Archives for September 2006

ICv2 has a bit more detail on the Tokyopop no-longer-exclusives. After noting that three titles, Dragon Head, King City, and Heaven!!, will no longer be sold only online, they bring up one aspect I hadn’t heard before:

In addition, Tokyopop is also moving toward a preorder system for comic stores for the titles available as Web exclusives. “Please note that details are still being worked out,” Tokyopop publisher Mike Kiley told us, “but in early 07 we hope to provide stores the opportunity to purchase online exclusives during the same limited pre-order window offered to consumers.”

I’m no retailer, but it looks to me like Tokyopop would be cutting out Diamond, the middleman, which might be a smart move for them. It depends on the terms, but with the pre-orders, they will have a rough idea of how many copies to print, and because they have cut out the middleman, they make more money per book. Two questions loom: What sort of discount will they offer retailers? And will the online manga be returnable? No info yet, but as Mike Kiley says, the details are still being worked out.

Seven Seas announces light novel line. Lots of people got this press release, but I’m linking to MangaCast because their enthusiasm bubbles over so delightfully.

At Love Manga, David Taylor takes a break from his vacation to weigh in on the Tokyopop online exclusives and talk about a new manga slated for Rush, DramaQueen’s global BL anthology.

Simon Jones puts the FMA censorship kerfuffle into perspective.

I think rant fests such as the one pointed towards Viz (and the newspaper publishers of the Mohammed cartoons, and questions of the quality of the cartoons themselves) does a disservice to everyone by overlooking the larger, far more important question… what are the cultural conditions that necessitated these decisions in the first place? This is the underlying problem that should be confronted and discussed.

And then he goes on to explain the nobler purpose of pornography, which pushes the boundaries of acceptability, thus opening up broader horizons for creative expression. Which, he concludes, means that if you don’t like censored manga, you should buy his books.

At Yet Another Comics Blog, Dave Carter crunches more numbers and finds more evidence that Tokyopop releases more volume 1s and 2s per month than Viz. I understand his point, that Tokyopop seems to be flooding the market because they are bringing out more new series, while Viz is plodding along with volume 152 or whatever of Inu Yasha. But I’m curious as to why that is. Is Tokyopop licensing shorter series, or dropping series after a couple of volumes, or did all their series end around the same time, forcing them to start new ones all at once?

Two sites, two good reviews: Active Anime and Comic Book Bin both like volume 3 of Sugar Sugar Rune, even though the Active Anime reviewer hasn’t even read the first two volumes.

On a darker note, David Welsh has good things to say about Drifting Classroom, a manga I also really liked.

This kids-head-to-the-library-to-watch-anime article has some interesting comments on age-appropriateness from teen librarian Carrie Vale:

“I preview them before showing them,” says Vale. “I use the same guidelines for showing my films as for PG-13. It’s different culture so the mores are a little different.”

She also requires that kids be 13 and older to view the films.

and from a parent:

“It’s good that the library will do it for me so I don’t have to worry about what he’s seeing.”

Volume 11 of Naruto retains its hold on 27th place in the USA Today Booklist for the second week in a row, making three weeks in the top 30 for the plucky lad. Volume 9 of Fullmetal Alchemist slips from 103 to 123. Negima, volume 11, drops from 88 to 134. But hey, what’s this? Volume 11 of DN Angel at number 137, the first time that series has cracked the top 150.

It’s kind of interesting that there are four manga on the list this week. It’s also interesting that they are all later volumes of series. But what really impresses me is that so many series are selling well enough that they make it onto the Booklist at least once in a while. Every week there’s something different, which to me is much more indicative of Manga Creep than to see single titles make it to the top of the list.

PW Comics Week confirms that Tokyopop is backing off a bit on its online exclusives:

Tokyopop publisher Mike Kiley says three of the books, Dragon Head, King City and Heaven!!, will be removed from its web exclusives program, “based on suggestions from retailers whose opinions we value.”

