Forum - View topicJason Thompson's House of 1000 Manga - Raijin Comics
|
Goto page Previous 1, 2 Note: this is the discussion thread for this article |
| Author | Message | |||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
|
angryrider
Posts: 18 |
|
|||||||||
|
I was in high school when Raijin and Jump came out, and of the two I preferred Raijin more, even if the biggest disappointment about it was that damned Bomber Girl. I decreased my purchases of American comics just so I could get the weekly issue, and it was because of Raijin that I actually cared more about manga. Shonen Jump was just fluff, and by the time Naruto the cartoon started, I became more and more disappointed in it until it started to increase their page count.
Raijin Comics was a great experiment, but if only they had more money to advertize their titles more, even if Sega basically funded the magazine. |
||||||||||
|
||||||||||
|
GATSU
Posts: 15366 |
|
|||||||||
|
angry: SEGA was more like an investor than a sponsor.
|
||||||||||
|
||||||||||
|
Akcoll99
Posts: 236 |
|
|||||||||
|
Great writeup! I was a HUGE fan of Gutsoon/Raijin when they first appeared on the market back in 2002. I was right in their core audience, a male reader in his 20's at the time. I was already a big fan of City Hunter thanks to the ADV sets and loved getting to read the manga finally. And it was great getting to read other favorites like Fist Of The North Star/Blue Sky, Slam Dunk, Baki, and Getten. I looked forward to every issue and even wrote an e-mail asking them about upcoming titles and was told that releases were in the works for Hojo's other big titles, Cat's Eye, Family Compo and Angel Heart. So, as a Hojo fan I will always be bummed by their failure and subsequent closure in the U.S. market...
Hindsight's always 20/20, but I wish now they had skipped the magazine and gone straight to the collected volumes. I always heard the individual volumes sold okay (with Getten being their best selling title) and that fans and retailers were frustrated by how slow they came out due to having to wait for the magazine to publish enough chapters. R.I.P. Gutsoon. My fingers are still crossed that we might someday get a full English language release for City Hunter. (Ha! Yeah right. Might as well hold out for Kimagure Orange Road while I'm at it...) |
||||||||||
|
||||||||||
|
GATSU
Posts: 15366 |
|
|||||||||
|
Akcoll:
I don't think they said releases were in the works. They were just giving you ideas of what else Hojo did. Do agree that maybe selling the individual volumes directly might've been more helpful. |
||||||||||
|
||||||||||
|
Akcoll99
Posts: 236 |
|
|||||||||
Um, no, they said in their reply to me very implicitly that they were working on these titles for U.S. release. In fact, here is the text from the actual e-mail from Raijin, dated 1-18-2004 where they replied to my questions about Hojo's back catalog as well as why Baki wasn't coming out in collected editions from them and what their plans were for their longer running series now that they had (at that time) scaled Raijin back from a weekly to a monthly: Thanks for your letter. Look for it to be printed in the Readers column somewhere around R#46-47. We are considering a number of solutions to the long series problem. At the moment, we plan to keep cranking out the paperbacks at a good pace to allow readers to keep up with the story. Then, as to what to do about the pacing in the magazine, well... We haven't made a final decision yet. But don't worry, the paperbacks will give you plenty of reading pleasure. We've already released 4 volumes of City Hunter and Slam Dunk, and volume 8 of Fist of the North Star is coming out in February Baki: the author and his agents (who are not directly inside the Coamix Inc.organization) had already signed a batch of rights relations before RAIJIN started out. We have to clear the mess of right issues before we can release the paperbacks. So we'll have to ask you to give us a little more time on this one. Believe me, there are a whole pack of fans who are shouting for this one to go into publication, and we'd love to get them out. Hojo: we are actively working on plans to release Hojo's backlog. Family Compo and Cat's Eye are on top of the list. Keep your eyes peeled on the pages of RAIJIN for release announcements. Thanks for your letter. Feel free to write more. And get your friends to buyRAIJIN! Sadly this was just weeks before they announced they were closing up shop... 
