license requests

License requests: The Taiyosha Bestsellers

June 1, 2010 by Sean Gaffney 4 Comments

I was glancing at Taiyosha’s bestseller lists this afternoon, helpfully divided by genre (more on that later). The genres in question are Kodomo (childrens), Shonen, Shoujo, Seinen, Josei, Adult, and ‘Other’. I’m going to stick with the Big 4 here, though the others are not without their fascination.

Shonen comics unlicensed, their publisher/magazine, and why they’re likely unlicensed:
1) Houkago Play 2. ASCII Mediaworks, Dengeki Playstation. It’s a 4-koma about a tsundere. That tends to sell better in Japan than it does here. Maybe Yen might bite. It’s also too new.
2) To Aru Majutsu no Index 6. Square Enix, Shonen Gangan. If Yen doesn’t license this either at AX or NYAF, I’ll be stunned. Science, magic, and religion in a novel/manga/anime trifecta of marketing.
3) Break Blade 8. Softbank Creative, Flex Comix Blood. This *was* licensed, by CMX Manga, but obviously isn’t anymore. Likely will be hard to get a hold of, as no CMX titles did all that well.
4) Bamboo Blade B 3. Square Enix, Shonen Gangan. A younger-audience oriented spinoff of Bamboo Blade, with a different cast. I suspect Yen is happy with just regular BB at the moment.
5) History’s Strongest Disciple Kenichi 38. Shogakukan, Shonen Sunday. Too damn long for Viz, most likely. Also a bit more boob-obsessed than they like. Plus Sunday titles sell poorer here than Jump ones do, Inu Yasha excepted.

Shoujo has a few more:
1) Koibana! – Koiseyo Hanabi 8. Shueisha, Margaret. Guy-hating heroine goes to mostly boys school, jerk-like guy helps her get over her phobia through systematic emotional abuse. Sounds like a Shojo Beat winner to me!
2) Switch Girl!! 12. Shueisha, Margaret. The premise of this sounds almost exactly like Kare Kano, but this series tends to emphasize the humor of the ‘popular queen of school is a slob at home’ rather than the angst and drama. This might be a good one for Viz in an unsarcastic way, as opposed to my sarcastic recomendation of Koibama.
3) Shitsuji-sama no Okiniiri 8. Hakusensha, Betsuhana. If the popularity of Black Butler were all about the hot prettyboy butlers, I’d say this was a shoo-in license. Sadly, this series lacks the supernatural, and doesn’t have yaoi tease, so less so. Tokyopop might try it.
4) Bokura wa Itsumo 5. Shueisha, Margaret. (Notice a pattern?) Standard high school shoujo, with the quirk that it has 4 different perspectives, 2 boys and 2 girls. Seems inoffensive.
5) Hoshi Wa Utau 8. Hakusensha, Hana to Yume. I suspect this one may still be in a ‘Viz vs. Tokyopop’ licensing argument. It’s also not as popular as Fruits Basket, the author’s previous series.
6) Love So Life 4. Hakusensha, Hana to Yume. Heartwarming family shoujo, perfect for fans of Baby & Me. Likely would sell about as well as Baby & Me did.
7) Berry Dynamite 3. Shueisha, Betsuma. A short series (this is the final volume) by the author of Love Com. Highly likely to be licensed in the future.
8) Usagi Otoko Tora Otoko 2. Shinkosha, not certain which magazine. Yaoi manga featuring a doctor and his pet yakuza. All the author’s other works were licensed by Dramaqueen. Perhaps this can be as well? Or maybe DMP?

