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Forum - View topicNEWS: Boys-Love Publisher LEAF Files for Bankruptcy
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Kiyoko
 Posts: 131 Location: Pennsylvania |
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Hmm. First Biblos folds, now LEAF.
Could it be that the shonen-ai and yaoi genre in Japan is beginning to lose it's popularity or at least become less profitable? |
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CCSYueh
 Posts: 2707 Location: San Diego, CA |
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Biblos had it's demise tied to the guy running it boosting his failing computer company up with profits from Biblos so far as I've heard.
The other option is less failing market vs market glut. I used to gauge the US economy by the Swap meets my late husband loved to go to. When there were lots of shoppers, but no one was spending money, I knew the economy was slumping (at least in my area) as people were looking for bargains, but passing on what they could live without. I better times, they would pick up the cute whatever spur-of-the-moment. So until someone puts out the state of the BL market in Japan, it's too soon to jump for joy over the demise of yaoi. Wasn't our recent stock market sputter tied in part to Japanese Banks tightening up? |
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poisondusk
 Posts: 69 Location: Brighton, UK |
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Leaf were a light novel publisher, rather than a manga publisher, so it doesn't necessarily reflect on the genre as a whole.
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Naivurtal
 Posts: 4 Location: San Diego, California |
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nah it can be, for every company that goes down 3 more will stand up in its place lol. Shonen-Ai and Yaoi will never go down, it'll just come back stronger
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Kaioshin_Sama
Posts: 1215 |
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Well I've been theorizing that this section of the Otaku market was slumping and giving up ground to other market areas. My theory is that the market has been so active recently that the Otaku's are running out of money and the new games aren't selling as well because nobody can afford them. It was just chaos for a while and now the market has hit a recession. I'm not sure its that supply exceeded demand (although that is partially true), so much as the current rate of trade can't sustain itself anymore. Some companies are going to go down, but I hope it isn't any of my favourites. I'm sure Alicesoft is safe, but one of my other favourites Eushully is a lot smaller and far more vulnerable.
Last edited by Kaioshin_Sama on Tue Apr 10, 2007 2:34 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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domino
 Posts: 373 |
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I find it interesting that there are so many Japanese BL publishers going bankrupt, yet so many American BL publishers appearing. I never thought I'd ever see such a trend pop up...
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sunflower
 Posts: 1080 |
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It's really only a trend of one though, since Biblos' bankruptcy was completely unrelated to its work in publishing, and was only a by-product of its owner's misfortune. |
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kokuryu
 Posts: 915 |
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I guess they were really not too well noted. Their ZigZag published novels were actually pretty good, and quite humorous in many spots. I guess their claim to fame was the BL content, but they also had many non-BL publications, and tended toward a lot of fantasy and mystical type stories.
It is too bad, and I feel sorry when a small publisher closes its doors because then the artists/writers that used their services wont get their stories out anymore. I think that what is really coming around is that people are re-defining what they are interested in, and reading books seems to be the least on many people's list nowadays - they are more into the visual, so a manga or anime will thrive while a book will die. |
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