Viz Media and Manga in the US

Here's an interview I managed to scrounge from Publisher Weekly: Viz Media and Manga in the US.

Bizarre Strategies

The Philippines, I think, is in a unique position when it comes to manga. I mean sure, we're near Japan and Hong Kong (or Taiwan) so it's theoretically cheaper for us to acquire manga (be it in Japanese or in Chinese). Unfortunately, we aren't really fluent with either language. So if the majority is interested in legitimately reading manga, it should come from the US.

In terms of popularity, I think Viz right now is the king when it comes to English-translated manga. When it comes to quality, however, I think Dark Horse is easily a good runner-up. There's one thing wrong with them however--they don't seem to be aggressive in getting their titles out. And it's just not in the case of the Philippines. But locally, the status of Dark Horse manga is that the supplier doesn't really export those titles unless you happen to own a comic store in the US. These days, I only see them in either Fully Booked or at Comic Odyssey.

Of course Dark Horse isn't the only one to adopt this policy. Lately I can't get my D&D books for the same reason. The supplier only gives it out to the licensed distributor, which is all well and good except for one fact: the licensed distributor hasn't been releasing those D&D books in the past eight months. As to the reasons why I can only speculate. But lately it seems that I'm the only person missing them so it might not be such a bad business decision.

In other news, I'll be saying farewell to Dragon and Dungeon issues at the end of the year as Paizo wasn't able to renew their license. Makes me wonder what Wizards of the Coast has in store for D&D.

I'm Behind on the News -- A Manga Cafe

Got this from Yoru: A manga cafe (it's been so long since I last heard from Flori!) in Makati! Near Makati Cinema Square.

Of course a few years ago, there was this Japanese "shop" at an undisclosed site in Makati (in H.V. dela Costa St. actually) which loaned manga and anime (on VHS tapes). Of course it wasn't an authentic manga cafe in the sense that it had tables and ambience... it was more like a small library (about the size of a convenience store) where Japanese patrons could do some shopping and browse through manga and rent the various VHS tapes.

NY Comic Con Updates

It actually surprised me that the New York Comic Con managed to draw lots of people in the anime/manga industry. I expected that some of the announcements that were made there would have been reserved for the more dedicated anime/manga conventions.

Anyway, since my tastes are weird, here are some choice bits from topics that interests me:

• Joss Whedon just turned in the script to Dark Horse for Buffy (Season 8) #1 but comic production takes a long time, around 9 months.
• A Kull miniseries from Dark Horse and hopefully a Solomon Kane miniseries to follow (FYI Kull and Solomon Kane are titles of Robert E. Howard, a.k.a. the creator of Conan the Barbarian [not the detective!]).
• Dark Horse releasing the MPD Psycho manga.
• Tokyopop will be releasing the Twelve Kingdom novels this year.
• Viz will be re-releasing Uzumaki and Gyo, which I assume will be shrunk down to their new manga format. Oh and they're also releasing Houshin Engi.
• Sadly, still no hope for seeing the rest of the Saint Seiya series.
• In a strange reversal, Yen Press will be releasing the Spiral manga instead of Tokyopop.
• A Wild Cards comic!
• An Orson Scott Card comic set in the same world as Ender's Game.
  

On the US Manga Phenomenon

Several days ago I passed by the comic store and the bookstore and one of the things that surprised me was the fact that I was buying various US-translated manga titles. I’ve been an anime/manga fan for more than a decade now but it’s only recently that I’ve taken up such shopping habits. One look at the manga shelf and there seems to be a plethora of titles to choose from—a stark contrast from a decade ago where the choices were minimal. The US manga industry might not necessarily be at its peak right now but it is definitely on the rise. And while many people have speculated as to the reasons why manga has proven popular in the US (and I have my own theories as well), I’ll perhaps tackle one reason that isn’t often cited: the marketing and the industry.

It seems that it’s only in the past few years that manga seems to have picked up steam even if it’s had a presence in the US for more than a decade now. Of course back then, the format is very different from what we know it now to be. Manga didn’t really come in the small digest format nor in the right-to-left reading layout or more importantly, at $7.99 or $19.99 an issue. I think that change made a significant impact in the US manga industry, the popularity of Pokemon and Yu-gi-oh notwithstanding.

