Indie Manga Creators can Score Free Translations on NIUHI -by Komodo @Anime NYC 2025
Back to: Anime NYC Main Page (Aug 2025)
NIUHI is a new digital manga/comics platform for indie creators looking to publish their work. Just recently launched, you can discover, purchase, sell, and translate high-quality manga and comics from all over the world.
The biggest selling point for NIUHI however, is the language translation model. If you want, you can leave your manga open to fans for translation. It’s kind of like crowd sourcing; anyone who buys your manga can literally do a translation for you in their own language, which makes it possible for your manga to be read in less commonly translated languages like Tagalog, Vietnamese or perhaps even Romansch (a Swiss dialect).
It’s a super cool idea!
BubbleTap – Putting Translations to Work
This thing is also wild. As you’re reading a manga in your default language (let’s say in English), you can tap on the speech bubble and it will immediately swap the text to Japanese or some other language of your choosing (should a translation for it exist.) Tapping it again will change it back.
This is called BubbleTap, something NIUHI likens to a language learning feature. While that’s certainly a good use case, we think it can be more than that.
Imagine you’re with a Japanese friend who doesn’t speak much English? They’ll no longer wonder why you’re suddenly laughing – just show them the manga you’re reading but BubbleTap to Japanese and all of a sudden, they’ll be laughing along with you!
Developed for Indie Creators
Getting your manga or comic printed by a major publisher (think DC, Marvel and their Japanese counterparts for example) is next to impossible for most independent creators. But NIUHI makes it painless to reach a world-wide audience with a few simple steps:
- Apply as a creator (answer some questions, should take 2 minutes)
- Wait for a decision (NIUHI will contact you)
- Publish your work
As one creator put it:
“Working with NIUHI is like hiring a publishing team without the contracts. I uploaded messy drafts – they returned organized chapters, market insights, and even spotted a cultural reference that wouldn’t work overseas.”
Once you upload your work in your local language, NIUHI account managers will take care of the files for presentation, curation (they’ll do a once-over to catch any errors) and handling of translations (if you already have your own) to implement the BubbleTap language switching.
You can also allow (or not) fan translations of your manga by enabling “Community Translation.” It’s a great opportunity to reach markets you probably would never have been able to reach in the first place – with the help of super fans who love your work!
Creators Can Create… at their Own Pace
As you’re probably aware, big manga and comics studios have tight deadlines for their writers, artists and other staff, leading to high stress.
NIUHI is the opposite; it’s designed to allow creators to work at their own pace and to make their creation available when they think it’s ready. There are no restrictions on publication times or minimum requirements for sales volumes.
That’s a big deal.
Cause if I had a nickle for every time a good manga suddenly finished at chapter 18 with an awkward ending (because the publisher didn’t think it sold enough copies), I’d die a rich man. Thankfully this probably won’t be an issue with NIUHI since they probably won’t force a creator to end their manga due to “poor sales”. It’s a relief.
NIUHI takes care of the Nitty-gritty
There are many things happening behind the scenes that most creators don’t know/don’t care about, like dealing with different currencies/payments and legal things like rights management. And NIUHI takes care of much of it.
When it comes to prices, everything is set to default to USD (US Dollar). Specific prices can then be set per country depending on local values for what things cost there. The goal is of course, to help you maximize readership in each region. If anything, you can think of this type of sale as an bonus – extra money that you probably wouldn’t have made otherwise.
And in the case of sales rights, NIUHI can geoblock sales to certain countries if you’ve already made licensing agreements. An example would be how the original Macross rights were sold to Harmony Gold for the USA market back in the 80’s – the creator, knowing this, could request NIUHI to geoblock Macross for the USA but make available everywhere else in the world.
It’s super useful and helps avoid unnecessary complications (which did happen to the creators of Macross for DECADES – a truely unfortunate legal drama).
Using the NIUHI Platform is Great Value for Creators
The NIUHI platform is the brainchild of Komodo, the Japanese company that officially licenses and sells the Steam Deck and accessories for the Asian region (specifically Japan, South Korea, Hong Kong, and Taiwan). They also have a game publishing division and is a developer of original games (like Hatsune Miku) with over 100 titles on Steam and game consoles.
In our view, they’re not the kind of company to fumble around like most newbie start-ups. They bring a lot of real-world experience with a global audience from their work with indie games and Steam Deck – and are extending that to include indie manga creators (like they’ve done for indie game developers).
In our book, it makes for a stable platform – or at least a solid back-end supporting the platform. All they need now is to find people with great stories to tell so they can promote them the world over! Certainly worth supporting.
If you ever need to visit them, you’ll be happy to know they have offices in Tokyo (Japan), Seoul (South Korea) and Honolulu (Hawaii, USA).
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More Info: https://niuhi.app
Social Media: IG: niuhi_us
Related Links:
About Komodo: https://komodo.jp
Komodo Games: https://plaza-us.komodo.jp
Event: Anime NYC (Aug 2025)
