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Manga Answerman - Does Buying English-Language Manga Releases Support the Mangaka?


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Cutiebunny



Joined: 18 Apr 2010
Posts: 1767
PostPosted: Sun May 06, 2018 12:53 am Reply with quote
CandisWhite wrote:
That is the name of the title character from the 70's anime Candy Candy. I have only ever seen, heard, or read, anything of this franchise by way of bootleg because the author & artist of the series hate each other and had a lengthy legal battle which resulted in no one owning the property and so no one, not even in Japan, can get a legitimate release.


I didn't know this but had wondered why this particular title was never released in Japan in DVD/Blu Ray form. Igurashi still draws Candy Candy sketches for charity sometimes, particularly the Akai Hane (Central Community Chest of Japan) charity. They're sold on Yahoo Japan yearly. I had no idea of there being a feud as she's submitted a Candis sketch every year.
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One-Eye



Joined: 08 Mar 2011
Posts: 2264
PostPosted: Sun May 06, 2018 10:00 am Reply with quote
TheAnimeRevolutionizer wrote:
Sez stuff...
I'm not really sure what your point is. You do realize I am mainly being critical on how the article was written and organized, not so much on the content and certainly not the author? As far as "reading between the lines"; like I implied a lack of context is not going to help a general reader and could inflame emotions. Does what I'm saying seem so far out of bounds to you?

Quote:
Alright, you know what? I'll just give you one of my infamous lectures right now. France has been in the anime and manga market since the mid 1970s. Let that sink in.
Go ahead knock yourself out, except I'm well aware of that and don't need you to tell me, but please continue.
Quote:
...But I wouldn't claim that we drive Japan's market.
And I never said we do, so I don't know why you are lecturing me about that or implying that I did.


Quote:
I also have some distaste for Deb's shock jocking (I love you Japan,but one of your worst aspects is despising arrogance but at the same time exude it when the one you face isn't Japanese- EVERYONE hates arrogance, period), but she has a point. And even as an American myself, I'm not going to lie in that some of the worst aspects are that plenty get so fatheaded, self righteous, and insufferably self important that they think they've been in the right since birth, and that no one else does it better than them. There's also a name for that too: it's called American Exceptionalism. I call it egotism and hubris, and if my day is sour, bigotry and being a piece of @#$% but the latter is a much more apt describer for such mentality.

No kidding. There are jerks in the world and there are plenty of Americans that are jerks. You wont get an argument from me about that. So again what's your point? Because I wasn't arguing that there are no bad elements in fandom. Look you seem to feel very strongly about people behaving badly and you know what? So do I. My main point was that the article could have been stronger and that the throw away line didn't do much for the article as written. I am not against what the article states, nor am I defending "American Exceptionalism", so I'm not sure why I'm getting a "lecture" (as you put it) about France and how bad people can behave in their little subcultures. Perhaps you misunderstood what I was saying?
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TheAnimeRevolutionizer



Joined: 03 Nov 2017
Posts: 329
PostPosted: Sun May 06, 2018 10:50 am Reply with quote
One-Eye wrote:
Look you seem to feel very strongly about people behaving badly and you know what? So do I. My main point was that the article could have been stronger and that the throw away line didn't do much for the article as written. I am not against what the article states, nor am I defending "American Exceptionalism", so I'm not sure why I'm getting a "lecture" (as you put it) about France and how bad people can behave in their little subcultures. Perhaps you misunderstood what I was saying?


I think you still sound peeved still that we aren't rallying against Deb for being passive aggressive and that what she implied is something to denounce as false.

Again, that's "just like, your opinion, man." Also, quit trying to gaslight and pedantic your way out of this.
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One-Eye



Joined: 08 Mar 2011
Posts: 2264
PostPosted: Sun May 06, 2018 3:42 pm Reply with quote
TheAnimeRevolutionizer wrote:
I think you still sound peeved still that we aren't rallying against Deb for being passive aggressive and that what she implied is something to denounce as false.
The only thing mildly annoying is you misrepresenting what I said and implying I have other intentions. I don't know how you arrive at me wanting to rally people against Deb, that's quite a stretch dude. The only thing I've done is state my reasoning and respond to other posters.

