# MangasMaker

Aiolum story: https://aiolum.com/story/mangasmaker/ · added 2026-11-06 · updated 2026-11-06

**In short.** MangasMaker (AI manga page generator from written scene ideas, Japan): US$12.62 verified revenue all time, November 2026. Evidence grade A: disclosed by a company or a filing, or verified by a payment processor. Team: 1 founder listed; headcount not published. Launched November 2025; still running, revenue falling.

AI manga page generator from written scene ideas · Japan · AI-native · solo founder · still running, revenue falling · group: Photos and portraits

- Outcome: US$12.62 verified revenue all time, November 2026 (evidence grade of the headline number: A; headline in US dollars: 13)
- Launch: November 2025; months from launch to the outcome: 12
- Team: 1 founder listed; headcount not published
- Outside funding: None found in any source
- Main factor: One payment in the first month, then none
- Meters, 1 to 4: evidence strength 3, copyable pattern 3, capital needed 1
- Tags: AI-native, Solo founder, Bootstrapped, Running, B2C, Comics and manga

Links:

- Visit mangasmaker.com: https://mangasmaker.com/
- Verified revenue on TrustMRR: https://trustmrr.com/startup/mangasmaker

**The product.** A web app, in Japanese and English, that draws manga pages. The user creates a project, picks a style such as shounen, shoujo or seinen, and writes what happens in the scene. The AI returns a whole page with panel layout, artwork and lettering in about 30 seconds to a minute. A character library keeps recurring characters looking the same across pages, and finished works download as PNG pages or one PDF. The site says the output may be used commercially.

**Why it worked.** This page is about a very small verified result. Stripe data on TrustMRR shows US$12.62 in November 2025, the month the product started, and nothing in the eleven months since. The product is still live, with a free plan, a Pro plan at ¥2,000 a month and credit packs. It shows how far a working AI image product can be from paying customers.

Evidence grades: A = disclosed by a public company, a filing or a payment processor, or verified by one; B = two or more independent reports agree, or a journalist confirmed it; C = a founder claim that no one else verified; D = reported, not verified: one founder claim or a third-party estimate with no second source; E = no revenue figure found, so the headline is a non-money fact and the other facts carry their own grades; calc = computed on this page from graded facts.

## Summary

MangasMaker is a text-to-image product for manga: a tool in which a person writes a description, and an AI image model draws a picture from it. Here the picture is a full manga page with panel layout (the division of a comic page into separate frames, called コマ割り in Japanese) and lettering. Each page costs 5 credits. The free plan gives 15 credits a month (3 pages) with a watermark, and the Pro plan gives 140 credits a month (28 pages) without one.

TrustMRR lists Bashar Kellawi as the founder, Japan as the country and 29 November 2025 as the founding date. The site's terms, written under Japanese law, say they were first published on 27 November 2025. TrustMRR reads payments from the Stripe account through an API key (a password that lets one program read another service's data). Its profile, synced on 5 November 2026, shows US$12.62 in November 2025, US$12.62 in total, an MRR (monthly recurring revenue) of US$0 and no active subscription.

The money figure is grade A, read from a payment processor, and it is one of the smallest on this site. It is close to the price of one Pro month, but the profile does not say what was bought. The page also shows earlier companies that sold tools for drawing, animation and visual stories to people without art skills, and failed.

## Pricing

MangasMaker prices on 6 November 2026, from the site's pricing and commercial disclosure pages, read in the site's script files (grade C); US dollar values converted at ¥157.47 per US$1 (Federal Reserve H.10, 30 October 2026)

| Plan | Per month, billed yearly (US$) | Per month, billed monthly (US$) | Limit |
|---|---|---|---|
| Free | 0 | 0 | 15 credits a month (3 pages); public projects only; watermarked PNG and PDF downloads |
| Pro (¥2,000 a month) |  | 12.70 | 140 credits a month (28 pages); no watermark; private and unlisted projects; priority support |
| Starter Pack | 6.22 one-time |  | 50 credits (10 pages) for ¥980 |
| Popular Pack | 15.75 one-time |  | 150 credits (30 pages) for ¥2,480 |
| Pro Pack | 28.45 one-time |  | 300 credits (60 pages) for ¥4,480 |
| Bulk Pack | 81.29 one-time |  | 1,000 credits (200 pages) for ¥12,800 |

