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Answerman - Since When Can Publishers Other Than Viz Publish Jump Titles?

Well, to be fair, Seven Seas doesn't seem to be the one contacting Shueisha (or even Akita Shoten) directly, as every volume of releases like Yuuna or Saintia Sho, or even the various Go Nagai manga (which would be Dynamic Pro) all state in the back (along with the translation credits) that they were licensed with the assistance of a company called Tohan Corporation, which had also apparently helped companies like TokyoPop & Media Blasters arrange licensing rights for titles like Arm of Kannon (a Gentosha title) or Samurai Man (yet another Akita Shoten title) years ago. I remember seeing something similar with TokyoPop's release of B't X, which credited a company called Tuttle-Mori Agency (&, checking ANN, this company also helped TP with a bunch of CLAMP manga, too).

Really, in the end, it's all about connections, and it looks like Seven Seas has found some connections via Tohan that are helping them gain access to publishers they likely wouldn't have been able to work with on their own. As Deb states, Viz obviously has right of first refusal still, but hopefully this can only open up more titles being given a chance here, since we don't need to rely on Viz for "everything" from Shueisha or Shogakukan anymore.

Shonen Jump and Shonen Sunday. that have been built up a reputation with readers, librarians, booksellers and comic shops as having primarily teen-friendly content.

Quote:

Shonen Jump and Shonen Sunday. that have been built up a reputation with readers, librarians, booksellers and comic shops as having primarily teen-friendly content.

But To Love-Ru and Yuuna and the Haunted Hot Springs are shounen, published in WSJ (and Jump Square for TLRDarkness) and thus are supposed to be teen-friendly

configspace wrote:

Quote: Shonen Jump and Shonen Sunday. that have been built up a reputation with readers, librarians, booksellers and comic shops as having primarily teen-friendly content. But To Love-Ru and Yuuna and the Haunted Hot Springs are shounen, published in WSJ (and Jump Square for TLRDarkness) and thus are supposed to be teen-friendly

Japan and the West's definition of teen friendly are not the same.

Tohan is one of the book licensing agent companies in Japan (like Tuttle Mori, the first and biggest one... There's a great piece about its founder and the history of licensed manga for those curious: https://www.japantimes.co.jp/culture/2018/05/27/general/will-digital-piracy-ruin-future-manga/#.W5LA-egzbAQ )
Seven Seas _most definitely_ talks directly with Shueisha, shogakukan and all the other Japanese publishers, but the contracts often have to go through agents for historical or business reasons.

Looks like the whole rumor of Viz Media being the only North American manga publisher with access to Shueisha and Shogakukan titles is entirely false. That's good.

a given manga also has to make sense for their overall brand and be a good fit for their line-up of titles. While VIZ may publish some titles that have “mature” content with violent action or horror scenes (see Terra Formars or Junji Ito's manga), or Boys Love manga (for example, BL manga on their SuBLime Manga imprint) they tend to shy away from outright ecchi / sexually explicit content, especially on imprints such as Shonen Jump and Shonen Sunday. that have been built up a reputation with readers, librarians, booksellers and comic shops as having primarily teen-friendly content.

The "mature content" stickers (which Seven Seas doesn't apply) might have cost them some sales but had to be there to protect their reputation. Furthermore, they dealt with controversy over initially censoring I''s (before deciding to release later volumes uncensored with their dreaded "mature content" sticker)

configspace wrote:

Quote: Shonen Jump and Shonen Sunday. that have been built up a reputation with readers, librarians, booksellers and comic shops as having primarily teen-friendly content. But To Love-Ru and Yuuna and the Haunted Hot Springs are shounen, published in WSJ (and Jump Square for TLRDarkness) and thus are supposed to be teen-friendly

Japan and the West's definition of teen friendly are not the same.

CatSword wrote:

The "mature content" stickers (which Seven Seas doesn't apply) might have cost them some sales but had to be there to protect their reputation. Furthermore, they dealt with controversy over initially censoring I''s (before deciding to release later volumes uncensored with their dreaded "mature content" sticker)

Been a long time since I heard someone mention I"s. I can barely remember any details myself. Just some line about fitting the criteria of the US audience. But, sometimes an advisory sticker/logo is not something the publisher decided independently. It can be a requirement of the book buyers for stocking the title. Even if a title had warnings on it or, was rated higher did not necessarily mean the contents were in line with the Japanese edition either. I have at least one title from VIZ that was shrinkwrapped and has all kinds of warnings but, was still too much to be published uncensored in English.

One theory I have is another branding issue; "agricultural high school" isn't skeevy like the Jump titles mentioned, but could still be hard to figure out how to sell. The other is license price. And of course, it could well have been a mixture of both.

VIZ also built its reputation by censoring a lot of titles it released across all age demographics and imprints for a variety of content, not just sexual. (Sans SuBLime AFAIK they just don’t license something if there is a content issue.) Lots of publishers have done the same but, VIZ were likely the biggest in this regard. Some of their titles still have caused little dust ups out in the wild too, along with being a good size company that can make you a target. So they probably have a bit of a reason to be paranoid. VIZ is still to me one of the most cautious publishers of Japanese comics in English. Though, their way of doing business has clearly worked well.