Quote:
Originally Posted by jlazar
Might be self-centered of me, but I wouldn't mind seeing some OEL books get sacrificed to keep more Japanese manga on the store shelves.
|
Actually, I suspect it will be the Japanese manga that will get many of the cuts. Some of Tokyopop's strongest performers have been OEL comics. But more importantly, it comes down to the fact that Tokyopop does not have primary access to the three largest manga publishers and thus are limited in what they can bring over. Shogakukan's and Shueisha's best titles go to Viz and Kodansha's best titles go to Del Rey. Those three companies more or less dominate the Japanese manga industry (at least the demographics that are important in North America). Even Square-Enix has a deal with Yen Press (although their most popular title is with Viz).
This basically leaves Kadokawa/Media Works (who mostly do Otaku-centric manga), Hakusensha, Akita Shoten, and smaller publishers of manga in the pool that Tokyopop can draw licenses from. The next "Naruto" or "Negima" is likely to come from the three companies I mentioned above. And Hakusensha doesn't have another title like Fruits Basket that I know of. Basically, in my opinion, Tokyopop has been developing their own manga/comics because they didn't have any other choice.