You say you want a revolution?

Posted on July 25, 2008 by Brigid Alverson

First prize for the most overheated first sentence in a comics-related press release goes to whoever wrote this:

Global manga giants TOKYOPOP and GENTOSHA COMICS have entered into a worldwide partnership to advance the cause of the manga revolution.

Especially because it’s followed by this:

Under the terms of the alliance, TOKYOPOP will provide sublicensing agency services (outside of Asia, France, and Italy) for GENTOSHA COMICS’s world-class library of manga hits, including titles like Gravitation, Lament of the Lamb, and Arm of Kannon.

Huh? It sounds Tokyopop will be publishing some Gentosha titles (as it already has) and acting as their agent for others, which is nice but I don’t think will have people rioting in the streets. Oh, and there will be some action in the “digital, film, and merchandising spaces” as well. All this would be more convincing if there were some details, especially as I mainly know Gentosha from their online manga anthology, which has been defunct since 2006, and their April 2007 this announcement about their plans to publish manga online in seven different languages.

About Brigid Alverson

Brigid Alverson has been reading comics since she was 4. After earning an MFA in printmaking, she headed to New York to become a famous artist but ended up working with words instead of pictures, first as a book editor and later as a newspaper reporter. She started MangaBlog to keep track of her daughters’ reading habits and now covers manga, comics and graphic novels as a freelancer for School Library Journal, Publishers Weekly Comics Week, Comic Book Resources, the Barnes & Noble Sci-Fi & Fantasy Blog, and Robot 6. She also edits the Good Comics for Kids blog at School Library Journal. Now settled in the outskirts of Boston, Brigid is married to a physicist and has two daughters.
This entry was posted in Mangablog. Bookmark the permalink.

6 Responses to You say you want a revolution?

  1. jun says:
    July 25, 2008 at 7:18 am

    Well you know… we all want to change the world.

    Now that song’s gonna be stuck in my head. Not that I’m complaining. :)

  2. Brigid says:
    July 25, 2008 at 7:28 am

    Yeah, me too. I’m really sorry I did that.

    The Germans have a great word for that, by the way: Earworm (I think it’s spelled Ohrwurm.) And I once read a really funny story by Mark Twain about getting a jingle stuck in his head—it’s called A Literary Nightmare (just googled it). So at least we’re in good company.

  3. Danny Choo says:
    July 25, 2008 at 8:24 am

    Wondering which population is larger – the anime watcher or manga reader.

  4. jun says:
    July 25, 2008 at 9:03 am

    I dunno, Danny. If you go by sales, I think manga’s doing better than anime. In terms of fansubs, though, I think anime is probably more popular than scanlations are.

  5. Tiamat's Disciple says:
    July 25, 2008 at 9:37 am

    I would disagree with that Jun. It’s very hard to say which is more popular on the scan/subs side because it’s hard to get a grasp on the various groups.

    I think it’s probably a very fluid situation depending on the titles. I seasons where there’s not many popular anime shows around, manga takes over, but equally it flows the other way as well

    Also there are a large number of closed groups who don’t advertise their scan or subs

  6. Pingback: Over-easy « boiled egg

Comments are closed.