William Flanagan's 2002: The Odyssey

[Jarred]

So professional translator, Translation Dojo Sensei, and ex-Viz Editor-in-Chief William Flanagan recently posted a nice, quick read on his blog about how the manga industry in the US changed from 1987-2002. Thought I'd share it here as it's a nice piece that quickly reminds us all at just how far the manga industry has come. It is a little Viz-centric, but that is where William worked during those years of the change-over.

A little history lesson for you all. [img]/images/graemlins/happy.gif[/img] As well as some interesting words about how changes could affect the future of the US manga industry.

2002: The Odyssey (TranslationDojo.com)

[JeffDM]

Maybe I should make a comment on the post, but it might seem out of place for being off topic. The light-blue/gray/green-on-white theme was a little hard to read because the contrast wasn't good. I had to copy and paste the text to a text editor to read it. Edit: not possible, there's no reply link anyway, I suppose I'll use the contact information when I get time.

While it was apparently pretty rough on some publishers, it was definitely good for my buying. I bought almost no manga before TP reduced their pricing, maybe two or three. Since then, I have bought at least two a month since then, usually a lot more than that.

[stfram]

[ QUOTE ]
JeffDM said:
While it was apparently pretty rough on some publishers, it was definitely good for my buying. I bought almost no manga before TP reduced their pricing, maybe two or three. Since then, I have bought at least two a month since then, usually a lot more than that.

[/ QUOTE ]

That's true for me, as well.

I pretty much just got the TP manga, and avoided Viz like the plague until they reduced their prices...$18-20 for a single volume was excessive, and I saw no reason to buy when I could get the same variety from TP, at half the price.

I did buy some Viz collected manga in the early nineties, Grey, Mai the Psychic Girl, Nausicaa, and a few other titles. This was when they offered them in dustjackets, thogh. They later dropped the dustjackets, but did not drop their prices. I saw that as just being cheap, and stopped buying.

Still have all those older volumes, too.