We recently had the opportunity to submit a written interview with Orange Inc. / emaqi’s CEO, Shoko Ugaki! Below, you will find the transcript of our interview with Ugaki-san!
Outerhaven: Hello Ugaki-san! First of all, we thank you for taking the time to answer our questions! Your time and attention are greatly appreciated!
Shoko Ugaki: Thank you very much for giving us this opportunity—it’s a pleasure to speak with you!
Outerhaven: First, if you wouldn’t mind, could you tell our readers a little bit about Orange Inc. and emaqi?
Shoko Ugaki: Orange Inc. is a Japan-based startup founded in 2021, with the mission of “Creating a world where everyone enjoys manga.”
We want to deliver every manga that moved and inspired us in every language. Manga covers an incredible range of themes and represents one of the purest forms of creative freedom. We aim to share that culture to readers around the world. We want to help create a world where people of all ages, from children to adults, can enjoy manga as part of everyday life. Our team is made up of professionals from different fields who share that vision.
To realize this goal, we built an in-house creative team called “Studio,” which specializes in manga localization. Experienced translators, letterers, and retouchers use our internally developed localization tools—built mainly around generative AI technology—to support the work. While we use technology to streamline parts of the complex localization process, our approach remains human-led and story-first, always respecting the world and tone of the original manga. Our aim is to achieve a level of scale and speed that was not possible under traditional workflows.
In May 2025, we launched emaqi, a manga app for North America that delivers new encounters and immersive reading experiences with manga. Through partnerships with a wide range of publishers in Japan and abroad, emaqi offers a broad selection of manga titles across all genres, helping readers discover an ever-expanding world of stories.
We also recognize that many people turn to pirated manga because officially translated versions are not available. We believe that increasing the number of authorized translations—and encouraging readers to choose them—will help ensure that appropriate royalties flow back to the original creators, leading to further growth of manga culture.
Outerhaven: There are a lot of manga subscription services out there. How do you feel emaqi stays competitive in an ever-growing market?
Shoko Ugaki: I see two major points of differentiation:
The first is our extensive catalog. Through partnerships with major U.S. publishers such as VIZ Media, Kodansha USA, and Yen Press, emaqi launched in May 2025 with about 13,000 volumes and 1,700 titles, making it one of the largest English-language manga apps in the world. Readers can enjoy these titles seamlessly within the app, and we plan to continue improving its features and usability.
The second is our localization capability. We obtain translation and publishing rights directly from Japanese publishers—both large and small—for works that have not yet been officially released in English. Our in-house team then localizes and publishes them for manga fans overseas. This October, for example, we’re adding eleven new titles to the platform and plan to keep releasing fresh stories in the coming months to continuously bring more content to our readers.
We are aware that many readers are interested in a subscription model, and this is also an option we may explore in the future.
Outerhaven: AI is becoming more prominent in the world today. From generating company statements to writing code, providing translation services, creating artwork, and almost anything else you can imagine, AI is still seen as a growing medium in its infant stages. What was the deciding factor that made you say ‘Now is the time to get on board?’
Shoko Ugaki: When we began thinking about bringing manga to readers around the world, we realized how few titles were actually available in translation. Even major publishers only release 30-40 translated volumes per month, meaning that more than 95% of Japanese manga have never been officially published in English. And for languages other than English, the number is even smaller.
Because manga localization is such a complex process, scaling up output through conventional methods alone is extremely difficult. That is why we started considering how we could use AI to improve efficiency.
Around 2020, we saw significant improvements in AI accuracy year after year and became convinced that it would eventually reach a practical level. Since we expected it would take time to build a usable system, we began development early—right after founding Orange in 2021 —and started building our own localization support tools with AI. About two years later, the emergence of ChatGPT and other LLMs brought another major leap forward in quality, and we incorporated them into our tools.
Throughout this process, we worked closely with translators, designers, and publishers to ensure that quality always came first.
Outerhaven: What was the toughest part about building the AI and getting it to work the way you wanted it to?
Shoko Ugaki: As we moved toward practical use of AI in localization, we realized that the actual workflow was far more complex than we had expected, with many detailed steps and a wide range of requirements..
The process of “translation and publishing” actually involves numerous detailed tasks beyond the translation itself.
For example, even within lettering, we must carefully adjust line breaks, optimize font sizes, and select typefaces that fit the tone of each work. And that’s just one part of the process. The translation phase itself involves multiple rounds of quality checks, Quality Assurance Procedures (QA), and strict adherence to style guides to ensure publication-level standards.
Addressing each of these steps with care and precision took a great deal of time—about three to four years to reach a truly practical level. Even now, there’s still a long list of areas to improve.
