INKR — Comics, Manga, Webtoons +12

I had manga rock for a couple years and deleted it about 3 years ago. I loved manga rock and recently I wanted to see if it was still in the app store. When I looked for it I had learned that Manga Rock had turned into Inkr. I had just thought they changed the name and the way it looked but when I started to read a few manga i had on manga rock they start to ask for a subscription and passes. I was so disappointed to discover this. I know the payment for the subscription is only $4.99 but I know my parents they wouldn’t pay for something like this. I tried the trail and I was so happy to be able to read manga for free but recently it finished so now I have to use passes. The passes aren’t very reasonable. The way you get ink is very easy but you usually get like 10 for an ad and 80 for a challenge. For a day pass it’s 500 ink, JUST FOR A DAY. So you can only read these blocked chapters for a day and it’s not really fair. For 3 days it’s 1500 and for a week it’s 3500. I only had this app for about 2 weeks, the first week I tried getting ink for the passes and the second week I decided to use the trail which lasted me a whole week. Even with this much time of having the app I only have 910 ink, barely enough for 3 days. I’m just very disappointed in how they remade the app.

I generally like the service. The collection of works includes stuff that differs from other similar services that collect from different publishers, including Kodansha. Translation quality wildly varies, though. Inkr might want to consider retranslating a lot of older comics, because they bring down the overall impression. I do appreciate that the newer ones have vastly improved translations and the ability to rate the quality. I also like that I can access the more mature rated content from the app. Some services restrict that to only web browser access.

My problem might be isolated to the current version, but everything loads so slowly. UI responses to taps have delays. And it constantly freezes, so I keep having to restart the app. I’ve tried rebooting, deleting the app and reinstalling, but it’s the same. Do some regression testing? Add another server? Incompatibility with something in an iOS update? Other similar apps I use aren’t this slow, so it’s not my internet connection. Anyway, good luck Inkr team.

For background, if it matters, I used to use Manga Rock and I’m currently a paying Inkr subscriber. I hope these quality control issues are addressed. I’d hate to have to cancel.

Great ideas with the ink to read for “free” and a reasonable subscription price and offering. If it worked. The app slows, freezes and crashes fairly often (iPad pro on latest update), sometimes less than a minute after fully rebooting the iPad and launching the app. Many systems are incomplete or non functional like “sales”. The tagline is “100% off” but that just means you can temporarily read the comic, not add those chapters to read later when you have time. On the contrary, 99% off means you can get all the chapters for the comic, permanently, for free or near to it. Is it sad when I want the sales to be LESS discounted?

Other failures are simple technical things like chapter downloads for later or offline reading hanging very frequently and requiring staring at the download bars or the ipad will shutoff the screen to save battery. This isn’t hard for the dev to circumvent, my ebook reader does it.

On a content note, many titles are dropped but still heavily recommended or promoted. 5 times now I have received a notification or list of recommended titles with a comic marked as “complete” with 20 chapters when the manhua has over 400. Other popular titles are marked as “ongoing” but have received 5 chapters in the last 6 months. Once again, the manhua has hundreds not translated on the INKR app but a quick google and there they are in English.