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Kalessin
Joined: 15 Aug 2007
Posts: 931
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Posted: Sun Jul 18, 2010 6:57 pm
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Personally, for a given property, I'm generally interested in the anime and whatever the source material is - be it a manga or a light novel or whatever. I'm rarely, if ever, interested in anything else. I'm not interested in manga or light novel adaptations of anything. And if the anime is the original source, then the anime is all I'm interested in. So, I have zero interest in a manga based on a series of light novels.
That being said, I hope that it does well. Seven Seas needs whatever help it can get. For whatever reason, light novels seem to sell poorly (which sucks for those of us who actually like to read), so many of them get dropped if they're even licensed at all. And I get the impression that Seven Seas can't really afford to take big risks at this point. I mean, if they were big enough, then they might have release the last Strawberry Panic novel just to make the fans happy (and maybe stand a chance of making some money). But they're just not successful enough to afford that, and at this point, they're probably not going to release a light novel series unless it's pretty much guaranteed to do well. However, if they managed to do well enough with their manga series that they could afford more risk, then maybe we'd start seeing more light novels from them.
So, I hope that whatever Seven Seas licenses does well, that they stick around, and that at some point they start releasing light novels again. But the manga of Toradora? I'm not interested in the least. I hope that there are plenty of other people who are, but I have no interest in manga which are adaptations rather than original.
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population_tire
Joined: 31 May 2007
Posts: 572
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Posted: Sun Jul 18, 2010 7:59 pm
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You haven't heard? Seven Seas isn't going to continue any of their light novels.
Horrible company. I hope they go out of business and someone else gets their licenses.
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Aura Ichadora
Joined: 25 Apr 2008
Posts: 2281
Location: In front of my computer
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Posted: Sun Jul 18, 2010 8:23 pm
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population_tire wrote: | You haven't heard? Seven Seas isn't going to continue any of their light novels.
Horrible company. I hope they go out of business and someone else gets their licenses. |
Now that's just cruel.
You rather see people lose their jobs and livelihoods because they are slow at releasing and/or don't fully release their titles? That's a horrible, disgusting thought to have.
Anyway...I'm sure that, with the manga getting (possibly) licensed, the light novels may get licensed sometime along the way. If not by Seven Seas, then maybe by Yen Press? Their light novel releases are nicely translated and bundled, and as far as I know they've been selling well so perhaps they'll be interested in picking up more in the future?
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Kalessin
Joined: 15 Aug 2007
Posts: 931
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Posted: Sun Jul 18, 2010 8:59 pm
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population_tire wrote: | You haven't heard? Seven Seas isn't going to continue any of their light novels.
Horrible company. I hope they go out of business and someone else gets their licenses. |
Seven Seas is not currently doing anything with light novels and does not currently plan do so. But they have indicated that that might change in the future. I think that it basically comes down to the fact that light novels aren't selling well enough, and they're not going to release them when they don't expect to make a profit. If at some point, they decide that it does look profitable enough to release some light novels, then they may do so.
Regardless, just because Seven Seas isn't currently doing anything with light novels does not mean that they never will, just that they won't right now. Only the future will tell what they will do in the future.
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_V_
Joined: 13 Apr 2009
Posts: 619
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Posted: Sun Jul 18, 2010 9:08 pm
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I don't think Seven Seas is even trying to join the new Manga Anti-Piracy Alliance.
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Jaymie
Joined: 18 Jun 2009
Posts: 915
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Posted: Sun Jul 18, 2010 9:24 pm
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I don't really care about the Toradora! manga, but I might just pick it up to support them. They need all the money they can get.
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enurtsol
Joined: 01 May 2007
Posts: 14746
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Posted: Sun Jul 18, 2010 9:33 pm
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population_tire wrote: | You haven't heard? Seven Seas isn't going to continue any of their light novels.
