Manga Meeya Two Pages Mode

Manga Meeya

For years I’ve used CDisplay, but when I meeted Manga Meeya at the mydailymanga a month ago. I now use Mangameeya comic reader, manga reading tool instead. I now explain why, in this very short review.

Extreme fast even while browsing into archives. The pictures are decoded seamless. Additionally you can specify, optionally, a cache for instead load. Instant I said and instant it is. The cache is very small. I think it’s only round 5% max of the total size of images listenend. You may specify a custom path for the cache and delete the cache whenever you like with or without mangameeya.

• No installation required
• Customize anything, menu’s, short-cuts, view …
• Thumbnails mode
  You can even zoom, to adjust the size.
• Japanese Support (Right to Left reading)
• Explore mode having thumbnails
• Animation flip (optional)
• Caches archives in rar and optionally cache to HDD
• NO Yellow reduction
• Reads rar, zip, cbz, cbr
  Recursively, which means it reads a zip into a zip, a rar into a zip or whatever …

I recommend this program to anyone reading comics on their PC having Windows. It’s so extreme fast, I didn’t even know it could be that fast. It’s also small and clean.

CD Display two pages mode

CD Display

I believe this program is the one of the oldest manga view tools. I would do a good guess when I say development was in 2001, but it works fine on all windows so far. CD Display homepage is at Geocities.

The thumbnails mode isn’t nicely done and is very slow for large archives. Using a T7200 dual processor, 2GB RAM, I’m afraid to open up an archive in thumbnail mode when it’s over 60MB. It takes a minute of two, if it even reach the end of the archive. In the case right, it fails to list all images. However, I’ve used the program for nearly 4 years! The layout is clean and easy to use.

Comical Reader Two Pages Mode

Comical Reader

Is Windows not your operation system. You search a even nicer lay-out, decent speed (around the same speed as CD Display)? Then you probably stumble upon Comical Reader. The homepage Comical Reader is also hosted at sourceforge and so open source.

The thumbnails on the right are ok, but you can’t remove them. Also, Comical Reader can’t open non archived files. Which made them third place in my Top 5. Because this means you can not open a jpg. Instead you need to compress any images you want to view into zip, rar or comic book (cbz, cbr) format.

Comic Rack Two Pages Mode

Comic Rack

Comic Rack is the slowest loader and biggest Manga Reading Tool I’ve seen so far. Though slow loading, browsing the archives is fast. No complaints about that.

Comic Rack nicely integrate the thumbnails of the current archive as you click the screen. Exploring the folders is also possible, but it’s slow in discovering the Comic Books (archives). Though having an explorer is rare.

It’s based on .NET (therefor bit slowly and Windows only). OpenGL is used for interface which gives you that soft touch and smooth expression. The first ever and only of my top5 which starts up and checks internet! (Probably for updates, but without an warning)

Pressing the “Minimal User Interface (F9)” will hide any unnecessary component as for example the menu and status bars.

Quivi Main

Quivi

Quivi is a straight on looking Manga Reading Tool. It does what it has too, nothing more, nothing less. Quivi is still hard in development which is found at Quivi Homepage at Sourceforge (so it’s open source).

It handles archives very slow, there appears no file cache so it seems to extract each file individual. For solid archives it’s waiting for 2-3 sec on a 7200 dual processor 2GB RAM. However way better than windows image viewer. Poorly it does not remember settings automatically like ‘fit height’. So you need to select it and save the settings.

I won’t recommend this program. Slow speeds in archive and no two display mode.

• Installation optional (zip avaible)
• Customize view and windows (eg. Files in screeny)
• NO Thumbnails mode
• NO Japanese Support (Right to Left reading)
  Single Display of images
• Explorer mode, a window ‘files’ list all files as a list as it nicely do with archives
• NO Animations
• NO Cache
• NO Yellow reduction
• Reads rar, zip, cbz, cbr

* Quivi is a Manga Reading Tool. This post is a part of my Top 5 Manga Reading Tools post.
Having Quivi at position 5 for slow speed and no customization at all. (Being in the top 5 however is still good )

Updated: 22 September 2008, informed by the author’s comment, see first comment. There is an zip avaible which doesn’t need any installation. He also mention you can save the settings. I’ve modified the small review. It’s always neat to find developpers still alive.

CD Display two pages mode

Reading manga’s is an required hobby for any anime fan. Anime’s are mostly an product of an succesful manga series. Now, we know there exists scanlators, which are the anime fansubbers but then for manga. They scan in, optimize the picture, do neccesary translations and put the files up in their distro.

As the distro files are all images compressed into an archive such as zip or rar, you do need to extract them before viewing. This won’t give you only unnecessary files which apparently is inconvenient but fragments the HDD a lot. Also, there is no need when you use a Manga View Tool, also known as Comic Readers. The extensions CBZ and CBR are equivalent to (win)ZIP and (win)RAR. You can rename them if you have too. The cb stands for Comic Book, thus CBZ is Comic Book Zip(ped) and CBR Comic Book Rar(red).

There exists a lot of free Manga View Tools or Comic readers which can directly read zip, rar. Some have support for more than these common archives… Let us summarize a few in the coming week. Yes, the post becomes a bit like a filler post, but well, swell… We save the best for last, so we start at 5.