Forum - View topicRE: New Tokyopop Manga Aquisitions
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Case
Posts: 1016 |
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Is this the 2-3 book collection of Bebop manga that Tokyopop has had out for a while now, or something new? |
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Hotaru's Sister
 Posts: 102 Location: NYC |
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No it's something new. if you go to tokyopop.com they have more info there.
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Craeyst Raygal
 Posts: 1383 Location: In the garage, beneath a 1970 MGB GT. |
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I'm glad to see that Tokyopop is picking up more enticing titles, but I'd prefer it if they'd spend a little less money on acquisitions and a lot more on speeding up their releases.
Forbidden Dance looks great, but I'd rather have volume 10 of Mars out before May. Honestly, the waiting on older series like Mars and Initial D is beginning to get on my nerves. I'd think that less acquired per month and more released per month would make better business sense. |
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Case
Posts: 1016 |
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Actually... no. That's thinking as a consumer. Good business sense would be aquiring a thousand different titles and releasing one book each month. Who cares how the fans of any particular series feel, if you can shovel the first book of a ton of different titles off onto the impulse buyers and the people who want to be on the cutting edge of the market. Lasw of supply, my friend. Law of supply. Thanks, Hotaru's Sister! |
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Craeyst Raygal
Posts: 1383 Location: In the garage, beneath a 1970 MGB GT. |
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That works in a pure purchasing economy where your company is the only game in town. Unfortunately, Tokyopop isn't alone. Viz, Dark Horse, and now Comics One (excellent Onegai Teacher release, I might add) are heady competition for Tokyopop. During a time when the marketplace is getting flooded, such as now, and a consumer's choices are as numerous as they are, what pays most in the long run is to build a reputation as being fan-friendly and quick with releases.
When you have customer loyalty, you can release utter crap whenever you feel and still receive high sales. (look at GM circa 1992-2002) You gain customer loyalty through at least attempting to look like you're doing what the customers want, and delaying top ranking titles for unproven or slow selling properties isn't it. Viz isn't as guilty, they concentrate most on their Rumiko Takahashi products- thats their sin. Dark Horse is very middle of the road and stays low profile in general. Comics One could be Tokyopop's biggest threat. They're price competitive, encroaching on the manhwa market, and offer the same right-to-left publishing. While their line-up isn't as flashy or as expansive as Tokyopop's. I'm willing to bet that if they release three volumes of Iron Wok Jan and Onegai Teacher (their top selling titles) a month they'll make more money quicker, which can be funneled back into purchasing more top tier older titles which can be released at the same speed. That's economics of manga sales as I see them. PLus I'm growing frustrated with Tokyopop's delays on Initial D. They could've at least annouced who the dub cast is by now. |
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Case
Posts: 1016 |
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I suppose you're right, there. I guess the competativeness of the manga translation industry just never occured to me as I wrote that last post. 
I still think you're asking a bit much of Tokyopop, though. They've never been a huge company, and yet they still manage to put out several books each month. The opportunity cost, then, is that they can't keep up the same pace with releases as they aquire more and more titles. But think about it - could you do the same job? Even if you were a lingual expert and had ten friends who were similarly adept (and maybe a few other people to sell what y'all translate), could you release new books at the same pace that Tokyopop does? It could very well be that they are translating at their limit, and would need more translators to further improve. Maybe they can't afford that. Maybe it wouldn't be feasible three years down the road, and they would have to massively downsize. Or, maybe they're already involved in that process and simply can't hire people fast enough. You never know. But you have to admit that there are plenty of reasonable excuses. IMO, this is one of those "You should be happy you have it in the first place" situations. I don't think you really have a right or reason to complain. If we were talking about smaller, comic book sized releases I might sympathize, but with a company that publishes almost all of its work as graphic novels I cannot.
Last I heard, it's due out this summer. I have a feeling that they probably won't "announce" the cast list per se. That just doesn't seem like the Tokyopop way, for some reason. The fact that it's supposed to come out so soon would seem to support that. (Unless they're just teasing us again, which is possible.) I mean, with a release no more than 5 or 6 months away, I should think that they would be well down the road to finding their talent. The production and post production couldn't even start until that's over with... 