Prices are in Japanese yen, tax included. One manga page costs 5 credits, and failed generations are refunded automatically. Monthly plan credits do not roll over; purchased credit packs never expire. The pricing page also shows a plan for teams and companies with a custom credit volume and no published price. No yearly price is shown. In US dollars, a Pro page costs about US$0.45 and a page from the largest pack about US$0.41 (calculated).

## How much revenue does MangasMaker make? The numbers, graded

One Stripe payment total of US$12.62 in the first month, none since, for a live AI manga generator priced at ¥2,000 a month

| Fact | Value | Grade | Note | Sources |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Total revenue | US$12.62 | A | TrustMRR, all time and last 12 months, both US$12.62, from Stripe through an API key, synced 5 November 2026. | [1] |
| Revenue per month | US$12.62 in November 2025 | A | TrustMRR monthly revenue timeline. No other month is listed. | [1] |
| Revenue in the last 6 months and the last 30 days | US$0 | A | TrustMRR revenue table. Every day from 7 October to 5 November 2026 shows US$0. | [1] |
| MRR and active subscriptions, November 2026 | US$0; 0 active subscriptions | A | TrustMRR metric snapshot. | [1] |
| Months with no payment since the first one | 11 (December 2025 to October 2026) | calc | Calculated: from the monthly timeline, which lists only November 2025. | [1] |
| Pro price | ¥2,000 a month, tax included (about US$12.70) | C | Site script and commercial disclosure page. Calculated at ¥157.47 per US$1 (Federal Reserve H.10, 30 October 2026). The US$12.62 is close to one Pro month, but what was bought is not verified. | [3, 5, 7] |
| Credits per page | 5 credits; free plan 15 a month, Pro 140 a month | C | Site script, terms and TrustMRR profile text agree. | [2, 4, 1] |
| Founder | Bashar Kellawi | C | Named on the TrustMRR profile. The site's commercial disclosure says the seller's name and address are "Disclosed without delay upon request", as Japanese law permits for some sellers. | [1, 5] |
| Founding date | 29 November 2025 | C | Founder-provided TrustMRR field. The terms say "First published: November 27, 2025". | [1, 4] |
| Team | headcount not published | C | TrustMRR lists one founder. The site names nobody. No source suggests more than one person. | [1, 5] |
| Styles | shounen, shoujo, seinen and others, plus a yonkoma (four-panel) mode | C | Guide and FAQ pages and the app script. TrustMRR's profile text says six styles. | [6, 1] |
| Image resolution | up to 4K | C | FAQ page. | [6] |
| Commercial use | allowed on every plan | C | Terms: rights the company has in generated content belong to the user, but AI output "may not be protected by copyright" and the company cannot guarantee it does not infringe. | [4] |
| Traffic data on TrustMRR | not connected | A | Google Analytics, DataFast and Search Console are all marked not connected. TrustMRR's own user estimate field says 0. | [1] |
| Time from founding to the November 2026 figure | 12 months | calc | Calculated: November 2025 to November 2026. | [1] |

How to read this table: a grade A value comes from the Stripe data on the TrustMRR profile. A grade C value is the company's own website (its pages load their text by script, so the text was read from the site's script files) or the founder's own profile text. A "calc" value was computed on this page from the rows above it.

## When did MangasMaker launch, and how did it grow? Timeline

From the first terms of service to a live product with a free plan, a Pro plan and no paying subscription, in twelve months. Each entry carries its grade.

