Apparently, if you're a teenage girl or young woman living in Japan, you can't not know and like Ringo to Kedamono (translating into The Apple and the Beast).

Reportedly, it is a hot-selling comic with a rather unusual storyline, fitting somewhat in the romance category and including two young androgynous males. And just in case for one reason or another, running down to the closest book shop and stocking up with the latest stories doesn't sound right, there is now an alternative, which is downloading them directly onto the mobile phone.

This is said to help the genre reach beyond the female otome ('maidens'). "Women and girls in their teens, 20s, and 30s like BL for their portrayals of innocent love," says Toshiki Fujii, a manager in the cell-phone content division at Nagoya-based Media Do. "But now those who might have been coy about walking into a shop can find what they're looking for online."

This is one more proof to how everything is going mobile these days, from games or services that were formerly only available for PC to the recently added comic book business that is also adapting in the Internet era. Reportedly, throughout last year, Japanese consumers spent about $20 million to view manga on their handsets and today, manga accounts for half the books that publishers sell for mobile phones.

"Our sites sell a combined 10 million episodes every month," says Katsuyuki Kobayashi, a deputy general manager at NTT Solmare, which runs the Comic-I and Comic C'moA sites, Japan's biggest online stores for cell-phone comics.