Repost: Manga Rambling

First of all, I hope everyone in the US had a tasty and safe Thanksgiving. Thanksgiving was small here with just me, my husband, and Omari. We fried turkey legs and had all the usual sides -- mashed potatoes, yams, southen style collards, stuffing, cranberry sauce, and pumpkin pie.  Everything was insanely tasty. (I will admit to being proud of my home cooking. My grandmother taught me well.) Hopefully our leftovers will last us through the weekend.

Onto to the manga rambling! I've been having some evolving thoughts as I've been exposed to more kinds of manga and reading bits and pieces about manga licensing in the US.  I've always been on the fence about scanlation, but I think I'm moving off that fence. In face of the knowledge that all but a very few series and oneshots are ever going to get licensed in the US, I now believe scanlation has its place in spreading manga love. I still have problems with money not going back the original artist directly by way of scanlation. And I still hate manga aggregators and people who post Japanese raws to the public Internet. They are horrible parasites that are killing the manga industry and they need to go away. But let's not beat that dead horse further.

I've come to the conclusion that as a customer, I should support what I want more of with my dollars.  Supporting US publishers for stuff I don't want out of obligation or "pity purchases" does not get me what I want. Instead the US publishers take it as that content is what readers want more of and then publish more of that. Since the kind of shoujo and josei I like are considered poison to the US publishers, it makes no sense for me to put my money into the seinen, shounen, moe, high school love train, and low quality smutty shat that the US publishers are offering in order to get what I want. Rather my money would be best spent on encouraging the Japanese publishers. And so this is what I've decided to do. I am now almost exclusively buying Japanese manga. I'm still buying Skip Beat and checking out some of the special hardcover editions of classic manga, but otherwise there is no other content I'm interested in.

I know the vast majority of you can't read Japanese. As part of getting off the scanlation fence, I'd now say go read scanlations if you have no access to the a licensed version in your language.  HOWEVER if you read the scanlation, please let the Japanese publishers know that you want more content that you like by purchasing as many of the Japanese manga that you can afford.  It's okay if you can only afford one volume of your favorite series. Just make the gesture and own a piece your favorite series.  Let the publisher and the artist know that you like what they are doing and you want more.  I also think that if you want localized manga anywhere near the extent of a manga aggregator, it's gonna come from Japan and not a US publisher.

Buying Japanese manga is easier than ever, and now with the weakened yen, Japanese manga is now cheaper than localized manga, and this includes shipping! Here are some websites to purchase Japanese manga:

• Amazon JP manga (shoujo/ josei) /magazines (shoujo / josei)
• YesAsia
• Honto (雑誌 = magazine , コミック = comics (manga) (shoujo / josei)
• Books Kinokuniya
• Sanseido Books -- if you don't have a local store, call up the nearest one to order books and arrange the magazine subscriptions.
• Akadot/Bookoff (used books) -- Do not browse this website at work. Hentai is front and center on the home page and despite what the page says, you can't turn it off.

I use Amazon JP and YesAsia for online purchases, and I go to Sanseido, Kinokuniya, and Bookoff physical bookstores.

Anyhow those are my current thoughts on manga. Go out and enjoy scanlations, but let the US and Japanese publishers know what you want more of by voting with your dollars. (In other words "Princess Jellyfish" lovers, go read the scanlations without guilt, but at least buy a few volumes of the Japanese manga to let the Japanese publisher know that you want it and to let the mangaka know that her work is loved.)

Manga Updates Link Removal Update

If you're following the matter, MU posted an update on the group link removal issue: LINK. I guess it is a legit complaint.  I don't know enough about copyright law to say whether what happened was valid or not, but it's clear to me the link removal request only benefited the manga aggregators. It's is clear that the publishing organization that made the DMCA complaint does not understand the manga scanlation world, and as a consequence drove eyeballs to to the entities that they are trying to curb.  Not that any of this is going to help. Honestly, publishers need to focus on publishing and offer potential customers something better than scanlation. If they want to beat the manga aggregators, then they need to become  manga aggregators with an ad-free subscription service and free with ads.

