Tokyopop

[Jupitris]

US operations (all of them from the LA distribution centre) only have closed. European ops are fine.
Go celebrate the narrow call.

Might as well turn this into a general State of the Industry topic, So what are everyone's thoughts? It seems US anime and manga is tanking , 4kids is declared bankrupt. Funimation have a lawsuit perilously close from Nihon ad sysems.

I'm glad manga is affected in the UK (until any knock on effects hit) and I prefer subbed anime.


Also I feel I have to point out, "scanlations and bad management"?
Certianly they wasted money on some real crap i.e America's greatest otaku. But Tokyopop balances original, niche and upcoming manga with strong sellers, many of which it actually creates, its manga licences pre-date many anime licences of the same series even when the anime's had already been running for a while when they licenced the manga, meaning Tokyopop are responsible for some cult hits like sailor moon, keroro, chobits and the like.
Tokyopop made decent profits but also had a diverse range, I don't want an industry where everyone exclusively licensed the most mainstream populist stuff, do you?
The management over-all was good, occassional poor desisions and risky bets on licences sometimes going bad are just parts of making a good company.

And tokyopop didn't call out scanlation's in their statement(s).
And I think its pretty naive to even try and blame them, much research has shown people that read scanlation's regularly actually buy more anime and manga, as a proportion of bought stuff to watch/read stuff I'm sure its much lower, but they still on average put much more into the indstry than those who refrain from partaking, its really very little different from borrowing from the library excpect the government doesn't pay for the copies at retail (seriously I went into my local independent store they sold my favourite series to a library at retail price of £7.50, you can beat that on amazon!!!) except that the potential (no real figures available) lost revenue from the libraries really wouldn't be that large proportionally anyway, its certainly not business killer, its just a lame way companies are trying to guilt trip the public over the fact our own genius has invented a system where-by the creation , replication and publication of all information manga included is so ridiculously cheap there's no money for big companies any-more.
The statement actually said that the bookstore chain borders demise that carried a good deal of all manga sales was what did the company in, the fact that physically buying manga got more difficult would have been the death-throws of a company anyway, lots of publishers are going under because independent stores are over-priced and on-line buying isn't popular (for damn good reasons)

[the boy wondering]

An interesting article I found and it sure is an interesting read.

"According to the newly released ICv2 White Paper on the “State of the Comics Industry,” manga sales in the U.S. and Canada suffered through a second straight year of double digit declines in 2009 with sales falling 20% from an estimated $175 million in 2008 to $140 million in 2009. This drop-off comes on the heels of a 17% decline from manga’s high point in 2007 when sales reached their peak of $210 million, which means that manga sales declined by a third from 2007 to 2009.

Interestingly in 2009 the drop-off in manga sales was more pronounced in the bookstore channel than it was in the direct market, with the weakest titles taking the biggest hits. The number of volumes of manga released, which hit an all-time high of 1513 in 2007 fell to 1115 in 2009 and is projected (according to ICv2’s survey of manga publishers see “Fewer Manga in 2010”) to plummet to 968 in 2010, thus mirroring the more than 33% decline in manga sales since 2007. While most of the major manga publishers have simply cut back on the number of their releases, the pressure of declining sales has forced a number of mid-level publishers, including Aurora, Go-Comi, and Dr. Master, to inactive status.

The young teen shojo fans who fueled the manga boom in bookstores have aged and in spite of attempts to interest them in reading more “adult” josei manga, as they grow older these predominantly female readers appear to be abandoning manga for other things. Meanwhile, Twilight has absorbed much of the attention of the teen audience that was buying shojo.

The TV exposure that drove major shonen hits such as Naruto, Bleach and Death Note is down considerably, which has kept hot new titles such Rosario + Vampire from achieving the kind of success that previous Shonen Jump hits have enjoyed.

The pipeline has also been weak, with no major new hits from Japan in the last few years. In fact, sales are down in Japan as well, with a decline of 6.6% reported for 2009, according to the Research Institute for Publications, via Anime News Network. .

While comic retailers tell ICv2 that they believe scanlations (translations of scanned manga, which appear on the Web within days of their publication in Japan) are hurting their sales, the evidence is not conclusive. Scanlations were around through the growth of the manga market as well as its decline, and some feel that they actually increase the market for manga collections by creating greater exposure for new properties. While it may be true that more manga buyers are telling retailers that they're reading online rather than buying, that may be due to economic conditions (they're buying fewer titles over-all), or to the lack of a major hit that stimulates buying.

Despite the recent declines, manga remains a key component of the overall graphic market in North America. In European markets where manga boomed before it hit it big here in the States, there was a post-boom drop-off, but sales then stabilized at a substantial level. In spite of a 19% drop in the number of releases and a 20% decline in sales, manga titles still represented 35% of all the graphic novels released in the U.S. in 2009 and accounted for a similar percentage of sales in the category."

