J
@jaquobus The main issue is that Tokyopop, in the US at least, was directly controlled by the founder. He got really lucky with getting a bunch of really good series liscensed while there was almost no competition in the US for manga. After competition showed up he then bought a bunch of crappy no name titles since the other really popular series from Japan and even some great Korean series started getting bidding wars for publishing rights. He also flagshipped a lot of interesting ideas for new products and then ran said ideas into the ground through poor management. Also, ther were multiple original works by creators from the us, japan and korea. Then he treated the creators like garbage and even in a few cases refused to pay them the money they were due according to the contract HE had them sign after the products failed to sell massively.
After the first collapse of Tokyopop in the late 2000's, the company ressurected after going through bankruptcy with all of its liscenses in tact, meaning that someone who knew the owner had bought the rights for the lowest legally allowed amount of money prior to the filing, then sold it back for the same amount afterwards, preventing many of the Japanese and Korean publishers from getting the US distribution rights back after seeing the circus TP's US branch went through. This also caused many retailers here in the US remove 60%+ of the shelf space they had for manga since alot of them lost massive amounts of money when the Tokyopop titles were recalled due to the way that US bankruptcy works for businesses. The fact that one of the 2 largest manga companies here had folded also made many other publishers immeadiately close the sub companies they had created to release manga and manhwa, almost destroying the market here for 5-6 years.
Then Tokyopop came back for a single year and repeated the same thing, almost exactly the same way, only smaller.
So don't be suprised when Americans panic and rage when the news that Tokyopop has been ressurected from the hell-hole it was cast down in comes to light.
The only thing that would make me hold even a glimmer of hope for them would be the news that the owner lost control and the brand was forcible taken over by someone with a brain. Maybe by the head of the German division since they seem to have the know how of running a good business.
