Forum - View topicAnswerman - Why Isn't Manga Made In Color Editions?
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Lord Geo
Posts: 2560 Location: North Brunswick, New Jersey |
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Simply put, costs. The color pages are meant to be a super-special, once-in-a-lifetime moment, so the publisher is willing to spend the extra money to print some color pages for the initial serialization. However, spending that extra money for every single collected volume print run, & in every form that series may get (tankouban, bunkoban, aizoban, kanzenban, etc.)? No way in hell is that going to happen. Hell, just look at the four Shonen Jump manga that received full-color final chapters (Ring ni Kakero, Dragon Ball, Slam Dunk, & Naruto), as every one of them has yet to see their final chapters reproduced in the way that they were originally made & shown; at least, this is to my knowledge. There have been exceptions, though. Saint Seiya Next Dimension, for example, is drawn with full-color in mind, so every tankouban is just that, & was even initially serialized in the magazine in full-color. However, word is that the other mangaka were getting annoyed/jealous of Masami Kurumada getting that special treatment, & I'm sure the costs were only adding up, so ND eventually switched over to greyscaled serialization, with the full-color being only available in the collected volumes. |
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Greed1914
 Posts: 4450 |
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There are probably a few reasons. If you look at old comics, you'll notice that much of the coloring is actually little dots that makes it look like everything is filled in, so that saved on printing. Costs to the customers have also gone up considerably over the years. DC has toyed with lowering the price from time to time, and even made a marketing campaign out of it a few years ago, but it went back up pretty quickly. They also reduced the number of pages dedicated to the story, and added more ads. A typical 32 page DC issue used to have 22 pages of story and 10 ads, now it only has 20 pages of story. I suppose it also helps that both publishers are part of very big corporations for whom the cost of color printing is probably pretty negligible. Regarding what Justin said about mangaka getting close to deadlines, I've heard that Toriyama decided to make Super Saiyans blonde since all that hair could be left blank on the page. |
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Theodore Relic
Posts: 63 |
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I remember back in the early 90s, when Viz attempted to color their manga reprints. While some of the books looked okay with the process used to color them (Ikegami Ryoichi was apparently so happy with it that he did a new color cover for every issue of the 10-part Crying Freeman vol. 3). some did not.
I particularly remember seeing Ranma 1/2, when they began the series in the US, in color. Now I've seen Lea Hernandez' work, both coloring and her drawn artwork. She does a very good job with both but on Ranma 1/2...the process just looks kinda muddy in spots. especially if the page had tones. Since color required different printing processes, the books went from $2.95 to $4.95 I recall. I don't think the experiment was a success, and within a year or so Viz reverted to black and white. |
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Ushio
Posts: 630 |
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180 page tankobon ¥430 - ¥1300 or $3.80 - $11.50 while the weekly or monthly anthologies cost between $2.5 - $7 each. While a monthly full colour 32 page comic costs $2.99 and up for DC and $3.99 and up for Marvel and $15.99 on average for a graphic novel (though they at least reduce quickly in price) |
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HeeroTX
Posts: 2046 Location: Austin, TX |
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Here's a random "new" issue of an American comic book: http://www.midtowncomics.com/store/dp.asp?pl=577&PRID=Doctor+Strange+Damnation+_1702201 It likely has (as others have noted) around 20 pages of content, comes out once a month, and has a cover price of $4.99. Weekly jump comes out every week, probably has closer to 150-200 pages of content and has a cover price of around 260Yen (or, around $2.25 at the current exchange rate). Or, if you want a more "direct" comparison. When Viz was releasing chapters as single issues way back in the day, you'd get a single chapter of manga in the American "floppy comic" type release. The issues back then averaged maybe $3/book (would be more now just due to inflation, but let's just roll with that). Contrast that with manga tankouban which usually comprise maybe 8-10 chapters of a single manga. A single volume of One Piece from about a year ago went for around 400 yen (or about $3.50). So, short answer: manga is (generally) not color because you get around 10x the content (or more, depending on various factors) for about the same price. |
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DerekL1963
 Subscriber Posts: 1116 Location: Puget Sound |
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Gah, that just kills me... I used to be able to get a couple of comics, a Slurpee, a piece of candy... and still get change back from a dollar. The price increase isn't just inflation though, after the crash Western comics are pitched more towards the adult reader/collector than the general public. The former demographic will pay more, and that results in maintaining profits on a smaller number of sales. |
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HeeroTX
Posts: 2046 Location: Austin, TX |
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Note, that's pretty much the same business model as anime has been under for decades. It's always interesting to see people assume that anime producers could make more money if they sold volume at prices similar to the US. I think both Japanese anime producers and American comics publishers have found that the RELIABLE higher cost sales are better than the ERRATIC mass market volume. (Just to note, I'm not saying I'm a fan of that business model, merely that it amuses me that the American/Japanese comics is basically a mirror image of Japanese/American anime) |
