Edit(?) in Yubisaki Milktea volume 1

[philnicau]

I've noticed an oddity after comparing the Original version of volume 1 with the Tokyopop version, even though in the Tokyopop version the pages are 188mms in length (compared with the Japanese version of 182mms) the are missing art at the top and bottom of each page of approx 3-5 mms.
It seems to me that while the Tokyopop versions have been enlarged they also have been cropped.

[chloes_fork]

Not sure that really counts as an "edit." More like a production issue. You scared me for a minute; I bought the first volume, and would be pretty peeved to find out I had unknowingly supported an edited title.

Not that cropping every page is such a good thing, either.

[Noodle]

This is pretty standard for the domestic market. If you're talking about a couple of mm of art, it's a production issue, not an intentional edit. Some publishers are a bit better with this, but for the most part there are very few books that manage to include the art as the Japanese versions do.

[witega]

The proportions of the 'standard' American size for manga are not quite the same as the Japanese standard. Its also slightly larger. Meaning just about every title is slightly blown-up and then manipulated to fit on the page. Tokyopop, in particular, has a long history of not doing this as well as most other companies.

It's not a good thing, and it would be really nice if Tokyopop would improve their production quality (they have had cycles of getting better then worse again and it can vary from title to title and volume to volume, but on average, TP is consistently the worst of any of the major manga companies in their print reproduction), but its not an edit in the sense of TP deliberately removing original content.

[Jarred]

[ QUOTE ]
witega said:
The proportions of the 'standard' American size for manga are not quite the same as the Japanese standard. Its also slightly larger. Meaning just about every title is slightly blown-up and then manipulated to fit on the page. Tokyopop, in particular, has a long history of not doing this as well as most other companies.

[/ QUOTE ]
So, I have a question about that. Couldn't TOKYOPOP or whoever just, you know, blow it up a little less so they wouldn't have to crop it? I'm sure there's a good answer, as my question is too obvious, so please teach me on how or why it is done that way.

[Greenlily]

[ QUOTE ]
Jarred said:
[ QUOTE ]
witega said:
The proportions of the 'standard' American size for manga are not quite the same as the Japanese standard. Its also slightly larger. Meaning just about every title is slightly blown-up and then manipulated to fit on the page. Tokyopop, in particular, has a long history of not doing this as well as most other companies.

[/ QUOTE ]
So, I have a question about that. Couldn't TOKYOPOP or whoever just, you know, blow it up a little less so they wouldn't have to crop it? I'm sure there's a good answer, as my question is too obvious, so please teach me on how or why it is done that way.

[/ QUOTE ]

It has to do with the horizontal proportions as well as the vertical ones. We can either lose a bit at the top, or a lot more on the edges and in the spine.

It's the problem with making manga a uniform size (more or less) in the US--it's not that way in Japan, and altering it to fit does mean that a little something gets lost (or else things don't bleed properly). Seriously though, we're talking millimeters. I've been doing this for almost two years now, and the only time I've been bothered by the loss was a couple pages of Earthian where the top part of an SFX was cropped, and it was hard to tell if it was a "tou" or a "goh." /images/graemlins/catgirl0.gif

[Jarred]

[ QUOTE ]
Greenlily said:
It has to do with the horizontal proportions as well as the vertical ones. We can either lose a bit at the top, or a lot more on the edges and in the spine.

It's the problem with making manga a uniform size (more or less) in the US--it's not that way in Japan, and altering it to fit does mean that a little something gets lost (or else things don't bleed properly).

[/ QUOTE ]
Thanks. It was always one of those questions I had that I knew had a simple answer but the booze kept me from answering it myself. /images/graemlins/sweat000.gif /images/graemlins/sdsmiley.gif

[Greenlily]

[ QUOTE ]
witega said:
On average, TP is consistently the worst of any of the major manga companies in their print reproduction.

[/ QUOTE ]

I was going to kind of argue this point, but then I thought about some of the recent Hands Off volumes, and changed my mind. *sigh*

Although in our defense, I'd say we're consistent in our inconsistency. Because on the other hand, Loveless and Saiyuki look damn good, if I do say so myself. /images/graemlins/sdsmiley.gif

[Libertus]

[ QUOTE ]
Greenlily said:
Although in our defense, I'd say we're consistent in our inconsistency.

[/ QUOTE ]

Glancing through Kyo 18 and comparing the reproduction to Kyo 1 it's easy to see things have improved quite a bit. Fine tone is distinuguishable now (as opposed to a grey blur). In fact, comparing Kyo 18 (TP version) to my JP original I'd say they look more or less the same.

