Title: MangaCamera
Platform: iOS
Cost: Free

Purists may scoff at a point-and-click way to ape the Japanese art form, but this free app makes rendering black-and-white scenes with drama and romance nearly foolproof. The app includes thirty-two backgrounds, most of them with manga-style captions or actions suggested, taking your photo to entirely new places.

You can choose (or change) the background after capturing the image from within the app, but unfortunately you can’t access your camera roll or the front-facing camera. There are options for darker, normal and brighter image processing, and the finished product can be saved via integrated output to twitter and facebook as well as saving on the device itself. It’s a bit of easy artistry for your nipponophiles.

Manga Camera runs only on the later versions of iOS devices and only on the most recent generation of iPod touches. For Android users, there are a number of comparable free apps in the Play Store.

For more great apps to use with young people, check out the archive.