In memory of TokyoPop
So Tokyopop closed its doors today.
Jason Thompson has some great commentary about it on his LiveJournal, with more professional insight than I'd be able to give it. But as an early adopter with a Mixxine subscription, Tokyopop definitely hearkens back to a simpler time for me. I remember the days when finding anything anime or manga-related (in a store or on the internet) was like finding buried treasure. When the business exploded, we got higher quality stories, but there was no "thrill of the hunt", and so Tokyopop took the backburner for me.
Sorcerer Hunters, published by Mixxine in left-to-right format. You're lookin' at history, folks.
While I can't say I've been as diligent with my anime watching, manga was always something I supported with money, even when I didn't have much. I never clicked with much of anything Tokyopop published since Mixxine, preferring instead the shounen titles of Viz and later Del Rey's killer lineup. And I have to confess that the small sampling of TokyoPop's OEL manga I tried poisoned me against the rest. Jason's post also makes me wonder if I didn't tacitly contribute to comic nationalism:
I don't care whether they were considered 'manga' or 'comics', and it's unfortunate that so many manga-influenced Western artists have ended up being caught in some stupid culture war between American comics and Japanese comics, not appreciated by either side....I've had the misfortune recently of hearing people advising artists "Well, if you want to succeed in the comics business, you'd better get that *shudder* manga out of your art style." Well, maybe, if you want to draw other people's comics. In that case, it's always better to be a chameleon. But if you want to create your OWN comics, then use whatever style you want to. Just be a little original (better yet, a lot original), and be good. The comic publishing industry isn't so healthy anyway right now that there are tons of jobs just waiting for you if you learn to draw like such-and-such. There's probably more successful webcomics artists out there now than there are successful artists published by print publishers. Like the old quote goes, "Just because you sell out, doesn't mean anyone's buying."
I'm not one to dwell on "the good ol' days" of any form of entertainment. I believe we'll encounter many great works of fiction in many different formats as technology evolves. But if it's simply a matter of my country being artistically xenophobic (again), I can't help but feel pained. Del Rey's gone, of course, but I'm quietly hoping that Viz is healthy. I'm also wondering if it's time to box up some of these titles like Yozakura Quartet or Dragon Eye, which will likely never see English-language dead-tree format again.
So many unfinished stories...
The anime store in my neighborhood that had been there since 1995 closed a few months ago, and I'm super curious about what Anime Expo's going to look like this year, or the year after. Maybe the American world of manga will shrink again, and become more browseable. Maybe it'll be exclusively internet based now, and us Japanophiles will get our goods directly from the source. Or maybe we'll all find something else to do. But if there's any company that started it all for me, it was Tokyopop. And I'll miss it for nostalgia's sake, if nothing else.
(Cross-posted in my Tumblr blog, for all three of you that follow that bad boy.)