CAA: Christian Anime Alliance

Kodansha to let Tokyopop licenses lapse

Basically, this means that Tokyopop won't be allowed to finish off Kodansha titles that are currently ongoing or reprint any out of print titles. The number of titles is pretty substantial. If you were looking to pick up Love Hina, Beck, GTO, Voices of a Distant Star, Getbackers, or whatever else, well, you'd better do it soon.

So...why are they doing this?

It is a mystery.

That's strange they don't even give a reason for it. I never rly liked TokyoPop, so it doesn't matter much to me, but still. Strange.

Del Rey is going to finish Samurai Deeper Kyo. Hopefully, they will pick up some of the others as well, or at least, one would hope Kodansha wouldn't yank them without having some sort of future plans in place.

Rave Master had only three volumes left. I think Getbackers was over halfway done. While not Fruits Basket level in sales, I was always under the impression that these were doing fairly well for Tokyopop.

I don't collect anything from Tokyopop myself (Only one three volume title), but I feel for the folks who do. 98% of my manga are Viz, heh.

MasterDias (post: 1343296) wrote:Del Rey is going to finish Samurai Deeper Kyo. Hopefully, they will pick up some of the others as well, or at least, one would hope Kodansha wouldn't yank them without having some sort of future plans in place.

Rave Master had only three volumes left. I think Getbackers was over halfway done. While not Fruits Basket level in sales, I was always under the impression that these were doing fairly well for Tokyopop.

I put the words "Del Rey" in bold for a reason...Like, ALL of Del Rey's manga are licensed from Kodansha. No, seriously. This decision makes sense.

Bleh.. Tokyopop's quality has gone down the tubes anyway... T_T
And you gotta love how they promote the living daylights out of their slowwww-release OEL books while near-neglecting their Japanese stuff, which for a company called TOKYOpop is pretty sad.

The only thing I dislike about Del Rey from what I've seen is their lower-case lettering in some of the manga they've put out. Really though, I love their cultural notes in the back. You feel like they actually care about the reader.

Sapphi (post: 1346559) wrote:And you gotta love how they promote the living daylights out of their slowwww-release OEL books while near-neglecting their Japanese stuff, which for a company called TOKYOpop is pretty sad.

I don't think they really had too much of choice actually. Most of the major Japanese publishers basically have exclusive contracts (or something similar anyway, if not officially) with other companies. Shueisha and Shogakukan are with Viz, Kodansha with Del Rey, Square-Enix with Yen Press, etc.

This isn't leaving Tokyopop with a lot of major titles. That's why they were basically milking Fruits Basket for all it was worth.