Story here. I had no idea that they'd gone so far downhill.
It seems that their European arm's unaffected for now, but in this economic climate, I genuinely wonder how long that can last. Although we've gone heavily down the route that anything that even looks like anime or manga is the greatest thing since sliced bread, we're still not the market that the US is.
that's just sad, though i saw it coming.... i'm getting so down about anything japan right now
... still waiting on the 9th Slayers book... 🙁
For those of us in the dumb department, you might want to elaborate on what this means for the greater industry.
My understanding was that Tokyopop's catalog was surprisingly limited for a pioneer company.
To be honest Tokyopop have been terrible for ages. They were alright in the beginning since they were one of the more prominent manga reprinters in the west with awesome titles like Love Hina, GTO and imo Battle Royale but their actual quality is terrible. Seriously, the paper quality is horrendous, the actual editing is downright offensive and in some cases like Battle Royale and Ikkitousen they didn't release a translation but rather gave the series to some writer just to write down some retarded story using the pictures as a basis instead.
And that's not to even mention that the series they're releasing now are either terrible or just completely unknown. Viz Media, Del Ray (is it now Kodansha?), and Seven Seas are all significantly better.
I shan't miss Tokyopop at all. Hopefully it means other publishers can pick up more of their series and give them the proper translation and release that they deserve like Darkhorse done for Chobits, Cardcaptor Sakura and upcoming Magic Knight Rayearth (which has such a completely awful release schedule). I'd love to see GTO omnibus' on glorious paper with intact colour pages and a quality translation.
Wait, didn't they JUST revamped their website after years of fans telling them that it was a a horror just to navigate in?
Even so, seeing Tokyopop shut down is a bad hit, nonetheless. With less of a push in anime in your mainstream channels, (Adult Swim used to be THE spot for anime for those who didn't have the means to find it on their own), and torrents of fan translations abound, not to mention torrents of actual anime shows based on manga, I'm honestly surprised any one of them have lasted as long as they have. These peeps have got to come up with a solution ala Marvel digital distribution, (but with the heart of DC), ASAPS, methinks.
They could definitely stand to improve their distribution for certain. Why not work the Japanese publishers themselves so that they can give a worldwide translation available on the same day of release worldwide for a small subscription? Honestly, it's not rocket science. I'm sure it'd be difficult but if fans can translate a chapter within hours of it being uploaded to the net then why is it so hard for mainstream publishers to do?
Their releases should be pretty much concurrent with the Japanese releases. Viz has improved slightly but their One Piece schedule used to have like 40 volumes of manga behind the Japanese release. And at the moment they're still around about 4-5 volumes behind. If you're a fan of the series, why wouldn't you want to be completely caught up to the series you enjoy?
And as for actual published releases companies need to go the extra mile. Like I said before, Tokyopop's actual quality in both print, paper and translation were shockingly terrible. How about actually trying for some decent paper, an accurate translation and actually reprinting colour pages?
They could definitely stand to improve their distribution for certain. Why not work the Japanese publishers themselves so that they can give a worldwide translation available on the same day of release worldwide for a small subscription? Honestly, it's not rocket science. I'm sure it'd be difficult but if fans can translate a chapter within hours of it being uploaded to the net then why is it so hard for mainstream publishers to do?
Their releases should be pretty much concurrent with the Japanese releases. Viz has improved slightly but their One Piece schedule used to have like 40 volumes of manga behind the Japanese release. And at the moment they're still around about 4-5 volumes behind. If you're a fan of the series, why wouldn't you want to be completely caught up to the series you enjoy?
And as for actual published releases companies need to go the extra mile. Like I said before, Tokyopop's actual quality in both print, paper and translation were shockingly terrible. How about actually trying for some decent paper, an accurate translation and actually reprinting colour pages?
