Forum - View topicNEWS: Manga Publisher Tokyopop Lays Off Eight More Staffers
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st_owly
 Posts: 5234 Location: Edinburgh, Scotland |
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I agree. A few years ago Tokyopop was just about the only company I bought stuff from. I'm a big CLAMP fan so I have a lot of stuff there. Now though they only seem to have the crap Viz etc don't want and OEL. Not forgetting Princess Ai of course... The only thing I've bought recently from them is Vampire Doll and Loveless. The rest has all been Viz and DMP. |
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FeralKat
Posts: 402 |
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Wow, this is bad, but after they axed all those titles earlier this year, I stopped buying any of their titles with the exceptions of Gakuen Alice, Fruits Basket, and Love Attack!!.
If they axe Gakuen Alice, Tokyopop will be dead to me. 
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FoxTheAlchemist
Posts: 4 |
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This kind of sucks actually. I would have mixed feelings if Tokyopop did go under because they were the first manga company I bought from. I collected Gravitation, Love Hina, and Mars from them. Their OEL market is like the WNBA, it provides opportunites for a group but it doesn't have the same level of fandom as its counterpart. I like drawing comics, so I applaud them for giving OEL a chance. Too bad most of it is crap.
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Hi-Chan
 Posts: 115 Location: Canada |
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I am worried about Gakuen Alice also and the last few volumes of Chibi Vampire. This reminds me of the fall of Geneon last year.A company with a few strong sellers but with mostly niche titles with low sales making up the rest of their catalogue.If they eventually cease operations and thats a big if;the strong sellers will likely be picked up quicky.But in this economy no company is going to risk extending itself on titles with dubious sales potential |
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Talon87
Posts: 89 |
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Oh really? 'Cause the doctor is in and he quite begs to differ. I think people are forgetting that TokyoPop was once upon a time the favorite publisher of the fandom. I remember those days very well but for those of you who didn't start collecting manga until very recently you can read more about the rise and fall of TokyoPop here. I think this line sums it up best:
Yeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep, pretty much. They may be horse poo nowadays, but once upon a time they were the company every fan swore by. |
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marie-antoinette
 Posts: 4136 Location: Ottawa, Canada |
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I also used to collect mostly Tokyopop manga, but right now there's only two things from them I collect, the Twelve Kingdom novels and Suppli.
But as much as we sometimes dislike them, it's never a good sign to see a big company that was doing so well collapse like this, because if they are in trouble likely the other companies are too, though hopefully not as much since TP seems to have made some bad decisions in flooding the market and things like that. The best thing that I think can come from this is that they finally accept the truth that we've known for awhile: in order to survive, they are going to have to drop some of their licensed titles. There's just no other way around it. So hopefully they stop claiming that everything is just "delayed" and flat out cancel something. Even if it's a series that I like (I've never been too optimistic about Suppli's chances), at least it will be nice to have concrete news instead of the eternal waiting game. |
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Unit 03.5-ish
Posts: 1540 Location: This space for rent |
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Tokyopop isn't the WORST manga publisher, but it doesn't help any that their anime catalog is...scarce, at best. Most US companies that do manga also do anime; I mean if one turns out to be not so profitable, at least they'll have the other one to get some returns on.
Also, any company whose head goes by the alias "DJ Milky" gets LULZ from me for all the wrong reasons. |
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dragonrider_cody
Posts: 2541 |
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It seems TokyoPop is the ADV of manga. Once they were the king of the hill, now they're struggling to survive. It was also the loss of their Japanese partner that seemed to damage them the most.
Where's a Sentai to help TP get new titles? |
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yblees
 Posts: 165 Location: New Zealand |
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Damn, not more layoffs..
