Tokyopop to stop publishing manga in North America

http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/news/2011-04-15/tokyopop-to-close-north-american...

Another piece of doom and gloom news for the North American manga industry. I was only reading one series from Tokyopop (Qwaser of Stigmata), but it was quickly becoming a favorite ;_; Hopefully some people's favorite's can be rescued by other publishers.

Oh I really hope so. I seriously don't want them to drop Maid Sama. If that happens I will die of despair... But it's sad in general that it's closing. I mean, I've read manga from them for years, and this is a big shock... They sort of felt like my friends.

Friends who made a lot of really bad life decisions.

Friends who never answered emails, or looked at their forum full of people asking about the status of this title or that one they left hanging for years.

I wish I could say I was shocked, but I'm really not. TokyoPop has been busily shooting themselves in the collective foot for years now. The debt Borders owed them (apparently) was just the final straw.

Two interesting editorials on Tokyopop's downfall:

Jason Thompson:

http://khyungbird.livejournal.com/82308.html

Matt Blind:

http://www.rocketbomber.com/2011/04/18/i-hate-stu-levy

That's screwed up. I have alot of manga that I currently read. Dat's not right.

6> Luckily, Tokyopop isn't the only manga publisher in North America. In fact, I'd go so far as to say that they weren't even close to being the best manga publisher in North America - if they were, then they wouldn't have had so many rounds of layoffs these last few years.

It's unfortunate about the licenses, but perhaps the German division will take over and finish them up in English or something, rather than doing English based out of NA. (Long shot and unlikely, but...)

Yes, I agree that Tokyopop is not the sole publisher of manga in North America, but they provide very popular manga.

I've always wondered about the company. I recall many times walking into chain bookstores and seeing their stuff at some huge discount. Like B1G1. Made me wonder about the financial stability of the company.

5>

I have fallen more and more in love with Rocket Bomber lately.

7>

>It's unfortunate about the licenses, but perhaps the German division will take over and finish them up in English or something, rather than doing English based out of NA. (Long shot and unlikely, but...)

I have a feeling that the German company only gets licenses to print manga in German, and that the JP licensor wouldn't want them cutting into potential US sales with imports. Japanese companies tend to act that way often: like when there's an official English subtitle track for an anime (say, the Haruhi movie) and the Japanese companies specifically don't include it on the JP release since they think importing would hurt the value of the license for US companies.

This is going to make things worse for these companies. Just drive more fans to the peer to peer and direct download sites if the only way that the fans are going to be able to get these are via fan translations.

Absolutely. I already can't find some of the manga I read. I have to go online to find the manga I want. The worst part is that most of them are incomplete.