To add a personal anecdote in to the mix, many of my friends who were reading manga between 2004 - 2007 are no longer. I'm tempted to suggest, albeit painfully, that manga [for many] in the Western hemisphere was a fad - a phase that many have grown out of, or can't afford. However, the drop in manga sales in Japan points to cross-cultural reasons as opposed to domestic tastes changing. I must also add that I don't think that scanalations are the problem (SCANS_DAILY 1.0 FTW !!!!!).

to conclude this post...reasons for decline in sales
- lack of big brand retailers (such as borders) selling manga therefore limiting accessibility
- not many big titles being released from Japan
- the lack of anime on television
- the image that manga is geeky/for kids/stupid/weird/only for asians preventing a growth in the audience.
- a fad?

source of the article posted: www.icv2.com/articles/news/17292.html

[Jupitris]

Gotta call bs on that article (although thanks for posting it!)
Its just assumptions and populist conjecture.
The Initial facts are interesting but we're talking about this in a backdrop of a global recession, I for one know I've bought at least 30-40% less manga this year, and where-as before I had pre-orders on all manga I wanted and had them on day of release, now I wait for months at a time before buying them all en-mass. A slowdown In new titles, and frankly the collapse of un-sustainable buisiness's is expected, Japan down 6.6% in manga sales? In 2009 with the ant otaku laws coming into force and the economy really biting? Hell quite good considering.
"the weakest titles taking the biggest hits" sure I only buy series im already into or collecting right now, I used to buy stuff because I thought it looked interesting or because they were on offer (first 3 volumes of selected series for 3.99... deal!) I just can't afford to be daring right now, big established titles won't take the brunt because they are established and people want to try and keep up with them, and im sure many people take my approch of not trying new manga because of the prices.

"The young teen shojo fans who fueled the manga boom in bookstores have aged and in spite of attempts to interest them in reading more “adult” josei manga, as they grow older these predominantly female readers appear to be abandoning manga for other things. Meanwhile, Twilight has absorbed much of the attention of the teen audience that was buying shojo."

This is the start of the downfall of the article.
1) Shoujo was a new market from the predominanty male shonen market, but new markets become established markets and you can't rely on continuous growth without introducing something new. Of course the Initial boom was going to subside eventually , if anyone believed otherwise they were stupid, but the timing of the end of the boom (aided/caused by) with the end of the economic boom causes a double threat problem.

2) Of course Jousei wasn' going to work well, hell its not very successful in Japan, it gets by but its definately the weakest of ALL manga markets (shonen, seinen, shoujo, shounen-ai, shoujo-ai, hentai and all the others) but again look back , whats the translation rate from shonen to seinen? Not great for sure. It just doesn't work out like that, you can't retain all your readers, and some not for long anyway.

3) Sorry to hate but if your relying on the sort of people who read twilight for a base, its a damn fickle base at best. That's not even actually too much against twilight (despite how much I hate it) but yea that sort of person jumps from, yes, FAD to fad, populist rubbish to puplist rubbish because they have no ability to determine what they like on thier own (that doesn't apply too all readers, some actualy like it, some have other reasons e.g peers always talk about it, but seriously its clear a large enough solid base was not established during the boom.

"The TV exposure that drove major shonen hits such as Naruto, Bleach and Death Note is down considerably, which has kept hot new titles such Rosario + Vampire from achieving the kind of success that previous Shonen Jump hits have enjoyed."
So the measure of manga is shonen jump? Point missed, for too long the big 4 have been relied too heavily upon, Rosario is too different from what most shoen jump readers like anyway, its no wonder it hasn't taken off, and shonen in general has been relied upon too much, more diversity and advertisement in other properties is needed.
And fair-weather fans that only read the big 4, Naruto, One piece, Bleach, Death note (no really I've met SO MANY people who have exclusively read those) of course there going ot be fickle and hell most of those are going down hill, death note is so over exposed, everyone's seen or read it. One piece is way way too big for new-comers, you see what 60 volumes , times that by 5, that's an investment of £300 just to catch up, you can buy an xbox for that.
Naruto smae problem along with.... yea its not going anywhere fast even in the manga.
Bleach? Even hard-core fans have started saying to me, Kubo cant write.
I've seen almost no adverts for manga outside of the big 4 its shameful, and what little I have is often based around "of the moment" stuff, that passes quickly.

"The pipeline has also been weak, with no major new hits from Japan in the last few years."
BULL , total bull. Just because fair-weather fans don't have enough generic crap to have shvelled down them doesn't mean JAPAN didn't provide great hits, most people watch the anime adpations anyway (such as durarara!! or Kuroshitsuji) but that doesn't mean that you can't capitalise on that.
Lower sales =/= Lower Quality , hell i'd argue the fact that for years highers sales have been masking poorer quality, for every copy of naruto sold... a better series flops. (Slight hate speach)

The scanlation bit admits, that its inconclusive the effects of scanlations, most independant reports say as I did above, scanlations have a positive effect, though big companies will alwys blame them as a scapegoat, and maybe there is some negative effect overall but there's just no evidence for it.

I agree too much manga/anime growth was a fad because too much of it based upon fair-weather fans with a limited interesting in the material and limited range of interest.
I diagree that Japan's decline is based on an overall problem, Sure I mean to an extent manga just isn't as original these days (A-lot more now is coming from anime) but recent fall in sales can be attributed to the economy.

[Deleted]

I didn't know this was happening.