Yomitan for Images? Alternative for Manga and Webtoons
Many learners search for “yomichan images” or “yomitan for manga” after hitting a common wall: dictionaries can’t read text baked into images. Manga and webtoons are images, so hover popups don’t fire.
Lexirise is a browser extension for Chrome, Firefox, and Safari that solves this with OCR overlays. It detects speech bubbles, extracts text, and adds interactive popups on top of the page. You keep reading flow while getting sentence and word help when needed.
• Yomitan reads selectable text on normal web pages. Manga/webtoons are images. • Lexirise is a browser extension that turns image text into clickable overlays. • Get readings, translations, and word saves without breaking reading flow.
Read Manga and Webtoons With Popups
Install the extension and try it on a series you already read. Works on supported websites.
Why Yomitan Doesn’t Work on Images
Yomitan (the active fork of Yomichan) shines on normal web pages. It hooks into text nodes and shows dictionary popups. Image text is different. The browser only sees pixels, not characters. No nodes, no popups.
Common workarounds include screenshot OCR or manual copy-paste into a translator. That breaks reading flow and loses panel context.
How Lexirise Works
The Lexirise browser extension adds a layer that understands the page visually:
- Detects panels and speech bubbles
- Runs OCR on each region
- Aligns extracted text to the image
- Adds click/hover targets for sentences and words
- Shows popups with readings, meanings, grammar, and save options
You read normally. When a line is tricky, tap it. For unfamiliar words, tap again for the inner breakdown. No tab-switching or copy-paste.
Yomitan vs Lexirise
| Features | Lexirise | Yomitan |
|---|---|---|
| Where It Works | ||
| Web page text (general sites) | Yes | |
| Images (manga, webtoons) | ||
| Vertical Japanese text | ||
| Reading Flow | ||
| Hover or click on bubbles | ||
| Sentence + word layers | ||
| Save words to review | Via external tools | |
| Languages | ||
| Japanese furigana / reading aid | ||
| Korean spacing + pronunciation hints | ||
| Chinese pinyin overlay | ||
| Extras | ||
| Grammar breakdowns | ||
| Stats and progress | ||
| Anki export | Manual | |
Important note
Yomitan stays great for normal websites with selectable text. Use it there. Switch to Lexirise on supported comics websites where the text lives inside images. See the supported list on the extension page.
Get Started
Download for Chrome
Supported websites (full list on the extension page):
Tips and Gotchas
- Overlay adds: clickable bubble regions, sentence popups, word popups, one‑click save.
- Scope: works only on supported comics websites (no generic web text, no CBZ uploads).
- Use cases: raw Japanese with furigana toggle, Korean webtoons with slang, Chinese manhua with pinyin/tones.
- Troubleshooting: stylized fonts may lower OCR accuracy; zoom one level. For small vertical text, increase site zoom or enable higher‑quality pages if available. Crop dead margins on screenshots before upload.
- FAQ bits: video subtitles on major platforms are supported; keep Yomitan for normal web pages; Lexirise exports words to Anki.
Try Lexirise on Your Current Series
Open your usual site, turn on the overlay, and read a chapter today.