Moving on to Seinen… (remember I’m leaving out licensed titles)
1) Saint Young Men 5. Kodansha, Morning 2. Going into why this isn’t licensed is a post in itself. Suffice to say, the publishers know about our love for this Jesus and Buddha share an apartment comedy.
2) Nana to Kaoru 4. Hakusensha, Young Animal. A tale of two teenagers and their wacky misadventures in S&M; and bondage, this is far too explicit to be licensed over here.
3) Moteki 4. Kodansha, Evening. Story of a guy who turns 30 and suddenly finds girls interested in him. Won an award, only 4 volumes… but it’s a romance geared towards adults, from Kodansha. Sadly, unlikely to be licensed, though I suppose I can throw another ‘nag Ed Chavez’ log on the fire…
4) Rakka Ryuusui 5. Houbunsha, Manga Time Kirara Max. 4-koma school antics with tinges of yuri, but I suspect Yen, who drowned the market in 4koma last year, is waiting on sales for K-On! before licensing more.
5) Giant Killing 15. Kodansha, Morning. A sports manga geared for adults, from Kodansha? Wow, 3 hard to license things that taste great together. I suppose if the anime does REALLY well, but didn’t Big Windup fail? And Viz is already triple-releasing Cross Game to get it out faster… sports manga may need to be a post for another day.

And Josei, where I wonder if ANYTHING is licensed. Oh right, Nodame Cantabile is.
1) Elysion 2. Gentosha, Web Spica. Not sure what it is, but the author’s been around forever, and Yuri fans might have seen her Yajikita Gakuen Douchuuki. Looks historical from the cover.
2) 888 Eight Three 5. Gentosha, Comic Birz. Slice of life detective agency antics. Comic Birz rides a genre line – I’ve heard it called seinen as well – but is filled with intriguing titles. The 5 in the title is the volume number. :)
3) Madame Joker 8. Futabasha, don’t know the magazine. I know nothing about this, and it’s 8 volumes and running. Surely that’s a reason to license it?
4) Nichiyoubi wa Marche de Bonbon 1. Shueisha, Cookie. HAH! See, Cookie is josei! I think this might be a gag comic series. Tokyopop put out the author’s Galaxy Girl, Panda Boy a while back. Sadly, Shueisha series, so hey.
5) Koshou no Oshigoto Returns! 2. Gentosha, Spica. Calling DMP, come in DMP. Surely this series is for you… as well as its prequel.
6) Ichiraci (Ichi＊Raci) July 2010. Tosuisha. Yes, a magazine made the top 10 sales list. Anyone license anything from this?
7) Akachan no Dorei 6. Kodansha, Kiss. Josei from Kodansha is EVEN MORE licensable than seinen from Kodansha! It has a cute baby on the cover, though. Who doesn’t love babies?
8) Mama wa Tenparist 3. Shueisha, Chorus. What is a Tenparist? In any case, I’d rather see Viz license Gokusen if they do decide to license nontraditional josei.

I think what this list shows is that a) there’s a lot of interesting stuff coming out over in Japan that’s hitting bestselling lists, and b) for most of them, there’s really genuine reasons why they aren’t out over here. Also, man, when did Gentosha get so popular?

Filed Under: license requests

Why Not KOR? Thoughts on Licensing

March 12, 2010 by Sean Gaffney 10 Comments

I’ve recently been reading an excellent book called The Star Machine by Jeanine Bassinger. It’s about the Hollywood studios from the late 20s to the early 60s, and how they engineered stars. What’s proving more fascinating is the section on stars that never were – they were attractive, they were talented, they had support… but they never hit it big.

I was thinking of this recently looking at the License Requests from my colleague David Welsh of Manga Curmudgeon. They’re all deserving titles, and publishers should be giving them a chance. But invariably, a lot of those titles are never going to come out professionally in North America. And not just because of pure marketability, although that’s one of the biggest factors.

As an example, let me pick a classic, incredibly influential romantic comedy from the days of Weekly Shonen Jump circa 1984 – in other words, a title running concurrently with the manga Dragon Ball. It’s called Kimagure Orange Road, and is the story of a love triangle between three students, one of whom is protecting a secret – he’s from a family of espers. It ran from 1984 to 1987, totalling 18 volumes. It spawned a very popular anime as well, which has been released in North American by Animeigo (though it is now out of print), and a couple of movies. And it was one of the first big fandoms online in the early to mid 1990s, along with Dirty Pair, Bubblegum Crisis, and Ranma 1/2.

