Sad to say but I was completely oblivious to Tokyopop's shutting down until I noticed that a manga I thought was licensed to English was being released by a scanlation group today. I was like WTF? Normally licensed stuff doesn't get scanlated because fans want to support the mangaka, but if Tokyopop is gone does that mean all it's titles are now free game again? Does anyone know any recent news about if any of BLU's titles particularly Silver Diamond and Sex Pistols(Love Pistols) have been picked up by a new publisher? I really want to buy these titles in hard copy.

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Always remember what Jesus said "Once you've worn chilled boxers you never go back..."
Saint Oniisan

I'm not sure what will happen with the manga that was licensed but whether they are scanlated again may end up being a group by group decision or such. It would be nice if they started scanlating them again tell they are relicensed.

I loved Tokyopop since it was the company that I first bought manga from. I feel sort of bad that I also had no clue that Tokyopop was closing tell I noticed a post on my Facebook from their page pretty much saying "Goodbye, we are closed!".


Unfortunately for me, I happened to procrastinate on ordering my Happy Cafe until they were in the middle of closing. Now I am missing Vol 4. It is a stupid worry but having Vol4 out of the first 7 different will look funny.

I'm sure there will be other publishers who will pick up a few titles of Tokyopop. For example, I remember going through the manga section in my book store the other day and seeing bulk volumes of Chobits published by someone else even though Tokyopop finished all eight volumes. It's a common thing for other publishers to pick up what a dead publisher did not accomplish. As to what series they will pick up, who knows...

And you do realize that the popular shounen titles such as One Piece, Bleach, etc. along with tons and tons of other popular series that are licensed are still being scanlated, right? Many people out there would rather have scanned releases because they're faster, they're still quality releases, and they're available to those who don't have access to licensed releases. The scanlation trend will continue with or without licensing. That's just how it is.

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@Pikapu

I figure what you said is true, but a lot of scanlation teams would hold off taking up a project that's licensed to English because of the legal implications. I do realize that ALL manga is copyrighted, some seem to forget that Japanese raws are licensed by the Japanese publishers and mangaka and only refer to licenses in reference to English publishers. I guess I'm going to have to wait and see about getting a hard copy of Silver Diamond volume 10. BTW volume 9 was released in April right before Tokyopop went kaput.

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Always remember what Jesus said "Once you've worn chilled boxers you never go back..."
Saint Oniisan

Definitely still happy that Tokyopop is going bye bye. I hated their translations for Initial D. HATED I tell ya. Plus they ruined the anime. Glad Funimation got the rights to the anime. Hopefully a better company picks up Initial D down the road in terms of manga.

Still happy that Tokyopop is going bye bye.

For the most part many publishers of manga in English do not seem particularly bothered about scanlation, so I don't think it's usually the legal repercussions that put people off scanlating works that are licensed in English. Ironically it seems Tokyopop were the most vigilant of all English manga publishers in sending out Cease & Desists (there are some big manga hosting sites that don't host any of their works because of this), and they ended up folding. (Well, poor business practices probably played the larger part.) Some publishers and creators have even remarked that they don't really care or that scanlation can have a positive effect on their own sales because it builds up the fanbase and can be an indication of how popular a series would be if released officially. Even if they read scanlations too, committed fans will probably want to buy a copy to support the creators and help keep the English manga publishing industry in shape. I mean, I read speed scanlations of my favourite series and still buy the books when they come out, and I have so many series on my shelves I'd never have bought if I hadn't tried them through scanlations first. I'm not saying scanlation is necessarily acceptable, like you say it still amounts to copyright violation whether it's licensed in English or not, but it's not horrifically evil either.

Well, the TL;DR point I'm actually trying to make is that it's probably more a moral thing than a legal thing when groups decide not to scanlate a licensed series. I played a part in scanlating a licensed series once and I only stopped because I felt awful about it given all the bad things we're hearing about the state of the English manga publishing industry.

In any case, whenever an anime/manga company goes bust, other publishers tend to swoop in and rescue at least some of the series, even ones that aren't particularly popular or profitable. There are some dedicated yaoi publishers out there in particular so I'm betting some BLU titles will be snapped up. You could look up some sales stats for indications of how likely a certain series will be saved.

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They did have terrible translators working for them. I'm not sad to see them go, even if they did bring over some of the best manga early on. And they also did have some very obscure very dark series that no one else would bother licensing, except for maybe Dark Horse. For that I'm going to miss them.

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I wonder if we can start a donation for older cancelled and unlikely to be relicenced manga, to get scanlation groups and complete the series. Cash donations going for the first quality release.

much like how I would gladly pay $100 to have a scanlation of the final chapters of steel angel kurumi. (thanks adv).