[Magus427]

[ QUOTE ]
Jim Lazar said:
How do you know this wasn't 'suggested' by the US marketers at Gutsoon? He must have gotten the idea from somewhere that he could sell more or cause less problems getting it into stores if he self-censored his work.

I doubt he just woke up one day and said, "You know, I should have put a pastie on that dancer."

In any case, it's an edit to the US release and it's a moot issue since Gutsoon is out of business.

[/ QUOTE ]

Gutsoon wasn't really a U.S. company to begin with. Hell, both Gutsoon Entertainment and the U.S. Raijin Comics label were subsideries of the Japanese publisher Coamix who used the two "companies" to enter the U.S. manga market (even now Gutsoon's website has a mailing address listed in Japan to contact them). I remember reading at most Gutsoon had like 15 people on staff total in the U.S. and I have no idea what they did (I sincerely doubt one of those 15 people was going to tell the legendary Hojo to edit his work). Four titles were initially chosen to be brought over from the Coamix stable and one of them was City Hunter. Gutsoon/Raijin also had links to the websites of the Japanese creators so you could check out their current works, etc. (Note: I don't see any other U.S. manga publishers having any links on their websites to the websites of the Japanese creators).

If anything, Gutsoon/Raijin had trouble penetrating the American market despite having quality titles and having their books sell well to hard-core manga fans. I don't think marketing their books was so much a problem as just finding a company to distribute them to the B&M stores to begin with. For this reason alone I doubt editing was done to make it more "market friendly" since the titles had a hard time being distributed to the "market" to begin with. I ordered all my City Hunter manga from Diamond Distributers (the company that deals exclusively with comic book shops, etc.)

And I'll be honest, I doubt we'll be seeing City Hunter published again in the U.S. (which is a damn shame) anytime soon unless Raijin makes a comeback. I don't see Hojo Tsukasa letting just any company publish his work, especially one he's not directly involved in or not having close to total creative control when it comes to a company publishing his work like he did with Gutsoon/Raijin Comics in the U.S.

-Magus