Forum - View topicNEWS: Tokyopop to Restructure
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Steventheeunuch
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Tortoiseshell Tabby Girl
 Posts: 153 |
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I also hope that the people who lost their jobs will soon be met with luck and good fortune.
This is definitely news for manga fans and light novel fans to follow and watch closely. Obviously, I don't have to worry about Fruits Basket, but I hope plans for the release of Natsuki Takaya's Phantom Dream will continue to proceed smoothly. And I'm looking forward to reading the rest of the Rage Against the Moons and Reborn on the Mars series (Trinity Blood novels), especially since I'm currently reading The Iblis (Volume 2 of RotM). If anything would upset me, it would be to be denied access to the rest of the story of Abel Nightroad. So, I'm rooting for the Crusnik, Sunao Yoshida, and THORES Shibamoto to have their work completed in English. Plus, I would love to see light novels become a continued presence in the English-speaking market, because I'd love to see more translated into English. May light novels (and great manga) survive these trying times. Last edited by Tortoiseshell Tabby Girl on Tue Jun 03, 2008 8:07 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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Richard J.
 Posts: 3367 Location: Sic Semper Tyrannis. |
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Should this event be seen as the beginning of the long whispered of manga industry bubble burst? |
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sdsyukichan
 Posts: 93 Location: Ontario, Canada |
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I don't understand how people do that - especially if they LIKE the series. Wouldn't you want to own it? I don't go into stores and just sit and read manga. I'll go in, buy it, and read it when I get home. I do read scans though (though only 2 series, and both are Viz releases) but it's so I can be caught up. And you know what? I still buy the volumes when they're released in English. I can't stand people who don't support the industry, and then complain when it starts crashing. >_< |
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The Xenos
 Posts: 1519 Location: Boston |
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Did you even bother to read past the title? If anything, this is them expanding. It sounds much more like TokyoPop is copying Marvel Studios. They've done well publishing comics (Japanese and America) and they want a chunk of the Hollywood Box Office. Bah. I'm ranting up a blog post about this right now. |
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loka
 Posts: 373 Location: Pittsburgh, PA |
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i like tokyopop as a publisher because they have never redone the sfx. at least not in any of the 13 series that i have. they were also nice about translating the interesting notes at the back of the NHK manga.
the only one i fear for is also one of my favorites- the craziness that is Yubisaki Milk Tea. |
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The Ramblin' Wreck
 Posts: 924 Location: Teaching Robot Women How To Love |
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Well, being as shojou is still tapping the female comic reader demographic and Fruits Basket may be their all-time best seller, I'd wager that your shoujo titles are safe.
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BleuVII
 Posts: 672 Location: Tokorozawa, Japan |
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I don't think that series that are close to completion have anything to worry about. It's just good PR for them to finish the series. Also, I heard Stu speak at a small art-focused anime and manga con last summer, and he has a personal thing for Welcome to the NHK. He even talked (unofficially) about trying to translate and release the eroge that came bundled with one of the Japanese volumes.
Took me a LONG time to figure out what OEL was. Original English Language manga? Also, I hate to break it to you guys, but the whole concept of people just standing in a store reading the manga is not unique to America. It is EVERYWHERE in Japan. In 7-11, I sometimes can't even get to the manga rack. In used bookstores, the aisle with Jump Comic and Gangan Comic paperbacks is almost impossible to pass through without weaving and shoving. The Japanese manga market doesn't survive on loyalty; it survives on them making manga cheap enough to be disposable. This is seriously the thought process: "Hmm... I have to catch my train, but I still haven't read X series from this magazine yet. But it's only 250 Yen... that's the price of two drinks from a vending machine. Heck, I'll buy it and throw it away at the next stop." Or, in a bookstore: "This is a really interesting book. I could either stand here in this cold aisle for the next hour reading it (which some tend to do) or I could pay 390 yen, which is less than the price of a snack at McDonald's, take it home, then resell it to a used bookstore next week." In America, MY thought process goes something like this: "This is a good series, but it's $10 a pop. that means I could either collect this series, which I'll probably only read once, or I could invest in a PSP. I think I'll read one or two volumes here in the store, and if I really like it, I'll come back for it." ---------------------------------------------- Double Post. Reading the article again, one of the divisions will be specifically for new media. That probably means their animated manga and cell phone manga services. Unfortunately for all of us, those are almost exclusively used for the OEL books. Also, just thought I'd point out that publishing fan art is not a waste of paper. It's just a waste of ink. When books are printed, a large piece of paper is folded into 8, 16, or 32 pages, the book is printed, and then the fold lines are cut, giving us separate pages. That's why you often see blank pages at the beginning or end of a book. |
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ZeetherKID77
 Posts: 981 |
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They better dump their OEL junk and improve their translation quality. Seriously, their Initial D translation was horrid. Also I hate their stupid OEL "manga" that runs in newspapers, way too cliched and predictable.
