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NEWS: ADV Manga Cancellations

Mind you, that's the only series I've actively dropped out of the three dozen or so series I'm reading.

The thing is is that you're still insisting - even AFTER these series have all been cancelled due to low sales - that "the market for them is still there" even though you have solid evidence that not enough people are buying these titles in order to make it worthwhile for the company.

It isn't the company "screwing over the fans", it's the company "running a business". You can't expect them to take a hit on something like this just because you like the comic book.

Even thier anime line is all top profile title like Inuyasha and Flame of Recca.

Just like funimation, they are less likely to take chance.

After the past ten years or so of manga publishing history, *any* company that publishes a series that runs over twenty or thirty volumes is taking a huge chance. While things are still relatively in a boom market right now, it's a gamble to take on a Boys Over Flowers (especially with competing anime sales) or other similar series.

Please Save My Earth has always been considered a risky title due to its length and poor artwork and storytelling during the first few volumes.

Basara, which I think is just awful, is barely surviving but they're taking a chance in hoping it'll build an audience.

And honestly, major kudos go to Viz for me right now for putting out a title like Sensual Phrase. Good smut is hard to find,

Viz has managed to weather the hard years of manga publishing and they've got some scars to prove it. The fact that they tried a couple of times to bring Urusei Yatsura out shows that.

But they found that some series just won't sell, like Black Jack and Patlabor.

But at least they tried to bring it back a couple of times already and they're not going to try again right now.

It's great, and I love both titles tremendously. A lot of people like to bash Viz, but both Hot Gimmick and Sensual Phrase are titles I couldn't live without.

sailor_moon:

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It's great, and I love both titles tremendously. A lot of people like to bash Viz, but both Hot Gimmick and Sensual Phrase are titles I couldn't live without.

I guess Patrick Macias was right when he told me the fans only care about sex in manga.

Or they just found some series they don't know how to sell, especially since the anime versions of those manga are keeping CPM afloat.
I don't recall them ever bringing back Blackjack and Patlabor. The only kind of vibe I got from them was, "Here. Check out these manga which are popular with critics and fans, but buy our Rumiko Takahashi and Pokemon manga instead."

I guess Patrick Macias was right when he told me the fans only care about sex in manga.

As a Patlabor fan, I have to hand it to you Gatsu: this is what I was going to post, and I usually don't agree with you at all . I thought it was a major letdown that Viz was willing to drop one of the most intelligent series they were publishing at the time. It would seem that subtle, character driven humor can't exist in the foreign market, without flashy art backing it up. Unless CPM does charity, the audience is there, Viz just doesn't know how to market classics like this.

Now, before anyone brings up that 'pure mecha' series don't sell anymore: let me point out that Patlabor is hardly like that. It's strength lies in believable, human characters and strong storytelling. The plausible mech designs are a nice bonus, but are really just providing a frame in which the tale is told. For me, this is what makes manga tick (My apologies for the OT rant)

Patlabor was never, I repeat, NEVER a huge hit in America.

It had a core fanbase and picked up a little popular appeal but the show wasn't a hit and some of these series...

and this is going to come as a HUGE SHOCK to some of you who are apparently living in fantasy worlds..

just flat out do not have a lot of commercial appeal in America and WILL NEVER BE huge successes no matter how hard they promote something.

A lot of people seem to be under the impression that if you have a niche genre show that a small but loyal fanbase loves and you market it heavily to everyone it will be a HUGE OVERWHELMING BLOCKBUSTER SUCCESS just because you advertised it heavily.

The titles you're talking about are "classic" anime series with middling-to-poor animation quality, extremely retro (and in some cases flat-out ugly) character designs, slow-moving plots and labyrinthine continuities that take dedication to really sit through.

Case in point: Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow. They marketed this thing for a year, saturated television with ads, plastered posters everywhere and ran trailers for it in front of every major release for 6-7 months before the film came out. HUGE campaign - some $35 million spent. The movie flopped and flopped hard; why? It was made for an extremely specific audience, people who loved retro sci-fi.

Just because CPM can sell 3,000 copies of Patlabor (if that) and turn a small profit doesn't mean there's some huge untapped market potential.

Also, stop looking down your noses at people who don't like old shows. There's nothing wrong with liking your anime with an few extra coats of paint and a little high gloss.

Some of the stuff coming out now is GASP OMG a lot better and way more accessable than those old series.

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A lot of people seem to be under the impression that if you have a niche genre show that a small but loyal fanbase loves and you market it heavily to everyone it will be a HUGE OVERWHELMING BLOCKBUSTER SUCCESS just because you advertised it heavily.

The problem is that the titles were complaining about never got much advertising to begin with, which is a big part of why they failed.