BOOK WALKER - 人気の漫画や小説が続々登場

I use Bookwalker for most of my manga and light novels but the "feature" where you have to either use the web browser or change your system language to access the Japanese store is frustrating. You used to be able to switch between them freely. It doesn't take long to switch your system language, and if you're reading Japanese books it's probably not too big of a deal to have it in Japanese permanently, but it's just an unnesseary step that makes the app slightly more hostile and gives benefit to any competition. For the developer responder, having to swtich system language or operate outside of the app to use the app is not a fix, it's a hack. Please fix the issue.

Before, you were able buy the Japanese version of mangas and books in the app, but now they’ve made it complex. If you want the Japanese version in the app, you will need to change your device language setting to Japanese. Otherwise, you will need to use a browser and go to the Japanese store for Bookwalker. I don’t know why they made it more inconvenient to purchase the Japanese version. Could it not just be a simple option in app to default to a certain version of the store? Previously, I would overlook the poor UI, slow load times, and crashes because this app allowed easy purchases of the Japanese versions, but now I would not recommend it. Until they bring back the ease of purchasing the Japanese version in app, I will just buy physical copies or look somewhere else. It’s strange how they would make it harder for people to buy their products… Some good things is that it has a large category of mangas/books to buy. They also give you previews (like the first couple of page) so you can get an idea if it will be something you’d like. I don’t really get the bookshelf part of the app because it is easier to just view your library and organize it by series, title, or author. Reading is easy, plus you can zoom (useful if there is small text or using smaller devices). Searching and bookmarking is simple too.

I’ve used this app to purchase light novels and manga in Japanese for years. It used to be possible to select the Japanese language store even with the UI set to US English. However as of current version, the app automatically switches between Global and Japanese-language stores based on the device UI language. As far as I can tell, there is no way to set the language within the app (the language selection on login only affected the login/account pages) Fortunately my existing purchases are still accessible within the app, and it’s fairly quick to switch iOS UI language nowadays so I can still purchase books in Japanese with some extra steps. But it does get me worried about future access. I hope this isn’t a precursor to dropping access to Japanese language ebooks for those of us living outside of Japan.