hmmm

[meganbmoore]

So, according to this, (linked by desdenova) Tokyopop is cutting back production by 50%.

My question is:  Does anyone know if this means they're cancelling titles, or if it means they're slowing down production so that there's a longer wait between releases?  Longer waits between releases I'm fine with.  Not getting English copies of various series I'm following?  Not so OK with.

Comments

[mscongeniality.livejournal.com]

I'm betting it's a combination of things. There will probably be fewer new titles and definitely fewer 'niche' titles. They're probably only going to invest in what sells and if sales drop off, a title is more likely to be canceled. Longer waits are definitely a given as well.

I'm only actively collecting a few Tokyopop manga these days (Furuba, Love Attack, Pet Shop of Horrors: Tokyo, Suppli, Saiyuki, and Wild Adapter) and I think it's going to be a mixed bag as far as survival. I honestly can't say which way those titles are going to fall out.

I'm also really concerned about the Pop Fiction line. If the Trinity Blood novels go away, I won't cry, but if 'Sea God in the East, Vast Sea in the West' doesn't drop next March, I'm going to have to find whoever is responsible and hurt them. Badly.

[meganbmoore.livejournal.com]

Yeah...I think my list of what I'm collecting from them has been fairly steadily shrinking. It seems that a lot of what I get from them lately is completed series, and most of what I do follow is well under way. (Surely they wouldn't cancel a series once it's in its teens/twenties...)

My main concern is the light novels, though. We've already lost Kino's Journey...

[mscongeniality.livejournal.com]

I've seen a couple of the novels shelved appropriately -- in the Young Adult section rather than with the manga. I'm hoping that broadens the audience and translates to sales.

[desdenova.livejournal.com]

I've been scouring the internets trying to find out exactly how they're implementing their restructuring, and what it means for their various licensed series, but all I'm seeing is speculation. Nobody seems to have any actual information beyond what's in the TPop press release. (At least, not anybody who's talking.)

Presumably more information will come out as time goes on...

[meganbmoore.livejournal.com]

Right now, I'm going with the best case scenario and going "they're probably just going to slow down production/up prices a bit." Instead of something along the lines of "they better not cancel Samurai Deeper Kyo when I've been following it for over five years and have 3/4s of it already!" (The only other title of theirs I'm still getting that I've been following for as long is Fruits Basket, which should be safe no matter what's going on.)

[desdenova.livejournal.com]

I honestly can't imagine how they'll cut output by a whopping 50% just by slowing production, but I expect that rather than canceling anything outright, they will put low-selling series "on hiatus." That way they can try to have it both ways--cut output and minimize how much they piss off fans.

[meganbmoore.livejournal.com]

I've been noticing, though, that they seem to be licensing more shorter series lately. Granted, I think they always have somewhat, but there seem to be more these days. I get the feeling that, if they add no new titles, series ending alone should cut their production a decent bit in the next few months.

[tokyofish.livejournal.com]

I'm already following series that have slowed to 1-2 volumes a year, so I'm preeetty worried. ;___;

I'm even MORE worried about the light novels.

[sodapopgirl703.livejournal.com]

Jeez, I'm with you in hoping this is best case senario for my sanity and SDK's sake.

[sanada.livejournal.com]

Well, realistically, they've overextended themselves by licensing huge batches of manga series without any real regard for whether it will sell or not. They can't even fit all of their series on shelves at most major retailers. It's the same thing that hurt Geneon, and I won't be surprised if other companies make similar announcements. Yeah, they'll probably blame scanlations or something, but for years I've been saying "hmm, most of the US anime/manga industry is operating on an unsustainable business model..." The crappy state of the economy is finally enough to push them over the edge, I guess.

I'm getting kind of tired of how Tokyopop is pushing the OEL manga, too, since they've got a terrible reputation for the way they treat creators. Refocusing on making MOVIES of their OEL series... they're going to drive themselves out of business. I just hope they finish the stuff I like before they do...

[meganbmoore.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I've thought Tokyopop's licensing trends were completely random since I first started noticing what series different publishers put out...uhm...3~ years ago? A little more? Probably 4. Viz seems to stick with mostly shoujo romance and shounen action(partly because, as I understand things, they have exclusive rights to series put out by certain magazines) and branch out to other things in bits and pieces, Dark Horse seems to lean more towards seinen stuff, usually historical or fantasy action, Del Rey and CMX seem a bit random, but not so much when you look closer, and both are backed by larger companies. Tokyopop, though, has always seemed to literally just throw whatever they can out at the public, and hope it sticks. Which probably worked really well when manga was the thing all the cool kids did, but that seems to have died down some now(I only started reading manga AFTER everyone stopped telling me to, and then largely because a US comic book company specializing in sff books went out of business, and I just couldn't go back to only superheroes in my graphic stories) and so things won't stick as well as they used to.

