SelfComic: Super Saiyan Photo

Review by eFreeware

Most photo editors treat your face as something to correct: smooth the skin, fix the light, straighten the horizon. Plenty of people would rather do the opposite and turn a plain selfie into something loud and ridiculous. That is the gap SelfComic: Super Saiyan Photo occupies, and it does not pretend otherwise.

The app comes from GameSmileStudio and sits in the Comics category on Google Play. It has been available since August 2019 and has passed 500,000 installs, with a 4.2 average from 2,374 ratings. It is free to download and carries ads, with no in-app purchases.

The audience this editor was built for

If you grew up on Japanese manga and anime and you like the idea of dropping yourself into that visual world, this is the sort of tool that makes sense. The developer frames it as a gift for manga and anime fans, and the whole feature set follows that line: you are not editing a photo so much as casting yourself as a warrior, a hero or something considerably more menacing.

The pitch is broad enough to cover a few moods. You can present yourself as a powerful fighter, a super saiyan or a god, and the developer also offers the darker option of a demon or a god of destruction, with the earth either protected or destroyed depending on which way you lean. That range is the point. It is a costume box rather than a retouching suite.

I would expect this to land best with people who already share photos in group chats and on social feeds and want something that reads instantly as a joke or a tribute. Anyone hoping for precise control over skin tones, exposure or composition is looking at the wrong tool, because the app is organized around characters, props and effects rather than photographic correction.

Dressing the part: hair, eyes, clothes and weapons

The core of the app is a set of collections you layer onto a photo. There are anime hairstyles, outfits and items, plus a separate set of eye options that includes anime-style eyes and a choice of eye colors such as blue, yellow, green or cyborg. You can try the hair, eyes and clothing associated with characters you already like, which is the fastest route to a recognizable result.

Weapons get their own collection. The developer lists a katana, the Z sword, a brave sword and Trunks' sword among the props you can add to a shot. These are the pieces that sell the transformation when a hairstyle alone is not enough.

The combination approach is what makes the editor flexible. A new hairstyle, a changed eye color and a sword in hand will read very differently from the same photo with only one of those applied, and you can keep adjusting until the picture looks the way you want.

Effects, emoji and manga framing

Beyond the costume pieces, there is an effect sticker collection built around energy and elemental flourishes. You can control energy, lightning and fire, and use special skills such as kamehameha. These are the layers that give a static portrait some implied motion, and they are the ones most likely to make a photo look like a panel pulled from a comic.

An anime emoji collection adds a lighter, sillier option for making a photo unique and humorous. Manga frames and overlays are included as well, which matters more than it might sound: a border or a speech-bubble-style overlay does a lot of the work of making a normal snapshot feel like part of a page.

Underneath all of that sits a basic photo editor with a text tool, so you can add captions on top of the character layers. There are filter effects for the photo itself, and you can bring an image in from your gallery or the camera. Finished pictures save back to your gallery, and can be shared to Facebook, Instagram and other social networks.

The most recent update, from June 2025, addressed bugs in sticker mode and with fonts. Placing stickers and wrangling text are the two jobs most likely to need a fix, and both have had attention.

What it costs you

What the app does carry is advertising. That is the trade you are making: the editing tools are available at no cost.

For an app you might open for a few minutes at a time to make one picture, that arrangement is easy enough to accept. The content rating is Everyone, which fits the playful framing of the whole thing.

There is nothing to unlock with a purchase, which keeps the decision simple.

How it compares with other photo editors

The obvious alternative is a general-purpose photo editor, the kind built for cropping, color correction and cleanup. Those tools are better at making a photograph look technically polished, and they will not hand you a katana or a lightning effect. If your goal is a clean portrait, a conventional editor does that job with more control.

A second comparison is a dedicated anime or manga creation app, where you draw characters from scratch rather than layering props over a photo of yourself. That route gives you far more freedom over the artwork but asks for drawing skill and time. SelfComic sits between the two: it starts from a real photo and pushes it toward a comic look with ready-made pieces.

There is also the social-media filter route, which is quick but limited to whatever a given platform offers on a given day. A standalone editor keeps your collection of hair, weapons, effects and frames in one place and lets you work on the same picture until it is right. For anyone who makes these edits regularly, that is the more useful setup.

A playful pick for anime fans who like to share

SelfComic is a free, ad-supported editor that does one thing with conviction: it turns your photos into anime warrior portraits using hairstyles, eye options, weapons, effect stickers, emoji and manga frames.

It suits anime and manga fans who want a fast, funny transformation to post for friends, and who are happy to work with a fixed set of character pieces rather than build something from scratch. It is not a retouching tool, and it is not a drawing app, and it does not need to be either.

If that sounds like the kind of edit you make for fun, the download costs nothing and the ads are the price of entry. Install it, pick a photo, and see how far the costume box takes you.

What's new in version 1.0.26

fix buges in sticker mode and font