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Answerman - How Did American Manga Releases Become Right-To-Left?

Viz started publishing Inuyasha unflipped with volume 38, in July 2009.
Since then they have published unflipped "Vizbig" omnibus editions of the entire series.

@sunflower

For Sanctuary, both the initial comic book format and the subsequent graphic novels are flipped. They were all published by Viz long before any unflipped graphic novels were released. The whole Sanctuary series involved five parts with a total of forty-six comics. Some were substantially more pages then usual.

Flopping was a thing among Western publishers pre-2004, but I think it wasn't the case for Southeast Asian manga publishers like Chuang Yi. It's been awhile, but they usually release in the original right-to-left format. I'll have to check because the only surviving copy I have from them is Pokemon Electric Tales of Pikachu and its tucked away in the attic.

I would always try to get people to sit down in the cafe at Borders and read instead of standing in the aisle, I think I got turned down every time. At the time poor highschooler me would take a book to the cafe, buy a drink and read.

I haven't yet forgotten Tokyopop's, ahem, "work" on the .hack manga and novels. You'd think their translator didn't even realize there was a "rest of the franchise" to stay consistent with. And even then, stuff like "Zawan Shin" was frickin' inexcusable.

Once you read a few pages, the reading format is not hard to grasp. I still LOL at the "You're Reading the WRONG Way" blurbs at the back of each book.

"Man, is everybody in Japan left-handed?" -Me, before finding out about flopping

This led to my favorite silly unintended consequence of flopping: Tokyopop's original edition of Parasyte forced them to change the name of the parasite that had taken the form of the main character's right hand. Originally named Migi (which just means "right") the English version renames him "Lefty the parasite."

I remember being so excited for some Viz titles back in the day, but the reversed name order just killed it for me. I could understand leaving out the honorifics, but when everyone is calling everyone by their first (given) names regardless of their relationship/closeness, I had to walk away. I'd rather just buy the books in Japanese and read them that way.

Do they still do this now?

Flopping seems like such a terrible idea. I think if someone was already interested in buying a Japanese comic, they wouldn't care so much that the orientation is flipped compared to Western comics.

I find it baffling how Book Stores didn't just shrinkwrap every single volume they had on the bookstore to steer clear these manga freeloaders. All these unsold, bent manga...and then they wonder why they don't rake in the money. Utter stupidity.

It's now possible to get the latest installment of One Piece, Fairy Tail, and other very popular series within 2-3 days of its release in Japan. Because they no longer need to "flip" the artwork, a series like Fairy Tail could be sent to an English translator with the artwork complete (minus the word balloons and other descriptive text) and the English text added in at the same time the Japanese editors add in Japanese text.

Don't be too hasty about calling someone a manga cow. I want to (gently) glance through an unsealed manga before deciding to buy it, and I don't go to the local comic book store very often, so I tend to look through most of their relatively small and constantly changing manga section when I'm there, but a staff member once implied I was reading without buying. I bought some books, but I was offended and didn't go there for a long time after that, though I would rather go there than Barnes & Noble or online. I wasn't there that long and I don't remember there even being any other customers in the store. I haven't noticed damaged books at stores, though I probably have seen manga cows.

We don't print Haruki Murakami's novels in the Japanese direction, after all!

Book Cows, ugh. Freakin seriously man. What is wrong with those people?!