# Manga Lore Guide — Japanese culture, explained

> Japanese culture, explained (iPhone/iPad app by Yuki Taguchi.)

- Source: https://appshunter.io/ios/app/manga-lore-guide/id6796933068 (this page in markdown: same URL + `.md`)
- Developer: [Yuki Taguchi](https://appshunter.io/developer/6796933070)
- Category: Books, Reference
- Price: Free with in-app purchases
- Age rating: 12+
- Requires: iOS 18.0 · 13 MB
- Languages: American English, French (France), Japanese, Brazilian Portuguese, European Spanish
- Released: 2026-09-06
- Data updated: 2026-09-28

## What is Manga Lore Guide?

Translators make hard calls under real constraints. This app adds back the context they had to cut.

■ ASK ABOUT ANY SCENE
Type a question the way you would say it. Answers come from a hand-written annotation database, with the source shown on every card.

■ SPOILER-SAFE BY DESIGN
Set how far you have read. Anything past that point stays hidden, so you can ask freely without ruining what is ahead. When you would rather see it anyway, one tap opens that single card.

■ REAL CUSTOM, OR INVENTED BY THE AUTHOR?
Every card carries a label: established fact, creator-confirmed, disputed, fan theory, author's invention, or lived experience. When the honest answer is "we do not know yet," the card says so instead of guessing.

■ 39 SERIES, 575 NOTES
Every series in the catalogue has notes to read today, and 36 of them have ten or more. On top of that, 89 cross-series basics cover the things that come up everywhere: honorifics, pronouns, school life, festivals, wordplay that cannot survive translation.

■ FREE TO START
Browse the full catalogue, read three headline notes per series, the fifteen most common cross-series basics, ask five questions a month, and request three series a month at no cost. Subscribe for ten questions and five series requests a month, and every note, basic and deep dive.

Manga Lore is an independent reference guide. It contains no manga artwork or text, and is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by any publisher or creator. All explanations are original writing.

Subscriptions renew automatically unless cancelled at least 24 hours before the end of the current period. Payment is charged to your Apple Account at confirmation of purchase. Manage or cancel in your Apple Account settings.

Terms of Use (EULA): https://manga-lore.com/terms.html
Privacy Policy: https://manga-lore.com/privacy.html

## Pricing and in-app purchases

Base price: Free.

**Subscriptions**

| Subscription | Price | Period |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Monthly | $4.99 | per month |
| Annual | $29.99 | per year |
| Founding Member | $19.99 | per year |

**One-time purchases**

| Purchase | Price | Type |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Support the writer | $2.99 | one-time |


## Is Manga Lore Guide safe?

Not enough ratings yet to assess Manga Lore Guide.

## Is Manga Lore Guide legit?

Manga Lore Guide has limited verification signals. The AppsHunter Legitimacy Score for Manga Lore Guide is 58 out of 100 points across 7 verification signals from App Store and developer data.


## Version history (last 5 releases)

### 1.5 — 2026-09-12

New series: Frieren: Beyond Journey's End, with six notes on the words the story is built from.

Four of them follow a single kanji. 魔 (ma) — the character shared by Demon King, magic and magical power — is an abbreviation of 魔羅, a transcription of the Sanskrit māra, and once meant "that which kills." The Demon King of Japanese is the king of the sixth heaven of the realm of desire, a figure from Buddhist scripture first attested in a collection of tales from around 1120. And mahou, the word for magic, already appears in a dictionary of the Muromachi period — where a Christian text of 1592 uses it for the teachings of other faiths.

The Japanese title carries a word the English one does not: sousou, the escorting of a body to the grave.

### 1.4 — 2026-09-11

New series: the Monogatari Series, with six notes on what its titles are doing. Four of them can be cut two ways — bakemono/gatari as well as bake/monogatari — because bakemono, nisemono, tsukimono and kizumono are all dictionary headwords.

Eight new entries in the basics, drawn from the Agency for Cultural Affairs' national survey: what Japanese speakers do when you do not speak Japanese, how they see English becoming the world's common language, and why a new word is tolerated before it is used.

Fixed: sources now show their link, so you can go and check them yourself. Answers to your questions render their bold text properly. The cross-series view no longer dead-ends for readers without a subscription. Startup is faster.

### 1.3 — 2026-09-10

Ten new entries in the basics, drawn from the Agency for Cultural Affairs' national survey on the Japanese language.

They are about the places where Japanese speakers themselves disagree. Only 10.5% pick the meaning the dictionary calls original for one common word. Six per cent say a well-known idiom the way the dictionaries record it. And asked whether keigo is still needed, the firmest yes comes from teenagers, not from their grandparents.

Also new: one note for Dr. Stone.

### 1.2 — 2026-09-09

New notes: 14 for the series, 3 for the basics.

Bleach, JoJo's Bizarre Adventure, Chihayafuru, Detective Conan and Dr. Stone. Several of them come from glossaries the rights holders publish only on their Japanese sites — pages the translated editions never carried.

The new basics: what 並 / 大 / 特 mean on a menu, the many ways Japanese says "and", and the two ways of saying "is not".

### 1.1 — 2026-09-08

New: the monthly plan now starts with a free week for new subscribers.

Fixed: the App Store page listed English only. The app has always been readable in English, Japanese, French, Spanish and Portuguese, and the listing now says so.

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*Data collected daily from the US App Store and indexed by [AppsHunter](https://appshunter.io/). User reviews are verbatim App Store reviews. Ratings, prices and chart positions refresh continuously; this snapshot is from 2026-09-28.*