Hiki — Manga Price Tracker & Discovery Platform

The Problem#

Manga fans have no easy way to discover what's available at local bookstores. Products are scattered across multiple retailers with inconsistent naming, no genre filtering, and no way to compare prices or track stock changes.

Our Solution#

We built Hiki as a full-stack manga catalog and price tracker that aggregates products from multiple bookstores, enriches them with metadata from anime databases, and presents everything in a fast, filterable, multilingual interface.

Key Features#

Smart Product Aggregation#

Automated scrapers run daily, collecting product data from multiple bookstores — names, prices, discounts, stock status, and images. Change detection flags new arrivals, price drops, and stock changes so users never miss an update.

AI-Powered Metadata Enrichment#

Raw product names from bookstores are often noisy and inconsistent. Our enrichment pipeline orchestrates multiple APIs to resolve them:

• AniList — Primary source for scores, genres, tags, synopsis, and cover art
• Shikimori — Title translation for Cyrillic product names
• Jikan & Kitsu — Fallback metadata sources for edge cases

The system generates smart title variants, handles both Cyrillic and Latin characters, and resolves even the most mangled product names to their canonical manga entries.

Advanced Filtering#

Users can filter by 21 manga genres, 100+ tags, price range, discount status, stock availability, and source store. Full-text search works across product names in all supported languages.

Multilingual Interface#

The entire platform supports multiple languages — including genre names, tag translations, and UI elements — built with next-intl and locale-aware routing.

Technical Highlights#

Frontend#

• Next.js 15 with React 19 and App Router
• Neubrutalism design system — bold 2px borders, offset shadows, manga-inspired aesthetic with Lacquer and Pangolin fonts
• next-intl for full i18n with locale-aware routing
• shadcn/ui components customized with the Neubrutalism theme

Backend#

• FastAPI (Python) with async MongoDB via Motor
• aiohttp scrapers with rate limiting and exponential backoff
• Multi-API enrichment orchestrator resolving titles across 4 anime databases
• Google Cloud Scheduler for automated daily scrapes
• Cloud Armor with geo-restrictions and crawler allowlists

Infrastructure#

• Both frontend and backend deployed on Google Cloud Run
• MongoDB for flexible document storage with compound indexes
• Cloud Build for CD on push to main

Results#

Hiki gives manga fans a single place to discover, compare, and track every manga title available locally — something that didn't exist before. The platform handles hundreds of products with real-time price and stock tracking, becoming the go-to resource for manga readers in the region.