If you wanted a glimpse of what manga was back then, then I suggest you look at Dark Horse comics. Dark Horse, of course, has been one of the pioneers in the manga industry. While they’re not limited to manga titles, they have, over the years, published a lot of non-mainstream and mature content. And in a way, they were ahead of their time. A point of contention right now among manga fans is “non-authentic manga” (a.k.a. Ameri-manga), which is manga that was not made by a Japanese creator. Right now TokyoPop, a leading publisher of manga titles (and perhaps responsible for the current manga paradigm shift but I’ll get to that later), is getting a lot of heat for their release of “original manga” but Dark Horse has been ahead of the game in that department. Just look at Adam Warren’s run of Dirty Pair under Dark Horse as far back as ‘98. But getting back to the topic at hand, manga titles wasn’t packaged in its present format but was originally presented in the way most comics were released back then. Instead of the collected volumes we now see or even the anthology of manga titles every month, manga titles were released in the singles format on at least a monthly basis. For those not familiar with comic jargon, singles are those slim, nearly A4-sized comics that had anywhere between twenty plus pages to forty. Pick up any superhero comic and you’ll see what I mean. And in a certain way, that tradition of distributing manga continues on. Just look at Dark Horse’s Blade of the Immortal series, which comes in that format if you want the latest chapter.

Of course Dark Horse wasn’t the only pioneer back then. I’d say Viz is in the same category as well. Much like Dark Horse’s business model, a lot of their comics was released in the same format, such as their Dragonball series. However, I will point out one problem with their business model (and to a certain extent, still plagues them in the present). Some of those manga “chapters” which got released in the US monthly at best was released in Japan on a weekly basis. US comic fans who bought those manga singles will most likely find the stories to be decompressed (to be fair, I find the US comic style to be compressed, but that’s because they have a page limit and it’s released as a monthly), hanging, and perhaps even finding some of the art inconsistent (because the art had to be “flipped” to present it in the left-to-right format). Of course eventually, those singles would be collected into “graphic novels”, a Western comic term that was coined decades earlier. Now most graphic novels back then seems like the manga titles we see now on the shelves—but that’s only for the untrained eye. The manga graphic novels back then were slightly larger in size and more importantly, more expensive. The price differential might not seem as much now—a title could go for around $14.95 to $19.95. Not really so expensive to US comic fans who purchased graphic novels but what the market didn’t realize then that the US comic fans who purchased graphic novels weren’t necessarily the target market of manga graphic novels. There’s also the fact that the manga graphic novels are indeed larger than the present manga titles but they’re smaller than most of the graphic novels back then (think A4!), not to mention that manga graphic novels were in black and white, while their Western counterparts came in color. Suffice to say, the entry point to manga was steep. Also be aware that while there was knowledge of manga back then, it wasn’t as prevalent as it is today, where manga titles can be seen in bookstores and people stop asking you to define what manga exactly is.

In the late 90’s, some of the publishers also experimented with Japan’s anthology format, releasing a phonebook-sized comic anthology that featured various titles on a regular basis. Again, it was plagued by similar constraints with the comic singles—what got released in Japan on a weekly basis got released in a monthly basis. For some publishers, especially the likes of Mixx and Viz, it worked, or at least gave them moderate success. For others, such as Raijin comics, it didn’t. But it did alleviate some of the problems of the singles—instead of just getting one title to read, you got around three or four different titles to peruse monthly. And as expected, some of the popular titles eventually got released as graphic novels.

Eventually Mixx, an unlikely publisher in the scene, managed to gather some steam, publishing phenomenal manga titles such as Rayearth or the lesser-known Parasyte (which has now been acquired by Del Rey). Eventually, they started releasing manga graphic novels not just in the right-to-left format but also in a smaller, leaner package that despite its size, was affordable: the $9.99 price tag. This, I think, gave them the edge of their competitors like Viz, who had similarly great titles like Ranma 1/2 and Nausicaa but were nearly twice as expensive. Of course manga veterans will know Mixx by its present name—TokyoPop. Around this time, anime was also at its peak in the US, with the likes of Pokemon and Gundam hitting the mainstream market.

