Forum - View topicNEWS: Tokyopop to Cut Manga Output in United Kingdom
|
Goto page Previous 1, 2 Note: this is the discussion thread for this article |
| Author | Message | |||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
|
tasukidaisuki
Posts: 11 Location: London, UK |
|
|||||||||
I have to agree! Some shops try and sell manga at £6 - £9 a volume which is ridiculous - but then again, I can remember years ago when I bought volumes of Ranma from the comic shop in Bluewater for £12! And putting titles like Fushigi Yuugi in the kids section of W.H. Smiths hasn't helped. |
||||||||||
|
||||||||||
Ambrogino
 Posts: 57 Location: York, England |
|
|||||||||
|
[quote="minakichan"]I find this incredibly hard to believe-- 80% of all graphic novels in the UK, a category including European and American comics and anything that ran in, say, Shounen Jump-- dominated by Tokyopop, of all companies? Even a drop to 50% is incredible.[quote]
I think a very peculiar definition of "graphic novels" must be being used here - I can't believe TokyoPop would have had an 80% market share next to Titan Books, who publish DC, Marvel, Dark Horse and 2000AD reprints in the UK. A majority? Possibly. 80% market share? Without the few manga based on anime that actually gets shown on UK TV like Dragon Ball, Naruto and Bleach? I sincerely doubt it. |
||||||||||
|
||||||||||
Moomintroll
 Posts: 1600 Location: Nottingham (UK) |
|
|||||||||
|
I'm guessing the figures only relate to bricks and mortar stores operated by mainstream book sellers (like Waterstones) since they certainly don't reflect the reality of online sales, comic shop sales or sales to public libraries.
With Viz and Del Ray (and, to a lesser extent, Dark Horse) titles now being sub-licensed in the UK by major mainstream publishers, it's no suprise that Tokyopop is losing that huge bricks and mortar marketshare. Next to the likes of Random House and Orion, Tokyopop is a tiny company. |
||||||||||
|
||||||||||
Zin5ki
 Posts: 6680 Location: London, UK |
|
|||||||||
|
T'is a sad day to be a manga fan in our green and pleasant land.
Fortunately for me, I never really became interested in manga- 7 quid for each volume at Forbidden Planet (most often without any option to obtain the series in some form of money-saving compilation) never made pocket sense to me. |
||||||||||
|
||||||||||
Mohawk52
 Posts: 8202 Location: England, UK |
|
|||||||||
|
||||||||||
|
||||||||||
|
Zin5ki
Posts: 6680 Location: London, UK |
|
|||||||||
Hang on, don't Smiths sell adult material on their top shelves anyway? |
||||||||||
|
||||||||||
|
Moomintroll
Posts: 1600 Location: Nottingham (UK) |
|
|||||||||
So don't buy from Forbidden Planet. £4.50 is a more typical price for a volume of manga from the online retailers - and that's less than the US RRP. |
||||||||||
|
||||||||||
|
ConanSan
Posts: 1818 |
|
|||||||||
|
||||||||||
|
||||||||||
|
Zin5ki
Posts: 6680 Location: London, UK |
|
|||||||||
Their loss. |
||||||||||
|
||||||||||
Barciad
 Posts: 131 Location: St Andrews |
|
|||||||||
|
Not a surprise to be honest. Come on people, lets be realistic here. Britian has never had the kind of comic book culture you might see elsewhere. Not like the US, not like mainland Europe (France in particular), and definately not like Japan. Granted, there has always been the stuff for the under-tens (Beano, Dandy, etc), and for those fond of lewd satire (Viz), but never the works that you could claim to have similar fan bases of your typical manga.