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samuelp
Industry Insider
Posts: 2231 Location: San Antonio, USA |
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I think this will be a good thing in the long run.
Tokyopop, as a company, was structured under the assumption it had a near monopoly on the manga market, which it DID a number of years ago. But with Viz and now Del Rey becoming larger and larger players, tokyopop's market share has shrunk (even as the overall market has exploded). They managed to get away with doing things the same way as before only because of the extreme growth in the overall market, but with the economy slowdown+anime/manga slump this sort of restructuring is seriously needed for them to stay afloat as a company. If I were them, I'd look into perhaps switching some of their lesser performing series to being offered online only, which would be a decent compromise between simply canceling them and still saves money. |
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samuelp
Industry Insider
Posts: 2231 Location: San Antonio, USA |
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Did you even bother to read past the spin? If you think this sort of restructuring and them laying off 39 employees (nearly 40% of their staff, estimated) is a sign of tokyopop turning into the next Marvel studies, you must have recently received rose-colored ocular implants. |
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Arachne
 Posts: 35 Location: Charlotte |
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Bingo! If only TP could realize what readers and bookstores already know... |
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stevek504
 Posts: 216 |
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Yep, I was like OEL? Orchestra Electric Light? So, maybe five minutes on Google was what it took me to figure it out (when you search for OEL, you get a lot of OEL and not a lot of answers). Maybe this would make a good lexicon entry in the encyclopedia? I am collecting Chibi Vampire, which I bet will be okay. I am a bit worried about the other two: Chibi Vampire: The Novel and Yubisaki Milk Tea. 
That is a large percentage of people they let go. I feel for them, I was laid off in December. Best of luck to them, and Tokyopop customers. I wish TP would change their web site (and CNNmoney.com). I don't like web sites that load up and start blaring out at 2AM. Please let me click on the little play button if I want to see it. Things like that keep me away from web sites. 
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The Xenos
Posts: 1519 Location: Boston |
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Well, that ties into their even more horrible Initial D anime adapation. There's a reason TokyoPop flunked out of the anime business. They actually redubbed all the popular original music in the dub and replaced it by music by DJ Milky. DJ Milky, who happens to be TokyoPop CEO Stu Levy. Cute. It's no wonder why I a strong distrust for this company and it's crazy emperor.
I should rephrase that. It's TokyoPop trying to mimic what Marvel is doing with its Marvel Studios move and Marvels successful attempt to gain a foothold in Hollywood. I haven't seen them succeed anywhere near as well as Marvel, or at all for that matter. Plus I've already ranted about what a bad (yet successful) publisher TokyoPop is when that contract thing came out, so I figured I'd focus on what a bad Hollywood production studio they intend on becoming. 
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The Xenos
Posts: 1519 Location: Boston |
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Well, as someone who has a blog on a site named Comics2Film, I couldn't help but add some commentary about TokyoPop's trumpeting about entering the "comics-to-film space".
http://www.comics2film.com/b/index.php?blog=11&p=731&more=1&c=1&tb=1&pb=1 I also bring up a number of criticisms I've had with TokyoPop as well as contend a number of loose 'facts' they have in their press release. Oh and Heidi MacDonald's blog at Publisher's Weekly has this interesting post. http://pwbeat.publishersweekly.com/blog/2008/06/02/trouble-ahead-1-toykopop/ |
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