It seems, though, that they also keep licensing shorter series. I can't help but think that if they just don't start up any new series and can hold out for a year or so, enough series would have ended on their own that they don't need to worry about cancelling series or putting them on hiatus.

(The scanslations thing, sadly, is a very valid point on some levels. While I think most on my f-list do buy the US releases of any manga they read scans of, there are a whole lot of people who just read the scans and don't buy the manga/support it by checking it out from the library/etc. They just read the scans and consider it money saved. On the flipside, there are a number of series I never would have checked out if I hadn't been able to read a few chapters before plunking down money for them.)

[sanada.livejournal.com]

It's unfortunate though because Tokyopop tends to have slightly better (or at least less stilted) translation quality on average than Viz. I was just looking at Tokyopop's list of releases and I've never even seen half the stuff that's on there because Borders knew that the manga boom would plateau so they didn't try to sell everything.

Hmm, I feel like I should try reading Western comics, but other than "The Sandman" and "V for Vendetta" I just haven't been able to get interested. Anything good that's low on spandex?

Yeah, I'm hoping for that... but I think they're still going to put stuff on hiatus. They make more profit on the OEL and manhwa than on a lot of the Japanese manga, so that's probably what will get hit first.

Well, a lot of people who read scanlations would never buy the actual manga... like, I read yaoi scanlations for the smut, but I wouldn't dream of paying $10-$15 for the mediocre art and nonexistent story that you usually get with those... But what does piss me off are people sharing "scanlations" that are actually just scans of commercial releases. That's becoming more and more prevalent...

[meganbmoore.livejournal.com]

Western comics: You might try exploring Image Comics, Dark Horse and DC's Vertigo lines. Off the top of my head, some fun stuff is Fables/Jack of Fables, Castle Waiting (extremely different takes on fairy tales) Hawaiian Dick (detective noir in Hawaii, with ghosts and zombies) Usagi Yojimbo(err...if you don't read it already...anthromorphic adoration of all things samurai fiction and Japanese history) Witchblade and The Darkness(if you like urban fantasy and don't mind some extreme T&A, though it is often equal opportunity.) Y: The Last Man is pretty popular, though I've only read the first few trades, and I've been meaning to check out Hellboy for a while.

Hiatus/Manhwa: In all honesty, I hope they end up just phasing things into slightly higher prices, which they actually seem to already be doing. It's funny about manhwa, though. For a long time, it seemed like manhwa wasn't sticking, and now it's everywhere. Then again, most of the manhwa I was coming across until a year or so ago I disliked, and now there's more and more I want to read. I guess they're finally just licensing the stuff I like.

Scans: In all honesty, if I'm not willing to spend my money on it, I just really don't consider it to be worth my time to read. What you list off is really the main reason I don't bother with yaoi/most shounen-ai. I've had it recced many times, but every one I've ever picked up has had less plot than the most generic of generic shoujo romance manga, and the only difference I can see between the uke and the average shoujo girl is where the organs are located, and if I'm reading that character, I'd just as soon it actually be a girl. And I can't be bothered with 90% of shoujo, either. (Really, unless it's what I'm just in the mood for-which I actually have been, lately, but I figure that'll end soon and I'll go back to my shounen ways-I prefer the romance to be secondary[or at least supported by a strong plot] regardless of the genders involved, and prefer them to not start out immediately romantic.) There's also the fact that most yaoi covers(or at least those posted on free_manga) seem to have an uke who has NO IDEA what kind of manga he's wandered into, and a seme who looks like a sexual predator, which also ties into my annoyance with most romances with dim heroines with saucer eyes being pursued by the bastard alpha hero who treats her like dirt but it's ok because of the sex...

Wait, did I have a point? I think I had a point, but I forget what it was.

Ah, scans. You know, I finally tracked down Clover scans a while back, but they were just scans of the Tokyopop releases, and not good scans, either, so I didn't bother reading them. I should start watching ebay for a good set of that. (Not to mention Tokyo Babylon, CCS and Magic Knights of Rayearth...I think at least one volume of each is out of print now, and I doubt that'll change.)

