Forum - View topicANNCast - Kurt in Earnest
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PBsallad
 Posts: 338 Location: Phoenix |
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I really enjoyed this show too. Keep up the great Zac and Justin. 
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Copyrighted Name
 Posts: 28 |
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To clarify on the Lupin-Miyazaki thing, Miyazaki was the series director (along with Takahata) for the latter portion of the first series, and was only involved with the second series for the aforementioned two episodes.
This was a really fantastic episode, by the way. I wasn't expecting to be too engaged by the Yen Press thing, but it actually turned out to be really interesting and informative. I might want to check out With the Light. I'm also pleasantly surprised to hear that Zeta Gundam is doing well here. |
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TheTheory
 Posts: 1029 Location: Central PA |
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Incidentally, I've never been into the manga thing (or US graphic novels/comic books)... but nothing made me as interested in starting as this episode did. A delightful guest who did a good job of sharing some good insights into the business. Kudos.
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Draneor
 Posts: 355 |
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Brian Hibbs at Comic Book Resources posts the BookScan Top 750 graphic novels yearly along with an analysis. As one would expect, many of them aren't manga, but you can get an idea of at least how the best sellers did (keeping in mind his disclaimer on the limitations of the data). |
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littlegreenwolf
 Posts: 4796 Location: Seattle, WA |
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Great show, I really enjoyed Hassler as a guest, but I could be biased being a bookseller. Still, I loved his viewpoint in the business.
I feel so guilty at hearing scanlations are ruining sales, but I can understand it. I read so many a week, but it's mainly non-licensed stuff. However there are some titles (Claymore, Naruto, Alice Academy, Ouran, Tsubasa) that are licensed, but you can't tell a fangirl she has to wait 2 years to read the next chapter of a series. I buy these titles as they're released here, but I'm not foolish enough into thinking everyone else does this. I agree, the websites are killing manga sales in terms of scanlations. A couple years back it used to be you had to brave the weirdness that were irc channels in order to get the latest chapters of a manga you were interested in. Now you don't have to work for your scanlations with the websites out there giving it to you with just a single click. I'd support a crackdown on the websites that post manga, but I'm not about to give up all my scanlations. Too many shoujo series that will never see the light of day here, and though I don't believe I'm entitled to free stuff, I DO actually spend a percent of my income on those titles I'm reading when I can, so it takes some of the guilt away for me. It's an addiction. I can't help myself. It's just sad that scanlations used to help create a fanbase to bring over series (Fruits Basket) but now I guess the damage outweighs the good.
Umm, well honestly as a former scanlator who actually took up doujinshi once the title I was working on was licensed (we scanlated doujinshi based on that title to feed to the fan community as we waited for the licensed release) I don't see much of a problem with it. It's done based on a lot of speculation, but the way I see it is it's basically fan art, doujinshi has no copyrights to infringe, and it all comes down to worrying about the artist's opinion on their doujin being distributed digitally. Honestly I think it helps give them more exposure, and creates international fans, but I've also seen a lot of doujinshi artist specifically state they don't want their artwork posted on the net. We never posted the scanlations we did directly on websites, and instead distributed them directly to readers in the community we were situated in. On the shoujo streaming vs. buying, It's hard to get a hold of shoujo series I actually want to buy. Too few are being released in Japan, and too few of those make it over here now. I miss the era of long running shoujo series. ... gimme a new season of Skip Beat! already dammit! Most shoujo series, even if they're based on a long running manga series now adays don't make it past a single season. But if I'm alone, then I guess there's not much of a market for it. I also want to say you guys at Yen Press are lucky with your Little Brown partnership. LB has some of the best booksellers in my experience in promoting books, and our LB rep is more than happy to help promote Yen Press titles (I love him for bringing my ARC Yen Press titles. Found I like the manwha Pig Bride because of them). They convinced my boss to get some of the new titles like the Maximum Ride and Twilight titles when we usually don't have the space for graphic novels. And I think Yen Press is brilliant for the manga-fication of popular book series like Twilight and Gossip Girl. There was an age when girls loved soapy comics, but that age died long ago. Teen girls will read drama, no matter what the form. I learned it the hard way when I loaned out my Peach Girl manga way back in high school to people not familiar with manga and never got them back. Light Novel Rescue Request: Good Witch of the West!! I'll never forgive Tokyopop for getting me hooked and cutting me off. Tokyopop went wrong in its marketing. It should have been released like a YA fantasy series, but instead they go with a weird format, and manga-style covers when there were some awesome, non-manga covers in the initial Japanese release that were just like any other fantasy book cover you'd find here. Really glad to hear With the Light has found an audience. Got an ARC with that and I have to say very few manga have touched me like it. |
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Agent355
 Posts: 5113 Location: Crackberry in hand, thumbs at the ready... |
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Once someone stole my credit card # and sent stuff to my address! I'm not kidding! The funniest thing was the Game netflix-type subscription ( I have no video game systems whatsoever) and some free samples of vitamin-like pill things....