Perhaps a testament to TokyoPop’s efficiency isn’t just in its popularity, or the fact that it’s still publishing presently. It lies in the fact that others have adapted to its format. Take Viz for example. Its manga collections have been scaled down but are priced more cheaply at $7.99 per issue. And it is gaining popularity—just look at the Shonen Jump line. Of course another strength of various manga publishers right now is visibility: whereas manga was usually found at the comic shelves, now it has a wider presence from bookstores to online. I think the fact that it’s in bookstores has made a big impact, drawing upon an untapped customer base. Of course US comics have made it to bookstores in the form of trade paperbacks (a practice that has been in the US for quite some time but only gained popularity in the 80’s with the likes of Alan Moore’s Watchmen and Neil Gaiman’s Sandman series but is the main comic model in Japan) but I think manga is outselling its US counterpart in that arena.

One of the biggest, most important transition in the US manga industry, I think, is the acceptance that they shouldn’t work with the US-comic business model—their markets are different (although of course there are overlaps, and I’m proof of that as I read both US comics and manga). In fact, only few manga titles right now are being released as a single on a monthly basis—the closest you have are the anthologies like Shonen Jump and perhaps what’s saving it from premature doom is that it is an anthology and thus drawing a diverse crowd rather than one specific fan market (i.e. fans of both Naruto and Death Note are forced to buy the same publication to get their regular dose of translated manga). There’s also the fact that the US comic market has been trying to court half of manga’s readership, namely the female segment and it has made many attempts (they do have good titles that address both female readers and go beyond the superhero stereotype). I think an important part is also the very terminology we use. Manga isn’t called graphic novels any more to gain it credibility and acceptance—manga is simply called manga and it carries with it all the preconceptions (as correct or erroneous as they may be) of the term. It even stopped pretending to be other than what it is as more and more manga titles are retaining more of their Japanese authenticity, not just in the right-to-left format but in sound effects, subject matter, and translation (of course there will be those titles that suffer from lack of time or some other constraint that makes them suffer in quality—look at TokyoPop: some titles have good translations, while others simply don’t).

So the next time you look at the next big thing, whatever it may be, aside from taking the artistic and aesthetic considerations (I don’t think Viz failed in that department yet it bestow upon them TokyoPop’s success), one should similarly play close attention to the business model you’re working with. Arguably TokyoPop’s model might have only acted as a catalyst to manga’s inevitable success, but few people in any industry will deny that having a good business plan isn’t a factor in their success.

Brand New

There's a certain feeling when you own a brand new item. It feels so raw, so virgin, so perfect... And more often than not, the said item will never be as good as the first time you open it from the box. In a certain way, brand new comic shops also feel like that, except on a bigger, grander scale. The place is well-organized, the displays pretty and complete, and the comic stocks haven't been touched.

The first time I've been to a sparkling brand new comic shop was during college, when CCHQ opened its doors in Katipunan. Last week, Comic Oddysey set up shop at Robinsons Galleria. I wasn't there during the opening day but I got to drop by yesterday and one could easily get mesmerized. At the center of the shop was a box of singles comics, arranged alphabetically. On the right side were displays of graphic novels and toys, arranged either by genre (I.e. X-Men), or by author (i.e. Alan Moore). To the right were various US-translated manga volumes, from the likes of Ouran to more mainstream titles like Naruto.

Anyway, I suggest you drop by during the weekend because Robinsons Galleria will be having its three-day mallwide sale, so you can discounts.

History of Animersion/Anime@Arki

Anime@Arki was the closest thing I experienced to an anime club. They'd host anime screenings once a month in U.P., and it was there that I'd meet several influential people in the local anime industry. I once even got to chat with a Filipino artist who used to work for CLAMP, but that's a different story. Anyway, for posterity's sake, here's the history of Anime@Arki. Again, much like every other group I've posted about, the group has gone its separate ways to pursue their personal lives, although there are reunions from time to time. I reprinted this entry sometime in March of 2003.

by the staff of Anime@Arki

Anime@Arki (A@A) started out as one of the events held during the Architecture week in UP Diliman back in August 1998. It was a two-day event featuring some of the more popular shows like Ranma ½ and Neon Genesis Evangelion to underrated yet quality titles like The Vision of Escaflowne.

