“I think that if shojo manga were to be introduced on a wider scale to the U.S., English-language publishers of manga could attract an incredible amount of new female readers.” – Ryoichi Ikegami, published in Vol. 1 No. 7 of Animerica, September 1993.
As usual, he was way ahead of the times, even in terms of another nation.
I’ve added a new page to the blog. It’s a list of the ten unlicensed manga I have been most interested in reading lately. Having said that, a few of them are pretty much permanent members. As stated on the page, I hope to update it frequently though updates won’t be mentioned in posts. Here’s the initial list…
The Drops of God (Shu Okimoto, Morning)
The Emperor of the Land of the Rising Sun (Ryoko Yamagishi, LaLa)
Gamble (Mitsuru Kaga, Shonen Sunday)
Guarding the Frontier (Kyoko Shitoh, Petit Flower)
Hataraki Man (Moyoco Anno, Morning)
Jaguar (Kyousuke Usuta, Weekly Shonen Jump)
Maihime Terpsichore (Ryoko Yamagishi, ?)
Onmyoji (Reiko Okano, Melody)
Otherworld Barbara (Moto Hagio, Flowers)
Ushijima the Loan Shark (Shohei Manabe, Big Comic Spirits)
It seems some talk over scanlations has started up again recently, at least on mangablog, in response to a recent interview with Dark Horse CEO Mike Richardson.
I’m not going to take a stand on the issue one way or another. What I want to say here is that I think publishers need to learn how to take advantage of the reality of the situation.
Take Viz for example. Their licensing strategy revolves around relentlessly licensing manga that have anime adaptations. Do they care if said anime is licensed and commercially released in North America? No, they don’t. I’ll leave you to figure out which titles I’m referring to… Now forget about the obvious fact that if a manga gets an anime adaptation then it must be popular in Japan and hence has a good chance at success in North America. The reality is that they know the anime will be freely available online through fansubs for all to watch. The result is almost equivalent to having that anime run every week on cable TV. There’s simply no better advertising arrangement for manga. I also believe that just because an anime fansub isn’t particularly popular doesn’t mean it won’t help out manga sales a lot, because as long it’s available and allowed to act as a previewing mechanism for potential buyers, it will help increase interest. And remember, manga is what anime fans actually spend their money on now. So in closing, don’t let any manga with an anime adaptation go unreleased, and good luck.