Horrible company. I hope they go out of business and someone else gets their licenses. |
If the light novels are not selling, nobody else will pick up those licenses regardless.
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Kalessin
Joined: 15 Aug 2007
Posts: 931
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Posted: Sun Jul 18, 2010 10:07 pm
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enurtsol wrote: |
population_tire wrote: | You haven't heard? Seven Seas isn't going to continue any of their light novels.
Horrible company. I hope they go out of business and someone else gets their licenses. |
If the light novels are not selling, nobody else will pick up those licenses regardless. |
Both Viz and Tokypop have dropped light novel series - presumably due to poor sales. It's quite clear, I think, that light novels don't generally sell well enough in the US. Part of that is likely marketing (hence why Yen Press has been doing things like releasing the Spice and Wolf novels with non-anime/manga covers), and part of that is probably due to the fact that not enough people read these days. We're talking about a niche market within a niche market. There aren't all that many manga/anime fans as it is, and when only a portion of them really want to bother reading... Well, it makes selling light novels harder. And given how much more text they have, it likely costs a fair bit more to translate one light novel than several volumes of manga or possibly even an entire series of anime. Anime might actually cost more since they usually have to do it quickly, and they actually have to worry about what was said vs what the script says instead of just translating the manuscript, but there's usually a lot more to translate in a light novel than a manga or anime. You're talking about a fairly large translation cost in comparison to how much money they actually make. It's not exactly a recipe for success.
I'd love to see more light novels translated and released in the US, and in a perfect world, pretty much anything released in Japan would be released in English here, but real life keeps getting in the way... It sure would help though if more anime and manga fans were not only willing to pay for stuff but were actually willing to read actual books.
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Kyaa the Catlord
Joined: 18 Sep 2006
Posts: 300
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Posted: Sun Jul 18, 2010 10:31 pm
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I don't trust Viz or Tokyopop, but I'm certainly not giving Seven Seas any more money on anything new. I'll finish the series they have that are incomplete, but you can't trust them to follow through.
Heck, I've started buying USED copies of Tokyopop titles due to them dropping Karin.
No money to BAD companies.
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Kalessin
Joined: 15 Aug 2007
Posts: 931
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Posted: Sun Jul 18, 2010 10:56 pm
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Kyaa the Catlord wrote: | I don't trust Viz or Tokyopop, but I'm certainly not giving Seven Seas any more money on anything new. I'll finish the series they have that are incomplete, but you can't trust them to follow through.
Heck, I've started buying USED copies of Tokyopop titles due to them dropping Karin.
No money to BAD companies. |
I assume that you're talking about the Chibi Vampire light novels? They haven't dropped them. The 6th book came out in April, and according to right stuf, the 7th comes out in September. Now, the 5th came out in July of 2008, so obviously they went a while without releasing any, but they apparently have started releasing them again. It wouldn't suprise me if they haven't really kept the previous volumes in print - if nothing else, it costs money to keep printing them, and if they're not selling enough, it's not worth it even if the initial print run was profitable. So, you may have a hard time finding older volumes, but it does seem that Tokypop is releasing new ones again.
The truth of the matter at this point is that light novels sell poorly enough that there's no guarantee that the publisher - whoever they are - will publish the whole series. No publisher will continue to publish stuff that doesn't sell unless they can afford the loss and are just looking to make fans happy (which is likely rarely the case, and I doubt that any manga or light novel publisher in the US can afford that). The same goes for manga. If it doesn't sell well enough, it's not going to get published in its entirety. The only thing that will guarantee that whole series get released is if they sell. Sadly, if you refuse to buy something on the grounds that it might not be finished, you'll likely end up not getting much, and if many people think that way, then a lot fewer series will get finished.
