Waku Waku! Pop'n Manga (partially found online Japanese 4-koma manga; 2006-2012)

Screenshot taken from the Weekly Konami main page promoting the comic.

Status: Partially found

Comment: Very few strips were found.

"Waku Waku! Pop'n Manga" (わくわく! ポップンマンガ) was a Japanese 4-koma manga that was published weekly via the paid mobile site, KonamiNet DX. It was based on the Japanese rhythm game, Pop'n Music, a rather successful game from Konami's own BEMANI line of rhythm games. It ran from August 25th, 2006, to March 23rd, 2012, with a total of 934 episodes published.

History

On August 25th, 2006, publication first began for the manga on KonamiNet DX, a Japanese paid mobile site accessible via the i-mode, EZweb, and Yahoo! Keitai mobile services. The strips were also published via other paid mobile sites, Weekly Konami (formerly Digital Comics), and Weekly Konami Petit. KonamiNet DX was where the strips were first published, but Weekly Konami had back issues of comics, in case you missed them on KonamiNet.

The manga saw a renewal on July 6, 2007, when it became a full-color manga with sound effects. Also, instead of 2 strips per week, there were now 4 strips coming out each week.

After November 6, 2009, those using i-mode and Yahoo! Keitai had to register for Weekly Konami to read new strips. In addition, if you wanted to read past issues of the strips from KonamiNet DX or Weekly Konami Petit, you had to use points. (which were likely obtained via real-life currency) However, if you were using EZweb, you could continue to browse past issues of the manga without using points.

After October 27, 2011, Weekly Konami Petit was no longer in service. Instead of this app, you could have viewed the latest strips in image-only format via the Comic Corner on KonamiNet DX. Distribution of the issues via Weekly Konami continued.

On March 31st, 2012, Weekly Konami ended its service, with 934 Pop'n Manga strips published in total. However, you could still view a majority of the strips via KonamiNet DX. All of these strips were available right up until KonamiNet DX finally ended its service on April 30th, 2016.

Availability

Since the comics were only available via a paywall, almost all of the strips were completely lost after KonamiNet DX closed its doors. It is unlikely that anyone posted them externally, since doing so would have been illegal. There is a possibility that some people may have stored the strips on their phone's memory, but finding these saved copies would be near-impossible. It is likely that Konami has an internal archive of all these strips, but finding these would again, be near-impossible.

So, finding the strips posted via the now-defunct paid sites would be considered pretty challenging. However, there is one other place a small number of strips were published...

Pop'n Music Magazine

On December 12, 2008, KONAMI STYLE announced there would be a limited-supply publication of Pop'n Music Magazine, a Pop'n Music-related magazine that you could purchase from Konami starting December 24th. There were 5 issues made of the magazine, from December 24th, 2008, until April 24th, 2009. The first four issues could be ordered via a first-come, first-serve basis, where as the 5th issue, a special 32-page edition, could only be purchased via Konami Points.

Inside every issue of the magazine, there were a select few strips from "Waku Waku! Pop'n Manga" included. A few of these strips have been posted online from various people on the Web.

This is the only known physical publication of these comics.

References

(Links provided via the Wayback Machine)
Weekly Konami Petit
Weekly Konami's main site
Weekly Konami manga listings
Weekly Konami access page
Pop'n Music Magazine