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Greed1914
Posts: 4450 |
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There is definitely some truth to that. As I mentioned before, DC tried a marketing push with "Drawing the line at $2.99" for a while, and that also involved cutting out things like short side-stories on various books. I don't think that plan lasted a year. Various reboots and relaunches crop up from time to time with the idea of attracting new readers, but the big boosts don't stick. Chasing the more casual customer just doesn't seem to work long-term. |
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Spastic Minnow
Bargain Hunter Exempt from Grammar Rules  Posts: 4614 Location: Gainesville, FL |
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But you're quoting only Japanese print publications. What about digital media? What about foreign printings? Sure, a Japanese company knows what makes money in Japan, but certain publishers in the US and other might not see color pages as a deal breaker. It's not like we get their initial magazine printings so a few pages out of many in what is likely a series only release can be an attractive plus. At which point I assume the answer is Japan's famous stinginess to provide a superior product to different publisher. "We don't print in color, we're not going to let THEM do it." |
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Lord Geo
Posts: 2560 Location: North Brunswick, New Jersey |
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Exactly. Manga is a Japanese product made specifically for Japanese audiences, so obviously the Japanese publishers are going to focus on the domestic, Japanese market, first & foremost. This isn't a hard concept, and you're hypothetical quote at the end is effectively how Japanese businesses tend to operate; they're intrinsically stubborn & wants to do things their way & their way only. Just because comics around the world are marketed in a different way doesn't mean that manga has to switch over to that methodology. Also, what companies here publish are whatever the Japanese are giving them. It's not like Viz actually got the full-color final chapter of Slam Dunk or Dragon Ball when time came to publish those last volumes, but was forbidden from publishing them like that by Shueisha. No, Viz was given the monochromatic versions that's been the standard ever since the final tankoubans came out in Japan. |
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Gina Szanboti
Posts: 11407 |
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Mixing paints? That's was felt-tip markers are for. 
Here's why manga aren't in color. While this is obviously in greater detail than would be done for a manga, it's still demonstrates how crazy labor-intensive it would be. It took her more than 2 1/2 hours just for the coloring. |
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MajinAkuma
 Posts: 1199 |
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Seeing color pages in magazines are usually very nice extra pages, and seeing them in a weekly chapter is nice enough.
I remember that people criticized this color page and accused Kubo of laziness (it's just his style). 
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lys
 Posts: 1010 Location: mitten-state |
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Another reason for the lack of colour page reproduction in collected print volumes may just be the practicality of getting the page counts lined up right: book pages are printed in signatures of usually 8 or 16 pages (think of folding a large rectangle of paper in half and half again a couple times), so to insert colour pages in between b/w pages you have to have just the right amount of b/w so that the colour will land between two 8-16pg signatures. (This is why when there are colour pages, they're usually at the beginning of the book so there's less fuss.) Or you print the whole book on a colour press (with the b/w pages calling for only one ink) which is more expensive... I know some (many?) ebook editions in the US bring back the colour art that was printed greyscale in the books--pretty sure Yen usually does this? But these colour illustrations have to be requested from the Japanese publisher: the files we get for a typical book are whatever they sent to their printer, so colour art is already greyscaled or converted to halftone (b/w dots). I'm happy with black and white art in manga. There are a few manga artists whose colour artwork I love, but those tend to be best suited for covers and special illustrations, and I can't imagine creating a whole volume of such artwork. A lot of colour US comics are unappealing to my eyes--adding colour and doing it well is for sure a talent! (I prefer fairly simple/flat colours that maintain an overall colour scheme or palette of colours throughout the pages. otherwise it can feel chaotic or overstimulating...) |
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EmperorBrandon
Encyclopedia Editor
 Posts: 2209 Location: Springfield, MO |
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The series from Comico, like the three expiring from Crunchyroll in just a few minutes, are more examples that are in color.
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Ouran High School Dropout
 Posts: 440 Location: Somewhere in Massachusetts, USA |
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I'm thumbing through the Dark Horse edition of Oh My Goddess! Colors. The liner notes say that Fujishima supervised the colorization, and I believe it. The work is exquisite, and the printing does it justice. It's a blast comparing it to the original pen-and-ink line art.
Dark, saturated colors are scarce; the tones are largely pale, almost pastel(ish). I can't say I've seen anything quite like it in American comics. What I remember most about this collection was how many months overdue the U.S. release was. I have to wonder if the Japanese printing was delayed too. |
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