Forum - View topicANNCast - Super Manga Pals Tokyo Drift
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Charred Knight
 Posts: 3085 |
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Okay I burst out laughing when Zac accused Holden Caulfield of being a whiner, and then tried to defend Shinji, because "Stop whining" was my thought process throughout Evangelion (and not just Shinji).
While I do admit that I made the question bleak, I could have made it even bleaker I could have asked if manga could survive at all. I really enjoyed this anncast and the other manga pals anncast as both guests are really entertaining and smart at the same time, a rare gift. Last edited by Charred Knight on Fri Aug 19, 2011 8:00 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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walw6pK4Alo
 Posts: 9322 |
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I agree on Redline, absolutely worth owning on BluRay.
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GhostShell
Posts: 1009 Location: Richmond, B.C., Canada |
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I was glad that Chris was able to provide some details as to what had transpired during the site outage. I worked in the computer services industry for twenty-nine years, and to have something like that happen to one of our customers would have been totally unacceptable. I'm sure there are better providers out there who would agree.
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ljaesch
Posts: 299 Location: Enumclaw, WA |
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Another good podcast this week.
That historical manga that was being talked about sounded interesting. I really enjoy history, especially when it comes to entertainment. I may have to track that one one down and read it. When it came to listing off the VIZBig manga that aren't limited to four volumes, I don't remember hearing anyone mention Inuyasha. I own the first five VIZBig volumes, and I know there have been four more released. From what I've seen on Amazon, it looks like there's three more scheduled to be released over the next six months or so. I also own the first Dragon Ball VIZBig, as well as the first volumes of the recent 3-in-1- releases for Naruto, Bleach, and Fullmetal Alchemist. Overall, I have to say I like the style of the Inuyasha and Dragon Ball omnibus versions better. When it comes to JManga, I'm currently not interested in reading manga electronically. However, I do wish them the best. |
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darkhappy1
 Posts: 495 Location: PA |
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This was quite the interesting ANNCast, even though I am not a frequent manga reader. It helped me recognize the movement towards digital manga, and I'm now interested in how JManga will fare. I'm pretty much in agreement with everyone about the pricing scheme; it's not good... Seeing a quote of their reply to some feedback in another thread here (that is now bogged down by a discussion about DRM) sold me on their serious consideration of feedback though, so I do hope they find a good pay plan quickly and become successful later on.
Also, dang it Zac. You make me wish 2012 to started already so that i could have me some Redline. |
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Blood-
 Bargain Hunter Posts: 24141 |
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I too appreciated the discussion about the recent ANN downtime. I can't imagine how frustrating it must have been for Chris not to have been able to get through to talk to someone directly. And having to leave Japan early, thus missing oban REALLY sucks. Ah, the joys of operating a web business.
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samuelp
Industry Insider
Posts: 2246 Location: San Antonio, USA |
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The problem with jmanga is that they are trying a risky game of chicken with the publishers:
First launch with the preferred pricing scheme of the individual publishers (high priced pay-per-series), get feedback and sales figures and use that data to force them to reconsider their demands. But all evidence of history implies that once Japanese companies see failure, they never think "Oh, then maybe we should try something different", they instead cut losses and take their ball and go home. I'm afraid that the conclusion that will be drawn is simply "digital manga can't be sold in the west" and the smaller of the publishers will see very heavy losses. |
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ljaesch
Posts: 299 Location: Enumclaw, WA |
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I forgot to mention in my earlier post that I was glad to hear more information about ANN's downtime last week. From what Chris was saying, it sounds like ANN received rather unprofessional treatment during that whole fiasco. I wouldn't blame Chris if he ultimately decided it would be better for ANN's servers to be hosted elsewhere.
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vashfanatic
 Posts: 3495 Location: Back stateside |
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As usual I just listened to what interested me (sorry!), but the comment from Deb about "You do it!" really stuck out for me. Working briefly in a fansubbing team really made me learn to appreciate the amount of work that goes into releasing a final product. What's more, if you want to do it well and quickly, you really do need to have it as a job. Amateurs have another life, another career generally, that has to take priority. When you pay for something, you're paying for the work that goes into it.
That said, if the final product is total crap, well, you probably don't want to buy it, i.e. the "vote with your wallet" idea. Which I why I love libraries. Sure, my taxes pay for it in a collective sense, but it's a great way to preview material before you make up your mind about a purchase. Ditto on streaming, either subscription-based or ad-supported. |
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poonk
 Posts: 1490 Location: In the Library with Philip |
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I agree with Deb, Men of Tattoos was really different-- a bit darker than most other BL titles and even most yakuza BL (that I've read at least). After finishing the whole volume I immediately went back and reread the earlier stories to better appreciate how they are connected.
Also, I'm getting more & more excited to see Redline the more I hear about it. Not enough to import the Blu-ray, but enough to plan on buying the DVD. Everyone has had such great things to say about it (and I'm a Kimura fangirl so he's the icing on this cake). |
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ikillchicken
 Posts: 7272 Location: Vancouver |
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Wow. Sounds like you guys got screwed around pretty bad by these guys.
