Cartoonizing photo app Mo Man Xiang Jiis banging up the U.S. app store charts, and pretty much all the others, in spite of the fact that it’s only in Chinese. Once they overcome these linguistic difficulties, reviewers seem to love the app no matter where they’re from. The operative word here, is "seems."
The app, made by China’s Hightalk Software, is easy enough to use, so long as you’re a trial-and-error kind of person, get lucky on your first try, or happen to speak Mandarin. It’s like Instagram, except the filters are cartoon renderings that seamlessly integrate with a cartoonized version of whoever’s face you just photographed.
A report published yesterday in The Next Web showed the app, which translates as “Magic Camera App,” according to the blog, ranked number one in China, number two in Australia, and number six in the United States, based on AppsFire data.
It’s hard to tell where the reviewers are from, but there’s something sweet about seeing so many people struggle to use the app in their somewhat common language of English:
Arvin Yuwono wrote: This Application is very nice and cool, like it very much, please fix the save function and please release English version
Erlyn Linus wrote: Cute! I dont understand the writing even the langguage..but its really cute apps 4 me...recomended by friend ^_^
Ratchanaon Khunprom wrote: Funnily nice Your app became popular in my country, so, at least, English please! We want 英语!
The general consensus is that users seems to love the app, but that they want it in English (or, presumably their native language), and they want to be able to download the images before they share them.
It’s hard to say for sure without a translator around, but something tells me downloading the image just might already be available, if only we could read what the heck was going on, instead of poking around at images like chickens poking at feed.
Not everyone is convinced of the apps popularity, though. In The Next Web report AppsFire cofounder Ouriel Ohayon posited that the rapid rise of the app’s popularity might be attributable to shady marketing practices.