|
||||||||||
|
||||||||||
|
ptolemy18
Manga Reviewer/Creator/Taster
Posts: 357 Location: San Francisco |
|
|||||||||
|
I'm suddenly getting all kinds of "I remember Raijin...." emails from everyone! Sam Humphries (hi Sam) emailed me to point out that Jake Tarbox was not actually the main editor of Raijin; that was actually a guy named Michael Palmieri, who hasn't stayed involved in the manga industry. Tarbox certainly *seemed* more important because he was almost like the company mascot, who showed up in all these little cartoons (well, cartoon illustrations at least), like Howard Phillips in Nintendo Power in the '80s. -_-
@GATSU - I agree about Revenge of Mouflon, I thought it was fairly tasteful and typical of manga. I was just pressing the heavy sarcasm when I went on about its anti-Americanism. About Berserk... you're totally right (good point in fact) that the anime ending probably made a lot of people read the manga, but also, I think it's just a way different experience than reading Fist of the North Star. The setting, the backstory, and most of all the heroes are SOOOOOO different. One of the reasons I like Berserk is that even though Guts is so badass, he's very human (well, mostly -_- ) -- he REALLY sweats and bleeds and suffers and gets beaten up and tormented and has to stretch himself to his limits to fight these monsters. Whereas in Fist, although there's a few fights where Kenshiro has to sweat a little, it's more about watching Kenshiro come in and deliver justice without even blinking an eye or changing his expression. And that's why I prefer Berserk to Fist of the North Star, personally. About ComicsOne -- I don't know if I'll ever write a post specifically about the company. For one thing, I never talked to them, so I don't know all the details of what went down or why they made the business decisions they did. For another thing, though, I've already written about almost every good ComicsOne manga (IMHO) one at a time -- Iron Wok Jan, Bride of Deimos, Kazan etc. I might write about some of their more obscure ebooks, though. @osakaedo - You're right! Ed Chavez reminded me of that. I knew they were still publishing, but *Weekly* Comics Bunch is no more. No Longer Human is great, BTW, the Vertical edition is excellent. @Akcoll99 - That letter is great! You're lucky you still have it. And that's pretty cool that they answered individual letters! |
||||||||||
|
||||||||||
|
GATSU
Posts: 15366 |
|
|||||||||
|
Akcoll:
Working on and planning are two different things. They no doubt had it in the pipeline if City Hunter did well, but nothing was set in stone. Hell, there were placeholders for Nemuri Kyoshiro and Keiji TPBs on Amazon, but no specific dates, for obvious reasons. ptolemy:
Jake did serve as a rep and translator for Hojo. Though, ironically, he didn't even know Buronson was at AX in '04. I hope they got to meet in the end, though. One of the background details about the guy was that he apparently served in the Japanese Navy, and je looked every bit like it. BTW, Buronson said he had nothing do with Blue Sky. He was just credited as a creator of the series in general.
Actually, for a lot of American fans who grew up on Fist, the reason we initially gravitated to Berserk is 'cus the premise promised Hokuto No Ken with a medieval setting. Plus, it was an antidote to the shojo stuff which was popular at the time. 'Course, now that Berserk is using the same type of prose, I'd rather just read the real thing instead.
Yeah, it's just too bad he doesn't do more of it lately.
Still got Crayon Shin Chan, Goku, and Kabuto left, I think. |
||||||||||
|
||||||||||
|
Tragic_Pineapple
Posts: 8 |
|
|||||||||
|
I remember picking up Raijin Games & Anime at my local comic shop back then; I remember it being very Sega focused which makes sense now. I wish I had known about the actual magazine and the FotNS/City Hunter trades. Now I'mma hunt them all down.
It's a shame Raijin Comics didn't succeed the way they had hoped. It was an amazing concept and I would have loved to see them become a lasting name in the manga industry. |
||||||||||
|
||||||||||
StudioToledo
 Posts: 847 Location: Toledo, U.S.A. |
|
|||||||||
|
I use to constantly buy this magazine every week from a comic shop 3 miles from home. It was worth every penny.
|
||||||||||
|
||||||||||
 |
All times are GMT - 5 Hours |
|
|
|
Powered by phpBB © 2001, 2005 phpBB Group