This week's poll is from our member residentgrigo. What's your opinions on spin-off series? In case you don't know what those are, imagine a series coming to an end. You know that side character that's kinda interesting? Let's make a new series with just him and his new adventures.

You can submit poll ideas here (and try to keep them manga/anime-related)
http://www.mangaupdates.com/showtopic.php?tid=3903

Previous Poll Results:
Question: What's your preferred treatment of 2 page spreads in scanlations that don't align well?
Choices:
Keep them together but leave a gap in the middle - votes: 1887 (28.6%)
Keep them together and redraw the gap in the middle - votes: 1949 (29.5%)
Keep them together and put them side by side even if they don't line up - votes: 566 (8.6%)
Keep each page as a separate image - votes: 995 (15.1%)
No preference - votes: 1207 (18.3%)
There were 6604 total votes.
The poll ended: January 30th 2016

I'm amazed this was such a close vote. Before this poll, I really thought people would always prefer having the gap redrawn, but it appears lots of people also prefer preserving the gap.

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Maybe just one spin-off is good enough. But, that's only for Shounen series.
For a Seinen series, Manga need to be standalone tales!

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One spin off the the max for me. Nowadays there are way too many spin off it started grating on nerve *cough Singeki no Kyojin *cough. Sometimes I feel like the author/publisher not ready to let go of the series while all of our fans are so over it.

Also, the quality and the aim of that spins-off are important too. Some especially those worked by different authors they started to contradict the main series. For those that work by the original series may neglect the main series. Mashima although he's doing a good job but I can totally live without the spin-offs.

I also expected the George Lucas "Special Edition" to have a noticeable lead but more may agree with some of what i said in the last poll than one would think. There has also been a noticeable uptake of US rippers who now also scan official manga translations.
This week´s AoT Before the Fall had no gap and both pages together. It took me nearly half the page count to notice due to the high quality of the overall job so i still don´t care. Splash pages aren´t a Japanese hallmark after all.

Maybe just one spin-off (at the same time and preferably just one overall) but one needs to be carefully with such a limit too. Frasier may have been more successful than the parent show Cheers and the aforementioned BtF is a more focused product than AoT but Joeys and flat advertisements as Gantz:G (the CG film is coming) reign the land. These also tend to have a problem with production values or purpose or they end up being 4-koma school "comedies". AoT even got 2 of those... @ the same time!
Manga spin-offs are currently out of control is all my poll is trying to say. A good side-story / prequel should stay in continuity, should be per-planned with an ending in mind and should give something back to the main series while still being it´s own story. I like small side-arcs as the TG one-shots or the recent 3 part flashback in Berserk but these are part of the same series so one may even live without a spin-off altogether and still get the same results.

The big US comics obviously live of a connected universe and even "art-house indies" as Sandman had and continue to have those. The Walking Dead adventure games are in the same continuity as the comic and so on. The last 2 decades of Batman or Geoff John´s Green Lantern are how to do it right so Lots of spin-offs can work too yet Japanese publishers would need to utterly change their approach in how they operate and we don´t want that, do we?

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It just depends on the story and the quality of the spin-off. It's clear there are plenty of series that only get a spin-off so the publishers can make more money. From a story standpoint, there isn't a need for a spin-off, but they'll keep getting made because there are fans out there willing to buy it. But some spin-offs are done well, they expand on the story or offer a unique perspective from a different character. So it just depends.

Majority of cases, I loath spin offs because they tend to be bad when compared to the original series. There is probably a reason that side character is a side character to begin with: there isn't enough substance to sustain an interesting story.

In saying that, there are exceptions that work.

Nah, manga need to be stand-alone. Tokyo Mew Mew A La Mary Sue, Soul Eater Moe, all that SnK garbage... the list of cringe-worthy spin-offs is terribly long. The only spin-off I've read and liked is Touhou Shinigami - Meteor Methuselah Gaiden, but even then I feel like the story could've just been included as a flashback arc in Immortal Rain, sorta like how Kakashi Gaiden worked.

It's another case of "depends on the story." I've read some really good spin offs that in a sense are standalones. One doesn't need to read both stories.

I haven't read many mangas that have spin offs though. The ones I have read with spin offs are pretty good but they end up standing alone e.g. I read the spin off first and find out that the original story exists but I don't have to read the original story first.

Last edited by mysstris at 2:30 pm, Jan 30 2016

Do sequels count? If the story is done after the original is done, I am usually fine with it. I dislike concurrent series in the same world, especially if it is done by different writers/artists.

Manga should be standalone. A spin-off needs to be really good for me to read it. And it should, at the very least, be by the original author. Spin-offs by other people usually mean a huge drop in quality of both the story and the art. Unfortunately.

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Being the lazy person that I am, I'm not likely to accept anything long-term though.

As long as the spin-off can stand on its own there can be as many as the author likes (that is, after the main story is finished).

Ah, but not those strange ones where some fantasy world inhabitants are suddenly in high school, those are stupid.

If, for example, the spin-off is about a side character that sometimes cross paths with the "hero" than even those parts that are already told in the main story SHOULD also be retold from the side character.

Spin-offs are just plainly milking the franchise. Sugar coat it as much as you want but thats its main goal. Unfortunately theres loads of stupid humans on earth, just look at how DLC & microtranscation turned into a revolution...

The spin-offs I found interesting:
1) those that just share the world but none or only a tiny amount of the cast (i.e. Devilman Lady vs Devilman)
2) those where the original has two sides facing off and in the spin-off you are following the other side.
(i.e. Sekai Seifuku anime vs Junketsu no White light spin-off)
3) those that were of a completely different genre, i.e. Soul Taker vs Nurse Witch Komugi-chan, or Dororon Enbi-chan being an adult parody on Kikoushi Enma.

So lots of spin-offs are fine - it's not like we are forced to read them all

Honestly i'm find either way.

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