Panic at the Disco!

[teddog]

Tokyopop to Restructure - Company to be split into two; 39 employees to be laid off

Not sure what to think, other than I'm kinda not shocked. Other than Aria, I don't touch most of what Tokyopop publishes. It's mostly trash and they burned me with the light novel thing. I now am the owner of three incomplete series by them after those titles were cancelled.

Most of the books I'm picking up now are through Viz and come this fall, Yen Press will be seeing a lot of my money. ADV may or may not see my business again if they manage to start up again.

I have a sinking feeling that they're going to axe some titles and Aria will go under. It's science fiction/slice of life and completely character driven. It doesn't have a chance in Hell.

The unstable market crushes ANY hope of seeing Yokohama Kaidashi Kikō brought over, but that horse wasn't really worth betting on.

Comments

[urufudo.livejournal.com]

The thing with TokyoPop is that they "promised" to never start a series without completing it. Unfortunately, to them, a "series" is just however many books they managed to license. I seriously doubt that they'll put Aria on the chopping block because it's a brand new license that they JUST saved from meeting the same fate with ADV.

TokyoPop's problem is that they licensed so many completely unknown series and so many local manga author series. Also, just because they're scaling back about 200 volumes a year doesn't mean they're automatically dropping series; they could just be publishing each volume further apart.

I'm sort of glad that I don't buy much from TokyoPop either. Viz sees about 80% of my manga purchases and I know that they won't stop publishing the series I buy from them because they're so damn popular. The only TokyoPop series I really follow (aside from Aria now) is Fruits Basket and Loveless, both of which are so popular that I have no concern about it. XD I guess the only shitty thing is that we for sure won't see the rest of the Slayers novels now.

[commanderteddog.livejournal.com]

Someone over at Anime On DVD brought up another interesting point - while TokyoPop was focusing on OEL manga, Viz, Del Ray and Yen Press were over making publishing deals with Japanese companies. The fall out from that means that TokyoPop is locked out of bidding on many titles. This might explain their focus on "You TOO can live the manga livestyle!". They needed a gimmick, but sadly that gimmick makes their page look like Fanfiction.net, not the page of a publishing company.

Aria's released on a fairly slow schedule already. I think it's every six months. A lot of the series I collect are here-there-and-everywhere in terms of popularity, but at least Viz as a habit of finishing their more "aimed at an adult audience" titles. 0.0

[urufudo.livejournal.com]

The only other TokyoPop titles I have on my sheves are Chobits, Earthian, Legal Drug, Samurai Champloo, Suikoden III and Warcraft: Sunwell Trilogy. o_O Everything else is mostly Viz with some other companies (ADV, Dark Horse and DelRay). I guess we can be safe in knowing that the future Warcraft books will come out on schedule. :D

Yeah, I had noticed that as well... that Tokyopop really doesn't have a lot of big-name series. It's really just Fruits Basket, isn't it? They have a lot of other series that are well known in certain niches (like Gravitation or Loveless) but nothing like Inuyasha, Naruto, Death Note, etc. Viz is really lucky they got the monopoly on all the Shounen Jump titles. XD

And yes, the newer TokyoPop site pissed me off the moment it went up. It's cool to have a fan community but they should have really made it separate from their publishing site. It's so hard to find any information on their series, it's incredibly unprofessional. :P

Maybe if they don't pick up the rest of the Slayers novels, someone else will. Actually, it'd be nice if that "someone else" got all of the manga and published that too. ;P Especially since they're coming out with even more in Japan now.

And will ADV hurry the fuck up and publish the rest of their freaking stuff already? I want more Yotsuba to! -_- I guess I should just be glad that they actually finished Chrno Crusade. :P

[commanderteddog.livejournal.com]

Along with Aria, I have Planetes and Scrapped Princess (the later I might get rid of, because it's AWFUL), the rest are light novels. Again, everything else is ADV, Dark Horse and Viz.

TokyoPop used to have some series.... back in the day. Right now, they reminded me a bit of Dark Horse, although the big difference is Dark Horse publishes titles that appeal more to old school fans, while TokyoPop is trying to appeal to the younger set. A release like Planetes? That would NEVER happen with TokyoPop today.

With novels in general, I'm not holding my breath anymore. Seven Seas is about the most honest when it comes to the novel issues. Their comments on their releases is that they're trying the smaller format as a gimmick, but people aren't buying them. Likewise, I would comment "I would buy them if I could FIND them". XP

I have no idea what's going on with ADV. I saw a news post about how their manga end was dead, now it's alive again. ZOMBIE! I would love to start Yotsuba, but I can't justify throwing money at anymore incomplete series. D:

[urufudo.livejournal.com]

DarkHorse still has immensely popular series though. They have Trigun and Oh! My Goddess, both of which I collect (or try to, anyway). I can't remember what else they have but you're right, they're generally classic series as opposed to TokyoPop's trying to appeal to younger audiences.

I still have faith that light novels can make it here, as long as the industry continues to thrive. I think it's kind of hitting a slump again right now but if it picks up again, I think people could get interested in light novels and they could become more popular over time. What they need to do is really continue to bring light novels for very popular series over and get people aware. They aren't going to fly off the shelves immediately; manga sure didn't when it first came out.

It'd probably also help if all the light novels were kept in one section, separate from the manga in book stores. They kind of get lost among all the other stuff. I think if there was a shelf or two dedicated completely to light novels, it'd be easier to see what other series were being made available. It'd also draw more attention to them too.

ADV is weird. They keep stopping and starting with their manga division. x_x You should still pick up Yotsubato, it's a series that's still continuing in Japan. I think they have 7 volumes right now, possibly 8. ADV published 5, and it's such a cute series that it's really worth it. I'm pretty positive that they'll continue to publish it if their manga division continues. :9