Major Publishers hop on the manga bandwagon

[Chux]

You'll read them backwards and you'll like it!

While more companies releasing manga is all well and go, STILL we go without Nana. Seeing as how Tokyopop releases ParaKiss, I expected them to algo bring us Nana, but still I don't see it on a store shelf.

And where the f**k is issue #2 of Gunslinger Girl?!?

No Shit, I bought both that, and .hack Vol 2 BEFORE Christmas.

Here it is, damn near 5 months later and STILL nothing from either.

[Bacon McShig]

And while we're at it, where the fuck is issue #3 of Cannon God Exaxxion?!?

Whoah, someone else reads Exaxxion? I thought everyone else had sworn off of DH manga. *thumbs up for good taste*

However, I don't see the stuff getting "flopped" as such a big deal, it's not like it changes the story or anything. I wouldn't care if I drew something and it got "flopped" in Japan...

Once again, I think it's perfectly reasonable for an artist to want to have the scar or eyepatch or bionic arm or what have you of their charcter to appear on the correct side.

[Dolemite]

Whoah, someone else reads Exaxxion? I thought everyone else had sworn off of DH manga. *thumbs up for good taste*

Thanks. I always thought DH did a good job with their manga publishing, personally.

As for Exaxxion, I made a thread about it a while back. Check it out: http://www.the-nextlevel.com/board/s...annon+Exaxxion

Have you seen vol. 3 anywhere?

Once again, I think it's perfectly reasonable for an artist to want to have the scar or eyepatch or bionic arm or what have you of their charcter to appear on the correct side.

Are you sure that they actually just turn the page upside down? I was under the impression that they simply re-arranged the panels themselves from left-to-right to right-to-left. If they actually DO just flip everything upside-down, than I totally agree with you.

[George]

How is that book? The art looks beautiful.

And while we're at it, where the fuck is issue #3 of Cannon God Exaxxion?!?


Like I said, I'm getting used to it, and I really don't mind it as much as I once did. In some ways it's actually a cool novelty. However, I don't see the stuff getting "flopped" as such a big deal, it's not like it changes the story or anything. I wouldn't care if I drew something and it got "flopped" in Japan...

Some dude in Japan is thinking the same way, I bet. That's how they've been doing it for hundreds of years. So it's not really a novelty any more than the way we do it is.

[lithium]

Frankly, I don't blame them. I've flopped some of my work just for shits and giggles and the flaws are sometimes much more pronounced to me that way

Holding your work up to a mirror is a classic technique for pointing out flaws. I've had many teachers have us do that, and one even required us to constantly hold our work into the mirror as we worked on it as an attempt to minimize distortions.

With that said, and even though I know this is "wrong", I just hate reading right to left. I still can't get used to it. The panels and book go right to left, but the words go left to right. It's so unnatural.

[mollipen]

Are you sure that they actually just turn the page upside down? I was under the impression that they simply re-arranged the panels themselves from left-to-right to right-to-left. If they actually DO just flip everything upside-down, than I totally agree with you.

What most companies would do is take the page, and flip it horizontally, so that what was once the right edge is now the left, and vice versa. Take a pic in Photoshop, do a horizontal flip, and you've just done what they did. So, at that point, right hands become left hands, right lanes become left lanes, etc.

I know of very, very few companies that took the time to actually cut out each panel and re-arrange them so that they read American style, but the artwork was not flipped. Blade of the Immortal, in fact, is the only book I can think of that does that.

And the last thing I think we need to worry about is a lack of manga to bring over to America. Manga and anime are two totally different worlds. Go to Japan - there are THOUSANDS of issues of manga at any one store at any given time. Some of those titles even get a full GN-sized book weekly or bi-weekly. Even if we suddenly had EVERY manga title currenly out in Japan announced for release in America, and if every book stuck to a monthly release schedule, even without looking to any new manga, we would have enough stuff to be published until I'm dead, at the least.

What really needs to happen is that the manga market here in America needs to diversify. Thankfully shoujo has become a hit, and we're getting some great titles from that genre. But there are still so many genres that have little to no representation on our shores. Still, a lot of the stuff we have is anime tie-in stuff, and if you ask me, that's some of the lower-quality stuff that we could get. There's a huge selection of non-big name manga out there that deverses to come our way.

I do, of course, wonder if the American market can support the amount of stuff we're getting. When I got back from Japan, and saw the manga section at Borders, I was shocked - just in that one year, the manga market here had grown by ridiculous proportions. And while I'm a bit concerned at how fast it is growing, I also love seeing it. If you're a fan of manga, and go to Japan, it breaks your heart to see how much they have (and how cheap it is) compared to our situation. So, the more we get, the better selection and diversity we have to choose from, the happier I am.

[Bacon McShig]

As expected, spot-on commentary, shidoshi. I think that now that the big companies are getting into the act, they'll be able to put in the marketing $$$ that (relatively) small publishers like Tokyopop and Viz couldn't afford, and therefore increase manga's visibility in the eye of public awareness. I'd expect they'll take steps to do just that, but if not, maybe the market will have a falling out.

What's up with Del Rey's SRP being $10.95, though? You would think that a big company that's trying to make a foothold in a new market would put things out at the indusry standard price point or less (considering they could EASILY afford it), not a buck more...

[Dolemite]

Nice reply, shidoshi. Thanks. Actually, I'm quite suprised that publishers would do that, flipping the page horizontally. I must assume then that any reference to something on someone's left has to be changed in the translation to the right, etc. Wacky.

And yeah, I've heard how insanely huge the manga market is in Japan. Unlike here, where comics are viewed as kid's fare, in Japan everyone reads it.

[mollipen]

Nice reply, shidoshi. Thanks. Actually, I'm quite suprised that publishers would do that, flipping the page horizontally. I must assume then that any reference to something on someone's left has to be changed in the translation to the right, etc. Wacky.

That is exactly one of the problems with the way it used to be done. Suddenly 95% of characters were left handed, signs in the background either had to be totally re-written, or when they couldn't be, they had to be left backward. A lot of little things like that, while little things, ended up very noticable.

Don't get me wrong - I can absolutely see why a lot of Americans would prefer to read manga in the standard, English reading stlye. But I see this as sort of like watching widescreen movies - for many people, it can be very hard to get used to at first, and there will always be some who hate it. But, in the end, it helps to give you a truer experience with that form of media.