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qollocust
 Posts: 182 Location: Philadelphia |
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I think the reason why some of the more mediocre series have done so well streaming is because no one is buying them on DVD. I know I personally only shell out the cash for DVDs of series that I really love and can't live with only watching once. I use the legal streaming sites to check out new things and to watch the shows that I would probably never buy, but am interested enough in to watch when I'm bored. Basically if the show looks only ok, I'll watch it streaming, if it looks (or I know is) amazing, I'll buy the DVD and enjoy it on a bigger screen at home.
As for scanlations, while I don't approve of them, I will admit I've wondered over to their side a few times. I've mostly only read older shoujo series that never have and never will be released here. Of course if I had my way, they would all be released in North America, but obviously that's not possible. I was shocked to see how easy it is to find scanlations nowadays, why haven't any of the publishers (Japanese or North American) gone after these websites? Like littlegreenwolf said, it used to be a lot harder to get your hands on scanlations which I think limited their audience and impact, but now a simple google search will bring up whatever series you want. I still prefer to read my manga in book form, so much more comfortable and no scrolling.
It looks like it is ranked by votes so obviously some of the more newer series wouldn't be ranked most popular yet. I think a weekly or monthly ranking by views would be more accurate of what people are actually watching. |
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Reaper gI
Posts: 299 Location: UK |
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I still wonder how many manga sales are due to fansubs. English releases of manga tend to come out fairly soon after a series (not necesarily season 1) airs in japan. (e.g Maria Holic, code geass , Spice and Wolf).
I'm sure I've read reports of licensors being bugged heavily for an anime licence only to lose all their sales to someone else releasing the manga first. Certain scanlations were going a little overboard Negima! was (is?) getting translated 2/3 days before it was serialised. People simply scanning english releases is very annoying as well; they have all the problems of the english release(if there are any) like untranslated SFX, omision of honourifics*, lack of colour pages and *shudder* mirroring. The only way to stop it effecively is as we've always said to compete with it (like Viz are trying to do) bringing english releases of big titles up to date with Japanese. The 2-3 year wait, if it ever gets released is still a big reason for reading scans, the other one is publishers dropping series midway (rights isues etc, why are the first 15 volumes of Negima! so hard to get in the UK due to the fact they got released here) * I don't mind this in subtitles; but it is not ok when you don't have reference to what the honourific was to begin with. |
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neocloud9
 Posts: 1178 Location: Atlanta, GA |
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I feel quite vindicated knowing how well Black Butler's been selling for Yen Press. Now here's to hoping someone (ANYONE) licenses the anime soon!
And I understand why they wanted to change Spice & Wolf's cover to appeal to a broader audience, but the one they wound up choosing was...a really fugly cover. I'm glad they made a special edition slipcover, though. I hope they continue to do that. |
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vashfanatic
 Posts: 3489 Location: Back stateside |
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Yeah, I've used scanlations myself - don't much like 'em, though. I hate reading anything for very long on my computer screen, give me a book release any day. Hence my fervent use of the public library (check out yours; you'd be surprised how many have a big manga/comic book section). I also try to read them in online readers rather than downloading them to my hard drive because that's an extra incentive to buy the releases (who wants to have to wait for all those pages to load?).