I. Must. See. Redline! Seriously, you're killing me here Manga. Please Hurry! That's essentially the problem I have with these kinds of services. If I'm going to pay a significant amount for it then I want to own it. If I pay $9 then I want my own copy that belongs to me and I can do what I want with and put on my shelf and keep forever. If you're not going to give me that then fine. However, you're not really selling me your product then. You're renting it to me. And if that's the case, I don't really want to pay very much. Personally, I would like to see free low quality versions at least for the first volume or so so I can check stuff out just to see if I like it. Then I'm probably happy to just pick up the physical version. Maybe a flat rate pay subscription for later volumes for the stuff I'm not crazy about and just want to read once (I could live with low quality here still). The idea of actually paying per item and yet not actually getting my own copy just doesn't work for me though. There's like 30 volumes for Vagabond collected in Viz Big. I just love em. It's a fantastic way to keep older series in print and make it feasible for people to catch up on them. I just wish they'd start doing it for more stuff. Ah, this whole DC reboot will amount to nothing. Why? Because it's not actually a reboot at all. Even more so than with Crisis, they're just stream lining the same old crap rather than actually truly rebooting anything. It's just a lot of bluster and next to nothing will ever actually change. They're still gonna go right ahead and keep telling stories with the same established status quo. If they ever truly want to make themselves relevant again then they need to do a true reboot. Don't assume your fans already know the status quo. Don't assume you're dealing with established characters. They need new prospective fans to be able to walk into a store and pick up "Batman: Volume 1" and get a self contained story. Put aside the status quo. Put aside all this shared universe/crossover crap. Treat it like Hollywood does when they make a movie. Look at the character. Look at their history and what works. Then, put it together into a coherent, complete story. Then, start telling that story from square one. Start with the character origin and develop things slowly from there. The beauty of it too is that these characters have such an amazing history. You've basically already got this wonderful blueprint for a fantastic story. All you need to do is show some editorial restraint, take your time, let things develop naturally, know where you want to go and stick with the story decisions you've made instead of constantly changing your mind and rewriting continuity, then I think you could tell a story that stretched a good decade or two without ever becoming redundant or ridiculous. That said, I totally disagree about it being a bad thing for new writers to work on established characters. I think to the contrary it's a fantastic way for new creators to be given a start and to show what they've got without companies having to take the risk of launching a brand new property for every single new writer. |
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Greed1914
 Posts: 4627 |
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The more the folks at DC talk about it, the more it seems like there isn't that much changing, and what is changing is happening to characters that weren't that popular anyway. I calmed down a whole lot when I looked over the plans for Batman, and realized that almost nothing is changing for that character, because the Bat sells. Granted, I'm still not thrilled about Barbara Gordon coming back as Batgirl since I preferred her as Oracle and I like Stephanie Brown, and I did drop Birds of Prey from my pull list since I don't like how drastically they changed that team. Also, while a clean reboot might seem like the way to go, I'm pretty sure that the folks at DC aren't willing to risk it. The current readers, like myself, were not enthused about the concept to say the least, and getting a bunch of new readers isn't necessarily worth it if a big portion of the current readers bail. Heck, Wonder Woman was going to wear pants permanently, right up until they saw the backlash against it. I've also wondered where exactly DC has gotten the data that would support the idea that all these teens are just waiting for a massive reboot. I certainly understand that they need to do something since the average comic reader is aging progressively, but I'm not convinced that these supposed new readers are really there in the numbers that DC thinks, or hopes. If there is some sort of data, then I could at least concede that it's a smart business decision, even if I don't personally like it. And even if they did reboot, history has shown that it'll just get complicated and scary to new readers again. Crisis on Infinite Earths was meant to consolidate and simplify the continuities, and here we are 25 years later doing it again. If something is to be done, I'm partial to the idea of creating "seasons." Each volume gets to maybe 12 issues, and then it's the end of that season. Then you start a new one. If nothing else, that would stop them from getting to those oh so scary high numbers and having to renumber again and again. Oh, and Zac is right. People don't NEED to know everything about these characters to jump in. I sure didn't. I mean, does anyone honestly think they need to read hundreds of issues? And if all else fails, Wikipedia will get folks up to speed pretty well. Onto digital manga and comics. I'm not a fan of it personally, since I'm hung up on the idea that if the company goes under, I can't get at the product I paid for. That and I like that my collections have physical presence. I do know that DC will start releasing its comics digitally on the same day they hit comic shops in order to appeal to those new young readers. I'll be curious to see just how that works for them because right now they will price the new releases at the same price as the physical versions because DC is reluctant to completely screw all those shops. The prices will only go down after a certain amount of time has passed. Ok, sorry for the wall of text. I'm just really passionate about DC, so I tend to get a bit carried away, and I wasn't expecting a chance to talk about it on ANN. |
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vashfanatic
Posts: 3495 Location: Back stateside |
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I think Linkara put it best when he said that comics that use continuity well use it so that, while you understand the story at hand without reading anything else, you feel intrigued enough to read other stories related to it. Bad use of continuity is where you have no clue what is going on without reading ten other things. For example, I read Gotham Central and understood the story just fine (partly because of watching BtAS when I was young), and wound up reading more of the DC universe as a result. |
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Tanteikingdomkey
 Posts: 2350 |
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I Think J manga is a great idea, and I love the idea as a fan subber/scantalator. however the prices need to come down, and previews need to increase in size. I was interested in Sherlock Holmes and before we even meet watson the preview stops, we only meet lastrade (who is now suddenly a girl) and holmes (who now has a eye patch)....this does not give anywhere near enough confidence, to pay 1.99 for 24 pages of a questionable holmes adaptation (and I LOVE sherlock).
also I noticed that the series that seemed to be picked up by Jmanga seems not to be scantilated by anyone in the industry. I would love for series to end up on Jmanga rather then dropped, like Kindaichi case files, Brave Story, or heck I would love for Jmanga to approach me and my group about helping to release Detective Academy Q in english, we wouldn't want anything in return, just to help with getting the series into english. |
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samuelp
Industry Insider
Posts: 2246 Location: San Antonio, USA |
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Be careful what you wish for. The day the Japanese publishers feel they can get fans to localize all their work for free is the day manga publishing in the west ends. |
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