When Ranma fandom took off, most folks thought that KOR would be an obvious pickup for Viz. It wasn’t as hilarious and wacky a comedy, but the romance and love triangle madness were thought to have great potential, especially with titles like Tenchi Muyo and the like hitting it big in anime stores. But it never got picked up. Then, when the U.S. version of Shonen Jump was announced, people though that they’d definitely want a good old-school romantic comedy in there, to balance off all the shonen fighting mangas, and that KOR was an obvious choice. However, no shonen romantic comedies were slated for the Jump magazine, though one or two (notably Strawberry 100%) are coming out over here in volume format.

Well-written title, not a huge number of volumes, a built-in North American fandom… why not KOR? Or, for that matter, any number of titles that *seem* like obvious choices but never made it over here. Well, let’s see.

1) It’s not who comes first, it’s who comes second. KOR was highly influential on manga’s romantic comedies, in particular the waffly teen boy, his tsundere love, and the perky yet jealous other girl sort of thing seen in dozens of manga since then. However, everyone here has now read that story to death. Will they really appreciate seeing an 18-volume manga just because of its historical value? (KOR does have one advantage over many of its followers in that it has a real ending, and resolves its triangle.)

2) Trapped in the 80s. Art marches on, and while KOR’s art is actually quite good, it’s also very much of its time, and it’s been noted that ‘retro’ art can sometimes hurt a title’s sellability. Not that this hurt Dragon Ball, but what about Saint Seiya, or Here Is Greenwood?

3) HardKOR fandom? Uh oh. Everyone loves a show that has a built-in fanbase, but that can be a double-edged sword. KOR has been circulating around for years – the anime was a fansub favorite long before Animeigo put it out over here, and the manga was completely scanlated several years ago. If Viz announced ‘Whimsical Orange Road’ tomorrow, how many would say they aren’t buying it because, let’s say, they ruined the title? Yes, it’s not in the same league as censoring child nudity (Dr. Slump) or renaming the lead character (Case Closed), or even changing one letter in a name for legal reasons (One Piece), but fandom, especially these days, needs very little excuse to NOT buy something. KOR fandom especially, like the female lead they adore, can be prickly.

(As a short aside, several of my friends at Otakon years and years ago found endless amusement in trolling fans of Kimagure Orange Road, talking about how we enjoyed the show but really hated that annoying girl… oh, what was her name… oh, right. Madoka. Generally speaking, the two reactions were a) Anger and outrage, or b) Fans ‘helping’ by telling us we were confusing the names of the two lead females. KOR was one of the first anime fandoms to seriously ‘character bash’, and Madoka vs. Hikaru wars still exist, though since the days of newsgroups have faded considerably. Personally, I like both female leads, but Kyosuke’s indecisiveness, which is far worse in the manga, is really hard to read without wishing him a boot to the head.)

4) The manga creator doesn’t want it licensed. This is not as common now as it was in the old days of 32-page floppies from Viz, when many creators absolutely refused to have their work flipped and reading left to right. That’s less of an issue these days, but there are still many creators who either don’t want North America to see their work at all, or add conditions such as ‘you also have to release my 20 other non-famous titles’ that make things hard to finance. A recent example would be Urasawa’s holding back the license for 20th Century Boys until Monster had finished its run here.

5) It’s a one-hit wonder. Generally speaking, when manga hits it big in North America, the first thing publishers do is find other titles by that artist. Fruits Basket is the perfect example. Yet the creator of KOR, Izumi Matsumoto, had only one other short serialization (called Sesame Street, a title that would HAVE to change to be taken seriously over here), and has been mostly invisible for the last 20 years. (He recently revealed he’s been suffering from a cerebrospinal fluid disease, and hopes to return to manga soon.) So you’re left looking for titles with a similar FEEL to Kimagure Orange Road… a great number of which are already out over here, and have been for years. Back to #1…

I like KOR, and hope people didn’t see this as bashing the title. It just makes a good example to illustrate my point. What, if it’s not the actual quality of the work, makes a title unlicensed? What are those little factors that make a Viz or a Tokyopop or a Del Rey say “We don’t think that we can make this a success” or “various problems prevent this from being released” or even “we have no comment at this time”?

