CIAYO Corp has unveiled an updated feature of its paid feature, CIAYO Comics Plus+, featuring over 100 comic creations to fill in the apps. This IDR 30,000-monthly subscription curates a selection of various countries’ best comics, including those made of Japan, China, and South Korea.
“Since launched in December 2019, we have exposed over 20 imported comic’s titles, with the highest traffic coming from South Korean romance genre comics. We’re not going to make any moves to replace local comics, but we are strengthening the efforts to inspire Indonesian comic creators being internationally competitive,” said Tonny Hanggoro, Head of Marketing, CIAYO Corp.
CIAYO Comics Plus+’ latest imported comic is Warlock from South Korea that was unveiled in early February 2020. “Now, it has been read 17K times and achieved 2,2K subscribers from across Indonesia. Previously in December 2019, we also introduced an imported romance comic from China, Midnight Love Affair, that has successfully achieved over 123K readers within two months. With these imported comics, we’re optimistic to create an even greater boost of successful collaboration between local and international comics creators,” added Tonny.
Following the latest feature update, CIAYO Corp has also released a new international comic collaboration, “Jonbray X Taka No Tsume: Invasi Gerombolan Cakar Elang”. Aligning to Japanese flash animation created by Ryo Ono, the story combines the heroes and villains of both the Eagle Talon anime series with comedic character of Jonbray’s Iyek Rempeyek that sees the Indonesian Jonbray’s characters travel to the United States in pursuit of finding a new career, only to come across the wicked Eagle Talon society to rule the world.
Tonny added, “Here, we involve numerous Indonesian cultures and identities to the story, such as motorbike ride-hailing and local-related comedy. Since launched in December, the ‘Jonbray X Taka No Tsume: Invasi Gerombolan Cakar Elang’ has achieved 36K readers with 2,7K subscribers. This marks a new milestone that with a touch of culture and qualified comedy content, local comics are growing to build a stronger global presence for the league,” said Tonny.
Indonesian culture and identity can be translated in various forms of story, however, two of the genres that are wildly popular for CIAYO Comic Plus+’ readers are romance and comedy. Tonny added, “The fact is also reflected in the total readership of Japanese and South Korean romantic-comedy genres, that reaches hundreds of thousand readers. Surprisingly, our readers for Indonesian romantic-comedy genres are way higher, reaching over 22 million readers for a comic.”
Two of the most successful local comic creations in CIAYO Comic apps are the romance Hanna & Mr Arrogant and comedy genre, Soul of Neko. Introduced in late 2018 Hanna & Mr Arrogant has now achieved 120K subscribers and read over 15 million times, while Soul of Neko has successfully collected 104K subscribers and read over 22 million times.
“We are committed to creating relevant and qualified local content to readers with high-level international standards. Hence, this year, we are planning to add around 100 imported comics titles, mostly from China and the US, which will serve up even more inspirations to our local comic creators. In the future, we will also add numerous South Korean and Japanese prominent comic characters to our story. But in the end, expanding local comics will always be our priority with the majority exclusive comics on CIAYO Comics are from local. We targeted to release over 300 new exclusive episodes,” Tonny concluded.