[magicnoire.livejournal.com]

If you can wait, I believe Dark Horse picked up the license for Clover and is releasing an onmibus of the entire series sometime around December.

[meganbmoore.livejournal.com]

...

Excellent. I'd much rather have a shiny new omnibus than used copies.

[smillaraaq.livejournal.com]

Mmm, and while I *like* BL, those are pretty much the same reasons why there are so very few modern yaoi titles that I'm willing to buy -- I want there to be actual plot beyond "will they or won't they" (c'mon, we know the answer already!), and I hate the popular near-rapist-seme/TSTL-doormate-uke combination. What I'd really, really love to see translated more of are some of the classic 70s/early 80s shounen-ai titles that were longer on characterization and mood and romantic tension and relatively short on actual smut, but I'm not holding my breath.

And that's really the main reason I bother looking at scanlations/raws, too: I'm always looking for new stuff, but there's so much crap out there that it's hard to know where to begin. You can't always count on the brick-and-mortar stores to have the things you're interested in in stock...and even if they do stock them, you can't always preview in the store if it's something violent or racy enough to get shrink-wrapped. I don't particularly like reading comics on a screen, but for BL-ish titles in particular I really, really want to see at least a few chapters to make sure it isn't the usual formulaic dreck before I special-order the books.

[meganbmoore.livejournal.com]

Yeah, a few of the older shounen-ai titles you've told me about sound interesting. (From Eroica With Love is on my "eventually" list...uhm...Clamp kinda pushed a lot of "eventually" titles back...) The thing about most of the stuff I've seen is that it seems to focus on the things about shoujo that annoy me. It's almost like boy/boy replaces the need for plot, or if there is plot, it's basically normal shoujo, and the only difference is the reproductive organs involved. A number of shoujo have completely lost me when they started on the "will we or won't we" stuff, and a lot of BL seems to just skip the preliminaries and jump right to it. Oddly, I've been encountering and enjoying the "anything goes" type of pairing manga, lately. Granted, it's been You Higuri(Cantarella has the incestuous bisexual triangle of doom with a promiscuous bisexual lead, and the emotional and physical feelings run rampant on all parts, though I doubt Chiaro will ever admit to any feelings beyond loyalty and friendship for Cesare, and while I've only read the one volume, Seimaden's hero seems to have kept himself busy all over the place waiting for his True Love to be reincarnated, and I understand there's a canon slash pairing later) and Clamp(both xxxHolic and Tsubasa have non-triangles of m/m/f where you're actively encouraged to go both "just friends" and "romance" on all sides, and I seem to recall that in the X/1999 anime, too.) And then I've finally decided to cave to the Kaori Yuki crack, which I understand is more of the same...

But really, as much as I like romances(really, all relationships...romantic, platonic, rivalry, enmity, familial, etc.-the fictional relationships that interest me the most are actually non-romantic m/f, but it's rare to find those without there being some sort of familial bond-biological or otherwise-or apparent romantic feelings on at least one side) I prefer them to either be secondary to the main plot, or to be supported by a strong plot, or very interesting gimmick. And I don't really consider gender to be an interesting gimmick.

I really hate it when I can't preview something at least a bit. I was really nervous about Dorothea before I got and read it, and I was happy when I saw Orfina unwrapped at the store yesterday, and it looks safe as far as raciness goes (but both have plots that could eventually lead to my "hell no" buttons eventually being pushed...)

[smillaraaq.livejournal.com]

I live in fear that CMX will cancel Eroica, since younger fans seem a little weirded out by 70s art and I almost never see it on actual store shelves (it probably doesn't help any that folks unfamiliar with classical music seem to inevitably misread the title as "Erotica" -- I have to wonder if store buyers scanning the listings assume it's hardcore smut from such a title misreading, despite the mild "TEEN" rating, and pass it by...) But they're already on a glacial release schedule and volume 13 hits later this month, so who knows? Crossed fingers, etc; at least if worst comes to worst there are full scanlations available.

