Sic Transit Tokyopop

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I’m a little late on this post, but frankly, it was depressing news and I didn’t feel the desire to write about it yesterday. So yes, Tokyopop has announced it’s shutting down its book arm here in North America as of 5/31. Assuming that this means the titles currently scheduled to ship 5/31 *will* ship (which we don’t know yet), this means the last TP releases will be:

Hetalia Axis Powers 3 (of 4, ongoing in Japan)
Maid-sama! 9 (of 12, ongoing in Japan)
.hack//GU 4 (novel) (complete as far as I can tell)
Happy Cafe 8 (of 15, finished in Japan)
Fate/Stay Night 11 (of 14, ongoing in Japan)
Sgt. Frog 21 (of 22, ongoing in Japan)
Maid Shokun 1 (of 4, finished in Japan)
Sakura’s Finest Volume 1: Sakura no Ichiban (of 5, finished in Japan)
Samurai Harem: Asu no Yoichi 8 (of 15, finished in Japan)
Deadman Wonderland 5 (of 9, ongoing in Japan)
Hanako and the Terror of Allegory 4 (complete)
AiON 3 (of 7, ongoing in Japan)
Butterfly 2 (of 5, finished in Japan)
The Stellar Six of Gingacho 3 (of 10, finished in Japan)
Clean Freak Fully Equipped 2 (complete)
The Qwaser of Stigmata 2 (of 11, ongoing in Japan)

Note that I grabbed this list from Amazon, and set it to sort by ‘best-selling’. So Hetalia and Maid-sama at the top, cute Hakusensha shoujo with no anime and Qwaser at the bottom.

Series with releases scheduled after May, now unfinished (or never begun):

Gakuen Alice (23 volumes, ongoing in Japan)
Demon Sacred (11 volumes, complete in Japan)
Pavane for a Dead Girl (6 volumes, ongoing in Japan)
Red Hot Chili Samurai (8 volumes, ongoing in Japan)
The Sacred Blacksmith (5 volumes, ongoing in Japan)
Kampfer (6 volumes, ongoing in Japan)
Skyblue Shore (6 volumes, finished in Japan)
Lives (2 volumes, complete in Japan)
Alice in the Country of Hearts (6 volumes, complete in Japan)
Silver Diamond (23 volumes, ongoing in Japan)
V.B. Rose (14 volumes, finished in Japan)
Togainu no Chi (8 volumes, ongoing in Japan)
Battle Vixens (18 volumes, ongoing in Japan)
Ratman (8 volumes, ongoing in Japan)
Chibisan Date (1 volume, ongoing in Japan)
Shinobi Life (10 volumes, ongoing in Japan)
The Diary of a Crazed Family (4 volumes, ongoing in Japan)
The Good Witch of the West (7 volumes, finished in Japan)
Gosick (novel series)
Full Metal Panic! (novel series)
Chibi Vampire (novel series)
Twelve Kingdoms (novel series)
Trinity Blood (13 volumes, ongoing in Japan)
The Secret Notes of Lady Kanoko (3 volumes, finished in Japan)
MariaHolic (8 volumes, ongoing in Japan)
Suppli (10 volumes, finished in Japan)
Totsugami (3 volumes, ongoing in Japan)
Brave 10 (8 volumes, ongoing in Japan)
Snow White Panic Mix (7 volumes, finished in Japan)
Portrait of M & N (6 volumes, finished in Japan)
D.N. Angel (15 volumes, on hiatus in Japan)
flat (4 volumes, ongoing in Japan)
Ame Nochi Hare (4 volumes, ongoing in Japan)
Aria (12 volumes, finished in Japan)
Strawberry Marshmallow (6 volumes, ongoing in Japan)

And this isn’t even including Blu titles, or series that had been on hiatus. That’s a lot of series left hanging.

Much as I’d like to blame all of this on Stu Levy and his pouring of TP’s money into his pet projects, I think it was Borders that really broke things here. The chain was a big big manga haven, and bookstores are where the sales are – online purchasing is simply not as big as brick and mortar buys. When Tokyopop switched to Diamond as its distributor, then Diamond announced that it would stop shipping to Borders… it was over, really. Yes, there’s Barnes & Noble, but they never got behind manga the way Borders did.

Staring at that list, I know some people will be thinking “Maybe the titles can be rescued!”. When I look at that list, I see precisely one title that I think likely to get rescued – Hetalia. *Maybe* Maid-sama and D.N. Angel, if I’m being wildly optimistic. But honestly, license rescues rarely if ever happen. The company that did them the most, I think, was in fact Tokyopop.

A lot of the mid-majors in Japan must be seeing the news and wincing right now. Hakusensha especially, but Kadokawa, Akita Shoten, Gentosha, Mag Garden… all were pretty heavily involved with Tokyopop, and now they have to see about finding new publishers who want to pick up their works. Which can be difficult, especially in this economy.

So who’s left? Viz and Yen, obviously. Kodansha once they restart next month. Vertical, which is in a realm of its own as always. Dark Horse, propping up the manga department with their Western comic arm. Digital Manga Publishing. And the smaller, boutique publishers: Bandai, Udon, and Seven Seas.

I’ll end this post by reflecting on the huge amounts of awesome Tokyopop gave me over the years. I got into manga via Viz, but really became a rabid fan thanks to Tokyopop. Sailor Moon, CLAMP, Fruits Basket, Gatcha Gacha, all those Lupin volumes that only I bought, Love Hina, GTO, Kare Kano, Marmalade Boy, Kodocha, Ai Yori Aoshi, Planetes, Karakuri Odette… so many memories. Tokyopop was behind the manga boom, forcing publishers to abandon floppies and make the GN the way to go.

