What’s this you hear all the girls whispering about? Shojo manga?! Manga — FOR GIRLS?! Yes. In case you haven’t taken a walk to your local Borders or Barnes & Nobles, shojo manga is getting big in the US. The Borders by me has an entire section devoted to shojo manga. I’m talking ten feet long, 6 rows high of shelf space. All in English. All Manga. All Shojo. And now shojo manga lives on your iPhone with DRAMACON!

I was looking for the DEATH NOTE iPhone app (I’ll tell you about another day, soon) and stumbled upon a couple manga titles in the iPhone App Store. Strangely enough, you find them by searching ANIME, not MANGA.

I saw DRAMACON and a light bulb went off in my head. I remember seeing it on the shelf a few years ago published by TOKYOPOP. Intrigued (and the fact that Volume 1 was FREE), I downloaded it.

How do you read it? You go panel to panel with a finger swipe.

At first, I thought that swiping to move on to each panel would get old, but guess what? I realized that by isolating each panel, I found myself appreciating the artwork in each panel more than when I was presented with a full page at once.

By reading slower, I’m taking the time to look panel by panel instead of just reading thru each page as fast as I can. Not only that but I realized that by seeing only one panel at a time, each new panel was a fresh piece of story. You know as well as I do that even with a disciplined eye, when you open up a two page spread of manga, you subconsciously peek at the whole page. Well, peek no more!

DRAMACON is written and illustrated by Svetlana Chmakova. Yes, a non-Japanese Manga writer and artist, but take a look and you’ll see it’s up to Japanese standards! As the title suggests it’s drama at a (comic) con. If you had just dropped the print edition of this in front of me, I would have said “Oh great, why don’t we just go see GHOSTS OF GIRLFRIENDS PAST then! Then shoot me!”

But…

I’ve really gotten into this (shojo) manga. I’ve been reading it the past few days on the bus, almost missing my stop twice. Is it on the girly side? Of course. Is it a good story? Absolutely. I like it and I think you will too. Download the Volume 1, Part 1 (of 4) for FREE at the iTunes Store right here!

Each episode of DRAMACON after #1 will cost you 99 cents. That’s less than a slice of pizza and a lot more interesting. That means the whole series will cost you about $13. (14 episodes but remember #1 is FREE.) Or if you don’t have an iPhone (or hate iPhones cause you think that piece of crap G1 is cool — whatever), you can buy the old school paper edition of DRAMACON Ultimate Edition (it’s hardcover, too!) at Amazon.

Learn more about Svetlana Chmakova at her official site!