You Higuri and Kaori Yuki are on my own "sounds interesting, must check out eventually" list, but my own TBR pile is so overwhelming that I'm not really actively searching online for sample scans; it's all wishlisted, so odds are good I'll manage to get a few volumes coming through BookMooch by the time I'm eventually strapped for new reading. (Ditto for Clamp, although with all the sprawling overlap between series I kind of deliberately want to wait until they've got more things wrapped up, then I can possibly just pick up one series to start and fill in the blanks as needed with online references...) Really, though, if I'm ever going to sit down and seriously hunt for scanlations of something, it's going to be either the really old-school 70s stuff (I just saw someone talking about Moto Hagio scanlations, which made me perk up my ears), or Yoshihiro Takahashi's various insane canine-action-shonen series (this is the sound of me still viciously cursing ComicsOne for dropping Ginga Legend Weed after three volumes, grrrrrr!)

I don't mind raciness, and in fact a couple of the recent/ongoing BL series that have worked the best for me in terms of plot-heaviness and less-cliched characters have been fairly explicitly hardcore -- but it's the plot and characterization that makes a story really compelling, rereadable and thus worth buying for me, with the smut (if it's there) as merely a very enjoyable bonus; but an awful lot of the current market seems to be strongly focused on the smut first and foremost. And without strong characters or a plot to hang it on, smut for smut's sake just gets rather boringly repetitive IMO...

[meganbmoore.livejournal.com]

I think all of Clamp's series before Tsubasa and xxxHolic are self contained, actually, and except for xxxHolic and maybe RG Veda(11 vols, I think) 10 or fewer volumes.

(And if you want to talk huge backlogs, I took pictures of mine when using up film yesterday.)

Would you believe me if I told you that, even in romance novels, I usually* just skim past sex scenes? Really, except for a few pairings in fiction, the only sex life that really interests me is my own.

*I sometimes pick up Bertrice Small for the historical Mary Sue badfic LOLZ, and have a couple Susan Johnson books I sometimes thumb through, because she's, uhm...creative, but without weirding me out. And it amuses me that she has all the historical details in footnotes at the end, because there isn't room for them in the books.

[smillaraaq.livejournal.com]

I thought a couple more of their recent series were at least loosely tied in to that Tsubasa/xxxHolic universe? I know I've seen mention of xxxHolic briefly crossing over into Legal Drug (which I don't wanna pick up anyway since it's left hanging...) RG Veda's been on my list since I've oohed and ahhed over the artbooks for that one and rather liked the OVA, garbled and rushed as it was...

And I'd believe you, because I've seen you mention the skimming before. I always read them because I do appreciate well-done erotica when I can find it, and will cheerfully point and laugh and mock the author endlessly when I don't find it. (I don't know SJ, but I *almost* picked up some Bertrice Small at the last booksale after seeing much "OH BERTRICE NO" lulz on Smart Bitches; then I reminded myself that I still haven't worked up the courage to tackle more Cassie Edwards, so I didn't really NEED to go seek out more badfic, no matter how cheap...)

[meganbmoore.livejournal.com]

The Legal Drug characters show up for about 1 page of xxxHolic when Watanuki goes to a drug store and wonders if there's something between the two guys working there. (In retrospect, it may have been to cue fans in to Doumeki's eventual arrival, as I'm told that LD's slash pair is a more seme/uke version of Doumeki and Watanuki.) To my knowledge, that's the only crossover with it. I need to get some of Clamp's artbooks. I'm picky about my artbooks, but I flipped through a few at A-Kon and liked them. I was just not going to spend $40 on them.

HERE, LET ME TELL TO YOU THE BERTRICE SMALL PLOT I LIKE TO USE TO SCAR PEOPLE WITH!!!!

There's this one book(I no longer have it...it had Hellion or fire or some such in it, so I can't remember the title) where the heroine's husband disappears and is believed dead. The king wants to marry her off or make her his mistress or some such, so she leaves her kid with trusty friends, disguises herself as a boy, and goes off to find him. He has been enslaved by an Evil Sorceress(ES) and made her sex toy. He also has amnesia. Heroine gets a job as a stableboy, but Evil Sorceress's Brother(ESB) recognizes her as a hot chick and makes her his sex toy and then there's this huge chunk where he's teaching her new tricks. HOWEVER, there is A CURSE, and only the females of that line can parent children, but ES is barren. So ES and ESB (OH! ES and ESB were also each other's first lovers. I remember that being pertinent somehow.) decide that they will have Hero and Heroine parent a child, and ES will adopt it. ESB will be there to, so it'll be an orgy. ES wasn't there, because other women don't get to have fun orgies. But they were all totally thinking about her the whole time, so that the baby would really be hers. ANYWAY! Hero miraculously gets his memory back the first time they have sex then, and he and ESB spend a while fighting over who gets to do her next. Two notes of dubious merit, though: later, before they escape, ES dumps Hero for another guy, but keeps him around, and Hero sulks for a while because Heroine and ESB are still having sex. Usually, it's the heroine twiddling her thumbs while he goes off with whoever. IIRC, he also tries to be uppity with the whole "I had to watch my wife having sex with someone else" thing, and she gives him what for about it, as she was in the same situation, and she was only there to save him in the first place.

