eBookRenta 17+

This is an extremely basic app. For as much money as I spend on my manga to read, I would love to have an app that has more functionality. Case in point: BOOK WALKER’s app, allows you to create and browse different bookshelves from one screen. You can also decide if you want to start a book/chapter from where you left off or from the beginning. The full title is also displayed with the number of the book/chapter and if you’ve already read it so you don’t lose your place. You can download your books directly from the app so you don’t have to go back to the main store to do so.

There are a LOT of things that can and should be better. The reason I am giving it 3 stars is because it works and I can read my books. But that’s all I can say about this app.

Please, developers, can you please update?

NOTE: This is a review purely based on what the app provides and not on Renta! as a service. I think their website is much better and as a publisher they have great releases.

I only use this app to have the manga available offline. It’s tedious to get your purchased manga onto the app since you have to log in to the Renta website in a browser on your device and go to your books and select ‘download’ from there, which will open the app and download what you’ve selected. The real tedium comes in because of the fact that Renta does releases by the chapter. This means you have to go back and forth between your browser and the app and individually download each chapter to the app. Each download also auto opens when it’s downloaded which isn’t bad when your downloading one thing but is annoying when you’re just trying to load up a bunch of purchases to the app.

Since other reviews were confused, to close out of a manga and go back to the bookshelf, you have to tap the middle of the screen and some options will appear at the bottom of the screen. You have to be careful not to tap too close to the edges of the screen or you’ll just turn the page.

Navigating through the app is a bit awkward/tedious, and downloading books to your bookshelf seems more complicated than needs to be. I’ve figured it out for the most part, but it’s definitely not smooth. Hell, I still can’t figure out how to exit out of reading a manga, I have to close the app completely to get back to my main screen. Can I make it work? Yep. Is it a pain? Also yep.