If you’re considering applying for a translator job at Seven Seas, Translation Dojo blogger William Flanagan has some tips.
Tina Anderson discusses how one of her favorite BL manga-ka, Motoni Modoru, started her career in doujinshi.
At comics-and-more, Dave demonstrates that men can read yaoi by reading Desire and liking it. Also: Bambi and Her Pink Gun.
Love Manga brings the news that DrMaster has picked up Chinese Hero: Tales of the Blood Sword.
With all of the chatter about Tokyopop’s relaunch of its website, we thought it was time to go straight to the source and find out just what they are thinking. So we called up Matt Nixon, the Web Community Content Producer, and asked some pointed questions. Below is a slightly edited transcript of our conversation.
MangaBlog: This website is a radical departure from previous versions of your site. What are you trying to do here?
Matt Nixon: We’re trying to create a community. After being to many, many conventions and really having an ear to the ground, so to speak, we found there was a place for a fan community, and this is sort of what we are building there. Tokyopop considers itself synonymous with manga, so we thought we should create a playground where everyone who lives the manga lifestyle—who loves the manga lifestyle—can hang out, share blogs and videos, and so forth.
MB: Whom do you see as your typical user?
MN: It’s designed to be a site for anybody who is interested in manga. It’s not age specific, it’s not gender specific. It’s designed to cater to everybody’s tastes. It’s designed to be a safe environment. There’s MySpace, Friendster—those are primarily used as dating sites. This is designed for people who don’t want to post photos, who don’t necessarily want to be in that scenario, who just want to share their thoughts about manga and anime. The idea is that everybody deserves to have a place to have their voice heard. And we’re listening to everybody’s feedback. It’s a beta version, it’s a testing version. Every day we are updating and changing things around, making it more palatable and easier to use.
MB: Why did you choose not to moderate the blogs and fan sections? Will you do so in future?
MN: At this point, it’s designed to be self-policing. There is a way for people to flag content; if it’s inappropriate, it’s removed automatically. Also, if there is anything odd or out of place, [users] can bring it up in the forums or communicate it directly to us. At some point it will be moderated. People can do what they want within reason, and for the most part the community has been very responsible. I don’t think I have had one instance of anything brought to my attention in terms of adult content.
MB: People are complaining the books are harder to find. Clicking on the “manga” button doesn’t bring you to a list. [At this point, light dawns on Marblehead, as we say around here.] Is the top navbar supposed to be all fan-generated content?
MN: That’s what it is. The symbol [on each button] is, roughly translated from Chinese and Japanese, “Mine.”
MB: OK, but the “manga” buttons on the left navbar don’t give you an alphabetical list, which is what we bloggers like to see. Instead, you give us a list of featured manga. What’s the purpose of that?
MB: For a very, very long time, there have been manga fans who have created their own community. The hard-cores really brought to the fore what they liked, and a lot of manga become popular by word of mouth. The problem is, somebody might find a manga they like, but they don’t know what’s like it. We’re giving them a way to find similar things within the same classification and category. The hard-core fans know what they are after. Now that we’re taking on more casual manga fans, and we’re giving them more service: If you like this, then you’re going to like that—just broaden their horizons a little.
MB: What’s the best thing about this site, in your opinion?
MN: In my opinion, the best thing about the site is the columns. We picked up columnists from various sectors of the industry. The stuff they are bringing to the table is great. Especially with the music—they are opening up doors for people to get into J-pop and J-rock and Korean music. And the cosplay section—the woman who writes that is a Harvard grad and she runs the Anime Boston cosplay section. She is doing human chess—that is a really cool column with really great photos.
MB: What other features do you think people shouldn’t miss?
MN: The online exclusives—the books that are only available through The Right Stuf. You can’t buy them in a store. Obviously, it’s a pilot program now, but we will create a site where people will come here to get this manga, and it’s the only way people will be able to get it.
MB: So does that mean a web manga model, like Netcomics, could be in Tokyopop’s future?