That said... scanlators need to stop translating series when they become licensed. Granted I'm guilty of starting scanlation with Arakure and Ouran, both of which were licensed at the time. At the time I justified my activities by saying the publishers were 2 years behind the Japanese releases. At the time I believed most people were like me and bought the licensed releases when they became available and were using the scanlations to keep current with Japan.  That may have been more the case 6 or 7 years ago, but I'm not so sure that's the habit of folks who came into manga exclusively through the manga aggregators.

Still, even if scanlations for licensed series weren't available, I'm not sure licensed readership would improve.  The truth is, many of us simply don't have the extra cash to spend on manga. And given the overhead cost involved with bringing manga to the US, it makes me wonder whether selling manga is a viable business outside of the blockbuster shounen and moe manga series in this down economy. I know none of the series that are and were done for this this blog have enough readership to justify the cost of licensing outside of J+K, which was licensed.

Anyhow, this is all of great interest to me because I've always believed that the publishers should ally with scanlators to spread the manga love profitably. But old media is old media, and because there are so many lawyers involved, all they know how to do is sue rather than innovate. It's sad, but that's the current reality. Fear not, though, it looks like we'll eventually get what we want from the Japanese publishers. If you haven't already, please check out Mangabox. I'm still evaluating Crunchyroll. So far they have 12 series that I don't care for and haven't added more to their roster. I also do not trust that their old media owners have readers in mind, but rather are more interested in serving their true customers which will be advertisers, which makes the readers the product they are selling and not the manga. If Crunchyroll becomes as useless as Hulu, I will be sad.

Conflicted Rambling

Ugh... it seems that I have a Murphies affliction. As soon as I announce and ramp up to start new series and oneshots, past oneshots become series, past short series become indefinite, and series that were on hiatus resume. Of course these are occasions for celebration, but at the same time, my new series plans just went out the window. The other option is for us to go back to being one of those groups with too much on their plate to do timely regular releases. This is particularly frustrating because we're well into starting these series and oneshots and I don't want to abandon the work we've done. Here's the breakdown of what we've got going.

Ongoing

• "Magnolia"
• "Pochamani"
• "Hakamori Majo Bianca"
• "Yukarism"

Complete in Japan

• "Rex Fabula"
• "Ore to Atashi no Kareshisama"
• "The Ghost Apartment Manager"
• "Wild Wing"

New Series/Oneshots

• Single Author oneshot collections
• "LLLL"
• "Megane no Incubus"
• "Kurogane Girl" 
• "Hana yori mo Yaiba no Gotuku"
• "Gensou Kajin" 

Sob...well... we'll take it one step at a time.  We need more staff :/... HALP!!!! J to E translators, HALP!!!!

Rambling Post About Upcoming Projects

Please pardon me now because I'm going to self-indulgently ramble.

Holding off and not rushing into starting new series until we finish some series that are already done in Japanese has given me a lot of time to think about what future projects I want to do and we should do. I've been experimenting with different magazines, "online magazines," and random tankoubon purchases over the past year or so. I thought it would help refine my tastes, but all it's done is thrown me into confusion. There are way too many shiny things out there and I want them all.

I basically choose projects that I like, but every once in a while I find myself asking what would be popular, which is the wrong question because we're not doing this for money. It's hard not to feed our hungry egos and it's always nice to be popular. But popular series rarely hold my attention for long as evidenced by the series we've dropped. In case you haven't noticed, we always end up dropping our most popular series (AnS, Orange Chocolate, and Pika Ichi). This is mainly because these series stories stagnate or become repetitive.

Anyhow... I'm always looking for "heart" and a certain amount of "emotional realness" in the series and oneshots we pick, though I admit with the 2011 color Lalas, I let go of that just to feel the excitement of variety. Hee!