Since the event was such a success, it was decided to hold this kind of show on a monthly basis right after as there were just a lot of good titles to show and share with fellow anime fans. Incidentally, that is the mission statement of Animersion / A@A: To promote good, quality anime to fellow anime fans, regardless of the age of the title. Just because a particular title is new doesn’t necessarily mean it’s good.

As the years went on, our events have grown and so have the following. The biggest show attendance was in January 2000, where we had 200 people come to watch Rurouni Kenshin OAVs, Gasaraki, End of Evangelion and Perfect Blue. The show was so packed, some of the audience had to sit on the floor, stand at the back, and even watch the whole thing from outside the doorway. We even heard of one loyal fan, who was on crutches, that climbed up 5 flights of stairs just to watch the show. Our shows also include some giveaways and raffles to entice more audience.

We have also incorporated contests in our shows that members of the audience could participate in like Bust-a-Move / Dance Dance Revolution dancing contest. We were the first to come up with the anime karaoke contest and the Name that Anime Tune contest. The Anime Karaoke contest is such a big success that our 2nd installment could only accommodate 24 singers; others had to be turned away.

We have also assisted Colegio de San Agustin during their fair this February 2002 as they also held their first anime show. Generally it was successful yet could still be improved in future attempts.

We are now on our 5th year, and a lot has changed; the audience composition, the shows, etc. One thing will not change, A@A will continue to promote anime so long as there are enough loyal anime fans who support our efforts.

Anima Anime: A History

Back in the late 90's until early 2000-2001, there were two groups in Metro Manila that were making regular anime screenings to the public. One was Anima Anime, who did is as part of their business of selling anime/manga merchandise. The Anima Anime group would be pivotal in the development of anime in the country, as much as some people might dislike its members. They were partly responsible for the first anime convention, and one of its members, Azrael, has made a name for himself nowadays as the comics-event guy to talk to. Eventually, the group disbanded and move on to other, more personal projects. I'd also like to add that it was Anima Anime who inspired me to make an anime fanzine, as they had a fanzine of their own, albeit lifting from existing anime magazines or off the Internet.

by Sherwin Nones

Anima Anime! started back in May 1999 when two guys (Sherwin and Jan) merged with a group of collectors (Bernie, Israel, Joey, Richmon, Richard) and joined the Collector's Convention in SM Megamall. The newly formed group of collectors decided to unify their resources in making an effort to provide cheap anime merchandise and making it more accessible. Opportunities for the group opened simultaneously as they decided to open their own shop at Binondo. After several more Collector's Conventions at Megamall, Collectimania events at Shangri-La, and several issues of their self-published fanzine, an article at the Sunday Inquirer Magazine about the group came out. This proved to be one of the major catalyst for Anima Anime's popularity which boosted heavy website traffic, a load of inquiries and a long list of orders. All this came at a time when the Anima just transfered to a new shop along Recto Manila. At the same time, Anima Anime also began tours in several campuses and starrted monthly anime film showings at Oracafe (Kamias st. QC). (Charles' note: this was sometime in 1999.)

It was around November of the same year when they transferred to a new shop in Robinson's Galleria. But it wasn't until February of 2000 when Anima Anime settled in their present shop at the 2nd floor FBR Arcade Katipunan Avenue QC. By that time, Anima Anime! has established itself as one of the major suppliers of anime merchandise online and event organizer. The group also firmed its line up of six people (Sherwin, Bernie, Jan, Israel, Chris and Gayle).

By the year 2000, AXN Asia tied up with Anima Anime to be their local store and event partner. This brought about the very first Anime Convention (AnimeXplosion 2000) held at the MegaTrade Hall SM Megamall. Anima Anime is credited to be the brains of the event which provided the link between organizers, sponsors, volunteers, and cosplayers. For the first time, anime fans became organized. Soon after, other groups have formed and decided to organize local anime events. Even the band NeOtaku has its roots at Anima Anime!