Quote:
Again, that's "just like, your opinion, man." Also, quit trying to gaslight and pedantic your way out of this.
Explaining my reasoning in order to engage in dialogue is not being pedantic. Neither is being critical of how an article is written. Maybe I'm long-winded, but that's not the same as being pedantic. I asked you what was so out of bounds with what I said? What was wrong? The only thing you've responded with so far is false accusations of gaslighting and pedantry. You disagree with what I said? Then explain why instead of just attacking my character and intentions. On the other hand, if you just want to rage against the "self entitled droning egotists of fans" as you put it then you got the wrong target and should look elsewhere.
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redranger



Joined: 13 Sep 2010
Posts: 271
PostPosted: Mon May 07, 2018 6:55 am Reply with quote
I...should get over myself? Okay! From now on when a new volume comes out I'll just download one of the crisp pristine scans one can find online. US damn yanks, obeying the law and paying for things. Who do we think we are?
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I_Drive_DSM



Joined: 11 Feb 2008
Posts: 217
PostPosted: Mon May 07, 2018 9:30 am Reply with quote
I'm lost to a sea of comments & hate I'm coming into this conversation so late, but one thing I would really like to point out is manga for the US market is much cheaper now that some people may realize.

In the real early days of manga publications in the United States publishers were treating them very similar to American comics, not only flipped and often re-sized for aesthetics but also turned into 20 to 25 page volumes. These issues were typically $2.50-$3.50 each on shelves. I have boxes upon boxes of those early release manga "comics" (a lot of early VIZ, Dark Horse, CPM, etc, etc) and I probably easily paid more for those "comics" than what I paid for the roughly 350 manga graphic novels I have on my shelves.

There really isn't excuse nowadays to not purchase the official releases of titles sans poor translation or print quality.

Prices have begun to creep back up for graphic novels sans mainstays like Shonen Jump that have stayed fairly consistent at ~$10 a volume. This is largely because TokyoPop, whom effectively trademarked the $10 manga volume, is no longer around. There's no major publisher snatching up every IP they can get their hands on and selling them all for $10. Most are either now releasing their IPs themselves like they should have been doing in the beginning, like Kodansha, or releasing titles with a strong focal point which often correlates to high quality prints.

The only real good thing I would say possibly helped mangaka over in Japan when American publishers were still producing "comic" format manga was aforementioned publishers having to source original artwork. As there would be many more volumes broken up than say a 200 page graphic novel it meant publishers needed original artwork for each 20 to 25 page volume that was put out. Ex: the recent Kodansha re-release of Sailor Moon is nice but the original "comics" TokyoPop put out had great cover art on each volume. Same can be said for other popular manga titles during the 90s that were published in the US, Evangelion, Ah! My Goddess, Tenchi Muyo, etc, and even many lesser known series that happened to get picked up had great artwork (CPM titles in particular).
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Zalis116
Moderator


Joined: 31 Mar 2005
Posts: 6896
Location: Kazune City
PostPosted: Mon May 07, 2018 2:46 pm Reply with quote
Aquamine-Amarine wrote:
It's funny that you people are so anti-scanlation, because I have a feeling every single person on this website probably started out watching and reading anime and manga online. So that makes the lot of you a bunch of hypocrites.

I wouldn't claim to be "without sin," but streaming/downloadable video wasn't a thing when I saw Sailor Moon in the late 90s. The first manga I read was some of the later volumes of Love Hina, which I'd blind-bought in ~2004 to continue the story after blind-buying the DVDs.

It's not so much scanlations/piracy that I take issue with (there's always going to be people who can't/don't want to pay, obscure titles not licensed, no reasonable legal options in low-income/underserved countries, etc.) , but the toxic attitudes of those who would spread misinformation and lies -- like the myth mentioned in the article -- designed to make paying customers switch to piracy, and in the process boost the bottom lines of bootleg streaming and reader sites. If they can't or don't want to contribute, the literal very least they could do is not expend extra effort to actively sabotage the legitimate industry.