MN: That’s definitely something we are working toward. We have even played around with the print-on-demand model, but we’re not happy with the output we are seeing. It’s not the same quality as in-house. We want to make sure that if we move to that, the quality is as good as the stuff we are selling in stores.
MB: OK, last thing: Broken links. You’re planning to fix those, right?
MN: We are busily fixing every broken link we come across. Every time we come to a new alert we get on it right away. This is the beta version, so sometimes when we fix one thing something else comes along.
MB: When will it stop being a beta and become Tokyopop 1.0?
MN: I know that the end of August is when we should have everything ironed out, and then we are going to change around our features based on feedback. So it should come out sometime in September, but we don’t have a hard date for that. Sifting through fan feedback takes time. Then we’ll change around to make more logical—if people are used to doing it this way, will they be confused again when we change it? This is designed to cater to the community. We live and die by them, and we are trying to give something back. It’s sort of like conventions—we don’t generate a lot of tangible income from that, but the fans love it. We get huge crowds, we get positive strokes. This is an extension of that. It’s a community thing.
MB: What’s the best way to give feedback?
MN: In the forums or by blogging on the Tokyopop website. Jim Devico has set up a section in the forums that is specifically to address those.
Can there be such a thing as too much good manga? In this week’s Flipped column, David Welsh looks ahead to some of CMX’s new releases and begins to contemplate adding a library wing.
In Honolulu, manga fan Robyn Yanagihara gives the whole problem a poetic cast:
With stories of modern life to mystic lore,
Entertainment isn’t hard to find anymore;
There’s anime and manga on every subject,
But alas! College budget!
MangaCast continues its SDCC coverage with a podcast of the translation panel. Here’s the lineup:
William Flanagan (xxxHolic), Charles McCarter (Ghost in the Shell: SAC), Jonathan Tarbox (Angel Sanctuary), Nobby Matsuo (Samurai Champloo: Sidetracked), and Jake Forbes (Fullmetal Alchemist)
Don’t miss it. And if you’re intrigued, a commenter observes that Seven Seas is looking for translators.
Tina Anderson blogs about doujinshi. Her post includes a handy breakdown of categories for those who are still learning the landscape.
The press releases are starting to catch up with the announcements at AnimeExpo and SDCC. Love Manga has the scoop on the new Seven Seas licenses and ICv2 has more on the latest Del Rey announcements.
Yaoi alert: A few days ago, David Welsh expressed some doubt about a new title from BLU, Gerard & Jacques, which features an unequal relationship between a wealthy older man and a younger, poorer one. The debate continues in a followup post, with opposing opinions (read the comments) from two readers. Meanwhile, Anime Bento pans Jazz as being more rape than romance.
At the new Tokyopop website, webmaster Jim Devico responds to the critics of the new site design and invites constructive suggestions.
He has already linked to this post at Precocious Curmudgeon, in which David Welsh spells out exactly what he does and doesn’t like in a website. I’m with David. At Love Manga, David Taylor gives his take. And Lyle has some thoughts on the different strategies Tokyopop and Viz have chosen to grow their market.
At the Translation Dojo, translator William Flanagan (Tsubasa, School Rumble) is blogging about translating humor and sound effects.
It’s been a week since the first-ever Yomi Awards, so at MangaCast, Ed and Jarred are already talking about next year’s awards. Also, Ed has a list of new manga titles that for one reason or another didn’t get a big splash at SDCC.
In other awards news, ComiPress translates an article about the 10th anniversary of the Osamu Tezuka awards. Also from ComiPress, watch the first 10 minutes of the Death Note movie for free.
This may be a Manga Creep Milestone: Christopher Butcher looks at next week’s shipping list and discovers that his store will be getting more manga than floppies.
Teens and adults are also buying Japanese animation comics, or “anime” comics, Davis said. Titles like Manga or InuYasha come out with new issues every three to six months rather than monthly and cost more than average comics ($7.95 to $9.99 as opposed to $3). Consumers notice a bigger difference in content than price, said Myth Adventures owner Helgi Davis.
“Seventy-five percent of the people who buy (anime comics) are women,” he said. “It’s they do love stories, romance, fantasy and things like that.”