- **27 November 2025** (grade C [4]): Terms of service first published, under Japanese law with the Tokyo District Court as the court of first instance.
- **29 November 2025** (grade C [1]): Founding date on the TrustMRR profile.
- **November 2025** (grade A [1]): US$12.62 in Stripe payments, the only month with revenue so far.
- **November 2026** (grade C [3, 5]): The site sells Pro at ¥2,000 a month and four credit packs from ¥980, with a free plan of 3 pages a month.
- **5 November 2026** (grade A [1]): US$12.62 in total, US$0 MRR, no active subscription.

## Why did MangasMaker work?

### Write the scene, get the page

The user writes up to 2,000 characters about the scene, the characters and the action, in Japanese or English. The AI draws the whole page, panels, art and lettering, in one step. The guide says more detail gives better results and shows a weak prompt next to a good one.

### Credits per page

Every page costs 5 credits, whatever the plan. Free users get 3 pages a month with a watermark. Pro users pay ¥2,000 for 28 pages and can keep projects private. Credit packs sell extra pages without a subscription.

### Consistent characters

A character library stores a name and a look, and the app passes it with each page so that the same character looks the same across a story. This is the main problem of AI comics, where each new image can change a face or a costume.

### A public gallery

Free projects are public and appear in the site's gallery and in a sitemap of projects and creator profiles. No source shows how many visitors this brings, and TrustMRR shows no traffic data.

## How it was built

These details come from the company's own pages and its script files. They are grade C.

- Built with Lovable, an AI app builder: the home page carries an "Edit with Lovable" badge, and the script contains Lovable's editor code.
- Supabase for the database, login and server functions: the page's security policy allows only a Supabase project, and the app calls functions named generate-manga-page, enhance-prompt, analyze-story and render-story-pages.
- No source names the image model. The terms say the service may change "at our partners (AI models, payments)".
- Payments through Stripe, which TrustMRR reads. The commercial disclosure lists Visa, Mastercard, American Express and JCB cards.
- Inputs are checked automatically; requests refused under the content policy are refunded, and repeated ones block generation for 24 hours.

Sources: [2, 4, 5, 6, 1]

## Who tried this before MangasMaker, and why did they fail?

Four companies in our database of failed startups sold tools that let people without art or animation skills make pictures or visual stories. The values below are from that database and are not independently verified.

The failed startups come from our database of dead startups, retold here in our own words; Its entries are AI-assisted summaries of public sources, so they carry no evidence grade.

### Fuzzwich (2007 to 2010; funding US$0.02M; cause: Competition)

- Promise: Drag-and-drop animation for casual users with no animation skills.
- Why it died: It stayed on the desktop while users moved to phones, and Adobe had far more money.
- Record: 

### Lightwell (2019 to 2022; funding US$0.5M; cause: Competition)

- Promise: A no-code tool for interactive stories made by creative people.
- Why it died: Adobe and Canva covered most needs, and it did not have enough features to stand out.
- Record: 

### FiftyThree (2011 to 2019; funding US$45M; cause: Competition)

- Promise: The Paper app and Pencil stylus, a digital sketchbook for the iPad.
- Why it died: Apple's own Pencil and stronger apps such as Procreate took its market.
- Record: 

### Taleship (2018 to 2020; funding US$0; cause: No Market Need)

- Promise: A shared writing tool for novelists, like Google Docs for fiction.
- Why it died: It built many features, none of them very well, and few writers wanted to write together.
- Record: 

## What changed

Fuzzwich, Lightwell and FiftyThree each made drawing or visual stories easier, and each lost to larger companies with free or bundled tools. Taleship found that few writers wanted what it built. MangasMaker meets both problems: AI image tools are a crowded market, and it must find people who want to make manga and will pay for it.

The technology problem is much smaller now. An image model can draw a full page from text, so one person built the generator, the character library and the payment flow with an AI app builder. The market problem is unchanged. After twelve months the Stripe data shows US$12.62 and no subscription, so the product works but the sources show no evidence yet that customers want it enough to pay.

## Can one person copy MangasMaker now?

**Verdict: The product, yes. The result, not yet.**

A solo founder can build an AI manga generator with an app builder, a hosted database and an image model API in a short time, as MangasMaker shows. The verified result is US$12.62 in twelve months, so this page is an example of what to build, not of how to sell it.