There’s a little more there, about retailers and their reactions, but the one subject the Tokyopop people seem totally averse to mentioning is price. Without some sort of discount, or at the very least free shipping, the online exclusives are doomed to fail.

Meanwhile, Dave Carter does the math to explain why everyone thinks Tokyopop is flooding the market—but not Viz. The short answer: For the month he looked at, Tokyopop had a lot more volume 1s.

The Mainichi Daily News has an article on Shakespeare manga in the UK.

The Broccoli blog reports that the translations of the first volumes of Galaxy Angel II and Disgaea 2 are complete. I found this interesting:

Unfortunately Broccoli doesn’t have an English style guide when they make characters. Everything is first determined in katakana, then they sometimes make English spellings that are used for products (like trading cards), and some things don’t get English spellings at all. Let alone some words get multiple spellings. It’s because how things are spelled aren’t that important in Japan.

Manga Junkie finds another unlikely-to-be-licensed gem. This one is a 4-koma manga about a cat who is depicted as a woman part of the time:

Yeah, it’s moe, but there’s nothing morally disturbing (even if Hime is depicted as a human & calls her owner “nii-chan”), and the art is cute.

It’s too bad that the cover art isn’t that cute. It’ll draw the moe loving ota’s, but cat loving women like me wouldn’t pick it up by looking at the cover. There are cuter color images within the manga too (they’re not printed in color, but was originally in color), altho it’s more loli-tic.

Yaoi911 reviews Empty Heart, and the Honololu Star-Bulletin looks at R.O.D.

The local paper profiles manga artist Billy Martinez. But this makes me say “Aaargh!”:

Martinez said the defining characteristics of manga art are the unusually large eyes of the characters, the prevalence of so-called “speed lines” to connote action and emotional intensity, and a serial, soap-opera style of storytelling.

(Via Journalista.)

For this week’s Flipped, David Welsh interviews Ed Chavez of MangaCast. Ed waxes lyrical about conventions, compares Comiket to the human body, and tells us exactly what he thinks about the different manga publishers. Organic Broccoli, anyone?

Rivkah has a preview of volume 2 of Steady Beat. (Via The Beat.)

At Comics-and-more, Manga Monday takes a detour into anime country before taking on the biggest manga of them all, Naruto.

The Beat has the Harvey award winners, and it’s official: Buddha won the award for Best American Edition of Foreign Material.

Del Rey is giving away page proofs of Train Man. They’re asking people to send in their e-mails, and they’ll draw ten names.

Lyle is not in the mood for silly personifications of War on the Tokyopop calendar. What were they thinking?

ANN has a side-by-side comparison that shows a cross in volume 8 of Fullmetal Alchemist was redrawn into a slab for the American edition. Reactions at the forum range from outrage to yawns, but some intelligent discussion creeps in as well.

Now you can pay for your manga with a Nana credit card!

Off-topic: I don’t usually pimp my own work here, but hey, it’s my blog. I interviewed Kelly Tyler-Lewis last week about her new book, The Lost Men, which tells the story of ten men who set out in 1914 to set out supply depots for Shackleton’s Antarctic expedition. Their ship drifted away in the ice, leaving them stranded with supplies for Shackleton but nothing for themselves. Nonetheless, through a combination of creativity and sheer grit, they traveled 1,300 miles to lay the depots, convinced that Shackleton and his team would be coming that way and would starve without the supplies. In fact, Shackleton had his own problems and never made it onto the mainland, but they didn’t find that out until they were rescued. It’s a great story. Check it out soon, as the link will self-destruct in two weeks.

Chris Butcher has the scoop: We were right. Tokyopop is reconsidering the online exclusive program.

There’s a more thorough, formal announcement coming but the speculation is correct: Dragon Head, Heaven, and King City have been completely removed from the online exclusive program, and will go back to being standard (though exemplary) Tokyopop releases.

It looks like all titles will be available in stores in one way or another. Stay tuned for more.