Tokyopop Is Back
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According to Anime News Network, Tokyopop, which has been shut down in North America since May 2011, will return to the English manga business, starting with titles such as Konohana Kitan, Hanger, and Futaribeya.
No word on if they will ever get back into the LN business. -
Too burnt out with Tokyopop. Had so many series cancelled that I'm not trusting them again.
Note: I do understand its due to them licensing way too many series.
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@legitpancake said in Tokyopop Is Back:
Fuck. This is a series I've been wanting for a very long time. They better not fuck this up.
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@village-idiot I saw a very detailed discussion/notice to the fans of one of the "American Manga" line that TP put out in its heyday, saying that the owner of TP was a human dumpster-fire and terrible businessman. The original post got A LOT of replies from former staff members/other authors who agreed and brought more stories and quite a bit of evidence calling out said owner for barely legal and highly unethical practices.
So expect it to be a bad ride. My only real solace after seeing some of the stuff that bunghole did with series was that he has lost a lot of the really good series that had been liscensed in the early days after some of the japanese publishers saw works being mistreated or not released as per their agreements.
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I still remember the extreme bad will that Tokyopop managed to garner with Kodansha that it still poisons the industry to an extent. Viz had a really difficult spell as well thanks to Tokyopop, so I am not happy to see them back.
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This is surprising indeed
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It's so weird that Tokyopop crashed and burned so hard in the English market that fans are disdainful to their reentry into the market; all the while their German spinoff/sister company Tokyopop GmbH is a pretty respectable publisher in Germany, which published titles like Tokyo Ghoul and Goodnight Punpun. Hoping for y'all that they'll be more like the German one and less like the old Tokyopop.
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@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.
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They are bringing back the Aria manga!
I love them sooooo much!
Aria is one of my most favourite manga in the world. I can't wait for them to continue publishing the rest of this magical series!