Manga is an incredibly diverse medium, not only in its wide range of genres but also in the unique writing styles and worldviews of each creator. It is impossible, at least today, for AI alone to reproduce that diversity completely.
Manga localization is such a delicate and creative craft that would need a whole other article to do it justice.
Outerhaven: When hiring your first batch of human translators and editors, how did you pitch the job to them? They might have been skeptical that the AI might be doing most of their work, so how were they assured that they were still in control?
Shoko Ugaki: The system we developed is a tool designed for translators and letterers, not a replacement for them. Its purpose is to help professionals work more efficiently, more quickly, and more creatively.
When hiring, we told candidates, “Please try the tool and let us know if there’s anything inconvenient or anything you’d like us to improve or add. We’ll respond and develop it as quickly as possible.”
We have a development system that incorporates their feedback directly, and the tool continues to improve every day thanks to their input.
Outerhaven: Where do you personally believe the line is when it comes to anime and manga? In other words, what is a boundary that AI shouldn’t cross?
Shoko Ugaki: From our discussions with manga creators and publishers in both Japan and the U.S., we’ve learned that most concerns about AI focus on AI-generated artwork—images that may have been trained on existing manga drawings without permission. What we do is completely different.
At Orange, AI is used strictly as a support tool for translation, never for illustration or visual creation. The language models we apply are fine-tuned from LLMs, not trained on any copyrighted manga art. Our system does not copy, replicate, or synthesize any panel layouts, character designs, or visual elements from existing works.
Our goal is to use technology to empower creators and publishers—to help them share their original stories, created with immense time and passion, with readers around the world more quickly and in more languages.
AI takes on the repetitive groundwork so that our translators, letterers, and editors can devote their skills to the parts that require true artistry: fine-tuning tone, preserving cultural nuance and humor, and maintaining continuity across each series.
This collaboration between human creativity and technological support is what allows us to produce reliable, high-quality translations that readers can trust.
Outerhaven: So far, what have been some of the more successful manga that Orange has translated?
Shoko Ugaki: Every title we localize is important to us, so rather than calling one a “success,” I’d like to share an example of a project where we were proud of our localization effort.
That would be “Squid Girl: The invader comes from the bottom of the sea!”. Our localization team often says that gag manga are the hardest to translate. This title is full of puns and wordplay related to seafood and squid, as well as expressions that rely on the unique sound and rhythm of Japanese. It also features many onomatopoeic expressions, and the protagonist’s personality evolves as the story goes on.
Finding ways to preserve the humor and timing while conveying the character’s charm was a major challenge. After many discussions, we created a version that captures the tone and spirit of the original, and I’m very proud of that result.
Outerhaven: What do you believe is a realistic goal regarding the number of manga volumes that the AI and human team can translate throughout a year, both in the short term and long term?
Shoko Ugaki: Our mid- to long-term goal is to reach a pace of about 500 volumes per month.
Looking ahead, we plan to support multiple languages beyond English as well. There’s still a lot of room to improve our tools, so we’ll continue working steadily and sincerely toward that goal.
Outerhaven: I read that you want emaqi to evolve past the standard digital bookstore. Are you able to share what your goals for the app are? Do you think it has a shot at competing with larger storefronts like BookWalker?
Shoko Ugaki: As I mentioned earlier, our ultimate vision is to create a world where countless Japanese manga that have never been translated can be read in people’s native languages around the world. To achieve this, we need to expand beyond English and handle translation and publishing ourselves at a much larger scale.
At the same time, affordability is very important—we want as many people as possible to have access to legal manga, and to make that possible, we are working to keep prices as low as possible by improving efficiency throughout our production process.
Outerhaven: Lastly, is there anything exciting that you can share that is on the horizon that readers of emaqi can look forward to?
Shoko Ugaki: Our Studio structure has been strengthened, and we can now release in-house-localized titles on a steady schedule. Many exciting works are lined up for release in the coming months, so please look forward to them. We want to deliver as many great manga as possible to readers.
As for the app itself, now that several months have passed since launch, we’ve received a lot of thoughtful feedback and ideas from our users, which have been truly invaluable. We’ll keep improving the UI/UX, adding new features, and making emaqi even more enjoyable. We’re grateful for all the support and hope readers will continue following our journey.
Outerhaven: Thank you very much for taking the time to talk with us and answer our questions! It was a pleasure to have this opportunity to speak with you!
Shoko Ugaki: Thank you as well for the opportunity. It was a pleasure to talk about our work at Orange and emaqi. We really hope your readers will enjoy exploring new manga with us.
You can check out emaqi along with all available titles through their official links:
- Official Website: https://emaqi.com/
- Twitter/X: https://x.com/emaqi_official
- Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/emaqi-official.bsky.social
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/emaqi_official/
To learn more about Orange Inc., check out their official website here: https://orange.inc/
