Like peanut butter and chocolate, two great tastes that are even better together will combine in March when Japan gets its very first manga e-reader app for the Nintendo Switch courtesy of publisher Shogakukan. That’s the good news. The bad news is, it’s only available in Japan for now, and it’s unclear if or when it will come to the US or other outside markets.
The announcement came from the social media of Tatsuki Waki, an editor for Shogakukan’s monthly Coro Coro Comic magazine (translation courtesy of Siliconera), who states that this will be the first manga reader released for the Nintendo Switch in Japan.
Here’s the original post:
国内史上初、ニンテンドースイッチで漫画が読める！！！3月13日ローンチです。#巻戻士 #コロコロ pic.twitter.com/Fwxa4HRux0February 5, 2025
Included in the post is an image of the manga Unmei no Makimodo Shi – All Great Achievements Require Time, by Fūta Kimura, which is published in Coro Coro Comic. This shows that the app is used by orienting the Switch vertically, rather than its usual horizontal position.
Those are just about all the details available right now, including how much of Shogakukan’s catalog of manga will be available, or what the app’s digital release schedule will be.
That said, it’s possible that the new Switch app will take its cues from Shogakukan’s recently launched Novelous app for iOS and Android, released on January 23, which uses AI-translation tools for English releases.
Like we said though, we don’t know if or when the Shogakukan’s Switch app will launch in the US, so it may be some time before American readers will need to worry about how the stories are translated to English.
The Shokugan Switch app is scheduled to go live in Japan on March 13.
Here’s our guide to everything we know about the Nintendo Switch 2.