I'd like to see sites pulling chapters that are available in English as they come out, though, so that, for example, you wouldn't have any chapters from volumes 1-22 of FMA online, just the most recent ones. I'm glad for my scanlations for Saint Young Men, though. I mean, once I get to Japan I swear I'm buying that thing, but meanwhile no American publisher is going to touch it with a ten foot pole. Oh: and though it's been said, many times, many ways, license the Baccano! light novels already. |
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Duraccano
Posts: 16 |
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AGREED! Hoping those new titles he talked about at the end is one of the Narita Ryohgo's titles, but sadly u guys prob cant get Vamp! right? Because of Seven Seas. oh well, id really like Baccano and Durarara. (could totally picture a non-anime/manga fan buying it.) |
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penguintruth
 Posts: 8461 Location: Penguinopolis |
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ルパン三世 (Rupan Sansei) is clearly pronounced "RU-PAHN SAHN-SAY" (Lupin III) in the Japanese versions, but if the intention is that the "r" sound is an "l", it's "LU-PAHN". The franchise theme song is a long chorus of "LU-PAHN THE THIRD". The same song that's in pretty much every TV special and movie since the '78 TV series. I'm not usually a stickler for pronunciation, but when the damn theme song pronounces it for you, there you go. |
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einhorn303
 Posts: 1180 |
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Can anyone post a text list of that CR "top titles" list? I don't have Boxee or an iPhone, orz.
In terms of CR viewership, you have to consider that CR relies on subscription fees, not just ads. So even if shows like Soranowoto and Hanamaru Kindergarten aren't watched as much by the teen viewers, if they attract more paying subscribers, they can be much more valuable to CR than "per-eyeball" popularity makes them seem. For example, I'm a 6.99 a month subscriber to CR, and only for those two shows. That's equivalent in value to 700 free viewers of Shugo Chara or whatever, at 0.01 cents or so per online ad view. |
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GATSU
Posts: 15306 |
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AWO:
I think it would have been financially prudent for Geneon to release the first series first, since it's shorter, and it gives you a feel for the characters. Plus, they could have tied it into Cagliostro, because Miyazaki worked on both shows, and Lupin wears the green jacket in both versions. Shin Lupin just dumps you into the series and expects you to know the characters right off the bat. And for a lot of AS viewers, that show was their first exposure to Lupin in general. FUNi should have also done better ads for the specials, because they came off like late-night b-shit you'd watch on Spike.
Someone hasn't seen Nostradamus. Also, Americans hate moe. I will agree that the problem is that the target audience for a certain age group isn't there, though that doesn't seem to be the case for Casino Royal, Bourne, and Tropic Thunder. So maybe if the licensors had cashed in on those movies instead of AP...
brand: I think fan-girls are into collecting shit. [See Twilight.] It's just the marketing for certain series tend to blow. Like they should have emphasized the whole Ms. Popular aspect of Koodocha, and they opt for the really bad music montages instead. [Yes, I know they're supposed to be bad.] qollocust: Or maybe the mediocre shows are less mediocre than what actually gets licensed. Tempest: This trailer for the LA movie from France says otherwise. |
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wandering-dreamer
 Posts: 1733 |
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Same here, I can completely understand why they chose a new cover but dear lord, I still wince whenever I see it in a bookstore. Really glad about the slipcover thing, nice save there. And I guess the reason they get so many rescue requests is because most fans don't see them as "another manga company that does light novels on the side," but "the only company that seems reliable and committed to their light novels." Actually would be pretty nice to see a company that focused solely on light novels (well, more like solely on foreign book titles which includes light novels), but that's a whole 'nother discussion. |
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