Forum - View topicTokyopop is back.
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Alan45
 Village Elder Posts: 10033 Location: Virginia |
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The April 2016 Previews from Diamond has a four page spread from Tokyopop. It is complete with an interview with Stu Levy. They are offering two titles. A manga version of Disney's version of Alice in Wonderland and a manga version of Finding Nemo. Here we go again. 
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st_owly
 Posts: 5234 Location: Edinburgh, Scotland |
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Oh dear, but did anyone really expect any different?
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zawa113
 Posts: 7358 |
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Augh, so they got Disney on board, juuuust great. At least it's not Frozen, then they'd instantly get all the money, and that would be a major problem (for inflating Stu Levy's ego)
The sad thing is, if they get something really damn good that I really want, I'll still have to buy the blasted thing. Or they'll just stick to Disney cine-manga and Stu Levy pet projects that we can safely ignore if we're lucky, but I doubt it. |
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Touma
 Posts: 2651 Location: Colorado, USA |
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I really do not understand the hatred for Tokyopop.
They published a lot of my favorite manga. I have hundreds of Tokyopop books that I still read. I just went through Sgt. Frog for the fifth or sixth time, and I recently finished my second reading of the Full Metal Panic novels. I am glad that they are coming back, if they actually are. I wish them well. |
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Alan45
Village Elder Posts: 10033 Location: Virginia |
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@Touma
I will agree that Tokyopop put out a lot of good manga. Unfortunately there were also a lot of complaints about their business practices during their run. Many were due to the owner inserting himself into things like the Initial D anime. Near the end there were serious questions about quality. They left an entire chapter out of the fourth hardback volume of Twelve Kingdoms. That was fixed in the softcover version but nothing was done about the defective hardbacks. Ultimately most of the hate and discontent was from the owner simply pulling the plug on the business and ceasing production with no advance notice. Multiple manga series were left unfinished for no good reason. Some were only a few volumes from completion. There was a lot of speculation at the time but the only reason given was that the owner was tired of being in the publishing business and wanted to pursue other projects. Now the guy is back crowing about how publishing is Tokyopop's specialty. I really don't want to do business with him again. Unfortunately if he gets properties I want, I will not have much choice. I don't think he can be trusted with any series running more than a single volume. By the way, I understand that the Full Metal Panic novels are incomplete. There are apparently several beyond the four done by Tokyopop. |
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Touma
Posts: 2651 Location: Colorado, USA |
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I really do not care about his business practices.
I care about the books, and I have no complaints about any of the Tokyopop books that I own. I do wish that they would have completed more of the series that I was reading, but they did not. That is just one of life's little disappointments that I have to deal with. I can still enjoy what I have.
That is correct. They released only five of 12. Tokyopop's volume 4 had volumes 4 and 5 of the original. They did release all of the novels that were adapted to anime. |
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zawa113
Posts: 7358 |
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@Touma
We mostly hate Stu Levy himself. I mean, he's not Kanya West bad, but within the US manga market.... he's sort of the Kanye West. His terrible pet projects and thorough screwing over of the OEL artists and authors certainly made us hate him a lot. For example, he somehow got respected mangaka Ai Yazawa to draw his pet project manga, Princess Ai, and even though it wasn't very good, you bet he marketed the hell out of that. And he did some other horrible pet projects that he also shoved down people's throats. And yeah, he screwed over OEL people, who couldn't have rights back until TP shut down. Granted, the contracts were pretty horrid to begin with and people really should've read them better, but way to advertise yourselves as too cool for those bs fancy schmancy contracts (yeah, they advertised working for them OEL like that). But basically, they'd make their work, then TP wouldn't publish it or anything, they'd just sit on their hands about it. It left things like fan favorite Off*Beat unfinished until Chromatic Press picked it up for online stuffs. Though I can't entirely hold Tokyopop's failure only on him, I gotta say that Border's failure put huge financial strain on Tokyopop as well (they did sort of have a lot of their money tied up in Borders and when they went kablooie, Tokyopop sort of had to follow suit). But then he goes galavanting off to Japan to make a tsunami documentary and promised to bring back the company. I'm not sure where he's getting the money for either of these things. And my god, they left a lot of unfinished manga and especially manhwa in their wake. Not just from the closure and the things left front hat (like Future Diary), but even before that, they dropped stuff pretty often. So, we're not upset that Tokyopop is back, in fact, the European TPs have been around and stuck around, we're just upset by the return of the incredibly annoying Stu Levy. And as long as he runs the party, we are going to be annoyed by his mere existence within the industry. |
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Alan45
Village Elder Posts: 10033 Location: Virginia |
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@Touma
I don't have any problem with the books I do have. Where I have a problem is with the couple dozen series I was following that are incomplete. It is hard to say just how many series were abandoned when Tokyopop went out of business. Some of the incomplete series may have been abandoned without notice before that time. This is a problem with all or almost all companies publishing manga in the US. And certainly CMX did the same think in simply going out of business without warning. I'm not happy with them either, but CMX is not trying to get back in the manga business. I think is comes down to attitude. Stu Levy has been the face of Tokyopop for most of the company's run. If he had said that he was leaving publication in order to avoid bankruptcy it would have been one thing. I forget the exact words, but he more or less said he was tired of the publishing business and was going to take his marbles and go elsewhere. Given how many loyal readers he just left hanging that is unforgivable. |
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st_owly
Posts: 5234 Location: Edinburgh, Scotland |
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Towards the end I heard that Fruits Basket was basically the only thing keeping the lights on. When that ended, I remember they massively pushed Gakuen Alice to try and make that their next big thing but it evidently didn't work. I think Stu Levy tried to hard to focus on OEL and quantity over quality.
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GATSU
Posts: 15580 |
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In Stu's defense, no one else would publish these OEL guys and gals. And he had to compete against the similar-oriented YA market which is-probably even more exploitative of authors and creators.
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