Which, to put it bluntly, is the problem anyone trying to sell mangas in Britian is faced with. Take France as a counter example. There has always been that ready market, catered initially by either homegrown comics or American imports. Now have a look at this article from four years ago. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/arts/3557503.stm As unfathomably magnificent as Asterix may be, it is no longer new, and thus is slowly getting elbowed aside. However, it is not some modern French artist doing this, but the Japanese. Now, I am not aware of the state of play in the US, the home of the graphic novel, but I can assume something similar (though not nearly as extreme) has happened. What I am saying by all of this is that elsewhere around the world, people like reading comics. Not in Britain however. I should know, I am English and find them great for satire (Asterix, Calvin and Hobbes - in my mind, comics and cartoons are ideal for satire because they all deal in exaggeration) but little else. I have tried to read a few, Transmetropolitian being the best I can think of, but I have always found they lacked the depth of a good novel. Okay, so I am being appallingly snobbish. Tar me, feather me, and throw me into the English Channel for being that way. That is what we English are like. But seriously, it would take a massive cultural shift for the teenage demographic to take to comics like others have done in order that us British may appreciate mangas in the manner you might hope we would. |
||||||||||
|
||||||||||
|
Mohawk52
Posts: 8202 Location: England, UK |
|
|||||||||
I think you are miss reading this report The reason TP has lost some ground is because others have come in to steal some of their thunder. Competition is always good for the customer. The only thing that hold anime and manga back here in the UK is open advertisment to the masses, meaning it's always left to word-of-mouth, or bad press.
Last edited by Mohawk52 on Mon Jun 16, 2008 1:30 am; edited 1 time in total |
||||||||||
|
||||||||||
|
Moomintroll
Posts: 1600 Location: Nottingham (UK) |
|
|||||||||
You may not be old enough to remember but back in the 80s and 90s (i.e. before the "manga boom") there were a number of titles that would fit your criteria - Tank Girl and Watchmen for example.
It's true that the proportion of the British population with an interest in comics is smaller than that in, say, France, Belgium or Italy but you're over stating your case. The amount of space major bookshops devote to graphic novels has been gradually increasing for years and public libraries now stock far, far more graphic novels than ever before (in the children's, teen and adult literature sections). Moreover, we're now seeing major publishing houses license or sub-license graphic novels in unprecedented numbers - and the likes of Orion, Random House and Jonathan Cape have far more impact on what gets picked up by retailers and libraries than traditional comic and manga publishers. If you re-read the article, you'll see that graphic novel sales in the UK are up 40% this year alone but Tokyopop's market share of that larger market has been steadily falling for some time. In other words, the UK graphic novel industry isn't failing - Tokyopop is failing. Big difference.
I think pretty much everybody on this thread is English. Evidently some of us don't share your experiences. Comparing comics to novels is always a bit dubious. It's like comparing theatre to television drama - they share some similarities of format but they're two distinct media and people go to each expecting different things. However, if you want literary comics there are hundreds of them out there. Try Blankets by Craig Thompson for instance.
No, just regretably misinformed.
Actually, all that's needed is the exact same change in attitude we've seen over the past 30 years in computer games. In the 1980s computer games were mostly for kids. In the 1990s they were primarily for kids and tech geeks. Now, in the 2000s, sales to adults in their 20s and 30s far outstrip sales to kids and teens and what was a minor branch of the entertainment industry is now a bigger part of it than film, publishing or music. Provided that younger fans maintain their interest into adulthood and provided that the mainstream media continues to treat works like Persepolis, Palestine and Tamara Drewe as serious works rather than as novelties, I don't think that the continued growth of comic readership in the UK is unlikely. |
||||||||||
|
||||||||||
|
Ramadahl
Posts: 325 Location: MK, UK |
|
|||||||||
Pretty much. I remember when manga first started appearing in stores, there wasn't a manga shelf - there was a Tokyopop shelf. And even then it was at least twice the size of the marvel, dc, etc. shelf.
Haha... U SO FUNY!