During the same year, when Oracafe closed, PowerBooks tied up with Anima Anime! for their monthly anime film showings. To this date, Anime Revue is still held monthly at PowerBooks Makati.

By 2001, AXN Asia had the AXN Anime Festival at SM Megamall where Anima Anime once again was a major part. They also took part in organizing the group that went to the HongKong Comic Convention where a local cosplayer (JM/Saito) won the regional contest.

Over the past years, Anima Anime has helped and has been supported by so many individuals and companies. One of its major partners is Culture Crash Comics (James Palabay, etc) which has continually offered its support to a lot of events that Anima Anime participates in. Anima Anime has also tied up with Sineklab, a group in CCP that organizes film showings during full moon nights. They have organized several Anime Film Showings at the amphitheater of the Manila Film Center.

By 2002 Anima Anime's line up has changed only but slightly (Bernie, Sherwin, Jan, Chris, Gayle, Carlo, Kalvin, and many more). They have organized a relaunch party over at the Filipinas Heritage Library where they gave away a DVD Player. Later this year, a contest to give away a game console will be launched as well.

As Anima Anime matures, it is now more concerned in pushing the local anime scene farther down the road where fans would be willing to be more than just plain fans. In fact, the group believes that in order to fully comprehend and empathize with anime characters and stories, there should be an effort to understand the culture. This is the reason why Anima Anime has started showing live action films and sometimes, Jpop/Jrock videos.

As the group conjures to have more creative events in the future, Anima Anime will still provide access for anime related as well as jpop/jrock merchandise. The Anima Anime of the future is organic and will evolve to become what the next step would be.

Adult Manga: Culture and Power in Contemporary Japanese Society by Sharon Kinsella

This is just me re-archiving some old work. In 1999, I made a local anime fanzine called P.Otaku Bytes. I stopped it some time in 2000, at the height of the anime boom here in the Philippines. One year later, I tried to make another fanzine, Fanime, but it only lasted one issue. I had all but given up but some people in 2002 were doing papers on anime so I decided to give it one more shot. I set up a blog that would hopefully feature articles on anime and manga in the country, but it lacked submissions. Here's a book review on what I think is an important book on manga, aside from the Fred Patten and Frederik Schodt canon publications. This was originally posted in June 9, 2002.

Publisher: University of Hawaii Press

ISBN: 0824823184

Publication Date: July 2000

Whereas comics are usually associated as "just for kids", the manga industry in Japan does not possess that label. The book Adult Manga narrates at this phenomenon and how it evolved.

Unlike the title, the book is not centered solely on manga that contains adult content. It discusses a wide array of topics like how the manga industry got its start to the existence of dojinshis (fan-made comics) to the current state of Japan's manga industry. What the book terms as "adult" is not necessarily limited to that which is too violent or containing many sexual taboos. Instead, "mature" would better suit that definition as it tackles subjects addressing people in general rather than specifically kids like relationships, businesses, and the like.

Kinsella's book serves as a good resource to anyone interested in manga and anime in general. It has charts and statistics of manga's popularity, gives a view of how manga comprises almost half of Japan's printed publications, and how it is a medium rather than just a genre. There are several interesting facts you'll find in the book like how Hong Kong used to pirate manga in the early 1980s but legalized it at the decade's end since it was quite profitable. Or about censorship in Japan and how the genitalia of men and women are portrayed in manga. It's a treasure though if you want to know manga's roots as it has a brief history on its evolution from woodblock prints to newsprint to bound books.

People interested in finding a resource on anime and manga will find this quite useful, especially with its comprehensive bibliography. The book is essentially a thesis printed for the masses. At $20, it's quite pricey for a paperback but most books related to anime and manga have prices in that range. The book also has some pictures for reference but none too flashy. There are also some typing errors in the book but they are few and not quite noticeable.

Overall, the book is well worth it although those who are not used to formal language might find it a difficult read. The book was once available at Powerbooks and some outlets might still have a copy. You can just order it from them or at Amazon.