So props to TP for one series at least /images/graemlins/happy.gif

Of course there is still room for improvement. But in my opinion TP is no longer clearly the worst (excluding that issue Del Rey had with blurriness a while back). Even Viz has slipped a bit - I noticed moire patterns in Bleach 12 on large areas of grey tone /images/graemlins/sad.gif

robert

[grungelee]

[ QUOTE ]
Libertus said:
Even Viz has slipped a bit - I noticed moire patterns in Bleach 12 on large areas of grey tone /images/graemlins/sad.gif


[/ QUOTE ]

Which is particularly why the images shouldn't get resized. Moiré patterns often happen when art with half-tones has been scaled up/down. It's not always apparent on screen, but when it goes to print becomes very visible. Theres also the notion of bleed which was mentioned (the amount of image that needs to get cropped off) so that there aren't chunks of white space at the end of the art.

[UndeadKing]

Forgive me if this isn't the topic to post in. It's not an edit, but there is another problem with the book. My copy at least. A little over halfway through the book(Pg 141) there is a word bubble with no text in it. This also happened one other time but I was unable to find it again when I glanced through.

[Peter Ahlstrom]

>_< That's an error. Everyone get out your pencils and write "Why...?" in that balloon.

[witega]

[ QUOTE ]
Greenlily said:
[ QUOTE ]
witega said:
On average, TP is consistently the worst of any of the major manga companies in their print reproduction.

[/ QUOTE ]

I was going to kind of argue this point, but then I thought about some of the recent Hands Off volumes, and changed my mind. *sigh*

[/ QUOTE ]

I did hedge with 'on average'. There are books where Tokyopop does a very good job these days--I would agree about Saiyuki (can't comment on Loveless). And you may partially be living down an impression I formed in the early years (I'm *still* unhappy about what happened to Soryo's art in some of the later volumes of Mars). But, completely subjectively, I still feel like I get distracted by reproduction problems in Tokyopop books more often than any other publisher.

[akoftroy]

The production quality in some Viz books is really poor as well. Angel Sanctuary, for example. You have to remember that it's not one person working on every title for each company. Different people are working on different books, some are better than others.

[Greenlily]

[ QUOTE ]
akoftroy said:
Different people are working on different books, some are better than others.

[/ QUOTE ]

And it even depends on which printer we use. TOKYOPOP goes to three different printers, and one is significantly better than the other two (the other two have their ups and downs, whereas the first is very consistent).

[Noodle]

[ QUOTE ]
Greenlily said:
[ QUOTE ]
akoftroy said:
Different people are working on different books, some are better than others.

[/ QUOTE ]

And it even depends on which printer we use. TOKYOPOP goes to three different printers, and one is significantly better than the other two (the other two have their ups and downs, whereas the first is very consistent).

[/ QUOTE ]

If a printer can't be consistent then isn't it time to bring the business elsewhere? The problem will never go away if only 1 in 3 printers can be depended upon to do the job right...

I will agree that some of VIZ's recent shoujo hasn't had the best print treatment (gah, FY 17 and 18?!), but despite TP's marginal improvement (and occasional beautiful titles), there is definitely a lot of "living down" (as witega put it) needed there.

[Greenlily]

[ QUOTE ]
Noodle said:
If a printer can't be consistent then isn't it time to bring the business elsewhere? The problem will never go away if only 1 in 3 printers can be depended upon to do the job right...

[/ QUOTE ]

As with many things in this business, it would be a very different industry if we had sales figures and print runs like they do in Japan. With our run numbers, we don't have as many options as you might think, and for titles where we're not printing very many copies, it's hard to give them the best treatment. Ironically, of course, that tends to hurt their general appearance, potentially driving down sales even further.

It comes down to scheduling too. A single printer can't do 40 different manga volumes a month, so we have to divide up the load a bit. It's what makes being a production manager so difficult. /images/graemlins/catgirl0.gif

[Vertical_Ed]

[ QUOTE ]
Greenlily said:
[ QUOTE ]
witega said:
On average, TP is consistently the worst of any of the major manga companies in their print reproduction.

[/ QUOTE ]

I was going to kind of argue this point, but then I thought about some of the recent Hands Off volumes, and changed my mind. *sigh*

Although in our defense, I'd say we're consistent in our inconsistency. Because on the other hand, Loveless and Saiyuki look damn good, if I do say so myself. /images/graemlins/sdsmiley.gif

[/ QUOTE ]

I'll argue for you...

ADV Manga is by far the worst in the business. Not only do they occasionally blow up images to fit their book trims but in some titles they dont do anything but reprint the page in the wrong size, so the bleed sticks through creating that strange effect seen in ChronoCrusade, Louie and Orphen where you can see the blank paper outside of bleeding panels. /images/graemlins/depresse.gif

The problem for ADV is that they are consistently changing their sizes. They started using Japanese sizes. Then began doing digest size books and are now doing something else (for a few titles). Making everything a little off with each no transition.
And I agree Saiyuki is one good looking manga.