1. Price by output unit (here one page = 5 credits), so each sale covers the model cost of what it buys.
2. Refund credits automatically when a generation fails or is refused, and say so on the pricing page.
3. Solve the main weakness of the format, here consistent characters across pages, before adding styles.
4. Connect the payment processor to a public revenue page from the first day, so progress is visible and checkable.

**What is still open.** A manga or comic tool for one paying group with a clear use, for example storyboards for advertising agencies, manga-style manuals for companies or comic pages for self-published books, sold with the channel that reaches that group.

## What could go wrong for MangasMaker?

- **Almost no revenue.** The verified total is US$12.62, all in November 2025, according to TrustMRR's Stripe data synced 5 November 2026. There has been no payment in the eleven months since, and no active subscription. Who paid, and whether the payer is linked to the founder, is not known.
- **Seller details withheld.** The commercial disclosure page under Japan's Act on Specified Commercial Transactions gives the seller, the operations manager and the address as "Disclosed without delay upon request" and lists only an email address. The founder's name comes from the TrustMRR profile alone.
- **Copyright of the output.** The site sells commercial use on every plan. Its own terms say AI-generated content "may not be protected by copyright" and that the company "can't guarantee it doesn't infringe someone else's rights", and they ask users to check that pages do not resemble existing works or characters.
- **Age of users.** The terms say "You must be 13 or older. Under 18, you need a parent's or guardian's consent." They ban sexual depictions of minors and of real people, and the FAQ says inputs are checked against a content policy. The site is not marketed to children in the pages read. The terms also show "Last updated: November 8, 2026", two days after the day they were read.
- **Model provider and competition.** No source names the image model, and the terms say the service may change when "our partners (AI models, payments)" change, so price and quality depend on an outside provider. ArcStory, an AI comic and manga maker on this site, was sold after more than 100,000 Google Play downloads; MangasMaker has no published user count.

## Sources

1. TrustMRR profile: MangasMaker (Stripe-verified revenue), synced 5 November 2026 — https://trustmrr.com/startup/mangasmaker.md (grade A). Read the markdown profile, downloaded 6 November 2026. Source for the monthly revenue, total, MRR, subscription count, founder, country and founding date. Profile text is founder-written (grade C).
2. MangasMaker home page and main script, read 6 November 2026 — https://mangasmaker.com/ (grade C). The page loads its text by script; read the page and its main script file as text. Source for the features, the plan constants, the credit packs, the Lovable badge and the Supabase security policy.
3. MangasMaker pricing page, read 6 November 2026 — https://mangasmaker.com/pricing (grade C). Read in full from the page's script file. Source for the plans, the team plan and the pricing questions.
4. MangasMaker terms of service, first published 27 November 2025 — https://mangasmaker.com/terms (grade C). Read in full from the page's script file. Source for the age rule, the rights in generated content, credits, the Pro plan and the governing law.
5. MangasMaker commercial disclosure (特定商取引法に基づく表記) — https://mangasmaker.com/commercial-disclosure (grade C). Read in full from the page's script file. Source for the tax-included prices, payment methods, refunds and the withheld seller details.
6. MangasMaker FAQ and guide pages — https://mangasmaker.com/faq (grade C). Read in full from the script files of the FAQ and the guide (https://mangasmaker.com/guide). Source for styles, resolution, languages, character library and the content-policy refunds.
7. Federal Reserve statistical release H.10, Foreign Exchange Rates, released 2 November 2026 — https://www.federalreserve.gov/releases/h10/current/default.htm (grade A). Read the yen row. ¥157.47 per US$1 on 30 October 2026, used for all dollar conversions.
8. Database of failed startups, local export — /method/#dead (grade C). Local export. AI-written summaries, not independently verified. Source for the failed predecessors.

Contact: aiolum@livyden.com. Run MangasMaker? Send corrections or a verified figure to aiolum@livyden.com (subject: Correction: MangasMaker).