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The Naked Beast
Joined: 26 Jun 2006
Posts: 1028
Location: A Blue Planet
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Posted: Sun Jul 18, 2010 11:15 pm
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alexcampos wrote: | Let's face it, Manga adaptations of Light novels are destined to fail. |
I thought the manga adaptation of the Full Metal Panic! light novels (to a certain extent) and anime (first season) was a great read. If it was not, then I would not have bought all of them. The now-defunct ADV Manga published this when they still had the Full Metal Panic! anime and manga licenses. The manga adaptation was very close to the anime.
Kalessin wrote: | For whatever reason, light novels seem to sell poorly (which sucks for those of us who actually like to read), so many of them get dropped if they're even licensed at all.
The truth of the matter at this point is that light novels sell poorly enough that there's no guarantee that the publisher - whoever they are - will publish the whole series. |
It does make me sad to to great titles like Full Metal Panic!, Kino no Tabi (Kino's Journey), and Scrapped Princess never went past a few volumes before Tokyopop ceased publication. Funny enough, the titles I listed were licensed and published by Tokyopop. There were blatant grammatical errors that slightly hindered but did not majorly affect my enjoyment of Tokyopop's limited title selection. Supplies were so limited that I had to search high and low to find a new copy of the most recently published volume of said titles.
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Teriyaki Terrier
Joined: 26 Mar 2008
Posts: 5689
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Posted: Sun Jul 18, 2010 11:25 pm
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Juhachi wrote: |
gokuthamonkeyking wrote: | i don't trust seven seas anymore... everytime they license something, it takes forever for them to release it. |
This was my exact sentiment when I saw this news. They're just trying to jump on the Toradora bandwaggon and try to get some money out of this series, by licensing the least-liked media form of the franchise. :lol:
Seven Seas was good about 4 years ago, but they're old news now. I'm just hoping for something REALLY GOOD for the other two licenses. And by REALLY GOOD, I mean something like Aoi Hana by Takako Shimura. They've licensed yuri titles before, so this one should be right up their ally, and its pretty short too (4 volumes at present). I would die of happiness if anyone licensed that manga finally. |
My thoughts exactly. A one point (four years is a precise number) they were a pretty great company. Eventually they became a washed up, lackluster manga company. They take far too long to publish manga, they license manga that often is either very bland, only appeals to a certain crowd.
Jumping a bandwagon is one thing, but I really don't trust Seven Seas at all now and days. To begin with the artwork of the Toradora manga is well beyond terrible and is done without serious effort. The artwork is so bad, it's not even worth reading, much less buying.
And didn't Seven Seas try to license Kodomo No Jigan several years ago? I remember how that ended up quite clearly.
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Reaper gI
Joined: 05 Oct 2009
Posts: 299
Location: UK
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Posted: Mon Jul 19, 2010 12:04 am
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The Naked Beast wrote: |
It does make me sad to to great titles like Full Metal Panic!, Kino no Tabi (Kino's Journey), and Scrapped Princess never went past a few volumes before Tokyopop ceased publication. Funny enough, the titles I listed were licensed and published by Tokyopop. There were blatant grammatical errors that slightly hindered but did not majorly affect my enjoyment of Tokyopop's limited title selection. Supplies were so limited that I had to search high and low to find a new copy of the most recently published volume of said titles. |
FMP! is still being released, they anounced the next two fairly recently. Finding the other 3 is not an easy task tho'.
Del Ray appear to still be releasing Zaregoto ok as well.
NB: they've put up the next one.
Apears to be Amnesia labyrinth, which is by the same author as Haruhi, and is basicaly unscanlated.
So we might get something worth reading out of this.
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Shiroi Hane
Encyclopedia Editor
Joined: 25 Oct 2003
Posts: 7578
Location: Wales
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Posted: Thu Jul 22, 2010 12:41 pm
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population_tire wrote: | You haven't heard? Seven Seas isn't going to continue any of their light novels.
Horrible company. I hope they go out of business and someone else gets their licenses. |
Much as I'd love to see more Boogiepop, I'm pretty sure they'd prefer to lose your business than to run themselves out of business altogether.
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