Pshaw. Some of us are perfectly happy with the FLCL release after waiting for it. And the pricings fine. You know all the reasons for the pricing, don't play dumb. I think Barciad may have some fair points. It's certainly true that the UK is lagging far behind the US and Europe in terms of developing a manga market. I'm just not sure if it's cultural lag, or intrinsic cultural difference. Ask me again in 20-30 years. In spite of the news article, this isn't really a big hit to the UK manga market. Tokyopop had next to no competition and were releasing a vast number of volumes each month, many of them poor tbh. With a rise in competition they're simply scaling back to adjust to this. As it was, they were currently cannibalising themselves - they were releasing too much stuff for people to buy in the face of competition. |
||||||||||
|
||||||||||
|
Barciad
Posts: 131 Location: St Andrews |
|
|||||||||
|
Moomintroll
Fair enough, I think you may be on to something. I only heard about the Watchmen recently and my only knowledge of Tankgirl comes through that 'film' they made in the mid-nineties. In other words, my problem is one of timing. Too young for the first wave in the late eighties (and early nineties), then too old for what came after. Ideally, I would have loved to have Persepolis, Palestine, and Transmetropolitian around tens years ago. Or perhaps it would have been nice for me to have had a look at the golden years of Tankgirl, Watchmen. or even Judge Dredd (I finally remembered there was a British Comic Book character of note). Alas, it was not to be. Perhaps I am just bitter at all my missed opportunities, now feeling locked in that forever feeling of 'too old for comics'. True, I'm talking nonsense, just how on earth can anyone be 'too old' for any medium, just so long as they enjoy it? Whoever it was that recommended me Nausicca, thanks. I saw the film two years ago. What can you say, it's a Miyazaki, and of course it was brilliant. However, there is one point I forgot to add. Of my favourite animes, a lot of my favourites are either book adaptations, or greatly influence by famous novels. Crest of the Stars, Haruhi Suzimiya, and Twelve Kingdoms for the former. Infinite Ryvius (based on Lord of the Flies) for the latter. To me, those felt like genuine stories, that is to say, pieces of fiction with a beginning, a middle, and an end. Yet more than that, they had this very literary feel. You could sense that Crest of the Stars came from a book. The manner and the composition of the story possessed the kind and depth and imagination you could only find in a good novel. A similar thing could be said about Twelve Kingdoms, though not to the same extent. I could of course be wrong, there could be manga based animes out there with similar flair and substance. I am sure some of you will mention FLCL or His and Her Circumstances to me. Great series no question, but their strengths lay not in their narratives. To the best of my knowledge 'Escaflowne' and 'Now and Then, Here and There' were original works, but please someone correct me if I'm wrong. However, I will gladly accept that it is probably a case of Tokyopop being greedy/incompetent rather than general corporate overstretch. The point about computer games is a good one. The process can happen, it will just take a while. All that being said I still prefer a good book and shoot me down in flames for saying so. It is, at the end of the say, strictly a matter of opinion, and once the question of taste pops up, you might as well stop the arguement there. |
||||||||||
|
||||||||||
|
Moomintroll
Posts: 1600 Location: Nottingham (UK) |
|
|||||||||
Well, if it's any consolation, I didn't really get heavily into graphic novels until I was in my 30s. The trick is finding something mature and literary enough to well and truly dispell the "kids stuff" tag lurking in your subconscious - if you'd like some suggestions, feel free to PM me.
The FLCL anime came out before the manga but I think I understand your point. I imagine it's a bit like movie adaptations of novels though - the fact that they rarely live up to the source material doesn't really reflect badly on either film or literature; they're just two entirely different beasts.
Wouldn't dream of it. Not all media are for all people and if you prefer novels to comics, that's perfectly reasonable. Personally I enjoy both equally but don't much like computer games and watch very little TV - I don't think there are any right or wrong answers when it comes to preferences in the arts provided one has actually experienced the media one purports to dislike. |
||||||||||
|
||||||||||
 |
All times are GMT - 5 Hours |
|
|
|
Powered by phpBB © 2001, 2005 phpBB Group