I don't even understand their actions from a self-interest standpoint -- if you're a pirate who wants to consume large amounts of high-quality entertainment for free, I'd think it'd be to your benefit that as many other people as possible pay into the system and subsidize your consumption. But no, paying contributors get mocked as suckers, instead. Wanting others to join the Pirate Tribe for no other reason than to give a middle finger to the industry is nihilistic death-cult territory.

TheAnimeRevolutionizer wrote:
I find it funny that the news site that promotes buying physical/legally marketed anime and manga had a story that said that barely any of the money goes to the creators, but a lion's share goes to licensors and publishers. animenewsnetwork.com/news/2018-04-30/anime-industry-report-shows-continued-growth-in-overseas-market/.130302

It's like some petty business conspiracy left wide in the open, and yet it's still rather concerning.
There is no conspiracy; who do you think is hiring and paying studios and creators, if not the licensors and publishers that sit on production committees? Money paid for legitimate releases and services in any area goes into sustaining the ecosystem that supports not only the creators, but also everyone else in the chain of this complex global entertainment industry.
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Nojay



Joined: 20 Jan 2016
Posts: 112
PostPosted: Tue May 08, 2018 4:47 am Reply with quote
An British author friend of mine who sells SF mostly through American-owned publishers gets about 10-15% royalties of the book cover price for non-English publications, including from Hasegawa in Japan. There's an advance when the book is accepted for translation and publication in that market and then only if the books sells over a given limit do the royalties kick in. I'd be amazed if manga artists don't get the same sort of a deal for foreign-language sales outside Japan.

So for a volume that sells 6000 copies in the States with, say, a 3500 volume royalty trigger and cover price before discounts of $10 they could expect to receive an advance (non-returnable) of about $5000 and royalties of $2500 over a couple of years of sales although most of that income will come in soon after first release. Reprints after the initial production run is all royalties. Not a fortune but welcome nevertheless.

The smart mangakas have agents who deal with the complex negotiations, arguments about royalty and advance numbers, push the publishers to do promotional stuff etc. to sell more of their client's books. The agents get 10%-15% of the take, my friend says his own agent is worth more than that to him just in saving him the headaches and worry of dealing with publishers directly.
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Clematis



Joined: 16 Feb 2017
Posts: 71
PostPosted: Tue May 08, 2018 6:48 am Reply with quote
My 2 cents - if it wasn't for scanlation sites, I wouldn't be able to read manga at all because the cost of importing a physical copy from the USA is prohibitive in the long term (we're talking small European country here with a market too small for any manga/anime publisher to bother). (the prices were rather high even during the short span of time many years ago when certain mainstream anime would go for almost €30 for 2-3 episodes, or a copy of manga would go for close to €20)

What I do to make scanlations less of a "necessary" evil is, 1) run adblocker 2) spread the word, encourage buying the manga I found good to friends and acquintances who also read manga - many of those are people situated in countries with better access to such media, or simply people with deeper pockets. Where possible, I urge them to buy the official copies, especially if I know the scalation is low quality (language or image-wise).

On a side note, let's not forget about older manga/anime - apart from major hits, most manga from 10+ years are very hard to obtain at an affordable price, if it all.

So while I don't pay money to the creator directly, I do help them out indirectly by influencing people around me, which continue to influence the people around them and so on, and that is still better than not reading at all, and hence not spreading good word to begin with, isn't it.
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Chrono1000





PostPosted: Tue May 08, 2018 2:56 pm Reply with quote
TarsTarkas wrote:
Well, she is not wrong.
Comparing the market sizes makes sense in an article about the manga market but it could have been done without the comments on supposed American arrogance. I think the article is important in that piracy is a major issue in the English manga market and is not limited to a specific country.

Zalis116 wrote:
I don't even understand their actions from a self-interest standpoint -- if you're a pirate who wants to consume large amounts of high-quality entertainment for free, I'd think it'd be to your benefit that as many other people as possible pay into the system and subsidize your consumption. But no, paying contributors get mocked as suckers, instead. Wanting others to join the Pirate Tribe for no other reason than to give a middle finger to the industry is nihilistic death-cult territory.
Their actions are bad in terms of their own self-interest but it makes sense from a psychological perspective. A lot of baffling explanations that people make about piracy are because they are trying to rationalize it.
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medoroa



Joined: 18 Dec 2016
Posts: 5
PostPosted: Mon May 14, 2018 12:26 am Reply with quote
DerekL1963 wrote:
Aquamine-Amarine wrote:
You should be neutral and state the pros and cons of both sides. You're supposed to be explaining an issue, not pushing propaganda that is bias towards one side.