I’ll miss them a lot.

Blue Exorcist Volume 1

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By Kazue Kato. Released in Japan as “Ao no Exorcist” by Shueisha, serialization ongoing in the magazine Jump Square. Released in North America by Viz.

Sometimes it’s hard to start a series when it’s actually starting. This especially holds true for Jump series, which frequently take a few volumes to get off the ground (and sometimes completely change direction). If the series has gotten buzz, and there’s already 15 or so volumes out, you can slowly catch up one by one, and if a volume is slow or awkward, shrug it off because you know the good stuff is coming.

So I suspect it is with Volume 1 of Blue Exorcist, which, as a setup for a Jump series about a hot-blooded exorcist who’s also the son of Satan, is entirely… adequate. The first chapter slightly less so, as it reads very much like a pilot episode (Nura had the same problem with its first episode), and doesn’t really go anywhere unexpected – Father Fujimoto had ‘I am going to die tragically’ tattooed across his forehead from the moment he showed up. Luckily, things pep up right at the end with the introduction of Mephisto, who is a giant freakish freak of the sort I love to see in Jump series. His alternate form is possibly the funniest moment of the volume.

After we begin Volume 2, at the academy, things start to improve as the author takes pains to worldbuild. The Academy itself looks great – the two-page spread of its grounds it fantastic, and made me want to walk around in it. I likewise enjoyed the revelation about Rin’s brother, and look forward to seeing more of their interaction – so many anime fighting series have siblings either on opposite sides or one dies to protect the other. Luckily for Rin, he already has his designated tragedy, so he and his brother can continue to bond. The other major character we meet, Shiemi, is a sweet, nice, girl in the Orihime Inoue vein, though so far lacking the eccentric quirks that drew people to Hime. I hope we get more to draw on in the future.

Again, the trouble with first volumes is that we don’t get much of Rin wising up, learning, and getting more powerful. I’m not sure how much he’ll actually wise up – his character is pretty much a hothead by definition, and will no doubt be rushing into any battles with little analysis. But right now he seems to be there to be exposited to, as we learn more about the way that exorcism and demons work here. Which unfortunately makes him a bit dull right now. There’s a few cool action sequences, but…

So as a debut Blue Exorcist is okay, but I still wonder if I would enjoy it more if I’d waited till Volume 5 was out, and then read it all in one big gulp. I will check out Volume 2, however.

Manga the week of 4/20

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First off, my obligatory Tokyopop/Diamond rant. Most of this months’ titles shipped on time. 2 were on Diamond’s list this week, but my store (and Midtown) did not get them: Gakuen Alice 16 and V.B. Rose 12. Two are simply M.I.A.: The Secret Notes of Lady Kanoko 2 and the Hetalia Axis Powers Postcard book. I suspect the last of those is genuinely delayed, as Amazon also doesn’t have it. But Amazon has had the others for 2 weeks now, so it’s a repeat of last month. And they aren’t coming next week either. I’m behind on Gakuen Alice anyway, but I’m Amazoning the other two, which means when Diamond gets off its arse and ships them via the direct market, I may do a contest giveaway.

Rant over, so what’s out next week? Quite a lot, actually. Breaking it down:

Bandai has a 3rd volume of Code Geass: Knight, the doujinshi anthology book marketed for young women with an emphasis on yaoi tease.

Digital Manga Publishing has a slew of things, including three shoujo titles from Mag Garden’s Comic Blade Avarus. The Beautiful Skies of Houou High in particular has a solicit that I suspect makes it sound more yuri than it is. There’s also a new Itakura Na Kiss, which surely must be getting near the point where the couple actually get together. Surely. Any volume now. On the yaoi front, there’s the 2nd volume of the late 1990s ‘Treasure’, and the second omnibus of Yellow 2, making it Yellow 2 2. Does that make sense?

Our long national nightmare is almost over, as Kodansha Comics releases the last of its fake new releases, the 6th volume of Akira. Like the previous 5, this is a straight up reprint of the old Dark Horse release. Next month will see the company actually release things that are NEW.

Finally appearing a mere 14 months after its solicitation in Previews is the 4th volume of Udon’s reprint of Silent Mobius, as they do their best Dark Horse imitation. Luckily, Udon’s reissue has been top notch, so us fans of the series should get a nice treat.

Viz has two new Ikki volumes, House of Five Leaves 3 for you Ono fans of not-really-yaoi-but-close-enough, and Kingyo Used Books for you really-you-read-this-for-the-characters? fans. There’s also March Story, with its Korean creator but Japanese magazine release, as it’s in Sunday Gene-X. And there’s a new 20th Century Boys, which is still chugging along.

And lastly, Yen Press has a new Black Butler, for those who were bored with seeing 1-4 in the NYT list and wanted a new volume to keep it company. New volumes of High School of the Dead and Omamori Himari remind us that even Yen Press is not above catering to the ‘harems and boobies’ school of manga, as typified by Dragon Age, the magazine they both run in. There’s a new twist in this month’s Higurashi: it’s the 2nd volume of an arc, but it’s not the end! The Eye-Opening Arc has not even begun to screw with your head yet, and is only at its halfway point here. Pandora Hearts not only runs in the same magazine as Black Butler, but also sells very well, possibly to the exact same demographic. Lastly, it’s the end of an era, as one of Yen’s first licenses, Spiral: Bonds of Reasoning, comes to the end with Volume 15. Congratulations to Yen on completing this shonen mystery series!

What interests you this week? It’s OK, you can admit it’s Omamori Himari, I won’t get mad. Much.