I have very mixed feelings about this. Sure Tokyopop has done some incredibly stupid things, like that decision not to translate sfx, and (my personal pet peeve) including colour splash pages on only the Second Editions of Wild Adapter, but not the first printing... But they've also put out some good stuff, not to mention being one of the first to bring out Manga in English, in any meaningful way. And HAD one of the best feedback from staff of any publishing group on their BLU forum - of course, the person in charge of forum feedback got laid off in the last round 
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Colonel Wolfe
 Posts: 370 |
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I have never had the same respect for Tokyopop ever since that incident when someone hacked their website and posted those pornographic images of Sailor Moon and it was discovered that the CEO of Tokyopop was a big fan of Sailor Moon hentai.
It was a disgrace and I had stopped supporting the company. Their titles are lackluster, their anime, which pathetic, did give fans DVD releases of Samurai Warriors/Ronin Warriors and other classic anime shows ... Now, they want manga fans to support their releases while showing no loyalty to their employees? Tokyopop is the biggest joke of the manga world. At least we still have companies like Dark Horse Comics and Viz who actually care about their releases. |
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MorwenLaicoriel
 Posts: 1617 Location: Colorado |
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Thanks for linking to that article--it was really informative. Really, I find this whole situation sad. The first manga I ever read was brought here by Tokyopop, if I remember right. (Besides a manga version of Star Wars, which barely counts... Not to mention it was flipped. Oh, and Pokemon.) Even though I wasn't really as into anime and manga as I am today, I was enough of a fan back then that I can vaguely remember when Tokyopop's reputation was better than it is today. It's really sad (and frustrating) to see how bad they've gotten in comparison. |
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Sakagami Tomoyo
 Posts: 943 Location: Melbourne, VIC, Australia |
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In all honesty, I haven't had the problems with them that I have with Tokyopop. That said, they never had as many titles I consider good as Tokyopop did.
An interesting read, and I hadn't previously realised that it was Tokyopop who started the trend for unflipped releases and lessening the Americanisation, which is something I am thankful for. And certainly looking at my manga shelves, there is quite a bit there with a Tokyopop logo on the spine. Nevertheless, Tokyopop as it's operating now leaves a lot to be desired.
I think the better way to put that is that Tokyopop is to manga what ADV is to anime; a once great company that has since made a lot of poor decisions and now struggles in the marketplace they built. "ADV of manga" tends to make me think of ADV's own spectacular failings in the manga market. |
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Talon87
Posts: 89 |
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You have got to be effing kidding me. 
You mean to tell me that you quit purchasing a company product because the CEO happens to enjoy pornographic drawings of teenage girls? I've got news for you: Michael Jackson owns the Beatles! Are you going to quit purchasing their songs because a percentage of the profits goes into his pockets? And if your answer is "I don't like the Beatles," then bah humbug. You shouldn't judge a product by its producer. Great musicians have been pedophiles. Great philosophers have been abusive husbands. Great writers have been drug abusers. On and on it goes. The goodness of a deed lies in the deed itself, not in the deed-doer. Their music is still great music. Their philosophies still ring true. Their novels bring so much laughter and sorrow to each generation. And so it shouldn't matter to you what the CEO of TokyoPop's sexual practices are even if you find them morally objectionable. To look at it another way, if everybody quit buying from TokyoPop because of who their CEO is and what he does, you might successfully bankrupt him, yes, but at what cost? You would also be bankrupting the entire company and thus ruining hundreds of lives. You might say, "That's not my problem. He shouldn't be jacking off to drawings of teenage girls." My response would be, "The Sailor Moon girls are hardly drawn with the bodies of teenage girls to start off with." That, and I pray you're not one of those hypocrites whose favorite anime is Love Hina and whose favorite fighter video game is Dead or Alive 4.
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enurtsol
 Posts: 14886 |
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And even before that, they were MixxZine, before all the controversies that forced them to change their name. So, some fans were already soured on them even before they are TokyoPop. 
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Unit 03.5-ish
Posts: 1540 Location: This space for rent |
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I know this is rather off-topic and probably best for another discussion, but what's this about ADV having trouble these days? Any links to an article or a discussion about such? Because that worries me if they're hitting bad times, too.
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