Positioning
Bessatsu (별책 / 別冊) borrows its structure from the supplement that came bundled with Japanese manga magazines. The main book is a free webzine: it crawls sites elsewhere for webtoons, manga, and animation, then introduces each work in detail with an image gallery and a link to where to watch or read it. It is what brings people in from search and brings them back. The bessatsu is an original visual series published once a week as “bessatsu vol.N”, made directly by the operator, and it is what earns the subscription revenue. A magazine changes its feature every issue while keeping its format, and the bessatsu works the same way: each issue shifts concept and art style but keeps the same shape, one cover plus eight main pages plus a closer, with the first two pages free.
Market and Problem
Conversation about manga and anime is everywhere on forums and social feeds, but it scrolls past within a day. AI visual content has multiplied at the same time, and the right to actually use any of it stays vague. Bessatsu answers both at once. Webzine articles accumulate as standalone pages that search engines index, and bessatsu images come with free use during the subscription period plus a proof of license stamped with the period it covers, so the right to use them can be demonstrated at any point. Every bessatsu is built from original characters and original settings only, which cuts the copyright risk off at the source.
Core Features
- Webzine (main book): three categories (webtoons, manga, animation), crawled and written up with an image gallery plus a where-to-watch link, and a tag hub per title
- Bessatsu viewer: an Instagram-style grid to scan a whole issue at a glance, tap a page and it opens in a modal you can swipe through (mobile swipe, desktop arrow keys), first two pages free with the rest behind the subscription, and a reverse-order archive for binge reading
- A single $3 monthly subscription: full access including back issues, and free use of the images with a proof of license issued per download
- Five locales (ko, en, ja, zh-cn, zh-tw), with comments and likes served by the shared BootSignal widget
Revenue Model
One Polar plan at $3 a month, with no annual option. Access to the whole archive and the image license are what keep a subscription alive. Inside the app WebView no payment element is rendered at all, per store policy, and readers are pointed to subscribing on the web instead.
Decision Notes
- Access control was designed without a server. Locked originals are protected by Storage security rules reading the subscription claim, and by transferring bytes for the client to render as a blob, rather than by a service that signs URLs. That removes the server and IAM to operate, at the cost of video arriving as one whole download instead of a stream. Sending most video to a YouTube link made that trade acceptable.
- “Free to use the images” is proved rather than promised. Every download issues a proof of license carrying the server timestamp and the subscription expiry, and the verification page is open to anyone. For a visitor without a subscription, that page doubles as the pitch.
- Every bessatsu uses original characters and original settings. Keeping derivative work based on existing titles out of a paid product is the line that cuts copyright risk, and homage goes no further than art style and genre.