Something tells me that we may have to wait for the first release (whether that goes to video or television) before we know who the voice actors are. |
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Craeyst Raygal
Posts: 1383 Location: In the garage, beneath a 1970 MGB GT. |
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Again, you've raised good points. It does take quite a few people to translate and publish that many titles and Tokyopop isn't a large company in the first place. I am, by and large, satisfied with the work they do and very pleased with their products. They've made great strides in showing just how diverse the comic world is, and can make a legitimate claim to being the company that introduced manhwa to the states with Ragnarok.
But, can you argue that they themselves aren't responsible for their huge workload? If they are understaffed, and if they can't afford more translators, then (as I said before) in order to make enough money to expand it makes more sense to put all your effort towards capitilizing on your top properties instead of grabbing rights to unproven properties. I myself am a fan of some of those "less popular" series (I.N.V.U is quite good in my estimation) but I'll sacrifice a few issues of slower selling titles if it means that Tokyopop can make the money to hire more translators to speed up the publishing process so they can make more money. |
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billslates
Posts: 31 Location: Miami, FL |
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I dunno. Viz is going to be a HUGE contender! It seems like they've one upped Tokyopop. If you look at their Media Flash(or whatever press release page), you can see that they are reissuing manga volumes(a little bit smaller), for $8.00 a volume. From what I know, all of the Shonen Jump titles are going to have that format, and they should be re-releasing even more manga titles for cheaper(with the volumes being 192-200+ pages, very good!).
Comics One does seem interesting. They have Crayon Shin Chan which seems cool, and i'm very glad that they're doing printed versions now, beside their original electronic versions. Tokyopop also looks good. I just feel like they need to put in some type of monthly magazine(anything!). I don't know why, it just seems odd that they are just making graphic novels(even though Comics One is 0_o...) Dark Horse. ... Nuff Said. They need to do something new. Coamix. I can't wait to pick up Fist of the North Star Master Edition. If you've seen it, you'll agree that the $15 price tag is worth it. Great coloring, and great size, makes a great manga. At the same time, I hope that they don't release Raijin's title in that format though. I don't have enough money for that. I hope they do it like Viz. Speaking about Raijin and Shonen Jump. When are they going to release their first volumes. I can understand Shonen Jump, their titles are kinda spaced out. Raijin has more than enough(from what I know), to release some titles. I prefer if they release them in the time of availablity, rather than all at once, so people can have time to get them once per week, rather than splurge buy. I'm pretty sure that there are other manga companies, but I don't know them off the top of my head. That's my 21 cents! |
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LordByronius
ANN Columnist
 Posts: 861 Location: Philippe for America! He is five. |
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I feel bad for saying this, but I had no idea who or what "Comics One" was until they picked up the Berzerk manga.
Now I'm all ears. |
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Case
Posts: 1016 |
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They are. But that doesn't necessarily mean that they're responsible for releasing every single title in their catalog on a monthly basis.
Not necessarily. A title popular overseas or among the underground fans can fail in the open American market just like an unknown title can. I don't think the underground or overseas popularity necessarily matter. Think about the titles you hear about from time to time that didn't do so well over there but take off over here. I'm admittedly not as familiar with instances of that as I am with anime, but isn't MARS one of those? And anyway, maybe their books show that increased production isn't feasible. Or maybe they just prefer to be a small operation. All I'm trying to say is, there are plenty of good reasons for them to release at the rate they do. At least they're releasing stuff on a regular basis, and making it highly accessible. I don't see anything to complain about. |
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ANN_Bamboo
ANN Contributor
 Posts: 3904 Location: CO |
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Comics One has been around for a while, but might I say-- they are amazing. The first volume of theirs I ever saw blew me away. It was the same size as Japanese tankouban, right to left, impressive work on translating sound effects, with the same presentation as their Japanese counterparts (meaning a novel with a dust jacket). Honestly, it looks exactly like the Japanese release, except in English. I haven't seen any of their releases in a while, but they do a very impressive job with their releases and are great for all the people out there who like their manga to be as close to the original release as possible. |
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