have you guys heard tokyopop's news? their going to sell select manga titles at there website only.

lately i have been losing interest in tokyopop, but it still came as quite a shock.

what do you guys think?

I just don't like how Tokyopop is losing the Tokyo and growing in pop. Ever since last year they've been publishing more and more 'american' drawn manga and I'm actually growing quite tired of how they still call it 'Authentic'.

I'm not quite a fan of SJ (youth level) myself, but atleast they stick with the titles from Japan.

Ditto to what nazaki said... lately Tokyopop just seems to like to publish more 'American' drawn manga, and maybe that's why they're losing so much interest.

I'm more fond of Del Rey titles, since they're the only ones to actually give a damn about the titles they release...

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真実はいつもひ とつ. ~ "There is always only one truth."

American drawn "manga" is most likely MUCH cheaper than stuff they can license from Japan. So with the glut on the market, TP is trying to have revenue streams with lower costs. There's a feeling that folks won't care, and while they'll make some sales (because if it entertains, it will sell at least a few copies), in the long run I don't think this is the way they should go. However, with so many competitors in the water, I'm sure they are afraid to do the right thing for fear of losing out. That's just my opinion though.

On the plus side, while I didn't like how some things in the Slayers novels were done, at least they are going to produce volumes 7 & 8 to wrap up the Lina/Gourry/Amelia/Zelgadis storyline. (Starting with volume 9, Amelia and Zelgadis are dropped and I don't think they are heard from again.) That will be a TP web-only purchase to cut down on their production costs.

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AstroNerdBoy's Anime and Manga Blog

At least TokyoPop isn't stupid enough to sell its popular titles as exclusives. I haven't been buying much TP stuff lately; I used to love them and for a while they were the only publisher I went to, but know there are so many other people with better products. For goodness sake, I'm even buying Viz's titles, and I had boycotted them for a while.

Some of those exclusive titles were American manga, which I don't buy. I wouldn't be surprised if they put it up on the site to test its sales. But the other titles, the manga and the manwha, really annoy me. Not that I read any of them, but I don't shop at TP's store. They cost more than any of my other online book sellers, plus you have to pay shipping with them. Selling exclusively on their site is a way to maximize profits, so I wonder if that's TP's goal. Still, they will continue to alienate fans if they do this, especially the newer fans who didn't have brand loyalty like I used to have.

After Maison Ikkoku, I refused to buy anything else from Viz. I despise their domesticated translations and the fact that when they had an opportunity to fix MI when they finally released it unflipped, all they did was return the chapters they'd previously removed. Otherwise, the bad translations remained the same and that drives me spare.

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AstroNerdBoy's Anime and Manga Blog

I don't see how it matters. I have a credit card so I could order off the site

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Which will come from RightStuf since they handle all of TP's store sales. ^_^

I order most of my stuff online, so that doesn't matter much. However, it seems to me that titles that are only sold via the website won't sell well. There's really no good way to get people into the manga via browsing. It may reduce TP's costs if they only prints what people actually order (which I'm guessing is the reason for these titles to only be sold on their website). Plus, since books are actually sold to bookstores at a fairly high discount off the cover price, TP's selling the titles directly would mean they'd get the entire cover price.

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AstroNerdBoy's Anime and Manga Blog

To me buying online can be a bit of a hassle. I live on the east coast and a mistake was mistake on my order address so they had to send it back to california so back I had to wait three weeks for a package plus one more because by the time it got there I was in college. Tokyopop works are for the most part aimed at teens(under 18) and a for the most teens(under 18) don't have cred cards.

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Every dead body that is not exterminated becomes one of them. It gets up and kills! The people it kills get up and kill!

When I didn't have a credit card, I'd ask my friend, my parents, or my uncle. I had three options right there =p

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It's not so much about having the ability to buy the exclusive manga. I just fail to see the point of it. In light of the growing amount of competition TP has from other companies, why would they sell something exclusively on their site? For some groups like DMP, customers don't mind losing the ability to browse or read through the manga because they already know what they want (in this, I am referring to DMP's yaoi subgroup, and the niche group of fans it targets). But for TP to do something like this makes me wonder about their overall goal.

If it was even five years ago, they could have gotten away with this. Back then, there was only TokyoPop and Viz, with DMP dabbling in the How to Draw series. With so many fans rushing to get nearly any manga they could get their hands on, this strategy would have worked. But now the market is flooded with titles for all sorts of fans, so why now? Also, they couldn't put their most popular titles online (like Fruits Basket) because sales would actually go down, but they put new titles and slow releases online. Is this to boost sales or to lower the amount of volumes they have to print?

And Yamikumo, you also have a good point. For these titles, it seems that TP is limiting their target audience. I wonder what they're planning...

Hmm... selling on their site is good if they're only thinking about american costumers. I also have a credit card, but I wouldn't buy from their site directly. The shipping costs are greater, the books take a long time to get here and of course, there is customs. Great way to make people in Europe stop buying their products! Still, if they only care about their home-country, maybe it's better for them to sell some titles online exclusively, who knows.

I don't know what's the big idea, though. If it was just those american manga titles, I really woudn't care, but I can see there is some manhwa and manga titles included. Ridiculous, especially because some of those titles are not first volumes! For example "Neck and Neck" or "One". What of people that started collecting these and aren't able to buy online? That's a load of customers they loose right there, I think.

Also, these products wouldn't be as publicized or known as the ones that hit the stores, and fewer people would buy them. I mean, I doubt there are a lot of people going to their site every week or something, looking for new products except perhaps diehard fans. It's easier to just walk into a library and look at the titles they have.
Bad move, if you ask me, but then again, what do I know of business...

i don't know about you guys but i love seeing the shelves full of manga right in front of me in the bookstores and knowing i can look at them, read a few pages to see how it is, or just pick up the next volume of my series right then and there. the one time i ordered a book online it took two weeks and it had a big black mark on the cover.

oh, and i also like del rey

Eh.. I don't really buy much manga anyway.

I don't like Toykopop, and even if I DID buy manga, I wouldn't buy theirs ( or at least not for a little while). I'm mad at them for forcing Onemanga to take down all of the manga they are licensing.


Although, they do have several titles that aren't being scanalated that I want to read..


But I do agree, they are degrading lately.

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I've never liked TokyoPop, not even when they were Mixx Entertainment. Maybe if they stopped flooding the market with five unappealing titles for every one decent title they license, focused on their editing (I just found three different spellings for 'Klan Blue' in "The Demon Ororon", ye gods), didn't censor the translations and the art of their titles, and tried a little harder at better book design, there would be some reason to support them. As it stands, Stu Levy is scum and I wouldn't mind at all if his little company went under. That would leave more room for better licensers such as Del Rey, Viz, and the smaller pubishers to bring over better quality stuff.

*cough* Sorry 'bout that rant. I'm not sure that it was constructive. But damn, ever since they axed the 'dirty jokes' out of "GTO" and promised remove potential 'lesbian' content from "Sailor Moon", they've been on my bad side. When I series gets licensed I generally drop the scanlations and buy the official volumes (even if I'm also buying the Japanese tanks), but not if TokyoPop picks it up.

Screw 'em.