There are no "both sides" or pros and cons to the question "Does Buying English-Language Manga Releases Support the Mangaka?". It's a yes or no question to which the answer is yes.


I don't want to support Aquamine-Amarine since there's a lot of things in his comments I think are ludicrous and biased (making his claim that the article having an "agenda" amusing), but this is simply not true. The contract options he mentions are legitimate, and the answer is not "yes". It's "it depends". Book publishing is like that: sometimes you get a percentage of the sales, sometimes you get a one-time royalty (most likely), sometimes you just get 20 issues of the published book and a promise that you'll get percentage after the publisher breaks even (highly likely for niche subjects). The fact that the original column talks about Tokyo Ghoul is biased and misleading in itself. Viz is owned by Shueisha and Shogakukan, which means they probably (note: probably) have their contracts and accounts handled by professionals, and Ishida probably gets a cut of the sales, just like he does of Japanese tankobon sales. This is, however, not necessarily the standard. There are smaller publishers, more niche publishers, who handle things differently, and to be entirely honest, the vast majority of manga published in Japan (not by volume but by title) is not published by the big three publishers that have direct US presence (i.e. Shueisha, Shogakukan, and Kodansha) and are written by artists who are not protected by the power of their publishers. Therefore, focusing on a title that retails 3.5 million in the US doesn't describe the reality for the vast majority of manga artists.

I repeat: the answer might be "yes" for the mainstream, big-name artists that the article mentions and people here know. The answer in general, however, is "it depends".
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medoroa



Joined: 18 Dec 2016
Posts: 5
PostPosted: Mon May 14, 2018 1:03 am Reply with quote
Cutiebunny wrote:
CandisWhite wrote:
That is the name of the title character from the 70's anime Candy Candy. I have only ever seen, heard, or read, anything of this franchise by way of bootleg because the author & artist of the series hate each other and had a lengthy legal battle which resulted in no one owning the property and so no one, not even in Japan, can get a legitimate release.


I didn't know this but had wondered why this particular title was never released in Japan in DVD/Blu Ray form. Igurashi still draws Candy Candy sketches for charity sometimes, particularly the Akai Hane (Central Community Chest of Japan) charity. They're sold on Yahoo Japan yearly. I had no idea of there being a feud as she's submitted a Candis sketch every year.


If she does that while labeling them "Candy", she's pirating the IP of the original writer. Igarashi has a tendency to draw Candy lookalikes and give them different names in order to circumvent this, but YMMV on how ethical you find that behavior to be.
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SHD



Joined: 05 Apr 2015
Posts: 1757
PostPosted: Mon May 14, 2018 7:13 am Reply with quote
Zalis116 wrote:
I don't even understand their actions from a self-interest standpoint -- if you're a pirate who wants to consume large amounts of high-quality entertainment for free, I'd think it'd be to your benefit that as many other people as possible pay into the system and subsidize your consumption.

And what if you want to pay but the content owner is not selling the damn thing to you? What if you pay for a Crunchyroll subscription but your local Crunchyroll catalogue is a pathetic fraction of what is available for US customers? What if you want to buy the English digital release of a manga and you can't because you're in the wrong region for it? (Seriously - I once spent the better half of an afternoon trying to buy the ebook of a certain manga in English from various services. I couldn't. I could have bought it in French or German, but not in English.)

Also, if you're not reading in Japanese there's a bunch of things you'll never see licensed because there's simply no market for it in English unless it ever gets an anime, and sometimes not even then. A bunch of stories with a Japanese or Chinese historical theme, or old classics that are not pushed by a determined person who has good connections at English publishers.

I do actually buy a lot of media, overwhelmingly digitally due to lack of physical space and to avoid shipping/handling costs which tend to double (or more) the cost. But there's a lot of things that I can't buy even though I want to, simply because I'm not allowed to due to region blocking. As much as people whine about piracy, I keep saying that region blocking causes a lot more harm.
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