Manga OCR

Manga OCR: Optical character recognition software for Japanese text, specializing in manga image processing.

Manga OCR is an optical character recognition tool designed specifically for Japanese manga and printed text. It uses a custom end-to-end model built with Transformers' Vision Encoder Decoder framework to recognize text in various scenarios. The software handles vertical and horizontal text, text with furigana, text overlaid on images, low quality images, and a wide variety of fonts. Unlike many OCR models, it supports multi-line text recognition in a single forward pass to process text bubbles at once. It is intended for readers and learners who want to extract Japanese text from manga and other printed media for use with dictionaries.

Manga OCR at a glance

Best for: Student
Runs on: Python, CLI, open source
Pricing: Free
Released: January 2022
Category: AI image tool
Website: github.com/kha-white/manga-ocr

Key features

Recognizes vertical and horizontal text
Processes text with furigana
Reads text overlaid on images
Handles low quality images
Processes multi-line text in a single pass
Supports clipboard and folder scanning modes
Provides a Python API

Use it for

Reading Japanese manga with a dictionary
Extracting text from screen captures
Processing printed Japanese text
Generating HTML overlays for manga

Alternatives to Manga OCR

Manga Translator UI — Provides a complete GUI pipeline with text detection, OCR, translation, and typesetting.
Manga Image Translator — Translates text in manga and images in one click.
Comic Translate — It offers AI-powered OCR, editing tools, and support for various file formats.
Koharu — Translates, edits, and exports manga locally on your machine.
BallonsTranslator — Translates manga automatically with layout and formatting support.
FigureLabs — Generates editable, publication-ready scientific illustrations and plots from text or sketches.

All Manga OCR alternatives