ALSO!!! You know how most fandoms have a section (size varies) of fans who just rabidly hate the female characters for being in the same reality as the hot guys? Small is like that with historical women who actually existed during the times of knights and pirates and sheiks and such. Every historical female personage is an evil shrieking jealous shrew who isn't 1/10th as hot as the heroine.

[morwen_peredhil]

I have read that book. It's not really the sort of thing you can forget. No matter how much you want to.

[meganbmoore.livejournal.com]

It's that whole orgy/memory recovery/baby with the "if we think about the one not here while we have sex, it'll be her baby" plot point. It's just beyond words. Then there's Skye O'Malley. I'm not sure if I hate Skye or the books more.

[smillaraaq.livejournal.com]

Well, if you liked both Sandman and V, looking into more of Gaiman's or Moore's stuff might be worthwhile -- they've covered a lot of different subgenres and worked with a range of different artists, and they're fairly prolific writers, so there might be a good chance there's something that will stick. For Gaiman, early volumes of The Books of Magic (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Books_of_Magic) might be one good place to start; for Alan Moore, I particularly like the stuff he did with America's Best Comics (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Moore#America.27s_Best_Comics) -- especially The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen for pulpy literary-reference fun and Top 10, your basic ensemble-cast police procedural story, only in a world where almost everyone has superpowers. (I'm not big on the spandexy superhero books myself, but I still love Top 10; if you have any fondness for cop shows like Homicide: Life on the Streets or Hill Street Blues, this one is well worth checking out...)

I'd second Megan's recs of Hellboy (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hellboy) -- grand pulpy paranormal fun; and Usagi Yojimbo (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usagi_Yojimbo) can be pretty amusing, especially for a reader like you who will recognize all the historical/folkloric/movie references Sakai is working in.

If you enjoy shoujo that's not on the formulaic high-school-romance side, you might like Strangers in Paradise (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strangers_in_Paradise) -- beautiful art, strong female friendships, and a plot that mixes crime-thriller elements with soapy relationship stuff. Or if your tastes in shonen run towards some of the ultraviolent exploitation crime series like Golgo 13, check out Sin City (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sin_City); Frank Miller has...issues...with writing women, but I find them easier to overlook in the world of Basin City where EVERYBODY is dirty, and the art is so gorgeously stark. (He's done some other interesting series strictly as a writer -- I really like the dystopian-SF Martha Washington books; but he's started going off the deep end lately, although at least not as badly as Dave Sim.)

How important is art style and quality to you in getting into a book? There are a bunch of indies that I'm particularly fond of, but the art is...extremely quirky.

[magicnoire.livejournal.com]

Honestly, I think it's going to be a mix of slowing down releases and cutting their catalog. I think titles like SDK, Saiyuki, etc would be safe because when I look at their list, there are other titles that can't possibly be selling.

[meganbmoore.livejournal.com]

Yeah. I susdpect that if things go, most of it will be the random stuff none of us have ever seen, anyway.

[chomiji]

Now I'm all worried about the manga I love. My two top sentimental faves (SDK and Saiyuki) are published by Tokyopop. Bu maybe the ones that regularly end up in the mainstream bookstores - like those - will be safe?

[meganbmoore.livejournal.com]

SDK was selling well enough recently to get it's schedule moved up, and I THINK Saiyuki still gets color pages every volume, which means it must yield good results, as that costs extra.

I will be mightily annoyed if titles I have been collecting for at least 6 years suddenly don't have the last few volumes available in English.

[smillaraaq.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I dimly recall reading somewhere that Saiyuki was one of their top sellers, so it makes sense they'd gt the premium color-page treatment; and they're *already* on a slow release schedule now that they're caught up with the Japanese volumes, so it's not like they have to scale back the publication speed...

[desdenova.livejournal.com]

I dimly recall reading somewhere that Saiyuki was one of their top sellers

Oh, I really hope that is true. I'm quite fond of their Saiyuki translation, and I'd be sad if I had to, like, start buying it in French.