Pick-up Voice for iOS

I kept forgetting this in the news posts, and then I thought it would be better if I actually read it first, which I kept forgetting, and so this went in circles for a couple of days but here we are!


As you may or may not know, an English version of the seiyuu magazine Pick-up Voice was released for iPhone/iPad a little while ago. Search for the Pick-up Voice Mobile in the app store/news stand and you should find it. The app itself is free, but you will need to pay a subscription fee or buy the individual issues to be able to read them.



My biggest problem with this app is actually the News Stand app itself. I had never used it before, but it annoys me to no end. When I first bought vol.1 I couldn't find it anywhere, so I had to choose download again. I didn't want to stream, so I downloaded the issue but if you close the app or your phone goes into standby mode the download stops and you'll have start over. Ugh. Eventually I managed to download it though. Next problem: if you switch into standby mode while reading the app closes and you'll have to manually select it again and manually browse to the page you were at again. Great (=＿=;;).

But if you open the current issue you are greeted by a several pages long Kaji Yuuki interview so most of my irritation just vanishes into thin air because he is so very cute somehow. I noticed that the English is a bit... weird at times. Not incomprehensible but there are definitely some odd sentences here and there and overall it has that "obviously translated from Japanese to English" feel. I don't know whether you know what I mean, but sometimes it is just so obvious what the source language was in translations, which results in a weird slightly unnatural translation. That said, everything is perfectly understandable, most of it is pretty good, and above everything else: I feel blessed for even having an English version.


Reading on an iPhone is slightly impractical but definitely possible. You'll have to zoom and scroll a bit to be able to read everything but it is not too bad. I imagine that it would be easier to read on an iPad. On the other had, I kind of wonder how it looks on an iPad. If I zoom a bit too much on my iPhone the image becomes pixilated pretty fast, so I was wondering how it looks on an iPad (If anyone has one and downloaded this, please let me know!) But once again: I feel blessed just because this exists.



I am really happy that they decided to release this, and I hope that they will continue to release more Issues in English. It really isn't that expensive, so I hope that everyone will support and buy this so that the publishers are encouraged to keep this up and maybe even release more stuff in a similar way!