If anyone has any other good examples, please feel free to leave them in the comments. And Viz, if you decide to license KOR tomorrow just to make me look foolish, I’ll be very amused indeed. And will definitely pick up the series. Though I think a wideban might be more sellable. ^_-

Filed Under: kimagure orange road, license requests

License Request: Tokyo Crazy Paradise

February 26, 2010 by Sean Gaffney 6 Comments

So, you’ve been reading the Shojo Beat line. In particular, you’re a fan of Skip Beat! You like the characterization, the strong female leads, and the dramatic posing. You want more! Has this author done any other shojo?

Why yes, yes, she has! In fact, if you turn over your Skip Beat volume to the back, Viz will tell you! Skip Beat is from the author of Tokyo Crazy Paradise! Fantastic, you think! When did Viz release that one? Well, ahem, they haven’t. Tokyo Crazy Paradise remains unlicensed.

Is it too long? Not really. At 19 volumes, it’s shorter than Skip Beat. Does it have a naive and romantically dense yet strong and spunky heroine? Why yes, yes, it does. Does it feature lots of hot bishonen guys, including a brooding male lead who teases the heroine out of love and is too serious for its own good? Yep, it’s got that too. Does it have chain whip fights? Oh, you bet it does! Sometimes the heroine gets spattered in gore! All this and the usual humor and drama mix we’ve come to exp—

…wait, back up a second. Chain whip fights?

OK, perhaps I should explain what Tokyo Crazy Paradise is about.

Yoshiki Nakamura had been writing for Hakusensha since 1993, and just had a small 7-volume success with MVP Wa Yuzurenai! In 1996, she started this new manga, but the tone was decidedly darker – at least the background was. This was not unusual for mid-1990s Hana to Yume, which still featured Descendants of Darkness and was a lot less fluffy than it is today (though it still had its share of fluff).

The series takes place in a dystopian Tokyo in the year 2020. Despite advances in technology, the main problem is that men greatly outnumber women. This means that most women who venture outside end up getting sexually assaulted – in fact, that’s how the series begins, with Tsukasa, son of a cop family, rescuing a woman from some rapists. Notably, everyone else on the street had been blithely ignoring the scene.

Unfortunately, Tsukasa’s parents were just killed, leaving he and his three brothers homeless. Desperate, they turn to his school classmate Ryuji… who also just lost his father, and is now the head of one of the largest yakuza families in the city. Needless to say, he does not take kindly to favors from the offspring of the police. Eventually, however, they work to catch the killer, and Tsukasa ends up as Ryuji’s bodyguard.

This is probably a good thing, as Ryuji is one of the very few to know Tsukasa’s secret: he’s actually a she, having dressed as a boy her whole life in order to avoid being assaulted in this Crazy Paradise. (For those worried about spoilers, we find this out on Page 20 of Chapter 1, so…)

The story then moves in the usual shojo pattern: guy likes girl and is jerkish to her to show it, girl gets angry with guy and completely misses that he’s fallen for her, rival for guy shows up, rival for girl shows up, etc. Balanced against this is the far more serious plot of rival yakuza gangs fighting for power, and how various pasts end up being connected. Tsukasa, being Ryuji’s bodyguard, also gets most of the big fight scenes in this manga as well. She is no delicate flower. And being the daughter of cops, she is not very fond of yakuza either.

There are a few drawbacks to licensing this, of course. At 19 volumes, it’s still long (for shoujo). It’s much darker than Skip Beat (major, likeable characters die), and thus hard to sell to teen girls with a ‘from the creator of!’ blurb, as Viz does the reverse for now. On the other hand, Viz has been known to release dark and violent shoujo (Descendants of Darkness, also from Hana to Yume – see above), so this isn’t too alien to them. And the overall tone is a dark background and plot interspersed with fun comedy and romance. Lastly, it’s also completely scanlated online, which is a big drawback these days. (On the bright side, the scans of the latter chapters can be utterly crappy – fans would appreciate a decent volume.)

But overall, come on. It’s a fighting young crossdressing girl being bodyguard for a brooding blond hunk. From the author of Skip Beat. This is marketable.

Filed Under: license requests, tokyo crazy paradise