Tokyo Pop is finally going under in the US. They will be shutting down US operations on May 31st. I don’t know what will happen with all the series they are in the middle of. I myself am currently reading:
- Shinobi Life
- Gakuen Alice
- Portrait of M&N
- VB Rose
- Aion
- Alice in the Country of Hearts
- Maid-sama
Needless to say, I’m rather disappointed. Anyhow…hopefully, another publisher will rise up and take over some of the licenses so the series can be finished (Hopefully in affordable electronic form rather than tree killing volumes). I’m not feeling all that confident, though, since I haven’t seen a resumption of any of the series from CMX, which went out of business last year. Sigh…*shakes head*
Here are some links for more information on the situation:
Oh…well…
The Crimson Flower Blog 
Awww that's so sad! 😦 I'm gonna miss TokyoPop; I grew up reading their stuff. I thought they were doing well and expanding… I guess not..
And wow down to just 6 employees..
I'm so frustrated since I had only recently begun to pick up more Tokyopop titles, since they seemed to almost be back to putting things out in a fairly efficient and moderately well-done manner (although there was that news about layoffs here recently).
I especially want the last volume of Alice in the Country of Hearts that was scheduled for this July. :[
Demon Sacred and Happy Cafe are also going to be sorely missed.
Well, darn. This is depressing news. Like you said, I myself, am not confident that the sereis will picked up. Go!Comi and CMX are both good examples of that. ::frowns:: Not happy at all.
Happe Cafe'
Maid-sama!
Gakuen Alice
Alice in the Country of Hearts
Portrait of M & N
Hanako and the Terror of Allegory
Platium Garden
Lady Kanako
And a WHOLE lot more.. ::cries::
Thank you, though, for imforming us of this.. tragedy.
I've been annoyed with Tokyopop for what they've done with ARIA (the second manga I had desire to buy), so I've been basically boycotting them except for that title. I just didn't trust them to give decent quality or continue publication, when I got burned so badly in my first months of manga reading/buying. So I don't even really pay attention to their titles – except to note that most of them I have no interest in.
But Shinobi Life – I was really hoping to see it near completion, at which point I planned to buy it. I hope it, at least, gets finished. And if they do go digital, I hope it can be downloaded – the one digital manga I looked into didn't seem to allow downloading, and the last thing I want is to have to be connected to the internet to read (I don't have an ereader).
But anyway.
I'm just sad that Dazzle (nee. Hatenkou Yuugi) is ending with them…
I hope another publisher picks it up because that is one series that I would rather have in book form.
And if you haven't read it, I strongly suggest you do…
Yep, I read “Dazzle”. TP has put out a chapter in a long time, though. Perhaps that's one of the licenses they lost 2 years ago.
As fans we are screwed badly, i actually enjoy purchasing the US versions of all my titles that i read i literally collect them and the loss of tokyo pop will kill many of the titles i purchase this is not good for any of us fans, it is already hard enough to purchase manga at least the stories we like and now we are losing one of the major players. Im being honest im not for the digital formating of Manga I like reading a manga online but as well reading my personal copy that i put in my hands.I like the feel of a manga in my hands and the loss of tokyo pop hurts alot especially the collection I have i have many series that are waiting for the next volumes i guess i wont be seeing any of my titles completed, this sucks so badly, we are lsong something major and people do not realize the impact that will occur to US fans until it happens
Screw digital formatting of manga, i like having and holding a manga, im annoyed with tokyo pop i have a few series that i purchase from them and now my complete sets will never occur i will be stuck with incomplete volume sets of manga, this I hate it so much, dammit. I really wanted to see AION completed because you cant even get proper scans of the current chapters online and i was hoping the US would release faster than the scan group, I also wanted Future diary completed i wanted the whole set, to many titles so annoyed and dissapointed, i want real manga not a digital version
I'm very irritated by the whole manga situation in the US. It's hard to buy translated manga, and what manga we get is only a drop in the ocean compared to the manga available in Japan. Given the limited availability, I have no other choice but to get the Japanese materials and read scanlations (or turn a blind eye). The real problem is a matter of economics. There is too much manga. There are too many series and too many volumes in each series and therefore the market is very splintered. When a market is this splintered the economics for book printing don't work. License cost, printing press set-up cost, and marketing costs are simply too much to overcome with sales unless the series is a mega-hit.
I can speak for the impact of scanlation with respect to this site. I know how many people visit this website and how frequently projects are read and readership isn't significant. In other words, the readership is nowhere near the readership needed to make printed editions viable and I doubt it would be enough to cover the cost of purchasing electronic license and hiring translators and graphic artists even if readers were charged a rate similar to books. Manga needs mega-hits OR huge libraries of materials to be a viable business outside of Japan.
My feeling is that there needs to be a legal manga exchange were translation groups can post and everyone gets paid based on the popularity of series and the quality of the scanlations (of course there would need to be some kind of approval process). This, though, is something that would have to be set-up by the artists themselves with the help of a tech company (like what Ken Akamatsu is doing) or a publishing giant. It would be incredibly difficult for scanlators to do this — not that it can't be done. I'm just saying it would be incredibly difficult. This is the future I'm hoping for so we can all have the manga we want legally and fairly.
I think any company large enough to successfully negotiate with the Japanese publishers will be too large to be profitable, especially considering competition with the scanlation groups.
I'd love to see a small company co-opt the community and, in some sort of organizational/QC role, arrange for print-on-demand (lulu?) of scanlated series with profit-sharing between the Japanese publishers, themselves, and the scanlation groups.
Since it's so hard to run a profitable manga publishing house, cut costs by outsourcing every possible part of the business to places that already have the infrastructure (publish-on-demand shops) or are currently doing the job for free (scanlation community). Maybe they can't promise a release date, or have a marketing department. But if sites like onemanga.com can become some of the most visited sites on the web without either of those, do they really need them?