not being in multi packs.

The French releases were 75 MB a pop. No multi packs to my knowledge.

While the japanese releases often go over 200 MB. Most likely due to having most of the volumes in one singular download.

Keep in mind that the list here is only for what was on Dokopon Choise. Dokodemo Honya-San had even more things... but sadly due to the nature of it being a digital platform and its downloadable content not being shown on the eshop... I cant find more info on what was on the service...

Most I have is tweets of people talking about the service.

I found a tweet that showed how JOJO was on the service, ive seen tweets mentioning people reading nichijou on the service too

Photo by Twitter user: TOUTO_jojoDR

Original Tweet

I also sadly I cannot check on the application itself due the service shutting down and no clear archive of this stuff being out there. some day ill find a way to look more into this

Dokopon Choise got new releases from 2013 all the way to 2016.

Last release being Nisekoi in Japan.

I sadly dont have data on when they released for french audiences, I just have data on the JP releases.

All of the releases under Dokopon Choises were removed from the eshop in January 31, 2019

Source

and subsequently, Dokodemo Honya-San got removed in 2020

Users could buy manga up to February 28, 2020

And they could redownload their stuff up to July 30, 2020

Source

Luckily for anyone who purchased content on the 3DS, they had a chance to move their 3DS library to their web library.

Honya San wasnt only on 3DS, same as HONTO, it had a web client under the name Dokodemo Bookstore

To my knowledge it seems like users who still have the app, on their 3DS, with downloaded books can enjoy them just fine.

And despite Librika merging with MEDIA DO in 2019, it seems like Librika still operates their digital bookstore to this day on mobile platforms.

What an odd piece of nintendo history isnt it.

I thought I was going to make a short post for once but no I ended up having to do a bunch of research for this. Because if I didnt... who was going to talk about the damm book services on 3DS.

I think making the list of manga on the service was the worst part.

But yeah! I recommend giving these a shot! even if you dont understand japanese, its still really cool being able to show off manga on your 3DS outside of the homebrew manga reader.

Ima leave this off with two silly tweets about boobs being uncensored on the release of Dragon Ball on the platform lmao.

"What the Hell! The 3DS is increasingly becoming a wonderful piece of hardware that creates special fetishes in children!!"

That is going to live in my head rent free for a month LMAO